The Japanese ambassador to Spain, Kenji Kiramatsu, yesterday visited the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Canary Island Observatories, together with Masahiro Aoki, secretary to the Embassy, Yoshihiro Miwa, the consul of Japan in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Josep Piqué Camps, President of the Council of the Spain Japan Foundation. Yesterday, they were received by Rafael Rebolo López, the Director of the IAC and Jesús Burgos, administrator of the General Services of the IAC at its headquarters in La Laguna. After a short visit, the delegation went up to the Teide

This morning, in the Cultural Space of the CajaCanarias Foundation in Santa Cruz de La Palma there was a public presentation of the Report on the Socio-economic impact of the Thirty Metre Telescope on the Island, by the Professor of the Department of Economy, Accountancy, and Finance of the University of La Laguna, its author. The report shows that the installation of the TMT on La Palma would not only be a milestone in the development of astrophysics, but it would have a significant positive economic impact on the Island. As well as Juan José Díaz, the others who spoke before the

Next Monday, November 11th, it will be possible to follow the transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the Sun from the Canary Island Observatories, from 12:36 p.m. to 18:04, on the channel YouTube IAC vídeos, of the Institute de Astrofísica de Canarias. A transit is defined as the passage of one astronomical object in front of another, so that the nearer occults a part of the surface of the farther. Only the inner planets (Marcury and Venus) can transit the Sun, from our viewpoint on Earth. In any century there are 13 transits of Mercury and the following transit will not occur

The Centre for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA), via the Spanish Virtual Observatory, is offering the scientific community and the general public a catalogue of more than 600,000 astronomical sources observed by the OSIRIS instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias.

A international team of astronomers, led by the University of Southampton and with participation by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has used the camera HiPERCAM on the Gran Telescopio Canarias and NASA’s NICER space observatory to make a high frame-rate movie of a growing black hole system. In the process they have discoverd violent flares in visible light and in X-rays which give new clues to help understand the immediate surroundings of these intriguing objects. The results of this study are published in the prestigious journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society