The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) invites the public to visit the Teide Observatory (Izaña, Tenerife) during the weekend of 21 and 22 June, coinciding with the week of the summer solstice. The activity is part of its Open Days, a free science outreach initiative organised by the Observatory itself together with the IAC's Scientific Communication and Culture Unit (UC3). Over two days, those attending will be able to tour some of the most important scientific facilities at the centre, learn how they work from the technical and research staff, and make live solar observations. Each

The PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars) space mission, led by the European Space Agency (ESA), has recently completed one of the most delicate phases of its development: the integration of its main components, the 26 scientific cameras and the service module that houses all the instrument's acquisition, processing, and control electronics. This stage, carried out at the facilities of the aerospace company OHB in Germany, marks a fundamental step toward the launch scheduled for December 2026 from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 6 rocket. “Almost eight years after ESA gave the

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, among the tiniest and faintest galaxies known, may hold the key to understanding one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries: the true nature of dark matter. A new study reveals that even a single collision between dark matter particles every 10 billion years — roughly the age of the Universe — is enough to explain the dark matter cores observed in these small systems. These galaxies, which contain only a few thousand stars, are dominated by dark matter and have relatively simple evolutionary histories. That makes them ideal cosmic laboratories for testing theories