Using the set of first-light observations from the new William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) wide-field spectrograph, a team of more than 50 astronomers, led by Dr Marina Arnaudova at the University of Hertfordshire, presents the first WEAVE scientific results on Stephan’s Quintet. This state-of-the-art wide-field spectrograph is a 20-million Euro project that brings together leading experts from around the world. WEAVE is set to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe, offering unprecedented detail, as demonstrated in this new study of Stephan’s Quintet

Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with other entities, such as NASA , have managed to detect the youngest planet ever found, using the technique of transits. This “baby planet” is paradoxically a giant in orbit round a very young star. The Principal Investigator of this finding, which has been published in the Journal Nature , is Madyson Barber, of the University of North Caroliona at Chapel Hill . Other authors of the article include Felipe Murgas and Enric Palle of the IAC. The discovery was made using the technique of transits. This works

Gravity has shaped our cosmos. Its attractive influence turned tiny differences in the amount of matter present in the early universe into the sprawling strands of galaxies we see today. A new study using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has traced how this cosmic structure grew over the past 11 billion years, providing the most precise test to date of gravity at very large scales. DESI is an international collaboration of more than 900 researchers, included the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), from over 70 institutions around the world and is managed by

This week, CTAO Managing Director, Stuart McMuldroch, and Construction Programme Manager, Volker Heinz, traveled to the Canary Islands for a productive visit with the hosting partners at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and colleagues from the CTAO Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration. The team was warmly welcomed at the IAC Headquarters in Tenerife by IAC Director, Valentín Martínez, marking the first official meeting between the two directors since Valentín recently assumed this role. Hosted by Ramón García López, Principal Investigator of the CTAO group at the IAC, the

The Instrument division of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has been working, in collaboration with other organizations, on the design and manufacture of the electronic system which will receive and process the astronomical data from the PLATO space mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) which aim is find “other Earths” which orbit stars similar to the Sun. The work led by the IAC has recently been approved by an international technical team which met at the headquarters of the company CRISA/AIRBUS in Madrid, with the presence of representatives of the European Space Agency