Paul Melchior (1925-2004), former director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, was cartoonist Peyo’s friend. Together they chose to illustrate the current research in Earth sciences at the Observatory with the Smurfs.
Hence, no less than 18 greeting cards featuring the joyful little blue men are published from 1966, all of them being inspired by the research and instruments of the [...]
On March 2018, the French-speaking program “Matière Grise” from the RTBF (Radio-Télévision belge de la Communauté française) celebrated its 20th anniversary during a gala evening with Paris Match Belgium. On this occasion, several trophies were awarded to the researchers who were particularly involved in the making of their programs.
Dr. Eva Robbrecht, who worked in the Royal Observatory of Belgium, was [...]
Brussels / Antwerp, May 14, 2018. The planetary scientists at the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) are delighted to announce the signing of a contract between the European Space Agency’s PRODEX (PROgramme for the Development of scientific Experiments) programme and Antwerp Space for the delivery of LaRa (Lander Radioscience), a ‘martian’ instrument onboard ExoMars 2020. [...]
On Thursday, May 3, 2018, a new law on the Belgian legal time was adopted by the Parliament, based on a recommendation from the Royal Observatory of Belgium. The legal time was, according to the law dating from 1892, the solar time of the Greenwich meridian. Today legal time in Belgium is aligned with the official world reference: the Universal [...]
30 April 2018 – On 5 May 2018, a delegation of scientists from the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) will attend to the launch of InSight, a NASA mission to Mars. [...]
On 25 April 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) announces the largest and most accurate 3-dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy ever made. Using the Gaia satellite, the position and motion of more than a billion stars was mapped by a consortium of European astronomers, including scientists from the Royal Observatory of Belgium. This map will be a treasure [...]
A team of researchers from the Observatory, in collaboration with the Northwestern University (USA), just published a new study about the theoretical performance of seismic hazard maps in « Scientific Reports ». This study illustrates the difficulty of evaluating the quality of these maps, particularly in stable zones where earthquakes are rare. [...]
1700 handwritten pages of information on XIXth century earthquakes, this is the unexpected treasure discovered by scientists of the Royal Observatory of Belgium and the Cologne University in the record-office of Duisburg (Germany).
The original documents covering the German, Belgian and Dutch border region include letters and most astonishingly formal macroseismic questionnaires of the Prussian authorities that have not been used [...]
From November 27 to December 1, the 14th European Space Weather Week (ESWW) will be held at Oostende (Kursaal) in Belgium.
The ESWW is one of the main international conferences when it comes to space weather. Already for the 12th time, its organisation is in the hands of the Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE). Once again, more than 400 scientists, engineers, [...]
Their innovation: using seismic noise generated by oceans and which travel around the world to study tiny changes in seismic wave’s velocity in aquifers. Decrease (or increase) of water resources stored in the underground is coupled with an increase (or decrease) of seismic wave velocities in the geological layers. [...]