An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of Liège and collaborators in UK, Chile, the USA, and Europe, has discovered a transiting giant planet orbiting the smallest known star to host such a companion — a finding that defies current theories of planet formation. The host star, TOI-6894 , is a red dwarf with only 20% the mass of the Sun , typical of the most common stars in our galaxy. Until now, such low-mass stars were not thought capable of forming or retaining giant planets. But as published today in

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has started its development of DRAGO-3 , the third generation of its instrument: Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations (DRAGO), designed for Earth observation from space in the short wave infrared region of the spectrum (SWIR). This new instrument comes after the success of DRAGO-1 and DRAGO-2 , which have proved their utility in key applications such as following volcanic eruptions, hydrological monitoring of regions affected by climate change, and the control of forest fires. Both the previous models have shown their

One of the biggest recent surprises in astronomy is the discovery that most stars like the Sun harbor a planet between the size of Earth and Neptune within the orbit of Mercury — sizes and orbits absent from our solar system. These ‘ super-Earths' and ` sub-Neptunes’ are the galaxy's most common planets, but their formation has been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team of astronomers has found a crucial missing link. By weighing four newborn planets in the V1298 Tau system, they've captured a rare snapshot of worlds in the process of transforming into the galaxy's most common