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.
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has finished, during October, with the help of FEDER funds, the renewal of the corporate network of the Canary Observatories, which means that the connected User Institutions will be able, with the new equipment, to augment their current connection capacity from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps.
The first tests of a concept using microwave radiometry have yielded promising results for the measurement of subcutaneous temperatures in biological tissues. The prototype has been developed in the programme of Medical Technology within IACTEC, the area of technological and business collaboration of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) with economic support (Training Programme) and infrastructure (the IACTEC building) from the Cabildo of Tenerife.
This Tuesday October 20th at around 23.12 hr (Canary time) the NASA space probe OSIRIS-REx will make its first attempt to collect samples from the asteroid (101955) Bennu. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has played an active role in the mission since 2011. Researchers Julia de León, Javier Licandro, Eri Tatsumi and Juan Luis Rizos, who are members of the science team of OSIRIS-REx will be present telematically at the meeting organized by this NASA mission so that the science team can follow in real time this dangerous maneuvre¸ using the SamCam camera on board the probe. This
The European Space Agency's Gaia mission is revolutionising our understanding on how the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we inhabit, has formed and evolved. Gaia is measuring the apparent luminosities, colours, positions, motions, and the chemical composition of an unprecedentedly large number of individual stars in our Galaxy. In particular, combining apparent luminosities with distances to these stars, here we have computed the intrinsic luminosity of 24 million stars within a sphere of 6500 light years around our Sun. Comparing such luminosities and colours with accurate models of stars we
The main emission mechanisms of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the spectral range between the radio and the far infrared are very well characterised and understood, both observationally and theoretically, for decades. However, in the late 90s a new mechanism was discovered in the microwaves, that has been coined “anomalous microwave emission” (AME). A basic feature of this emission is its tight spatial correlation with the thermal emission from ISM dust grains. This means that the AME observed intensity is stronger in regions with a higher abundance of ISM grains. This led to the proposal
The flight model for the SWIR DRAGO camera, developed by the IACTEC-Space team at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has successfully passed all the tests needed to be integrable into the ION satellite for launch into space next December, on SPACE-X’s FALCON 9 rocket. This project is a part of IACTEC, the area of technical and industrial collaboration of the IAC, which is supported financially (Capacitation programme) and in infrastructure (IACTEC building) by the Cabildo Insular (island government) of Tenerife.
