News
«The diversity is huge»
When Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a normal star twenty years ago, they started a revolution in astronomy: An ancient human dream became research reality. «There is an infinite number of worlds, some like and some unlike our own.» With this quote by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the Genevan astronomer […]
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A cosmic detective story
«Comets give us good clues that the planet formation era was violent and the early solar system very different from today,» said Willy Benz, director of PlanetS, at a conference in Madrid. «Comets were born during the formation of the solar system in the first 10 to 100 million years», explained Willy Benz in […]
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Hot and stormy at high altitudes
Studying the atmosphere of an exoplanet, astronomers of the NCCR PlanetS derived a temperature profile with unprecedented precision. Their results are based on data collected with a relatively small ground-based telescope. This opens completely new perspectives for the characterization of remote exoplanetary atmospheres. High up in the atmosphere of the exoplanet named HD 189733b it […]
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Big crowd at the museum
500 people! Never before hosted the Natural History Museum of Geneva so many people for an opening of a temporary exhibition. Even tough it is the largest exhibition ever presented by the Museum, it is doubtless the topic of exoplanets that attracted such a crowd on the 21st of March 2015. Who never dreamed of […]
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This start has been wonderful
A great setting in the Alps, 93 participants, and excellent scientific presentations, the General Assembly in Anzère kept all promisses, and marked in many ways a tangible start of our NCCR PlanetS. To ensure the long-term cohesion of this ambitious initiative at the beginning, we need to get to know each other better, to learn about […]
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A great mingling experience
At the first General Assembly of the NCCR PlanetS, 93 participants gathered in Anzère (VS) at the end of January 2015 to present their projects, discuss their goals and get to know each other. «They do know how to pick a meeting location,» twittered Brian Schmidt adding a nice photo of Anzère with snowy mountains. […]
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A Nobel prize in Anzère
«I spent my childhood in Alaska where snowstorms like today are commonplace. So when I was about your age, I wanted to study meteorology,» said Brian Schmidt to fifteen teenagers from Ayent who came to meet him on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the NCCR Planets. The American astronomer finally opted for astronomy, […]
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Test chamber for CHEOPS is installed
An outstanding vacuum chamber in a brand new laboratory is now waiting for the space telescope CHEOPS at the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) of the University of Berne. Space experts will put the completely assembled flight instrument in the chamber and calibrate it therein under space conditions. At five and a half tones, […]
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3000 children’s drawings will fly
3000 children’s drawings will fly to space with CHEOPS. The Space Telescope CHEOPS (CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite) will be the first mission dedicated to search for transits by means of ultrahigh precision photometry on about 700 bright stars already known to host planets. The satellite will be built under the lead of researchers from the Centre […]
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Solar eclipse and «Tag der Astronomie»
On Friday, March 20th people all over Europe will have a chance to follow a partial solar eclipse. The following day, Saturday, March 21st we celebrate the «Tag der Astronomie». Both events present a great occasion for astronomy clubs to reach out to the general public and to inform about astronomy and space research and […]
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