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.

List view
  • Artist’s conception of waves trapped between the surface of a sunspot (lower image, taken with the GREGOR Fabry-Perot Interferometer) and the transition region (upper image, by courtesy of NASA/SDO and the scientific team of AIA). Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    The presence of resonating cavities above sunspots has been confirmed
    An international team of researchers, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has confirmed the existence of resonant cavities above sunspots. These results, recently published in two articles in the journals Nature Astronomy and The Astrophysical Journal Letters, have settled a debate lasting several decades about the nature of the waves in the active regions of the Sun. Sunspots are darker regions which often appear on the Sun’s surface. They are caused by strong concentrations of magnetic field, and can be as big as the Earth, or even much bigger. From the end of the 1960’s
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  • Luminosity - X-ray colour diagram of the black hole MAXI J1820+070 (black, solid line). The different traces indicate wind detections at different wavelengths throughout the entire outburst.
    Research news
    Discovery of continuous infrared winds during the outburst of a black hole
    X-ray binaries are stellar systems composed of a compact object (either a stellar-mass black hole or a neutron star) and a donor star that transfers mass to the former. Outflows represent fundamental physical phenomena to understand accretion processes in these systems. Black holes show three types of outflows: radio-jets and optical winds during the hard accretion states, and highly ionised winds observed in X-rays during the soft states. The black hole transient MAXI J1820+070 showed optical winds with velocities up to 1800 km/s during the hard state of its 2018-2019 outburst. In this work
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  • Artistic impression of the constant emission of winds produced during the eruption of a black hole in an X-ray binary. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    Continuous infrared winds discovered during the eruption of a stellar mass black hole
    A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has detected for the first time the constant infrared emission from winds produced during the eruption of a black hole in an X-ray binary. Until now, these flows of material had been detected only in other wavelength ranges, such as X-rays or the visible, depending on the phase in which the black hole is consuming its surrounding material. This study provides the first evidence that the winds are present throughout the evolution of the eruption, independently of the phase, and this is a step forward in our
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  • The stellar source for phosphorus, element so important for life, is still unknown. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Research news
    The phosphorus that came from the stars
    All chemical elements in the Universe (except for H and most of the He) have been made in stellar interiors. But among those elements, the ones that allowed to build life such as we find on Earth are of particular interest (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and phosphorus). However, the stellar origin of phosphorus (P) is still unknown as none of the current models of Galactic chemical evolution can explain all the phosphorus we observe in the Galaxy and notably in our Solar System, highlighting a still lacking phosphorus source. In this work we report the discovery of stars very rich in
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  • Scheme which represents the origin of phosphorus on Earth, with respect to possible stellar sources of phosphorus in our Galaxy. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    Stars rich in phosphorus: seeds of life in the universe
    The journal Nature Communications today is publishing the discovery of a new type of stars, very rich in phosphorus, which could help to explain the origin of this chemical element in our Galaxy. This achievement has been made by astronomers of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and researchers in computer science from the Centre for Research in Information and Communication Technology (CITIC) at the University of La Coruña (Galicia).
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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).
    Press release
    Differences between the discs of active and non-active galaxies detected for the first time
    A study led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), making comparison between the discs of several pairs of spiral galaxies, active and non-active, concludes that in the discs of the former the rotational motion of the stars is of greater importance. This study, just accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, is the first evidence for large scale dynamical differences between active and non-active galaxies in the local universe. The astronomers participating are from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna
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