An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), has found one of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy, behind a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. It is a supergiant, with a mass almost 50 times the mass of the Sun, with a radius almost 40 times the solar radius, and a luminosity approaching a million times that of our own star, and has been given the descriptor 2MASS J20395358+4222505. But its most disconcerting aspect for the researchers is a variation in its velocity of

An international team of astronomers, in which IAC researchers participate, have discovered barium, the heaviest element ever found in an exoplanet atmosphere. It has been discovered at high altitudes in the atmosphere of the exoplanets WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b, two ultra-hot gas giants. The unexpected discovery, made possible by the ESPRESSO instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), raises questions about what these exotic atmospheres may look like. WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b are no ordinary exoplanets. Both are referred to as ultra-hot Jupiters as

NASA's space telescope has produced a molecular and chemical portrait of the atmospheric constituents of exoplanet WASP-39 b, a Saturn-sized behemoth that orbit a star some 700 light-years away. The observations provide a full menu of atoms and molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The suit of discoveries is detailed in a set of five scientific papers produced by an international collaboration involving research staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). WASP-39 b is a planet unlike any in our solar system. It is a so-called "hot Saturn" –a planet about as