Seismic Activity in/around Belgium in 2025
In 2025, 137 earthquakes were located by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in or near Belgium. On Belgian territory, no earthquake was large enough to have been felt. [...]
05
Jan 26
News
09
Dec 25
Proba-3 is 1 year in space
December 5, 2024 – 1 year ago, the duo satellite Proba-3 left Earth to head to space. The telescope ASPIICS, whose task is to make perfect total solar eclipses from space, was onboard. The launch went flawless.
December 5, 2025 – exactly 1 year later, ASPIICS has already delivered a wealth of amazing pictures of the solar atmosphere close to its [...]
03
Dec 25
Late growth spurt of young stars allows giant planets to form after all
Brussels, 3 December 2025 – By measuring the rate at which young stars grow, astronomers discovered that contrary to earlier expectations, young stars appear to grow much faster in the later stages of their formation than at the onset. So, much like humans, intermediate mass stars undergo a growth spurt and have a voracious appetite during their adolescence. This finding, reported by [...]
12
Nov 25
Northern Lights Over Belgium
November 12, 2025, very early in the morning. Colleagues from the STCE, the Belgian Space Weather Centre, admired the northern lights from their terrace in Brussels and are amazed by the show of colours. After all, it is quite exceptional to be able to observe this phenomenon in Belgium (let alone in the middle of a city with a lot [...]
13
Oct 25
Scientists of the Bepicolombo mission met at the Royal Observatory of Belgium
Tuesday, September 30, 2025, marked the beginning of a 3-day workshop gathering international members from the BELA and MORE experiments onboard the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. [...]
19
Sep 25
WiseNight 2025 Festival at the Planetarium
On 26 September 2025, come to the free WiseNight festival at the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. [...]
10
Sep 25
Webb reveals new details of the Butterfly Nebula
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details in the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302. From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a never-before-seen portrait of a dynamic and structured planetary nebula. Those new [...]
01
Jul 25
Proba-3: top experts on coronagraphy meet at the Royal Observatory of Belgium
The 11th Science Working Team meeting of the ESA Proba-3 mission recently took place at Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB). The world’s top experts on coronagraphy, the technique to observe the solar corona by blocking the light of the solar disk, like during a total eclipse, met there for three days. Our colleague Andrei Zhukov, the principal investigator of the [...]
27
Jun 25
Tiny Solar Bursts Show Pulses Like Big Flares
New findings from the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft reveal that even the tiniest bursts of activity from the Sun may behave like their larger counterparts.
The Sun constantly produces tiny flashes of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission in its outer atmosphere, known as the corona. These flashes, called EUV brightenings, are small, short-lived bursts of energy that appear all over [...]
20
Jun 25
Soapbox Science 2025: female scientists take the floor at the heart of Brussels
On Saturday 28 June 2025, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., twelve female researchers from all over Belgium will be sharing their passion and knowledge in a fun and accessible way at the Carrefour de l’Europe/Europakruispunt. [...]