News

This section includes scientific and technological news from the IAC and its Observatories, as well as press releases on scientific and technological results, astronomical events, educational projects, outreach activities and institutional events.

MM/DD/YYYY
  • Thumbnails of TNG50 (top left) and SDSS (bottom left) quenched galaxies. The top and bottom right panels show the pixel-wise contributions to the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for the TNG50 and SDSS galaxies, respectively. See Zanisi et al. (2021) for more details.
    Research news
    Neural networks to distinguish real and simulated galaxies

    Can neural networks distinguish computer simulated galaxy images from observed galaxies? This is the question that has been addressed in this work. For years, reproducing the morphological diversity of galaxies has been a problem for cosmological simulations. The new generation of simulations, such as Illustris TNG, are becoming more and more realistic. But enough to fool a neural network? In this work it is shown that it does not. Using unsupervised deep generative models, it is shown that, despite the fact that realism increases greatly in the last generation of simulations and with

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  • The unprecedented spectropolarimetric observations achieved during the CLASP2 space experiment. For detailed information, see http://ow.ly/S2gS50DF0wS. Credit: NAOJ, IAC, NASA/MSFC, IAS.
    Research news
    Mapping solar magnetic fields from the photosphere to the corona

    The solar chromosphere is the region between the relatively thin and cold photosphere (temperature of a few thousand degrees) and the hot and extended corona (temperatures above a million degrees). Although the chromosphere is much less hot than the corona, it is also significantly denser and thus much more energy is required to sustain it. Moreover, the mechanical energy necessary to heat the corona needs to traverse the chromosphere, making it a crucial interface region to understand how this energy propagates and is released in the most violent activity of the solar upper atmosphere

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  • Visita secretario Estado España Global
    Press release
    The Secretary of State for Global Spain visits the Teide Observatory

    Yesterday there was a visit to the installations of the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) by the Secretary of State for Global Spain, Manuel Muñiz, accompanied by the Delegate of the Government in the Canaries, Anselmo Pestana, and the Deputy Director of the Cabinet, Guillermo Corral. The Deputy Director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Casiana Muñoz-Tuñón, and the Administrator of the Teide Observatory (Observatorio del Teide), Miquel Serra-Ricart, told him about the effort being made in this research centre, and were able to show him some of the telescopes and instruments in the

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  • Galaxy cluster in formation
    Press release
    The Gran Telescopio Canarias discovers the largest cluster of galaxies known in the early universe

    A study, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and carried out with OSIRIS, an instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has found the most densely populated galaxy cluster in formation in the primitive universe. The researchers predict that this structure, which is at a distance of 12.5 billion light years from us, will have evolved becoming a cluster similar to that of Virgo, a neighbour of the Local Group of galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs. The study is published in the specialized journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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  • Reconstruction of the cosmic web (shaded areas in grey in the left panel) based on a distribution of galaxies (in red in the left panel) and the primordial fluctuations (right panel). Credit: Francisco-Shu Kitaura (IAC).
    Press release
    Big Data to model the evolution of the cosmic web

    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has led an international team which has developed an algorithm called COSMIC BIRTH to analyse large scale cosmic structures. This new computation method will permit the analysis of the evolution of the structure of dark matter from the early universe until the formation of present day galaxies. This work was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

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  • Solar active region artistic simulation
    Press release
    The CLASP2 space experiment achieves an unprecedented map of the Sun’s magnetic field from the photosphere up to the base of the corona

    Every day space telescopes provide spectacular images of the solar activity. However, their instruments are blind to its main driver: the magnetic field in the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that occasionally affect the Earth occur. The extraordinary observations of the polarization of the Sun’s ultraviolet light achieved by the CLASP2 mission have made it possible to map the magnetic field throughout the entire solar atmosphere, from the photosphere until the base of the extremely hot corona. This investigation, published today in the journal Science

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