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Switzerland in Space
From the Bernese solar-wind experiment on Apollo 11 to space research in Switzerland as a member of the European Space Agency ESA – the development up to the first long-term space research programme ‘Horizon 2000’. By Martin C.E. Huber The Bernese experiment, which Buzz Aldrin planted into the solar wind after he and astronaut colleague […]
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A prize for outstanding achievements
The astronomer Monika Lendl has won the Look! business award for the Austrian woman of the year in STEM (Science, technology, engineering & maths). Monika Lendl is member of PlanetS and works as senior researcher at The University of Geneva. This year’s Austrian woman of the year in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, nominated […]
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“We will need large space missions”
Sascha Quanz was appointed the new professor of Exoplanets and Habitability at ETH Zurich on 1 June 2019. “I’m delighted that we can now move ahead with renewed vigour, also within PlanetS,” says Sascha Quanz, who is now also a member of the Executive Board of the National Centre of Competence in Research. PlanetS: You have […]
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Discover exoplanets while playing
Two years ago, the Icelandic company CCP, which markets and operates the EveOnline galactic conquest game, launched the “project discovery”, a concept of citizen science included in the game. Using the star light curves taken by the European CoRoT satellite (COnvection, ROtation et Transits), the goal was to try to discover periodic decreases in the […]
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Highlights of recent research results
Recently, PlanetS researchers published papers about stolen comets, a forbidden planet, meteorites from Vesta, and Rare-Earth metals in the atmosphere of a glowing-hot exoplanet. The video based on computer simulations demonstrates what happens if two young stars in a cluster undergo a close encounter. Each star has a belt of so-called planetesimals, the building blocks […]
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Stolen comets and free-floating objects
Our Solar System may contain alien comets that were stolen from another star flying past 4.5 billion years ago. Far away in a distant cluster of young stars, a similar close encounter might have also sent the inter-stellar visitor “Oumuamua” flying on its way towards us, and there must be many more of these free-floating […]
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Bern in Space
Bern in Space Berne celebrates 50 years of moon landing – When Buzz Aldrin was the second man to leave the lunar module on 21 July 1969, first he unfurled the solar wind sail of the University of Berne and put it into the bottom of the moon before the American flag. This experiment was […]
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Rare-Earth metals in the atmosphere of a glowing-hot exoplanet
KELT-9 b is the hottest exoplanet known to date. In the summer of 2018, a joint team of astronomers from the universities of Bern and Geneva and members of PlanetS found signatures of gaseous iron and titanium in its atmosphere. Now these researchers have also been able to detect traces of vaporized sodium, magnesium, chromium, […]
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Fantasy Basel: We were there
PlanetS was at the Fantasy Basel! And talked about many things with you!
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The important role of La Silla
By Pierre Bratschi About 80 astronomers were invited by ESO to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the La Silla Observatory. An event that may seem anachronistic in the era of the VLT, the ELT, and of the JWST, indeed what else can we expect from an observatory that has “only” two “small” 3.6m telescopes? How can […]
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