An international scientific team, including the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has detected distortions in the brightness of a galaxy's disc that could be explained by the gravitational effect of an unknown neighbouring galaxy. Named GTC-1, the satellite galaxy was discovered using ultra-deep images obtained with the OSIRIS camera of the Gran Telescopio Canarias, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma. The finding provides a possible explanation for a puzzle about way the light fades out at the edges of galaxy disks, a mystery that has bothered the

An international scientific team, including the researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Cristina Ramos Almeida, Patricia Bessiere and Giovanna Speranza, has discovered that quasars, some of the brightest and most powerful objects in the Universe, are mainly ignited by mergers between galaxies. The finding sheds new light, after years of controversy, on what causes the emission of large amounts of energy in the most powerful active nuclei. The research has used observations from the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) at the Roque de

An international collaboration, with participation by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has found a system of six exoplanets orbiting a central star with a precise rhythm.This phenomenon, known as orbital resonance, is common during the starting phase of planet formation, but it is exceptional to find a system with such a large set of planets which conserves this kind of gravitational synchronism. This finding shows that the system has not undergone major changes during its six billion year history, so that it gives an unusual view of the formation and evolution of planets. The