Severo Ochoa Programme

Research News

  • Artist's impression of a system with two super-earths

    An international scientific collaboration, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has discovered two new super-Earths orbiting a bright red dwarf star only 33 light-years away. Both objects are among the closest-known rocky planets yet found outside our solar system. The results are presented today at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Pasadena (California, USA). Two new exoplanets, HD 260655 b and HD 260655 c, have been detected using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space telescope designed to look for planets in orbit

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  • Orion Protoplanetary Disk

    International research led by scientists at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has shown the existence of solid sulphur compounds in HH514, a jet of gas coming from the centre of the Orion Nebula. The concentration of this chemical element could be related to the process of exoplanet formation. The researchers have used three of the most important optical telescopes in the world: the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The results are published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal

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  • According to the current theories of galaxy formation, these generally form as small entities that grow through fusion, collision and accretion, eventually becoming the majestic galaxies that we observe nowadays. As an example of such process we can mention our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Around it we can find tens of dwarf galaxies and even stellar “streams” formed by already dissolved systems. We have focused in the study of our two most prominent satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, a system in the process of falling towards our Galaxy, whilst also having a mutual interaction. Their

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  • Simulation of the Formation and Evolution of a Cluster of Galaxies

    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has led the development of a new numerical procedure that allows to reproduce in a few seconds with Big Data and machine learning techniques the intergalactic medium obtained from a cosmological simulation of 100,000 hours of computation. Thanks to this algorithm, called Hydro-BAM, researchers have been able to exploit the hierarchy in the relationship between the properties of dark matter, ionized gas and intergalactic neutral hydrogen, ingredients that make up the large-scale structure of our universe. The research has also made it possible to

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  • Sculptor dwarf

    The journal Nature Astronomy publishes today, in its collection of reviews dedicated to dwarf galaxies, a new article written by Giuseppina Battaglia, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the University of La Laguna, and Carlo Nipoti, researcher at the University of Bologna. The study describes the latest results on the search for dark matter in Local Group dwarf galaxies. Dark matter in dwarf galaxies is the subject of a review article published today in the journal Nature Astronomy in its living collection of articles that, from December 2021, is dedicated to the

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  • Rocky planets

    An international research, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has discovered a new planetary system comprised of 4 planets orbiting the star TOI-500. This is the first system known to host an Earth analogue with a period shorter than one day and 3 additional low-mass planets whose orbital configuration can be explained via a non-violent and smooth migration scenario. The study is published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The inner planet, dubbed TOI-500b, is a so-called ultra-short period (USP) planet, as its orbital period is only 13 hours. It is regarded

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