News
Top Marks for PlanetS
Once a year renowned experts evaluate the scientific quality and the progress made in every Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR). After a two-day exam at the end of May at the Geneva Observatory the review panel was highly impressed by the activities of the NCCR PlanetS. The yearly site visit of the […]
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Looking for our interstellar roots
Maria Drozdovskaya wants to know what our „astrochemical ancestral tree“ looks like. The incoming Fellow of the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern has just won a prestigious award that she will bring to her new host institution: The Gruber Foundation (TGF) Fellowship. It is one of the oldest and […]
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PlanetS in the Shopping Mall
As soon as the pillar about exoplanets has been set up in the lobby of the planetarium of the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne, people are gathering. They want to know what there is to see. They are especially attracted by the rotating planet on top of the pillar. Around the planet there is […]
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Purely for exoplanet science
Next week, about 240 scientists from Europe and the US will gather in Davos to present and discuss all aspects of exoplanet science from observations to characterisation and theory. The conference “Exoplanets I” is organized by Kevin Heng, director of the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and a subproject […]
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Open house day
On the occasion of the inauguration of its new building, the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva invites you to an open house on 2nd July 2016. You will be able to visit the new clean room in which the Observatory is building a high-resolution spectrograph measuring the mass of planets identical to ours. […]
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Listening to Venus
Space missions exploring Venus unveiled a Venusian world of active volcanoes, shining mountains, and river valleys carved by torrents of flowing lava, depicted David Grinspoon. In his lively talk, which he even brightened up with songs and electric guitar, the astrobiologist narrated that much earlier in time, Venus may have had a wet, temperate climate, […]
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47UMa
47UMa, G1V, mv=5.03 47 Ursae Majoris (in short 47 UMa) is a 6-billion-year-old system 46 light-years away. The star, also named Chalawan, is similar to the Sun and can be seen with the naked eye between the Big Dipper / Plough and Leo Minor. The masses and distances to the star of the two innermost […]
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On the variety of asteroid interiors
Asteroid interiors in the early solar system – from fluffy snowballs to internal magma oceans In the nascent solar system, the building blocks of terrestrial planets – asteroids of dozens of kilometers in size – were internally heated by the decay of radioactive elements. The amount of radionuclides present in a single asteroid determined its […]
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CaSSIS camera: first images from space
Since its launch on March 14, 2016, the ExoMars probe is on its way to Mars. The spacecraft with the high resolution camera onboard will arrive at the red planet next October. The researchers are already confident that CaSSIS works. The high-resolution camera system sent first pictures from space. The technically extremely complex camera system […]
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Thinking out of the box
On May 24th and 25th the Geneva Observatory will have the honour to host the 2nd PlanetS site visit. I expect this event to be again an occasion to share the outcomes of PlanetS’ exciting activities with SNSF representatives and the world-renowned members of the Review Panel. The site visit will coincide with another exceptional […]
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