At the Morelia Planetarium “Lic. Felipe Rivera” and the Old Jesuit College Cultural Center in Patzcuaro, around two thousand people enthusiastically took part in the activities of the Noche de las Estrellas 2023 in Michoacán, which main theme was women in space, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the first space flight of Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut who was the first woman in space.

Planets form from a disk of gas and dust that often surrounds young stars. A new study published today in the journal Nature and coauthored by Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez, a researcher at the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) at UNAM, Campus Morelia, reveals previously unseen properties of the dust within the disk around the young star HL Tau, shedding new light on the process of planet formation.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has published new results that describe for the first time how light from the edge of the supermassive black hole M87* spirals as it escapes the black hole’s intense gravity, a signature known as circular polarization. The way light’s electric field prefers to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise as it travels carries information about the magnetic field and types of high-energy particles around the black hole. The new paper, published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, supports earlier findings from the EHT that the magnetic field near the M87* black hole is strong enough to occasionally stop the black hole from swallowing up nearby matter.

On Saturday, October 14, 2023, the people of Michoacán enjoyed a partial solar eclipse. The last time a similar phenomenon was observed was in August 2017. Various educational, government and civil society institutions formed the Eclipses Michoacán Local Committee so that as many people as possible could observe this eclipse safely.

Dr. Laurent Loinard from the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) at UNAM Campus Morelia received the 2023 Scientific Research Award, given by Mexican Society of Physics (Sociedad Mexicana de Física, SMF).