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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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PlanetS seeks Planet9
Following the proposal of Stéphane Udry at the General Assembly of Grindelwald, all members of PlanetS eager to explore the paths of a possible discovery of Planet9 met in Geneva on the 10th of March. About thirty astronomers were present in the lecture hall and via teleconference to listen and discuss with colleagues the constraints […]
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What makes a good science talk?
Impressions from the General Assembly 2016 (Photos: Sylviane Blum) In Fall 2015, the first yearly PlanetS Professional Development workshop for PhDs students and postdocs took place. The first topic we looked at was giving a science talk. In the slides below, you will find a […]
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Entering another world
“As an astrophysicist you have a lot of abilities and skills that are very important in and transferable to the professional world outside of science,” says Sascha Quanz who has worked as management consultant at McKinsey & Company before returning to astrophysics. He is now lecturer at the ETH Zürich and leader of the PlanetS […]
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Facebook author’s workshop
On Tuesday, March 22nd, nine young scientists together with the PlanetS communication team discussed about the new PlanetS Facebook profile. The official launch of the Facebook page will be on Monday, April 18th 2016. Altogether twelve volunteers from our Zürich, Geneva, and Bern sub-projects will continuously produce and submit new Facebook posts, covering several aspects […]
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When a dream comes true
When Antonio Gracia Berná was featured as PlanetS collaborator of February 2016 he wrote: „To me, there is a major discovery I’d like to see during my lifetime: the trustable detection and confirmation of the gravitational waves predicted by A. Einstein’s work.“ A very timely statement since on 11 February 2016 researchers affiliated with the […]
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