News
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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Find out more about alien worlds
They regularly appear in the news: exoplanets. But what exactly are they? And what do they have to do with Switzerland? With special information pillars, which are set up at various locations in Switzerland, the scientists of the NCCR PlanetS want to show to the general public that they are a leading organisation worldwide dedicated to […]
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Last call for “Exoplanètes”
The exhibition “Exoplanètes” of the Geneva Museum of Natural History comes to an end and according to numbers provided by the museum, some 300,000 people have visited it, one month before its scheduled closure on 4 April. “Exoplanètes” then will hand over to dinosaurs, a unique topic capable of drawing in as many or even […]
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First Circumbinary Planet System with Disc
Planet-hunting SPHERE Images First Circumbinary Planet System with Disc HD 106906AB is a double star located in the constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross). Astronomers had long suspected that this 13 million-year-old stellar duo was encircled by a debris disc, due to the system’s youth and characteristic radiation. However, this disc had remained unseen — […]
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PlanetS in Grindelwald
At the second General Assembly of the NCCR PlanetS the members presented project highlights and discussed future interdisciplinary ventures. “People were interacting a lot”, says NCCR scientific officer Yann Alibert: “The meeting was very successful although packed and quite exhausting.” “This is it”, summarized PlanetS director Willy Benz: “The one time in the year where […]
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