Thanks to a push from planet Venus earlier this year, the orbit of the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was tilted. A century ago mankind raced to explore the poles of the Earth, now Solar Orbiter made its way to the poles of the Sun. For the very first time the solar poles have been imaged! [...]
May 12, 2020 – The 3 telescopes of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) onboard Solar Orbiter opened their doors to capture images of the Sun.
May 12, 2025 – Almost 1 million images of the Sun have been made and put in the EUI data treasure chest to be used for groundbreaking research. [...]
On 8, 9 and 10 April 2025, the Royal Observatory of Belgium welcomed 85 leading solar physicists, in person and online, to participate in an international workshop on the future of the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission.
Through presentations and group discussions, the science of three instruments (EUI, Metis and SPICE) was reviewed in detail. A special session was held on the [...]
A partial solar eclipse will take place on Saturday, 29 March 2025 and will be visible in Belgium. Instruments of the Royal Observatory of Belgium will observe it. If the weather permits it, there will also be an observation event at the Planetarium. [...]
A new documentary about the end of the dinosaur era research will be screened on March 27 and April 2, 2025, at the 2025 DOCVILLE festival in Leuven. Named ‘De dag dat het zonlicht niet meer scheen’ (The day the sun stopped shining in English), it was based on a science pitch of Cem Berk Senel from the Royal Observatory [...]
On Mars 12 2025, at 13:51 (Belgian local time), the ESA Hera mission for planetary defence made a close flyby of the planet Mars and its moons Deimos and Phobos. Scientists took the opportunity to study Deimos, photograph Mars and Phobos and calibrate Hera instruments. Scientists from Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) take part in the data analysis of the [...]
Recent restrictions on science and scholarship brought by the new US administration executive orders have prompted the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) to respond with a statement calling for their members, partners and like-minded organisations to take a stand to safeguard academic freedom and the autonomy of scientific institutions. The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) endorses [...]
Brussels, 17 February 2025 – A recent five-year study has uncovered new insights into the properties of Yellow Hypergiants, a heavy star class known for their dramatic outbursts. Scientists focused on Rho Cassiopeiae (Rho Cas), HR 8752, and HR 5171A, revealing that Rho Cas exhibits cyclical outbursts every 10 to 40 years, with large fluctuations of its surface temperature. Alex [...]
Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Let’s put those in the research fields of the Royal Observatory of Belgium in the spotlight. [...]
Previous studies posited that the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs was caused by large volumes of sulfur released from rocks within the Chicxulub crater following the asteroid impact. A new paper published in the journal Nature Communications questions this scenario. The authors, including Cem Berk Senel and Özgür Karatekin of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, used groundbreaking empirical [...]