An international team led by researchers from the IAC, using the radial velocity method, have discovered a possibly rocky planet at the edge of the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. Only a few dozen planets of this kind are known and its detection was made possible with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) at the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma.

The CLASP experiment, motivated by theoretical investigations carried out at the IAC, opens a new research window in astrophysics by being able to measure polarization signals in two spectral lines of the solar ultraviolet radiation. The observed polarization provides information on the magnetic field and geometry of the plasma in the enigmatic transition region between the chromosphere and corona of the Sun. CLASP is an international project whose first results have just been published in the The Astrophysical Journal.

May 27th will be the last day to sign up for those teachers who want to attend this course, which will be held in Tenerife from 10th to 14th July, organised by the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y Formación del Profesorado (INTEF), the Universidad International Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).

This IAC project, funded by the FECYT, will allow us to put together the biggest panoramic image of our galaxy without using professional telescopes. The photographs will be taken with a digital camera from the Teide Observatory, and will generate material for many outreach and educational applications.

Their detection in the interacting galaxies, the “Antennae”, was possible thanks to a new method –BUBBLY- developed by IAC researchers and the GHaFaS instrument installed on the William Herschel Telescope.

The host galaxy of a powerful galactic nucleus revealed using the CIRCE camera on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). This discovery, in which the IAC participated, has reopened the debate about the galaxies which contain these nuclei.