The event has taken place in La Palma from 16 to 18 of November and it has gathered 150 scientists from all over the world.

The meeting has included more than 60 scientific presentations, some of them held by Grupo GUAIX researchers, as well as two public outreach lectures on the mysteries of the universe and the contributions of the GTC to their solution.

This is the latest of four conferences held up to date, after three of them of preparatory nature. In it, there have been subject to analysis the results obtained by the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), the biggest infrared optical telescope in the world, with a segmented primary mirror of 10.4 meters of diameter.

Nowadays, researchers can operate the GTC on a routine basis with the OSIRIS instrument, camera and spectrograph that works in the visible spectrum (the light sensible to the human eye). Each of this instrument's tunable filters is equivalent to 19000 conventional filters and, furthermore, precious time is saved as these elements need not be assembled and dismantled. This device will be joined soon by CanariCam, in commissioning phase, which works in the medium range infrared, invisible to the human eye.

Over the coming years, new second generation instruments will be included, such as EMIR, a wide-field multi-object spectrograph that will work on the infrared and will be key to the study of the history of star formation in the universe. It will be ready in 2014, one year before FRIDA, which will eliminate in real time, thanks to adaptive optics, the turbulences with which light reaches us after crossing the atmosphere. Between 2016 and 2018, the third generation instruments will be included: MEGARA and MIRADAS.

This scientific meeting is organized from the "Primera Ciencia con el Gran Telescopio CANARIAS: La Astronomía Española en Vanguardia de la Astronomía Europea" program, (First Science with the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS: Spanish Astronomy at the forefront of European Astronomy), Consolider-GTC financed by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), in which GUAIX participates with the Galaxias Team.