The headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and its technological headquarters, IACTEC, open their doors to the public at their Open Days as part of Open Government Week 2025. This initiative, promoted by the Open Government Partnership worldwide, seeks to bring public administrations closer to citizens and promote the values of transparency, integrity, participation and accountability. The event at the IAC headquarters will take place on Monday 19 May, while the IACTEC will open its doors on Tuesday 20 May. Both days will be held in person, with two visiting hours

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

The single star nearest to the Sun is called Barnard’s star. A team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has recently detected a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting it. This exoplanet, called Barnard b has at least half the mass of Venus and orbits rapidly around its star, so that its year lasts only a little over three Earth days. This new exoplanet is sixteen times nearer to Barnard’d star than Mercury is to the Sun, and has a surface temperature close to 125oC, so it does not have liquid water on its surface. This discovery, led by the IAC in collaboration with a number