An international collaboration, with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), determines with an unprecedented level of precision the mass, age and rotation profile of the core of a massive pulsating star. Known as HD 192575, it has been observed by the NASA space telescope TESS continuously for more than a year. The results shed new light on how such stars are internally structured and how they evolve until their death, when they explode as supernovae and form neutron stars and black holes. The scientific team has also used observations made with the Mercator
The first batch of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is now available for researchers to mine. Taken during the experiment’s “survey validation” phase, the data include distant galaxies and quasars as well as Milky Way stars. The universe is big, and it’s getting bigger. To study dark energy, the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of our universe, scientists are using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map more than 40 million galaxies, quasars, and stars. Today, the collaboration, which includes the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)
A team of scientists led by the Observatory of Munich University and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias have obtained direct visualization of the process of feeding the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Andromeda galaxy. The study reveals the existence of long filamentary structures of gas and dust which move in a spiral starting at a distance from the black hole and ending up at the black hole itself. The results, which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal, were obtained using images from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is