Elodie Gloesener, PhD student on the IAP (Interuniversity Attraction Pole) TOPERS Planet (Planets: Tracing the Transfer, Origin, Preservation, and Evolution of their ReservoirS), won the Odissea prize for her work in the frame of a Master in Space Sciences at the University of Liège on methane and clathrates of Mars (Promotor Veronique Dehant & Ozgur Karatekin). She studied the temperature [...]
Attilio Rivoldini, planetary scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, won a competition of the Class of Sciences of the Belgian Royal Academy. His work was sent as an answer to a request for “an original contribution, experimental or theoretical on the physics of planets and moons of the solar system”. [...]
A team of scientists including Dr. Alex Lobel of the ROB, reported they have finalized a thirty years long investigation of a hypergiant star. In that period the surface temperature of this gigantic and extremely bright star quickly rose from five to eight thousand degrees. With this discovery a crucial ‘missing link’ in the evolution of hypergiant stars has been [...]
Observations from space (PROBA2-SWAP) and from Australia were coordinated by Belgian scientists.
Images are available at http://proba2.oma.be/news/solar_eclipse_20121113 where you also can find the blog of Dr. Anik De Groof with fantastic images. [...]
A team of researchers including astronomers from the University of Liège and Dr. Ronny Blomme of the ROB has observed the colliding stellar winds of the two stars in the massive system Cyg OB2 #9.
They used observations from the satellites XMM-Newton (ESA) and Swift (NASA).
The result features in press releases by ESA, NASA and the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
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Observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed an unexpected spiral structure in the material around the old star R Sculptoris. This feature has never been seen before and is probably caused by a hidden companion star orbiting the star. This slice through the new ALMA data reveals the shell around the star, which shows up as the [...]
Update: Successful landing in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012 at 05:14:39 UTC
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will deliver the Curiosity rover, the largest planetary rover ever flown, to the Red Planet’s surface early in the morning of 6 August. [...]
Honorary head of Department Dr. Eric Elst of the ROB observed the transit of Venus of June 6, 2012 in Tobolsk (Siberia). In 2005 he found there the place where Chappe d’Auteroche observed the transit of June 6, 1671. Dr. Elst travelled to the same place to observe, besides mosquitos and clouds, the transit of 2012. A few of his [...]
By mixing the very old digitized data and the data from space probes, scientists from an international team in which also the Royal Observatory of Belgium takes part showed the existence of a tidal energy dissipation in Saturn larger than expected and have reconciled it with theory by revisiting the interior model of Saturn and by changing the orbit scenarios. [...]
Five years of Mars Express (MaRS experiment) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gravity mapping data are providing unique insights into what lies beneath the Red Planet’s largest volcanoes. The results show that the density of the lava changed over time and that the thickness of the planet’s rigid outer layers varies across the Tharsis region. [...]