The GTC AO system designed and developed during the last years is based on a single deformable mirror with 21 x 21 actuators, conjugated to the telescope pupil, and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 20 x 20 subapertures, using an OCAM2 camera. The GTCAO system will provide a corrected beam with a Strehl Ratio (SR) of 0.65 in K-band with bright

Galaxy clusters form at the highest-density nodes of the cosmic web1,2. The clustering of dark matter halos hosting these galaxy clusters is enhanced relative to the general mass distribution, with the matter density beyond the virial region being strongly correlated to the halo mass (halo bias)3. Halo properties other than mass can further enhance

The instrument FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for Adaptive optics) is an integral field spectrograph (near infrared) with imaging capability for being used at the Nasmyth B platform of the Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GTC), behind the Adaptive Optics (AO) system. FRIDA is the first GTC instrument to use the telescope AO system. FRIDA is a

Binary companions to asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are an important aspect of their evolution. Few AGB companions have been detected, and in most cases it is difficult to distinguish between main-sequence and white dwarf companions. Detection of photometric flickering, a tracer of compact accretion discs around white dwarfs, can help identify

On June 25th 2017, the new intermediate-resolution optical IFU and MOS of the 10.4-m GTC had its first light. As part of the tests carried out to verify the performance of the instrument in its two modes (IFU and MOS) and 18 spectral setups (identical number of VPHs with resolutions R=6000-20000 from 0.36 to 1 micron) a number of astronomical

We present the first results using a new SCHOTT 1% narrow band filter in the near infrared for the CIRCE camera of the 10.4m GTC telescope. The goal of the project is to detect very distant galaxies at the dawn of the Universe. These remote and extremely faint galaxies are selected by their Ly-alpha emission. For this project SCHOTT manufactured a