Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has identified water vapour in the atmosphere of WASP-18 b, a massive extrasolar planet, a so-called hot Jupiter, with a temperature of around 2.700 °C. The result is published in the journal Nature. Exoplanet WASP-18 b is about 400 light-years from Earth, is 10 times more massive than Jupiter and has an orbital period of less than a day. Its extreme proximity to its star, its relative closeness to Earth, and its large mass

The first Canary Earth Observation Satellite, belonging to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has successfully passed all the pre-launch technical tests, and is on the way to the United States for launch from California before the end of the year. ALISIO-1 ( Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations) is the first Canary satellite which will orbit the Earth, in the framework of the ALISIO space programme, led by the IAC and coordinated by the IACTEC-Space group. In 2018, the team gained its first success after the launch of an atmospheric sounding balloon with