News

This section includes scientific and technological news from the IAC and its Observatories, as well as press releases on scientific and technological results, astronomical events, educational projects, outreach activities and institutional events.

  • Staff from the Tenerife II - El Rosario penitentiary centre visit the Teide Observatory
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has initiated a project of science outreach in the Tenerife-II prison in El Rosario, with the aim of bringing knowledge about the Universe to the prisoners, as well as to the educational and other working personnel at that centre. This initiative is taken in the framework of the commitment of the IAC to the popularization of science as a tool for inclusión and social transformation. The project is led by the astrophysicist, and IAC researcher David Aguado and is a continuation of a first experiment in 2024 in the Madrid V prison at Soto del Real
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  • Attendees at Our Science Day 2025
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) today held the 16th edition of the ‘Our Science Day’, an annual internal event which brought together its research and technical staff at the IACTEC headquarters in La Laguna. This meeting has established itself as a space for sharing the most outstanding advances of the past year in the different areas of work of the centre, promoting collaboration, cohesion and the exchange of ideas between teams. The conference was opened by the director of the IAC, Valentín Martínez Pillet, who presented an analysis of the centre's situation. The director
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  • enric_figure1
    The rocky planet GJ 1132 b, with Earth-like mass and radius, is a prime candidate for atmospheric studies. Previous observations with Hubble and JWST yielded conflicting results about its atmosphere. This study used three transit observations with the CRIRES+ instrument to search for He i, HCN, CH₄, and H₂O in GJ 1132 b's atmosphere. No clear atmospheric signals were detected, but upper limits for CH₄, HCN, and H₂O were established. The results suggest that if GJ 1132 b has an atmosphere, it is not dominated by hydrogen. The work highlights the challenges of detecting high molecular weight
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  • Cartel de las Jornadas de Puertas Abiertas en el Observatorio del Teide 2025
    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
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  • Nine galaxies taken from over 700,000 spanning all of cosmic time, from upper left to lower right: the present day universe, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 billion years ago
    The largest observation program of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released its data: nearly 800,000 galaxies observed in unprecedented detail. COSMOS-Web thus offers the most extensive and deepest view of the universe ever obtained. In this data release, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has played a key role, performing the morphological classification of more than half a million galaxies using neural networks, a crucial contribution to explore how galaxies form and evolve over cosmic time. COSMOS-Web was the largest General Observer program selected for Cycle 1 of
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  • Imagen del sistema TOI-6894 / IAC
    An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of Liège and collaborators in UK, Chile, the USA, and Europe, has discovered a transiting giant planet orbiting the smallest known star to host such a companion — a finding that defies current theories of planet formation. The host star, TOI-6894 , is a red dwarf with only 20% the mass of the Sun , typical of the most common stars in our galaxy. Until now, such low-mass stars were not thought capable of forming or retaining giant planets. But as published today in
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