On 12 August, to mark the total eclipse that will be visible across much of Spain, various towns in Palencia — including the capital, Frómista and Carrión de los Condes — will host a series of observation and outreach events bringing together scientists and students from Spain, Morocco and the United States. This event will serve as a training exercise for the NATE experiment, which will take place in North Africa during the next total eclipse next year, and will act as a meeting point between depopulated areas of Spain, the outermost regions, and Moroccan, American and Spanish students and

The international BEARD project, led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), has used data from several telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, and computer simulations to explain how galaxies similar to the Milky Way have managed to survive the most violent stages of the history of the Universe. The present model for the evolution of the universe predicts an epoch dominated by important mergers of galaxies some ten thousand million years ago. “It’s a case of violent interactions, in which it is foreseeable that weak structures

A team of scientists, including astrophysicist Carlos Hernández Monteagudo from the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), has compiled one of the most comprehensive catalogues of small bodies in the Solar System, based on photometric observations made from Earth. The study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, compiles data on 6,579 asteroids, comets and irregular satellites, mainly from the main belt located between Mars and Jupiter, opening up new possibilities for studying their composition and rotation. The