Severo Ochoa Programme

Research News

  • Recreación artística de MAXI J1820+070

    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

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  • Recreación artística de GJ 3512

    A team of astronomers of the CARMENES consortium, with participants form the Institutode Astrofísica de Canarias, has discovered a planetary system around the red dwarf star GJ 3512, at some 30 light years from Earth, with an unusual gas giant planet whose excentric orbit could imply the presence of another massive planets. In the study the 40 cm telescope of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) at the Teide Observatory, was used. This discovery is published today in the journal Science.

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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.

    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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  • Kilonova Evento 2016 GTC

    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

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  • Sistema planetario GJ 357

    A team of astronomers, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has found three new planets orbiting a star, one of which might have conditions favourable for life. The discovery was possible with data from NASA’s TESS satellite, and with data from several ground-based observatories, among them the Spanish Calar Alto Observatory with its CARMENES instrument. The results are published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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  • Fernando Moreno Insertis

    The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded one of its prestigious “ERC Synergy Grants” to a team led by Fernando Moreno Insertis, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Professor at the University of La Laguna (ULL) as a member of a consortium of five European institutions.

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