The members of the Comité Científico Internacional (CCI) of the Canary Islands Observatories met today on the island of La Palma. The ISC is the body established in the International Agreements that gave rise to the Canary Islands Observatories managed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and guarantees the effective participation of the User Institutions in decision-making regarding their use, maintenance and improvement. The meeting, held at the Hotel H10 Taburiente Playa, began with a minute's silence in memory of Professor Francisco Sánchez, founder of the IAC, whose legacy

The European Solar Telescope (EST) project has taken a decisive step towards construction with the establishment of the Board of Governmental Representatives (BGR), marking the first formal commitment at the governmental level to this European flagship in solar research. Until now, EST has been driven by a scientific consortium of universities and research institutions across Europe. The creation of the BGR transforms EST into a collaboration among European nations, whose national governments lend political support to the project and to the creation of a future European Solar Telescope

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has successfully completed the integration of the scientific detector into the FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for Adaptive Optics) instrument, an integra-field camera and spectrograph designed to work with the adaptive optics system of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan), the world's largest optical and infrared telescope, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma. The integration was carried out in the laboratories of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City by a team from the IAC