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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  • false-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) image of Bennu
    Press release
    Nailing Bennu's colors to the mast: new findings on the origin of this primitive body

    Science magazine, in a special collection on asteroid Bennu, has published the results of the analysis of photometric-spectrum color variations on the surface of this extremely interesting asteroid, captured by the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Thanks to these results, researchers proposed a model to explain the effects of “space weather” on materials similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. They concluded that some of the heterogeneity observed on the surface of Bennu is due to space weathering and some is inherited from Bennu’s parent asteroid. Juan Luis Rizos, Eri Tatsumi, Javier

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  • Artistic representation of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon (not to scale) with the space-time curvature of Einstein's General Relativity over the spectrum of sunlight reflected from the Moon (in colors from blue to red). The spectrum is taken with the HARPS instrument and calibrated with the LFC. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    New measurements of the solar spectrum verify Einstein’s theory of General Relativity

    An international team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has measured, with unprecedented accuracy, the gravitational redshift of the Sun, a change in frequency of the lines in the solar spectrum which is produced when the light escapes from the gravitational field of the Sun on its way to Earth. This work, which verifies one of the predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity, is to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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  • GTC (panel a) and Spitzer (panel b) transit observation of the planet candidate WD 1856b. The lack of difference in the transit depth in the optical and infrared helps to put constraints in the mass of the transiting object.
    Research news
    A giant planet candidate transiting a white dwarf

    Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside the Solar System, most of which orbit stars that will eventually evolve into red giants and then into white dwarfs. During the red giant phase, any close-orbiting planets will be engulfed by the star, but more distant planets can survive this phase and remain in orbit around the white dwarf. Some white dwarfs show evidence for rocky material floating in their atmospheres, in warm debris disks or orbiting very closely, which has been interpreted as the debris of rocky planets that were scattered inwards and tidally disrupted. Recently

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  • Artist impression of WASP-189 and its planet. Credit: ESA.
    Press release
    The CHEOPS mission measures the properties of one of the hottest and most extreme extrasolar planets

    CHEOPS, the new exoplanet mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating, has observed a nearby planetary system which contains one of the hottest and most extreme extrasolar planets known until now: WASP-189 b. The result, the first from this mission, is being published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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  • Image illustrating the comparison between an active spiral galaxy (orange box) and its non-active twin (blue box). Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Research news
    Large scale dynamical differences between active and non-active galaxies in the local Universe

    Observational evidence s suggest a co-evolution of the central supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. In some of them, the black hole is ingesting the material surrounding it at a very high rate, emitting a large quantity of energy. In those cases we say that the galaxy has an active nucleus (AGN). Studying the mechanisms which control the relation between the active nucleus and the rest of the galaxy is essential to understand how these objects form and evolve, and to be able to throw light on this question we need to compare active and non-active galaxies. Here, we first identif

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  • Left and centre: Image of the region of the sky containing BOSS-EUVLG1, which stands out due to its blue colour. Credit: DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. Right: Artist`s drawing of the burst of star formation in BOSS-EUVLG1, which contains a large number of young massive stars, and hardly any dust. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    Astronomers find the first galaxy whose ultraviolet luminosity is comparable to that of a quasar

    An international scientific team, led by researchers at the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA) and with participation by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), have found the galaxy BOSS-EUVLG1. This is the galaxy with star formation but almost no dust, the most luminous of its type known up to now. It was found using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands), and with the ATACAMA Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), in Chile. The discovery was recently published in the

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