Jan 25, 2024
ESA's Scientific Program Committee has adopted the LISA mission, giving the go-ahead for construction of the instrument and satellites. For the first time, LISA will observe the Universe through gravitational waves from space.
ISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), the European Space Agency's large-scale mission to explore the Universe by observing the many sources of gravitational waves, was adopted on Thursday January 25 by ESA's Scientific Programs Committee, meaning that the concept and technology are recognized as sufficiently advanced for construction of the instrument and satellites to begin. Launch is scheduled for 2035.
Jan 22, 2024
The James Webb Space Telescope has produced a new portrait of the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-39b, a "hot Saturn" some 700 light-years away. After the first near-infrared observations in 2022, which revealed for the first time the presence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it was observed again in 2023, but this time in the far infrared, using the MIRI spectrometer.
Jan 17, 2024
To unravel this mystery, several teams with diverse skills from the Astrophysics Department had to come together, as the architecture that unites the star to its planet is highly complex. They had to combine a detailed understanding of stellar and planetary physics, exploring their interactions, with a thorough knowledge of the observations made by NASA's Kepler satellite to be able to decipher the data.
Dec 21, 2023
NewAthena, a pioneering X-ray observatory, will enable us to make major scientific progress in our understanding of the hot and energetic universe.
On November 8, 2023, ESA's Science Program Committee (SPC) approved the evolution of the Athena (Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics) mission, now named NewAthena, and confirmed its status as the flagship mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision program. Positioned as a pioneer in X-ray astrophysics for the coming decades, NewAthena will enable the astronomical community to make major scientific advances in our understanding of the hot, energetic universe.
Dec 18, 2023
Barbara Perri, an astrophysicist at Irfu's Astrophysics Department and an expert in space weather, has been awarded an ANR contract for the WindTRUST project, which aims to predict solar activity in order to protect against it. The WindTRUST project is based on improved numerical simulations of the environment between the Sun and Earth, in particular the still poorly understood link between the Sun's magnetic atmosphere and its fast-moving wind of energetic particles.
Nov 27, 2023
The majority of the 3400 known pulsars are "seen" in radio waves, and are located in the Milky Way. The 340 pulsars seen in gamma-rays all share the common feature of being among the 10-15% most powerful pulsars.
An international team led by French researchers, including those at DAp, publishes on November 28, 2023 in the Astrophysical Journal a compilation of 340 pulsars seen in gamma rays (30 MeV - 30 GeV) with the LAT space telescope on NASA's Fermi satellite. Prior to Fermi's launch in 2008, only 11 pulsars were known in gamma rays. This new catalog brings together all the characteristics of all known gamma-ray pulsars.
Nov 22, 2023
ExoMagnets aims to develop new theories and high-performance simulations using future exascale computing infrastructures in order to exploit existing and future observations of the magnetism of distant exoplanets.
Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist in Irfu's Astrophysics Department, has been awarded an ERC Consolidator contract. The core of his ExoMagnets project is to understand the magnetic coupling between an exoplanet and its star, and therefore the magnetic field of exoplanets, which is crucial for the habitability of a planet.
Nov 15, 2023
The consortium of laboratories that has developed the MIRI instrument for the JWST is benefiting from guaranteed observation time. The CEA's Astrophysics Department, which is part of the consortium, has defined and coordinated the exoplanet observation programme. Among the objects selected are a number of brown dwarfs, which are excellent proxies for studying giant exoplanets, particularly those that orbit far from their star, much further away than the planets in our solar system.
Nov 08, 2023
ESA has selected THESEUS, a mission dedicated to the transient and multi-messenger Universe, for a feasibility study for its next medium sized mission. IRFU will play a leading role in this, with the responsibility for the IRT telescope.
ESA has selected the THESEUS (Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor) mission as a medium-sized mission candidate. THESEUS is the natural successor to the Sino-French SVOM (Space based astronomical Variable Object Monitor) mission, which will be launched early 2024 (for 5 years of operation) and in which IRFU is also playing a leading role.
Nov 07, 2023
This series of five images demonstrates the satellite's exceptional performance for its cosmological mission!
To reveal the influence of the dark components of the Universe, over the next six years Euclid will be observing the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies. This mapping will cover periods going back to the last 10 billion years of cosmic history, in order to gain a better understanding of where, when and how dark energy and matter - two key components of the universe that are still a mystery - act.
Oct 24, 2023
Study of the second-brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed reveals tellurium, an element rarer than platinum on Earth
An international team of scientists, including a researcher from Irfu's Astrophysics Department, used several space and ground-based telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, to observe an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst detected on March 7, 2023, GRB 230307A, and identify the neutron star merger that generated the explosion responsible for the burst.
Oct 10, 2023
For the 17th edition of the Prix Jeunes Talents France, the L'Oréal Foundation rewarded 35 brilliant young female researchers in France, selected from 618 eligible applications by a jury of excellence comprising 32 researchers from the French Academy of Sciences. At Irfu's Astrophysics Department, Achrène Dyrek received the award for physics. Achrène Dyrek has just obtained her PhD in astrophysics.
Sep 26, 2023
Fermi-LAT telescope continues systematic γ-ray survey NASA's Fermi satellite was launched in June 2008, and the Fermi-LAT telescope has been carrying out a systematic γ-ray survey of near-GeV energies covering most of the sky every 3 hours (and the whole sky in no more than a week) since August 2008.
Jul 31, 2023
Euclid's two instruments have captured their first test images. These fascinating results indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific objectives for which it was designed, and perhaps even more.
The Euclid satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on July 1st, is traveling to reach its orbit at the second Lagrange point, which it should reach in early August. This transit time has been used to commission Euclid, checking the satellite's services such as communications, power, and pointing, and then the two instruments, VIS and NISP, as well as fine-tuning the telescope's focus.
Jun 20, 2023
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a group of astronomers led by MPIA, in collaboration with a team from the Astrophysics Department of CEA Paris-Saclay, searched for an atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c. Although the planet is almost identical to Venus in terms of size and mass, its atmosphere turned out to be very different. By analyzing the heat emitted by the planet, they concluded that it may have only a tenuous atmosphere containing a minimum of carbon dioxide.
May 11, 2023
On October 9, 2022, at 13:16 and 59.99 seconds, a gamma-ray burst (GRB) dazzled almost all the X-ray and gamma ray detectors available at the time. Since their discovery, multi-wavelength telescopes in space and on the ground have continuously monitored these events. This outburst, named GRB221009A, shook the world community of astrophysicists, who have since been analysing it to understand the physical phenomena that triggered this most intense burst of energy in our history.
May 10, 2023
Discovered in 2009, exoplanet GJ1214b orbits a small star just 40 light-years away. With a mass around six times that of Earth and an atmosphere made up of hydrogen and helium, it is considered a "mini-Neptune". A team from NASA, in collaboration with researchers from CEA Paris-Saclay, pointed the JWST at the planet using the MIRI instrument, built by CEA Paris-Saclay, for some 40 hours.
Mar 30, 2023
The European Research Council has just announced the names of the winners of the Advanced Grant. This 2023 edition rewards in particular two researchers from the CEA's fundamental research department for their work in the fields of astrophysics and neuroscience. Anaëlle Maury is the leader of the PEBBLES project. This project consists of developing an innovative methodology to characterise the properties of dust around very young stars in the process of forming their proto-planetary disks.
Mar 27, 2023
An international team of researchers has used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to measure the temperature of the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b. This is the world's first detection of thermal emission from a rocky exoplanet as small and “cool” as the rocky planets in our own solar system. TRAPPIST-1 b receives about twice the amount of energy as Venus receives from the Sun and four times more than Earth.
Mar 17, 2023
Magnetars are neutron stars known for their wide variety of electromagnetic emissions coming from the dissipation of their extreme magnetic fields, which are the strongest known in the Universe and can reach 1015 Gauss, or 10 billion times that of the strongest magnet created by humans.
Feb 28, 2023
CEA has delivered the flight version of the ECLAIRs onboard software to CNES after 6 years of development.
CEA has delivered to CNES the flight version of the ECLAIRs instrument software for the SVOM satellite. This concludes a major instrumental development phase conducted by CEA over a period of 6 years to produce what is maybe one of the most complex software packages ever carried on a French scientific space instrument. The latest version of the software equips the ECLAIRs onboard computer, which departed to China in early 2023.
Oct 25, 2022
The four principal investigators receive almost 10 million euros for their project 4D-STAR, which will develop and deliver innovative numerical models of rotating magnetic stars in three spatial dimensions throughout their evolution.
Oct 25, 2022
For the first time since the XMM launch (1999), a cosmological analysis constraining the density of matter in the universe, from a catalog of 178 galaxy clusters detected by XMM, has been possible and in an autonomous way, i.e. with its own distance measurements and without calling upon additional information from numerical simulations or other cluster samples.
Sep 27, 2022
The most intense magnetic fields of the universe in the context of LISA.
The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) space mission by ESA and NASA, will observe gravitational waves from space. After its launch around 2035, LISA will observe in the low frequency band of the gravitational waves spectra and will capture the signal coming from sources which are not detected yet in the high frequency band of ground-based detectors such like Virgo, LIGO, KAGRA, or GEO600.
Sep 15, 2022
As part of the Solar Orbiter science support activities and in conjunction with the ERC Synergy WholeSun grant, researchers from CEA Paris-Saclay, together with an international collaboration, have developed advanced numerical simulations to study the formation of structures of the solar wind. These simulations allow studying the interaction of the convection at the solar surface with the magnetic field. They reveal the appearance of twisted magnetic structures that can participate in the creation of switchbacks.
Sep 09, 2022
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays, their energy source and their acceleration process raise many questions more than 100 years after their discovery by Victor Hess in 1912. What are their sources of acceleration and energy? What are the acceleration mechanisms and their properties? If these are not the only sources considered, strong shocks in supernova remnants constitute one of the privileged places of acceleration which allows the acceleration of particles by the mechanism of diffusive acceleration.
Sep 07, 2022
Nine months after its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope provides unprecedented images of an exoplanet, the first ever obtained in the mid-infrared. These images should revolutionize our knowledge of extrasolar worlds. A team of French astronomers has been involved in the observations of this planet and in the design of the coronagraphs of the telescope.  Launched on December 25, 2021, the James Webb completed its test phase in July 2022.
Jul 12, 2022
The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world discovers for the first time the full capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope's first color images and spectroscopic data, which reveal a spectacular array of previously elusive cosmic features, were released on July 12, 2022.
Jun 27, 2022
Understanding the star formation process is a major open question in contemporary astrophysics. It is indeed the process that controls the evolution of galaxies since their birth, gradually transforming their interstellar gas into stars and enriching it with heavy elements and dust grains. It is also the formation of stars that is at the origin of the formation of planetary systems and the appearance of life. This process is however complex and still very poorly understood.
Jun 17, 2022
Scientists from the CosmoStat laboratory at CEA have produced within the international science collaboration UNIONS (Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey) a reference catalogue of 100 million gravitationally lensed distant galaxies, one of the largest datasets ever created. This new collection is based on thousands of deep images of the northern sky captured by MegaCam, a large digital camera built at CEA, mounted on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).

 

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