The first satellite developed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias,, which was launched into space last December, has sent back its first images. The quality of the observations shows the perfect performance of its DRAGO-2 infrared camera. The pointing test of its laser optical communications module has also been successfully carried out, making it the first Spanish satellite to use this technology. Today, at a press conference, the first images obtained with the ALISIO-1 satellite (Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations), an Earth observation satellite whose

An international research team, led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) together with a group of Italian universities, has confirmed a new method for finding protoclusters of galaxies, the largest structures in the early universe. These progenitors of present-day clusters of galaxies played an essential role in the evolution of the universe, but are not easy to find. This study shows that a specific type of galaxies, those which emit radiation at submillimetre wavelengths, are very good indicators of the presence of distant protoclusters

An international study, carried out by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated, shows that the universe could produce extremely luminous galaxies at very early epochs, when it was only some 3% of its present age. This result implies that these galaxies formed stars before, and more quickly than predicted by current theoretical models. The study also reveals an unusual galaxy that “imitates” the emission from a very distant galaxy. The results are published in the journal Nature. During the first months of scientific