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

An international piece of research, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found clues to the nature of some of the brightest and hottest stars in our Universe, called blue supergiants. Although these stars are commonly observed, their origin has been an old puzzle that has been debated for several decades. By simulating novel stellar models and analysing a large data sample in the Large Magellanic Cloud, IAC researchers have found strong evidence that most blue supergiants may have formed from the merger of two stars bound in a binary system. The study is published in the