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.

  • Explanatory drawing of the planetary system of GJ617A in comparison with the Solar System
    We report on the first star discovered to host a planet detected by radial velocity (RV) observations obtained within the CARMENES survey for exoplanets around M dwarfs. HD 147379 (V = 8.9 mag, M = 0.58 ± 0.08 M⊙), a bright M0.0 V star at a distance of 10.7 pc, is found to undergo periodic RV variations with a semi-amplitude of K = 5.1 ± 0.4 m s−1 and a period of P = 86.54 ± 0.06 d. The RV signal is found in our CARMENES data, which were taken between 2016 and 2017, and is supported by HIRES/Keck observations that were obtained since 2000. The RV variations are interpreted as resulting from
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  • Image of the dispersion relation
    The centres of massive galaxies are among the most exotic regions in the Universe. They harbour supermassive black holes, with masses of at least one million, and reaching thousands of millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black holes can cause a great deal of matter to fall towards them, producing the emission of huge quantities of energy before they finally fall into the black hole. Also, during this period (the "active phase" of the galaxy, referred to as an AGN or Active Galactic Nucleus) matter is expelled from outside the black hole in the form of high velocity (relativistic)
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  • Image of the dispersion relation
    The centres of massive galaxies are among the most exotic regions in the Universe. They harbour supermassive black holes, with masses of at least one million, and reaching thousands of millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black holes can cause a great deal of matter to fall towards them, producing the emission of huge quantities of energy before they finally fall into the black hole. Also, during this period (the "active phase" of the galaxy, referred to as an AGN or Active Galactic Nucleus) matter is expelled from outside the black hole in the form of high velocity (relativistic)
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  • Diagram of stellar orbit statistics for CALIFA galaxies.
    This project, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is collaborating, has made a map with 300 galaxies close to the Milky Way, which they have classified on the basis of the way the stars are moving, rather than using the morphological classification used until now.
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  • Distant Milky Way halo giants marked on a Pan-STARRS1 map. Location of our targets overlaid on a RGB rendering of the distribution of Milky Way halo stars. Credit: Giuseppina Battaglia
    An international team of astronomers led by Giuseppina Battaglia, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), finds signs that the outer halo of the Milky Way contains stellar remains of massive dwarf galaxies that were devoured by our own.
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