Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has identified water vapour in the atmosphere of WASP-18 b, a massive extrasolar planet, a so-called hot Jupiter, with a temperature of around 2.700 °C. The result is published in the journal Nature. Exoplanet WASP-18 b is about 400 light-years from Earth, is 10 times more massive than Jupiter and has an orbital period of less than a day. Its extreme proximity to its star, its relative closeness to Earth, and its large mass

A study led by researcher Laura Scholz, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found, for the first time, observational evidence that the evolution and the properties of the galaxies are conditioned not only by the mass of the stars they contain, but aso by the effect of the dark matter halos which surround them. The results are published in the specialist journal Nature Astronomy. Dark matter comprises around 85% of all the matter in the Universe. Although ordinary matter absorbs, reflects and emits light, dark matter cannot be seen directly, which makes its detection

During commissioning the Canary satellite ALISIO-1 proves its efficiency by observing phenomena in over 100 regions of the world The first Canary satellite, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), ALISIO-1, (an acronym for Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations) was launched into space on December 1st 2023 from the Vandenberg Airforce Base in California, and in only a few months has completed the commissioning phase, the verification on orbit that all its systems are working correctly. In this phase of verification the DRAGO-2 camera has been calibrated, and