Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before. The results were published today in the journal Nature Astronomy . The Milky Way today is a massive spiral galaxy home to hundreds of billions of stars. However, our galaxy wasn’t always so large; it has grown by

An international team composed of Drs. Sylvain G. Korzennik, from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian , and Antonio Eff-Darwich Peña, from the University of La Laguna and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has published a pioneering study aimed at improving our understanding of the Sun’s internal structure. The work, published in The Astrophysical Journal , stands out for its use of exceptionally long helioseismic time series, exceeding twenty-five years of continuous observations, to analyze the deepest layers of the Sun. Helioseismology is the study of patterns of

The Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) is organising the 37th Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics, which will take place in San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife) from 16 to 27 November 2026. This edition will focus on the study of massive stars as tools for understanding processes ranging from star formation to gravitational wave events and core-collapse supernovae. The training programme is aimed at around 75 students on advanced master’s and doctoral programmes, as well as postdoctoral researchers in the early stages of their careers. Over the course of two weeks