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Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 07.10.2021

Mars: first results from the Perseverance rover
Images from Perseverance's French-American instrument SuperCam show that the crater where the rover landed once contained a lake. The SuperCam observations also identified strata containing boulders, related to a major change in the hydrological regime. This study, led by a French researcher, will facilitate selection of the most suitable areas for Perseverance to collect samples.

Astronomy / Space Science - 06.10.2021

Why there is hardly any dust on some asteroids
There was a surprise in store for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it prepared to land on asteroid Bennu in October 2020 in order to collect samples. Contrary to what astronomers believed, the asteroid's surface was not covered with a layer of fine dust, called regolith. This dust, which blankets the Moon and some asteroids, is formed when thermal shock and meteorite impacts break up surface rocks.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 16.09.2021

Part of the Universe’s missing matter found thanks to the MUSE instrument
CRAL publication in MNRAS , on September 16, 2021. CNRS press release on September 16, 2021. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument  from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 , has mapped a galactic wind for the first time.

Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 10.08.2021

Mars: first results from the Perseverance rover
Publication of LGL-TPE in Science on October 7, 2021. CNRS press release on October 7, 2021. The Perseverance rover has now confirmed the suitability of its landing site: Jezero crater really did contain a lake, into which a river flowed through a delta 3.6 billion years ago. Led by a CNRS researcher, the international team involved scientists in France from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier , and published its findings on October 7 in Science.

Astronomy / Space Science - Earth Sciences - 22.07.2021

InSight Mission: Mars unveiled
Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 29.06.2021

The final dance of mixed neutron star-black hole pairs
Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole. The phenomenon was detected twice in January 2020. Several hypotheses could explain the existence of such mixed pairs. Further observations will be needed in order to settle the question.  Another missing piece has just been added to our knowledge of cosmic phenomena.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 11.06.2021

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet to continue experiments on foams
Studying how liquid foams evolve over time is difficult, if not impossible, on Earth because of gravity. The FOAM-C experiment, which began in 2020, was designed to study liquid foams in zero gravity on board the ISS. New samples will be set up by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet on Friday, June 11. The FOAM-C experiment studies the properties of liquid foams in zero gravity.

Astronomy / Space Science - Environment - 08.04.2021

More than 5,000 tons of extraterrestrial dust fall to Earth each year
Every year, our planet encounters dust from comets 1 and asteroid 2 . These interplanetary dust particles pass through our atmosphere and give rise to shooting stars. Some of them reach the ground in the form of micrometeorites. An international program 3 conducted for nearly 20 years by scientists from the CNRS, the Université Paris-Saclay and the National museum of natural history 4 with the support of the French polar institute, has determined that 5,200 tons per year of these micrometeorites reach the ground.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 24.03.2021

Astronomers Image Magnetic Fields at the Edge of M87’s Black Hole
Within the EHT collaboration, the CNRS and IRAM participated in the creation of a new image of the black hole in the M87 galaxy. Produced in so-called "polarized" light, this image makes it possible to observe the magnetic field and to better understand the physics around black holes. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole , has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarised light.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 18.03.2021

First images of the cosmic web reveal a myriad of unsuspected dwarf galaxies
The MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope has captured an image of several filaments in the early Universe... ... revealing the unexpected presence of billions of dwarf galaxies in the filaments Although the filaments of gas in which galaxies are born have long been predicted by cosmological models, we have so far had no real images of such objects.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 18.02.2021

The Mars2020 Mission - Perseverance Rover Landing
Follow along live as the Perseverance rover lands on Mars, thanks to the SuperCam instrument on board which was co-developed by three research laboratories under the supervision of Sorbonne University. On Thursday, February 18, 2021, a little before 10:00 pm, the Perseverance rover will descend on Mars at more than 21,000 km/h.

Astronomy / Space Science - 04.02.2021

The CNRS welcomes France’s commitment to the construction and operation of the largest radio astronomy instrument ever built
The SKA Observatory will design and build the most sensitive radio astronomy instrument ever created, operating over an unmatched radio-wave range. It is expected to study the formation of the very first stars and galaxies shortly after the Big Bang. SKA will produce a data stream that exceeds today's global internet traffic and Facebook's current storage needs.

Astronomy / Space Science - 02.02.2021

Exoplanets: SPIRou carries out first ever measurement of a very young planet’s density
A research team led by scientists from IRAP (CNRS/CNES/Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier) and IPAG (CNRS/UGA) 1 has for the first time measured the internal density of a very young exoplanet orbiting a newly formed, extremely active star. Despite the 'noise' generated by the star's activity, they successfully achieved this using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)'s planet hunting instrument SPIRou.

Astronomy / Space Science - 26.01.2021

A titanic interstellar medium ejection from a massive starburst galaxy at redshift 1.4
Skip to main page Skip to contain Skip to sitemap Skip to search Skip to accessibility Skip to contact Skip to legal notice Publication of CRAL in Nature Astronomy on January 11, 2021.  Feedback-driven winds from star formation or active galactic nuclei might be a relevant channel for the abrupt quenching of star formation in massive galaxies.

Astronomy / Space Science - 18.01.2021

Saturn’s tilt caused by its moons
Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (Paris Observatory - PSL/CNRS) have just shown that the influence of Saturn's satellites can explain the tilt of the rotation axis of the gas giant. Rather like David versus Goliath, it appears that Saturn's tilt may in fact be caused by its moons.

Astronomy / Space Science - Computer Science - 19.11.2020

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, IRAM, Observatoire de Paris-PSL, Ecole Centrale Marseille and Ecole Centrale Lille, working together in the ORION-B 1 programme. In a series of three papers published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on 19 November 2020, they present the most comprehensive observations yet carried out of one of the star-forming regions closest to the Earth.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 06.11.2020

Has the hidden matter of the Universe been discovered?
Astrophysicists consider that around 40% of the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets and galaxies remains undetected, concealed in the form of a hot gas in the complexe cosmic web. Today, scientists at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay) may have detected, for the first time, this hidden matter through an innovative statistical analysis of 20-year-old data.  Their findings are published on November 6, 2020 in Astronomy & Astrophysics .

Astronomy / Space Science - 27.10.2020

Surprisingly mature galaxies in the early Universe
When the Universe was only a tenth of its current age its galaxies experienced a growth spurt.  It was this period that the scientists in the ALPINE project 1 focused on when they used ESO's ALMA 2 telescope to carry out the first ever large survey of distant galaxies.  To their surprise, these galaxies observed in the early stages of their life were far more mature than expected.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 02.09.2020

New populations of black holes revealed by gravitational waves
The gravitational wave 1 detectors LIGO and Virgo have just chalked up their biggest catch yet, a black hole 142 times the mass of the Sun, resulting from the merger of two black holes of 85 and 66 solar masses.  The remnant black hole is the most massive ever observed with gravitational waves, and it could give us some clues about the formation of the supermassive black holes that sit at the centres of some galaxies.

Astronomy / Space Science - Environment - 05.08.2020

Ammonia-rich hail sheds new light on Jupiter’s weather
New Juno results suggest that the violent thunderstorms taking place in Jupiter's atmosphere may form ammonia-rich hail, or 'mushballs', that play a key role in the planet's atmospheric dynamics. This theory, developed using data from Juno's microwave radiometer by the Juno team, is described in two publications led by a researcher at the Laboratoire Lagrange (CNRS/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur/Université Côte d'Azur) with support from the CNES.