On Wednesday 30 October, the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) received a talk by the first Swiss astronaut, Claude Nicollier, who wanted to share his experience in space with the personnel of the IAC. Claude Nicollier is the first Swiss astronaut to have flown into space. After his studies at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, Claude joined ESA as a member of their first group of astronauts. Since 2007 Nicollier has been a Professor at the Federal Polytechnical School at Lausanne. He has spent more than 1000 hours in space (more than 42 days) including a

An international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has discovered the extremely eccentric orbit of a gas giant exoplanet. This world, called TIC 241249530 b, not only follows one of the most drastically stretched-out orbits of all known transiting exoplanets, but also is also orbiting its star backwards, lending insight into the mystery of how these high-mass gas giants evolve into hot Jupiters , with very close and circular trajectories. The study is published in Nature. Within the population of known exoplanets, there are those that

The Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias hosted this week the global meeting of the members of the European project The Whole Sun , a project approved and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of its Synergy Grant calls. The duration of the project is seven years (from 2019 to 2026) and its full title is: “The whole Sun: untangling the complex physical mechanisms behind our eruptive star and its twins”. The main objective of the ERC’s Synergy Grant calls is to promote the joint work of groups of researchers in different European institutions so that all the necessary tools