One of the biggest recent surprises in astronomy is the discovery that most stars like the Sun harbor a planet between the size of Earth and Neptune within the orbit of Mercury — sizes and orbits absent from our solar system. These ‘ super-Earths' and ` sub-Neptunes’ are the galaxy's most common planets, but their formation has been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team of astronomers has found a crucial missing link. By weighing four newborn planets in the V1298 Tau system, they've captured a rare snapshot of worlds in the process of transforming into the galaxy's most common

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has received a visit from Robert P. Kirshner, Executive Director of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO) . During his stay at the IAC headquarters in La Laguna, he was welcomed by the center’s director, Valentín Martínez Pillet, and by the deputy director, Eva Villaver Sobrino, along with other members of the research institute. During his visit, he was able to learn firsthand about the institution’s scientific and technological capabilities and gave a colloquium titled The Thirty Meter Telescope and Science of the Future

During October, the Adaptive Optics System team at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTCAO) of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the technical team at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan), successfully completed the integration of the GRANCAIN instrument into the world's largest optical-infrared telescope. The installation was carried out at the GTCAO outlet on the telescope's Nasmyth B platform, a key step in initiating performance testing of the new adaptive optics system. This is the first scientific instrument to operate using the GTC's adaptive