Severo Ochoa Programme

Research News

  • Artist's impression of the small fraction of young blue stars in an elliptical galaxy where its bulk of stars is old and red. Created with an image of NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), with vectorpocket resource (Freepik). Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Research news
    Young stars found in the oldest and most massive galaxies in the Universe

    Elliptical and lenticular galaxies (collectively called early-type galaxies) are the oldest and most massive galaxies in the Universe. These galaxies were built up rapidly (in less than thousand million years) and therefore, their stars are generally ancient and cool, meaning that they mainly shine in the optical and infrared spectral ranges. However, any hot young stars that might be present are difficult to detect in these spectral ranges. The study, based on 30,000 early-type galaxy spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey BOSS has analysed the UV spectral range to detect the young

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  • A realistic artist’s impression of WASP-76b atmosphere
    Press release
    Observed: an exoplanet where it rains iron

    Nature magazine is publishing today a surprising study about the giant, ultra-hot planet WASP-76b in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have taken part. This exoplanet, 390 light years away towards the constellation Pisces, has days when its surface temperatures exceed 2,400 Celsius, sufficiently hot to evaporate metals. Its nights, with strong winds, cool down the iron vapour so that it condenses into drops of iron. This is the first result with the high resolution spectrograph ESPRESSO, an instrument co-directed by the IAC and installed on teh Very Large

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  • Artistic impression of one of the SPECULOOS telescopes, with the binary brown dwarf eclipsing in the sky
    Press release
    Observed: an occultation of a brown dwarf by another

    An international team of astronomers in the project SPECULOOS, dedicated to the search for habitable planets, with scientists participating from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered an eclipse (termed an occultation) in a peculiar brown dwarf formed by two stars orbiting around each other. The results are just published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The finding was by chance, when the scientists were working on the results from the first light of one of the four telescopes of the project, in Chile. Shortly after the building of the first SECULOOS telescopes, and

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  • Composición espectro LFC
    Press release
    Sucessful test of new technology which should help to discover “other Earths”

    A scientific team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, confirms the high degree of precision of the new calibration system known as a “laser frequency comb” which could be the key to the detection of planets like the Earth. The study is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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  • 1D-LTE oxygen-to-iron abundance ratios [O/Fe] vs. metallicity [Fe/H] of the iron-poor star J0815+4729 (large star symbol) compared with literature measurements from the [O I] forbidden line (diamonds), the near-IR O I triplet (circles), and the near-UV OH lines (squares). The two triangles at [Fe/H] ∼ −3.6 correspond to the oxygen measurement from OH lines in the metal-poor binary stars CS 22876–032 AB (González Hernández et al. 2008).
    Research news
    The extreme CNO-enhanced composition of a primitive iron-poor dwarf star

    We present an analysis of high-resolution Keck/HIRES spectroscopic observations of J0815+4729, an extremely carbon-enhanced, iron-poor dwarf star. These high-quality data allow us to derive a metallicity of [Fe/H] = −5.49 ± 0.14 from the three strongest Fe I lines and to measure a high [Ca/Fe] = 0.75 ± 0.14. The large carbon abundance of A(C) = 7.43 ± 0.17 (or [C/Fe] ∼ 4.49 ± 0.11) places this star in the upper boundary of the low- carbon band in the A(C)–[Fe/H] diagram, suggesting no contamination from a binary AGB companion. We detect the oxygen triplet at 777 nm for the first time in an

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  • Stellar mass vs. velocity dispersion relation showing that stellar systems, over 7 orders of magnitude in mass, follow the Virial relation. Small bulges and high redshift red nuggets also follows the relation indicating a common origin.
    Research news
    Red nuggets at the center of nearby galaxies

    The “Lambda Cold Dark Matter” (CDM) cosmological model is the current theory credited for reproducing the physics responsible for the formation and evolution of large-scale galactic systems in an accelerated expanding universe. In this context, the halos of CDM collapse and convert their energy reaching a state of equilibrium, allowing the formation of galaxies when the matter begins to cool. From an observational point of view, the behaviour of the luminous matter (stars and gas) is very different from that of dark matter. However, there are empirical relationships that reflect the

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