An international team of researchers report on a remarkable couple of dwarf galaxies inside an unpopulated area of the Universe. This uncommon pair of low-mass galaxies merging near the center of a cosmic void, offers a unique view of one-on-one interactions and of the evolution of galaxies located in very low density environment. Deep optical imaging from the Isaac Newton Telescope revealed a two connected arc-like structures that may have formed from shock fronts produced during the merger.

An international group of astronomers has observationally demonstrated the profound effect that a star evolving through the planetary nebula phase can have on planetary bodies in orbit around it.

An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that destroyed its own planetary system, conserving the remaining fragments in the form of dust orbiting its central star.

The passage of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in December 2019 offered a unique opportunity to acquire comprehensive data on an object originating from another planetary system, that left behind material in interplanetary space as it approached the Sun. Astronomers using a number of telescopes around the world, including the telescopes of the Isaac Newton Group (ING), monitored its behaviour spectroscopically and photometrically.

Asteroid 2023 DZ2, discovered using the Isaac Newton Telescope, will not collide with Earth, even though their orbits intersect. The results of a detailed analysis reveal the orbit of 2023 DZ2 is synchronised with that of Jupiter, reducing the probability of a collision in the coming decades.

Un equipo cientifico internacional, en el que participan las investigadoras del Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) Cristina Ramos Almeida, Patricia Bessiere y Giovanna Speranza, ha descubierto que los cuasares, uno de los objetos mas brillantes y energeticos del Universo, se encienden principalmente por fusiones entre galaxias.

While analysing data from the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS, a radio survey at 150 MHz), a team of astronomers discovered a ring of diffuse emission around the Calvera pulsar. The ring is large, at approximately one degree, and sits in a region otherwise empty of large-scale radio emission.

Using observations and archival data from several telescopes around the world and in orbit, including the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT), astronomers have discovered at least 70 new free-floating planets (FFPs) - planets that wander through space without a parent star to orbit - in the Upper Scorpius OB stellar association, which is the nearest region of star formation to our Sun. This is the largest sample of such planets found in a single group and it nearly doubles the number known over the entire sky.

An international team of astrophysicists led by the Stellar Astrophysics Group of the University of Alicante (UA), the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), and the University of Valparaiso (Chile) has discovered a massive cluster of stars of intermediate age in the direction of the Scutum constellation. This object, which has been named Valparaiso 1, lies some seven thousand light years away from the Sun, and contains at least fifteen thousand stars.

ING is expanding its studentship programme and is advertising two extra places for the 2020/2021 call, to cover the period from now until the end of September 2021. This will be an exciting year for the ING students. Opportunities for INT observations are being expanded as the INT is increasingly operated in service mode, in response to travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the students will be able to take part in the commissioning of the WEAVE instrument on the WHT, planned to begin in January 2021.

Using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT), a team led by University of Warwick astronomers has concluded that geosynchronous orbital debris posing a threat to operational satellites is not being monitored closely enough. In a new published survey they report that more than 75% of the geosynchronous orbital debris they detected could not be matched to known objects in public satellite catalogues.

The Isaac Newton Telescope Galactic Plane Survey (IGAPS) is the merger of two photometric surveys in the optical wavelenght range, IPHAS and UVEX, both based on data obtained in ~1860 square degrees covering the northern Galatic plane using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) from 2003 to 2018. The IGAPS point-source catalogue contains 295 million objects, and it provides measures of 174 parameters.

Using the capabilities of the Wide Field Camera (WFC) at the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) to explore large areas of the sky and detect faint ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), a collaboration of astronomers in the Netherlands and Spain performed a study to investigate these galaxies in detail, the Kapteyn IAC WEAVE INT Clusters Survey (KIWICS).

A team of astronomers led by Matthew Hooton at Queens University Belfast (United Kingdom) used the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) to observe the hottest known exoplanet during its secondary eclipse, which is the first published example of any ground-based secondary eclipse observation at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths.

A team of astronomers led by Dr David Sobral of Lancaster University, UK made one of the largest 3D maps of the infant universe using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii and the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). Looking back in time to 16 different epochs between 11 and 13 billion years ago, the researchers discovered almost 4,000 early galaxies, many of which will have evolved into galaxies like our own Milky Way.

Using observations across the entire electro-magnetic spectrum, astronomers have discovered a radio pulsar spinning 707 times every second, making it the fastest known spinning pulsar in the Galactic field and the second fastest known overall.

Planetary nebulae are believed to represent the fate of all Sun-like stars; as the star evolves it sheds its outers layers in the form of a dense stellar wind which is then ionised to form the glowing shell of the planetary nebula. It has become apparent that the wide array of shapes found in planetary nebulae are difficult to understand in a single star scenario.

Astronomers from the Universities of Lancaster in the UK and Leiden in the Netherlands report the discovery of giant halos around early Milky Way type galaxies which are composed of Lyman-alpha photons that have struggled to escape them.

The European Space Agencys Rosetta mission is currently exploring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta mission is a hugely ambitious endeavour - the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and follow it on its journey towards the Sun, accompanied by its lander, Philae, which made the first ever landing on a comet in November 2014. Observatories across the planet are supporting this mission, and the ING is playing an important part in this - especially in providing unique observations this year as the comet passed its closest point to the Sun and highest level of activity.

olour-composite (RGB) image of the Cocoon nebula obtained from a combination of wide- and narrow-band images taken using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) on the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope. Only part of the CCD #4 is shown.

Galaxies are often found in clusters, which contain many ‘red and dead’ members that stopped forming stars in the distant past. Over billions of years, galaxy clusters build up structure in the universe - merging with adjacent clusters. When this happens, there is a huge release of energy as the clusters collide. The resulting shock wave travels through the cluster like a tsunami, but until now there was no evidence that the galaxies themselves were affected very much.

In 2014 the Isaac Newton Telescope became the first telescope in La Palma to discover and secure five Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) as part of the EURONEAR project and as a result of the allocation of several override programmes awarded by the time allocation committees.

An international group of astronomers has found the first pair of white dwarfs with a total combined mass unequivocally above the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. The orbital period of the system is 4.2 hours, which means that the stars are close enough to spiral in due to the emission of gravitational waves and eventually merge in about 700 million years. This finding, which has been published in Nature, provides observational support to the double-degenerate path of formation of type Ia supernovae, so far a theoretical possibility under ongoing debate.

The production of the catalogue, IPHAS DR2 (the second release from the survey programme The INT Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plan

Ou4 is a recently discovered bipolar outflow with a projected size of more than one degree in the plane of the sky. It is apparently centred on a young stellar cluster - whose most massive representative is the triple system HR 8119 - inside the HII region Sh 2-129. The apparent position of Ou4 and the properties deduced in this study are consistent with the hypothesis that Ou4 is located inside the Sh 2-129 HII region, suggesting that it was launched some 90,000 yrs ago by HR 8119.

A team of international astronomers has created a detailed three-dimensional map of the dusty structure of the Milky Way as seen from Eart

2014 LU14 is the first ever Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) discovered using the Isaac Newton Telescope and from La Palma. This discovery is also the first reported by the EURONEAR network, a large collaboration founded by ING astronomer Ovidiu Vaduvescu which involves researchers and telescopes mostly based in European countries.

Before the launch of Kepler, an extensive programme to identify bright G/K dwarfs with minimial stellar activity was carried out by various groups internationally. Although a small number of photometric variability surveys were carried out pre-launch they were either not especially deep, did not have wide sky coverage or did not have a cadence shorter than a few minutes. To fill this gap a team of astronomers started a photometric variability survey (RATS-Kepler) in the summer of 2011 using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) on the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). RATS-Kepler is complementary to the Kepler-INT-Survey

The bipolar planetary nebula (PN) Sh2-71 lies in the constellation of Aquila at a distance of 1 kpc. It was discovered by Rudolph Minkowski in 1946. Shortly after the discovery, the central star (the brightest star in the centre of the nebula) was identified to be a variable with a quasi-sinusoidal lightcurve with an amplitude of 0.8 magnitudes. Later observations showed sharp brightness dips, possibly eclipses, with a period of 17.2 days. Besides an unusual lightcurve, it also exhibits pronounced spectral variations.

The Isaac Newton Telescope Contributes to Near Earth Asteroid Research. Two recently published papers on Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) demonstrate the increasing role of the Isaac Newton Telescope in precovering, recovering and discovering NEAs. A team of 23 young astronomers, working at ING or elsewhere, and amateur astronomers, led by ING astronomer Ovidiu Vaduvescu, mined several imaging archives, observed and analysed the data, and eventually became the authors of the papers

The caterpillar-shaped knot, called IRAS 20324+4057, is a protostar in a very early evolutionary stage. It is still in the process of collecting material from an envelope of gas surrounding it. However, that envelope is being eroded by the radiation from Cygnus OB2. Protostars in this region should eventually become young stars with final masses about one to ten times that of our Sun, but if the eroding radiation from the nearby bright stars destroys the gas envelope before the protostars finish accreting, the final masses of the protostars may be reduced. The object lies 4,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.

The Elephants Trunk nebula, formally known as IC1396A, is a cloud of gas and dust located 2400 light years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. The Elephant Trunk is part of a larger region of ionized gas illuminated by a nearby massive O-type star (located outside the image to the left). Radiation and winds from this hot star compress and ionize the edges of cloud, resulting in the bright ionization fronts seen in this image.

The Kepler-INT Survey is a deep 5-filter optical survey of the Kepler field, made with the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. The observing strategy and data reduction method are identical with those used in the IPHAS and UVEX galactic plane surveys and involves scientists from all ING partner communities.

This is an image of NGC 2359, better known as the Thors Helmet nebula, obtained using the Wide-Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. NGC 2359 is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubbles center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. The central star is an extremely hot giant Wolf-Rayet star thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution.

IC 1396 in the constellation Cepheus imaged in the red light from hydrogen atoms. This image was obtained as part of the INT/WFC Photometric Hydrogen-Alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS). Credit: Geert Barentsen & Jorick Vink (Armagh Observatory) & the IPHAS Collaboration.

Image acquired using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope of the Cats Eye Nebula, or NGC 6543. Credit: D. L

This image is part of the Eastern Veil Nebula, or NGC 6992, and it was obtained using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. It is a three-colour composite made from data collected using filters to isolate the light emitted by hydrogen alpha (H-alpha), doubly ionised oxygen (OIII) and ionised sulfur (SII) atoms, and coded in the image as red, green and blue respectively. Credit: D. L

This image of the Crescent Nebula or NGC 6888 was obtained using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. It is a three-colour composite made from data collected using filters to isolate the light emitted by hydrogen alpha (H-alpha) and doubly ionised oxygen (OIII) atoms

This image of the Ring Nebula or Messier 57 was obtained using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. It is a three-colour composite made from data collected using filters to isolate the light emitted by hydrogen alpha (H-alpha), doubly ionised oxygen (OIII) and ionised sulfur (SII) atoms

Using the Millenium Galaxy Catalogue, compiled with data obtained with the Isaac Newton Telescope, astronomers have calculated that the Universe is actually twice as bright as previously thought. In the latest Astrophysical Journal Letters (10th May), the astronomers describe how dust is obscuring approximately half of the light that the Universe is currently generating.

Evidence for the detection of a third body orbiting around the eclipsing binary CM Draconis has been obtained using binary stellar eclipse timing method for the first time. Although binary or multiple stars are very frequent in our Galaxy, to date no unambiguously circumbinary planets had been detected.

Some individual objects from the Galaxy Zoo project have gained a lot of attention from the public; the most famous of these is the ghost-like Voorwerp (the Dutch word for object), which was discovered by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkle. Observations with the William Herschel, among others, led astronomers to the conclusion that this object consists of a cloud of highly ionized gas.

The IPHAS collaboration, together with CASU and Astrogrid has announced the availability of the IPHAS Initial Data Release (IDR). The INT/WFC Photometric Halpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane is an imaging survey being carried out in H-alpha, Sloan r and Sloan i bands with the Wide Field Camera (WFC) on the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) to a depth of r=20. The IPHAS IDR is a photometric catalogue of more than 200 million objects coupled with associated imaging data covering about 1700 square degrees three colours.

The Isaac Newton Telescope pointed to the comet 17P/Holmes just after the sunset of the following night to the outburst, and it has been tracking its evolution since then.

Astronomers have been able to obtain accurate and empirical measurements of the the masses and radii of the component stars of a new low mass eclipsing binary system. JW 380, as it is called, comprises a 0.26, 0.15 solar-mass pre main sequence stars and it is located in the very young Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). More information: http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/press/orion.html

A deep infrared survey of the young sigma Orionis open cluster using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope has revealed that brown dwarfs and isolated planetary-mass objects may share the same origin.

This new image of the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237) is thought to be the most-detailed ever produced. Compiled from data taken from the Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric Hydrogen-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS), the image spans four square degrees, about twenty times the size of the full moon.

Using data from the Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric Hydrogen-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS), astronomers have found evidence that giant whirlpools form in the wake of stars as they move through clouds in interstellar space.

Astronomers have seen an asteroid change the rate at which it spins for the first time, and shown that it is due to the YORP theoretical effect predicted but never before seen.

The Isaac Newton Telescope/Wide-Field Camera H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS) has discovered a new Planetary Nebula.

The destiny of planetary systems through the late evolution of their host stars is very uncertain. Recently a team of astronomers from the University of Warwick using both the William Herschel Telescope and the Isaac Newton Telescope found a metal-rich gas disk around a moderately hot and young white dwarf.

When comet Tempel 1 came into view from La Palma, some 16 hours after the NASA Deep Impact probe struck the comet, members of the La Palma Deep Impact Collaborating Observers team were able to start tracking the target comet with the 2.5m Isaac Newtow Telescope.

12 February 2004. M81 and SN 1993Js companion: Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Astronomers using the Isaac Newton Telescope report in a research paper published in the December issue of the Astronomical Journal the discovery of a new Local Group galaxy, never catalogued before, in the constellation Cetus. The Cetus dwarf galaxy, as it is called, is a very intriguing object. At a distance of 800 kiloparsec, it is only 1-2 kiloparsecs in diameter and it contains only a million or so stars, placing it firmly at the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function.

An international team of astronomers led by Prof. Jan van Paradijs, University of Amsterdam has recently completed the first phase of a multi-year project to survey the sky to very faint limits using the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma, Canary Islands.