News
Planet 9 takes shape
Astrophysicists at the University of Bern have modelled the evolution of the putative planet in the outer solar system. They estimate that the object has a present-day radius equal to 3.7 Earth radii and a temperature of minus 226 degrees Celsius. In the far infrared the planet is much brighter than in the visual. How […]
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3000 drawings for CHEOPS
Children in Switzerland and all over Europe made thousands of imaginative drawings of stars, planets, rockets, satellites, aliens and CHEOPS. 3000 entries to the drawing campaign organised by the University of Bern will fly into space with CHEOPS, a space telescope being built in collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland. You can […]
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Planning Starts for HIRES Instruments on the E-ELT
The Universities of Bern and Geneva and members of the NCCR PlanetS are involved in one of the instruments for the world’s biggest telescope. Scientists and engineers have begun mapping out the detailed specifications of two new instruments that will be part of the instrument suite on ESO’s forthcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt/) (E-ELT). […]
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Water in the atmosphere of a Super-Jupiter
Kappa Andromedae b is one of the few substellar objects outside our Solar System that has been directly photographed. Whereas astronomers still debate as to whether the object is an exoplanet or a brown dwarf, Kamen Todorov, member of the NCCR PlanetS at ETH Zürich, and colleagues measured the amount of water vapour in the […]
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Water in the atmosphere of Kappa And b
New estimate of the water abundance in a planetary mass object spatially resolved from its host star. Dr. Kamen Todorov of ETH led a team that modelled the spectrum of Kappa And b. We hope to coordinate our efforts in this area through the NCCR PlanetS and apply similar techniques to other directly imaged planets. […]
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NCCR PlanetS
Dear Reader, The year 2016 barely began when the claim was made that there is evidence for a yet undiscovered planet (Planet 9) within our solar system. You would think that nothing could stir more the astronomy community and the general public…. But here comes the direct detection of gravitational waves and the excitement reaches […]
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Swiss camera flies to Mars
On 14 March 2016, a new Mars mission will be launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Aboard the European spacecraft is a camera built at the University of Bern – in a record time as team leader Nicolas Thomas explains. Originally, the team in Bern was selected by NASA to provide a Swiss-built telescope for an […]
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Focus on Planet Nine
Members of PlanetS have joined the worldwide race to spot the alleged ninth major object in the outer Solar System. Researchers at the University of Bern study the evolution of such a planet and estimate its visible magnitude. “And if PlanetS also gets into the search of the 9th planet” enthusiastically exclaims Stéphane Udry , […]
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How a cosmochemist works
Maïa Kuga studies noble gases trapped in meteorites in order to better understand planet formation. Have a look at the laboratory at the ETH Zurich to find out how the PlanetS postdoc works.
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Looking for life elsewhere
How do we define what “habitable” means on another planet and how do we look for life elsewhere in the Universe? These are questions the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern wants to answer. Its new director Kevin Heng is an expert in the atmospheres of exoplanets and also leader […]
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