50 years of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)

01/01/2025

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Half a century at the forefront of astrophysical research and space exploration.

Five decades driving knowledge, technology and passion for the universe.

Fifty years bringing the cosmos closer to you.

Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC

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The Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) will be 50 years old in July 2025. It was founded in 1975 with the aim of creating a research centre for astrophysics, space science and associated technologies. At the time of its creation, the CSIC considered that, in order for the new institute to acquire scientific personality, it was necessary to have its own means of observation. Thus was born the Sierra Nevada Observatory (OSN), always linked to the history of our centre.

Since then, the IAA-CSIC has not stopped growing. In these 50 years, the people who research at the IAA have gone from carrying out their first studies on the physics of stars, observing with the telescopes of the OSN, to currently researching each and every one of the main areas of modern astrophysics, in all ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, using the best telescopes in the world through competitive observing time. From an incipient instrumentation group, whose purpose was to measure in situ emissions from the atmosphere by means of sounding rockets, we have moved on to develop state-of-the-art instrumentation for telescopes both in space and on Earth, forming part of large international consortia, in some cases as principal investigators of the corresponding project.

In these 50 years of history, the IAA's contribution to the advancement of knowledge has been fundamental: we have studied the solar magnetic field with great clarity, orbited a comet, discovered more than 60 exoplanets with the CARMENES instrument, found the germs of protoplanetary discs, studied how stars form in galaxies, obtained the first images of black holes, mapped large samples of galaxies, among others. And all of this has been published in the best journals in the field of astrophysics. Currently, we publish more than one article per day of the year, having exceeded 400 publications in 2024.

These 50 years have been guided by curiosity, by the desire to know and learn, by scientific rigour, by the enthusiasm of many people who have led the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía to what it is today: a ‘Severo Ochoa’ centre of excellence, recognised for the first time in 2018 by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, accreditation which it obtained again in 2023 and which it still enjoys.