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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  • David Calle en el Observatorio del Teide
    Press release
    El youtuber David Calle visita el IAC

    David Calle, youtuber, fundador del portal educativo https://www.unicoos.com , visita el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), en La Laguna, y el Observatorio del Teide, en el marco de una colaboración de la Unidad de Comunicación y Cultura Científica (UC3), la Dirección del IAC y Unicoos. Durante su estancia, este ingeniero de telecomunicaciones y profesor de academia presencial y online desde Secundaria a Universidad, g rabará en el Observatorio d el Teide. Participan en la grabación: Irene Puerto, astrofísica y monologuista de Big Van y, por parte del IAC, Olga Zamora, astrónoma de

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  • HC2NP congress logo.
    Press release
    A look at the subatomic world from the IAC

    The second edition of the conference on Particle Physics, HC2NP2019, organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, will take place next week in Puerto de la Cruz. For a week a distinguished gathering of scientists will meet to discuss the latest advances in our understanding of the subatomic world. This, the second edition of the conference "Hadronic Contributions to New Physics Searches" (HC2NP20199, organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), will take place at the Vallemar Hotel, Puerto de la Cruz. "At the present time" explains Jorge Martín Camalich, a

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  • Averaged Spitzer spectra in the MIR of LRLL 21, 31 and 67, solid line and 4 interstellar locations (broken line) in IC348. The location of Fullerenes, organic molecules and water are indicated.
    Research news
    Fullerenes in the IC 348 star cluster of the Perseus molecular cloud

    We present the detection of fullerenes C 60 and C 70 in the star-forming region IC 348 of the Perseus molecular cloud. Mid-IR vibrational transitions of C 60 and C 70 in emission are found in Spitzer IRS spectra of individual stars (LRLL 1, 2, 58), in the averaged spectrum of three other cluster stars (LRLL 21, 31, and 67) and in spectra obtained at four interstellar locations distributed across the IC 348 region. Fullerene bands appear widely distributed in this region with higher strength in the lines of sight of stars at the core of the cluster. Emission features consistent with the three

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  • The evolutionary phases of galaxies against the dispersion of velocities of the stars (which scales with the total mass). The sample used (gray), the red sequence, green valley and blue cloud are represented. The new definition (left) allows to study in detail the galaxies in the green valley.
    Research news
    Exploring a new definition of the green valley and its implications

    Galaxy formation remains one of the major open problems in astrophysics today. There is a wide range of mechanisms that control the transformation of gas into stars in galaxies, compounded by the cosmological evolution of structure, along with complex feedback processes. An observational approach targets general trends in large distributions of galaxies. On a diagram plotting colour versus mass, the distribution of galaxies gets split into a bimodal structure, featuring a region of red, passively-evolving galaxies (termed the red sequence), and a so-called blue cloud, made up of star-forming

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  • Image, left-hand panel, and reflectance spectrum, right-hand panel, of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) obtained by the 10.4~m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), located at the El Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain), which is managed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) together with the Teide Observatory in the island of Tenerife.
    Press release
    The Gran Telescopio Canarias obtains the visible spectrum of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), the first confirmed interstellar comet

    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

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  • The comparison between the observed Spitzer spectrum (in black) and the synthetic spectral energy distribution (SED; in red) of a dual dust chemistry AGB star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We report the luminosity and effective temperature of the star, and the following parameters for the internal and outer dust shells: optical depth (at 1 µm), dust temperature, dust composition and distance from the central star.
    Research news
    Dual dust chemistry around evolved stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud

    During the final stages of their lives, stars with masses between one and eight times the mass of the Sun evolve along the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). AGB stars expand and loss a major fraction of their mass through stellar winds. The low temperature and high density of AGB winds provide ideal conditions for the condensation of dust grains in their circumstellar envelopes. Gas and dust are expelled into the interstellar medium, becoming an essential component for the formation of new stars and planets. Therefore, studying the type of dust (solid state organic or inorganic components) and

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