How do giant planets become eccentric?
The vast majority of giant exoplanets observed (planets 100 times heavier than the Earth) have very “eccentric” orbits: their trajectory does not follow a circle, unlike the Earth, but an […]
News
Mars 2020 mission: Perseverance rover lands successfully carrying French Supercam instrument
Thursday 18 February, the Perseverance rover, carrying a suite of seven instruments including the French SuperCam, a greatly enhanced version of the ChemCam instrument already operating on NASA’s Curiosity Mars […]
ExoMars discovers chlorine in the atmosphere of Mars
ExoMars’ European-Russian probe, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), has been orbiting Mars since October 2016. It has been observing the atmosphere continuously since April 2018 in search of trace gases […]
SPIRou stares at a young rebel: the AU Mic planetary system
SPIRou, the new spectropolarimeter / high-precision velocimeter recently installed on the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), allowed to measure the mass and density of a close-in Neptune-like planet orbiting the hugely-active […]
A reference compound to calibrate the analyzer of the Mars rover Perseverance
How do you calibrate a device once on Mars? On board the “Perseverance” rover, the SuperCam module will have a series of reference samples to improve the accuracy of mineralogical […]
21 Years of XMM-Newton celebrated with a new catalogue and an ambitious citizen science project
On the 21st anniversary of the launch of the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (XMM-SSC) are releasing a new catalogue, 4XMM-DR10, of all of […]
PEP consortium delivers flight models of the first four particle detectors of the JUICE probe to Jupiter
After 8 years of development, the PEP consortium, which includes IRAP (CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier de Toulouse and CNES) (1), has just delivered to Airbus the flight models of the […]
Machine learning: a breakthrough in the study of stellar nurseries
Artificial intelligence can make it possible to see astrophysical phenomena that were previously beyond reach. This has now been demonstrated by scientists from the CNRS (IRAP included), IRAM, Observatoire de […]
Uncovering the hidden side of storms – France’s Taranis satellite to launch in november
Sprites, elves, jets… few people know that scientists habitually use such other-worldly words to describe transient luminous events or TLEs, light flashes that occur during active storms just a few […]