Nov 13, 2024
Is the Standard Model of cosmology, the basis of our understanding of the Universe since the Big Bang, in danger? Recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), carried out by an international team including the CEA-IRFU Astrophysics Department, have revealed massive galaxies in the young Universe, sparking a lively debate within the scientific community.
Nov 04, 2024
The Sun's magnetic field is generated by a dynamo effect, caused by convection and rotation in its envelope. It will evolve in the distant future when our star becomes a red giant, an evolved star characterised by an extended envelope and much slower rotation.
Oct 22, 2024
NASA has just selected the PRIMA project (The PRObe for Infrared Mission for Astrophysics) for a phase A study, from among around ten proposals. This study phase, which will last one year, will enable the project to be evaluated in depth before a final decision is made. If PRIMA is selected, NASA will allocate a budget of one billion dollars for its development, with a launch scheduled for 2031.
Oct 21, 2024
Understanding the diverse stellar populations that make up galaxies is crucial to studying their formation over cosmic time. Nevertheless, some intractable stars continue to resist the modellers! Their complex nature and short lifetimes make stars in the asymptotic branch of thermally pulsating giants (TP-AGB) difficult to model, a subject of debate for decades. The James Webb Space Telescope is finally lifting the veil on their contribution to the spectrum of distant galaxies.
Oct 15, 2024
Zoom in on the first page of ESA's Euclid cosmic atlas
On 15 October, ESA's Euclid space mission revealed the first piece of its grand map of the Universe, showing millions of stars and galaxies. This first piece of Euclid's survey was revealed at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and Director of Science Carole Mundell.
Aug 21, 2024
It is well established that most galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole, long suspected of hindering the formation of new stars. However, no study had previously demonstrated a direct link between these black holes and the evolution of galaxies.
Jul 14, 2024
METIS is a first-generation instrument for the ELT, the Extremely Large Telescope currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, which will see its first light in 2028. Irfu has been involved in this instrument since 2018. In 2021, 14 cryomechanisms that will drive a dozen optical systems on the METIS instrument were delivered. METIS comprises two separate units: one for spectroscopy, the other for imaging. The latter contains coronagraphs, based on phase masks.
Jun 14, 2024
An international research team, including scientists from CEA, has just revealed the chemical composition of a disk of matter rotating around a young star, where new planets are forming. The results reveal the largest number of carbonaceous molecules ever observed in such a disk, including some detected for the first time outside our solar system. These findings have implications for the potential composition of planets forming around this star.
May 28, 2024
A team of theorists from the CEA's Astrophysics Department (DAP), working within the Laboratory for Modeling Astrophysical Plasmas (LMPA), have carried out simulations using the CEA's supercomputers, with the aim of understanding the formation of stars and protoplanetary disks. Months of computational work have enabled us to achieve resolutions never achieved before, revealing new details about the formation of these objects.
May 23, 2024
The Euclid collaboration today publishes five reference papers on the mission and ten scientific papers based on the first images unveiled to the public in November 2023, as well as the new images presented today by ESA.
This phase of preliminary observations conducted last fall provides a glimpse into the telescope's exceptional performance.
May 15, 2024
Although significantly more common in the Universe, ultra-cool dwarf stars remain poorly understood due to their low luminosity. Consequently, our understanding of their planetary population remains limited, even though they represent a substantial fraction of the planets in our Milky Way. It is in this context that the SPECULOOS program was developed, aiming to explore exoplanets around this type of star.
May 03, 2024
An international team of researchers, including members from CEA, utilized NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather of the hot gas giant WASP-43 b.
Measurements in mid-infrared obtained with the MIRI instrument, combined with 3D climate models and other observations, suggest the presence of thick and dense clouds on the night side, clear skies on the day side, and equatorial winds reaching up to 8,000 km/h, mixing atmospheric gases around the planet.
Mar 27, 2024
An international team, including the Astrophysics Department of CEA-Saclay, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), utilized one of the world's most advanced spectrographs to detect the smallest "stellar tremors" ever recorded in an orange dwarf star, making it the smallest and coldest star observed to date with confirmed solar oscillations.
Mar 20, 2024
UPDATE [03/26/2024]: The optics de-icing procedure has been a success!
UPDATE [03/26/2024]: Euclid's optics de-icing procedure has produced much better results than expected. The main suspect in the blurred vision of Euclid's VIS instrument was the coldest mirror behind the telescope's main optics. After warming it by just 34 degrees, from -147°C to -113°C, was enough for all the icy water to evaporate.
Mar 05, 2024
After being awarded the 2020 Tate Prize for International Leadership in Physics, astrophysicist Dr. Catherine Cesarsky is honored with another prestigious award: the 2024 Fritz Zwicky Prize in Astrophysics & Cosmology for her outstanding contributions to understanding galaxy evolution through infrared space observations, as well as for her leadership in developing contemporary astronomy observation infrastructure.
Feb 28, 2024
XMM-Newton's energetic universe joins forces with the Euclid satellite's vision of the sky. A thousand hours of X-ray observations, over a region 40 times the size of the moon, will complement multi-wavelength studies of the cosmic evolution of galaxy clusters. A decisive association to constrain cosmological scenarios and reveal the nature of dark energy.
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.
