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.
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.
The two spectrographs on the Gran Telescopio Canarias have reached their full operating level and have become two of the most requested instruments for observing time on this major telescope which has produced over 500 publications in high level journals and has accumulated over 10,000 citations.
The Universities of Turku (UTU) and Aarhus (AU) are the new owners of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) situated in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). The two institutions take over from the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Associations (NOTSA), a non-profit organization created in 1984 by the Reseearch Councils of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, with the later incorporation of Iceland, in 1997. On 1 October, a delegation from both universities took part in a simple event at the ORM, which was also attended by representatives of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
The spectrum acquired by GTC of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) reveals that this object has a surface composition not unlike that found in Solar System comets. Shortly before dawn on September 13th, Julia de León, Miquel Serra-Ricart, Javier Licandro, all members of IAC's Solar System Group, and Carlos Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, obtained high resolution images and visible spectra of comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) using the OSIRIS instrument at the 10.4m GTC, installed in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma). Observations were
An international team of astronomers, including researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the CSIC has found evidence of a “kilonomva” in the data from a gamma ray burst detected in August 2016. This is a phenomenon similar to the supernovae which produce large quantities of heavy elements, such as gold and platinum. This event is similar to another explosion detected by LIGO in 2017, for which the combined observation of light and gravitational waves opened the door to an understanding of this type of objects. The results are to be published in the journal Monthly
August arrived again, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating in the festival to honour our Lady the Virgin of Light in the town of Garafía (La Palma), the municipality which is the home of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). An outreach lectura, the exhibition “100 Square Moons” and the traditional open day are some of the organized activities.
