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Between heaven and earth
The Arte television channel aired Tuesday, May 26 at 17:45 a 25 minute documentary on the search for exoplanets. We visit with astronomers (as Aurélien Wyttenbach of Geneva observatory) the high places of planetary science as Euler Swiss telescope at La Silla or 3.6m of ESO where HARPS is installed also at La Silla. […]
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The spectrum of 51peg b 20 years after
51pegb: 20 years after its discovery, astronomers have managed to obtain its spectrum. Remarkable success of an international team of astronomers including members of PlanetS: they got for the first time a spectrum of light reflected from an exoplanet; and not just any one but 51pegb, the first around a sun like star discovered […]
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HD 69830
HD 69830, K0V, mv=5.95 HD 69830 is a planetary system about 41 light-years away, in the northeastern part of the constellation of Puppis (the Poop Deck). The central star is a yellow dwarf, about 7 to 9 billion year old, that is slightly smaller than the Sun (90% of its radius and 86% of its […]
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Planetary system of the month
In order to show the extraordinary diversity of planetary systems (multiple or single) discovered to date, PlanetS offers once a month to immerse yourself in one of these new worlds. First we offer a simple animation in which you can change certain settings such as the angle of view, the rotation speed or the visual […]
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NCCR PlanetS
Dear Reader, You are looking at the first edition of the e-Newsletter of the National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS. The Swiss National Science Foundation launched PlanetS in June 2014 as a response to an astronomical revolution. The one spawned by the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting another solar-type star […]
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51 Peg b – top secret
Studying the data collected at the Observatory of Haute-Provence the astronomers in Geneva knew something big was coming. But they kept their secret and worked hard to eliminate all sources of error. The Summer of 1995 – like every day at noon, astronomers from the Geneva Observatory interrupted their work for lunch in the cafeteria. […]
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“I could not believe it”
51 Peg b changed our view of the Universe – and the life of its discoverers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. “I thought there was something not working in the software,” remembers Didier Queloz his first reaction when he analyzed the data collected with the spectrometer called ELODIE. Has it always been a goal to discover […]
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Planets for beginners
“When I think that I do not even know what a planet is,” exclaimed Véronique, a specialist in contemporary art, pushing open the doors of “Exoplanets”, the exhibition organized by the Museum of Natural History in Geneva. It is a gray day and light rain sprinkles the city on this fresh Sunday of April, ideal weather […]
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Amazing weather reports
There are clear skies on exoplanet HAT-P-11b, whereas infernal winds are blowing high up on HD 189733 b. Today, with their elaborate instruments on Earth and in space astronomers not only discover new exoplanets, but also gain insight into the atmospheres of these distant worlds. In the future they even hope to detect signals of […]
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Dedicated to planet hunting
At the European Southern Observatory exoplanet science brought a rich harvest in the past, and the future looks even brighter as ESO guest author Gaspare Lo Courto explains in the following article. By Gaspare Lo Courto, ESO This year marks two decades since the discovery of the first exo-planet orbiting another solar-type star, 51 Pegasi […]
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