An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that destroyed its own planetary system, conserving the remaining fragments in the form of dust orbiting its central star. To date, more than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars of all kinds and almost every stage of stellar evolution. However, while exoplanets have been discovered around white dwarfs – the final stage in the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars like the Sun, no exoplanets have been detected in the previous
A new citizen science project launched today by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium, in collaboration with the Zooniverse platform, will enable volunteers from around the world to identify the shapes of millions of galaxies in images taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope. The aim of the initiative is to train deep AI neural networks to build the largest morphology catalogue to date. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpse at the quality of Euclid’s images, targeting a variety of sources, from nearby nebulas to distant clusters of galaxies. And
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) invites the public to visit the Teide Observatory (Izaña, Tenerife) during the weekend of 21 and 22 June, coinciding with the week of the summer solstice. The activity is part of its Open Days, a free science outreach initiative organised by the Observatory itself together with the IAC's Scientific Communication and Culture Unit (UC3). Over two days, those attending will be able to tour some of the most important scientific facilities at the centre, learn how they work from the technical and research staff, and make live solar observations. Each