For the first time we use self-consistent evolutionary models of low-and intermediate-mass stars (1-8 solar masses) coupled with theoretical dust formation models to follow the evolution of these stars during the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) in the Spitzer Space Telescope two-color and color-magnitude diagrams. These models are the first able to identify the main regions in the Spitzer diagrams occupied by AGB stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The main diagonal sequences traced by LMC extreme stars in the two-color and color-magnitude Spitzer diagrams are nicely fit by carbon stars

Happy New Year 2014 from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

With the Canaricam instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), a team of researchers known as ‘Los Piratas’ have caught a system of two galaxies fused together in collision, feeding two black holes at their centres

Astronomers at the IAC have discovered complex patterns of resonances in the discs of spiral galaxies not previously described by theories. Using the GHaFaS 2dimensional spectrometer they have measured the velocities of the density waves in the discs of over a hundred galaxies Within the discs of spiral galaxies there are waves which propagate concentrically in the form of spirals. This is somewhat similar to the waves on the surface of a lake, or the standing waves on the strings of a violin, or on the surface of a drum, to use a musical metaphor. These are the so-called “density waves”

NASA: The Geminids from the Canaries, astronomical image of the day We receive a message from an asteroid in the guise of a meteor shower

The nearby galaxy NGC 1277 was formed at an early epoch of the cosmos and has remainedunchanged since then, thus making it a unique window on to the early Universe. Astronomers have found that the rate of star formation in massive galaxies at that remote epoch was much higher than expected with a thousand times more stars being generated than at present in the Milky Way. Further information: Spanish Press Release