Thanks to images obtained by the James Webb Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates has been able to verify that galaxies in the early universe are usually flat and elongated, and not round or spiral like the nearest galaxies. International research has found, by analysing high-resolution, infrared images of the JWST, that flattened oval disc and tube-shaped galaxies were much more common when the universe was between 600 million and 6 billion years old. In contrast, the nearest galaxies have clearly defined
On November 6th and 7th a meeting will be held in the Museum of Science and the Cosmos in La Laguna, to celebrate the dedication to astrophysics during 60 years of John Beckman, Emeritus Research Professor of the IAC. Among those present will be scientists who have collaborated with him, and some of his doctoral students, who include the present Director of the IAC, Rafael Rebolo López, and the Deputy Director, Casiana Muñoz Tuñón. John arrived at the Institute in 1984, invited by the Director at that time, Francisco Sanchez Martínez, and the Professor of Astrophysics Carlos Sánchez Magro
H II regions are ionized nebulae associated with the formation of massive stars. They exhibit a wealth of emission lines in their spectra that form the basis for estimation of chemical composition. The amount of heavy chemical elements is essential to the understanding of important phenomena such as nucleosynthesis, star formation and chemical evolution of galaxies. For over 80 years, however, a discrepancy exists of a factor of around two between heavy-element abundances (the so-called metallicity) derived from the two main kinds of emission lines that can be measured in nebular spectra
