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.

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  • Research news
    Scientific results with the QUIJOTE-MFI wide survey: The anomalous microwave emission in our Galaxy and M31

    In the 90s, the COBE satellite discovered that not all the microwave emission from our Galaxy behaved as expected. Part of this signal was later assigned to a fresh new emission component, spatially correlated with the Galactic dust emission, which showed greater importance in the microwave range of frequencies. It has been named since as “anomalous microwave emission”, or AME. The current main hypothesis to explain the AME origin is that it is emitted by small dust particles which undergo fast spinning movements. In Fernández-Torreiro et al. (2023), we study the observational properties of

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  • Fernando Clavijo, Diana Morant y Rafael Rebolo
    Press release
    El Consejo Rector del IAC nombra a Valentín Martínez Pillet futuro director del centro

    La ministra de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Diana Morant, ha presidido esta mañana la reunión anual del Consejo Rector del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) en la Sede del IAC, en La Laguna, en la que ha anunciado que el físico solar Valentín Martínez Pillet será el próximo director de este organismo público de investigación. Los miembros del Consejo han agradecido a Rafael Rebolo la labor desarrollada durante sus 10 años al frente de la institución y han destacado su categoría profesional y su labor de gestión. Además de la ministra, a esta reunión también han asistido

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  • Distant galaxies identified by JWST
    Photomontage
    Astronomers discover that the first galaxies had very different shapes to today's galaxies

    Thanks to images obtained by the James Webb Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates has been able to verify that galaxies in the early universe are usually flat and elongated, and not round or spiral like the nearest galaxies. International research has found, by analysing high-resolution, infrared images of the JWST, that flattened oval disc and tube-shaped galaxies were much more common when the universe was between 600 million and 6 billion years old. In contrast, the nearest galaxies have clearly defined

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  • Representation of a near-Earth asteroid. Credit: Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    Astronomers make a significant advance in our knowledge of the asteroids nearest to the Earth, the Arjunas

    Research, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has participated has analyzed object 2023 FY3, a member of a group of asteroids which have trajectories similar to that of the Earth. The available data suggest that it could collide with the Earth during the next hundred years, but its small size implies that it is not a major threat The study of the physical characteristics and the dynamical evolution of object 2023 FY3, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have participated, enhances our limited knowledge about the

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  • Black hole of Andromeda
    Press release
    Observers measure how Andromeda’s central black hole is fed

    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

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  • Image of the Nube galaxy through different telescopes. Credit: SDSS/GTC/IAC
    Press release
    Nube, the almost invisible galaxy which challenges the dark matter model

    A group of astrophysicists led by Mireia Montes, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered the largest and most diffuse galaxy recorded until now. The study has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and has used data taken with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and the Green Bank Radiotelescope (GBT). Nube is an almost invisible dwarf galaxy discovered by an international research team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (ULL) and other institutions. The name was

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