Hello everyone,
Please find below the DAp Gazette #30.
1) News from the DAp
- The DAp General Assembly was held on September 20, 2025. You can find all the presentations via this link.
- Since February 1, Stéphane Mathis (LDE3) has succeeded Pierre-Olivier Lagage as head of the Department of Astrophysics.
- The first event of “1 month 1 lab” allowed nearly 40 people to explore the activities offered by the LCS. The next team to open its doors will be the LCEG (Cosmology and Evolution of Galaxies) on February 11 and 13. Join us!
- As Raphaël Peralta’s contract as the DAp communication manager comes to an end, he will leave his position to join the Paris Observatory. Future communication requests will be handled by the DAp Communication Team.
2) Highlights
- Sympathetic flares are solar eruptions that occur when a primary flare in an active region triggers a secondary flare in a neighboring region. A statistical study reveals that they account for about 5% of solar eruptions. The typical interval between two flares is around 30 minutes, and the optimal distance between active regions for this phenomenon is close to 30°. The phenomenon is believed to be linked to the magnetic connectivity between active regions.
- Magnetars are neutron stars with some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the Universe. Numerical simulations over hundreds of thousands of years show that the Tayler-Spruit dynamo, activated by fallback matter after a supernova, plays a key role in the formation of weak-field magnetars’ magnetic fields.
- Understanding the complex structure of the Milky Way, such as the origin of its central bar, is one of the major objectives of galactic physics. By tracing the origin of the star SOS1, researchers have hypothesized that many stars in the central bar may have been displaced from globular clusters under the influence of gravitational forces.
3) Live from the Labs
- On November 29, 2024, the launch of the new Irfutur working group took place. Comprising 10 young talents from the 7 departments of Irfu (including Lena Provost and Thomas Capocci for the DAp), this group is driven by a shared ambition: to help our institute evolve and collectively envision the Irfu of tomorrow.
4) News from Earth
- On January 7, the gamma-ray observatory CTAO was promoted to a European research infrastructure of interest, becoming the 29th ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) created since 2009. This legal structure will help accelerate the construction of the observatory on its two sites (Canary Islands and Atacama Desert).
5) News from Space
- Following the review of the Svom mission in Beijing in January, the review group proposed moving to the scientific exploitation phase as early as April. Svom alerts intended for follow-up telescopes will be accessible starting in February. Over the past six months, Svom has detected 78 gamma-ray bursts.
- The observation phase of Gaia, the ESA’s Milky Way mapping mission, has finished. Over the past decade, Gaia has accumulated more than three trillion observations of approximately two billion stars and other objects, aiming to revolutionize how we view our galaxy and cosmic neighborhood.
6) Inspire Them
- “How to do astronomy in comics?” That was the question posed to David Elbaz during the radio show Autour de la question on RFI.
- On Saturday, January 18, at 2:30 p.m., Allan-Sacha Brun presented the exceptional solar activity of the past year during the 2024 Scientific Retrospective organized by the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie.
- Ugo Lebreuilly and Matteo Bugli discussed astronomy in front of a large audience on January 28 in an interactive and fun way — with a beer in hand!
- Would you also like to share your research, work, or experiences with the general public? Write an article for the non-profit science communication platform The Conversation!
7) Schools, conferences of general interest and calls for tender
- The SF2A biannual call for proposals to financially support the organization of conferences and schools has deadlines at the end of March and early October.
- The “Emilie du Châtelet February 2025” call for projects will help fund colloquia, conferences, schools, public events, communication activities, and hosting of international visitors. The deadline is set for March 3, 2025.
- Every year, CNES awards more than a hundred doctoral and postdoctoral research grants to students of all nationalities in space-related fields. The deadline is set for March 14, 2025.
- Several calls for applications are open from the Academy of Sciences, including the Madame Mergier-Bourdeix Prize for mathematical and physical sciences, astrophysics, and their applications (closing date: February 11, 2025).
- The dates for the 2025 researcher competitions are now known: submission of CR/DR files: early January; CRCN auditions: March 31 to April 4; DR auditions: April 9 to 10.
- The 2025 astronomer and assistant astronomer competitions are now open. The closing date (deadline for receipt of applications and letters of recommendation) is Monday 10 March 2025 at 4pm.
- The third international school on the interstellar medium of galaxies will take place in Banyuls-sur-Mer from July 21 to August 1, 2025. Registrations will be open from Monday, January 27, to Friday, April 18.
- The 2025 call for applications for the Jeunes Talents France L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science program, organized by the L’Oréal Foundation in partnership with the French National Commission for UNESCO and the Academy of Sciences, is now open. The deadline for submitting applications is Wednesday, February 26, 2025.
- The ESA call for medium (M8) and fast (F3) missions, as well as the exploratory call for mini-rapid missions, will be issued on March 19, 2025.
You can send an email to to pass on information you think is relevant.
Editor of the Gazette: Raphaël Peralta. The gazette is an initiative of the DAp’s scientific communication and animation team.