Press release

Published on May 20, 2020
Press release published by ESO

Observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the telltale signs of a star system being born. Around the young star AB Aurigae lies a dense disc of dust and gas in which astronomers have spotted a prominent spiral structure with a ‘twist’ that marks the site where a planet may be forming. The observed feature could be the first direct evidence of a baby planet coming into existence. A study including IPAG / OSUG.
“Thousands of (…)

Published on April 16, 2020
Press release published by ESO

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), involving IPAG], have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s theory of gravity. This long-sought-after result was made possible by increasingly precise measurements over nearly 30 years, which have enabled scientists (…)

Published on December 04, 2019
Press release published by CNRS

From 7 December 2019 to 25 January 2020, a team of scientists from France (CNRS and Université Grenoble Alpes), including researchers from the [IGE ->http://www.ige-grenoble.fr / OSUG, and Italy (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto Nazionale Geofisica e Vulcanologia) will traverse the middle of the Antarctic plateau, travelling 1,318 km, round trip, from the Franco-Italian Concordia research station towards the south pole and back. The expedition, dubbed the East Antarctic (…)

Published on October 29, 2019
Press release published by Univ. Grenoble Alpes / CNRS / Sorbonne Université

Surface melting in West Antarctica is triggered by atmospheric rivers that transport heat and moisture from the mid-latitudes and sub-tropics to the polar regions according to a new study from researchers [1] from the University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sorbonne University, and from Portugal and the United Kingdom. Their study will be published in the journal Nature Geoscience on 28 october 2019.

Published on October 11, 2019
Press release published by Univ. Grenoble Alpes

The MEET project (Monitoring Earth Evolution Through Time) will receive 12.8€ over 6 years to investigate Earth’s evolution since its creation. The project is led by 3 researchers from 3 institutions in France, Germany and USA, and is held by the Université Grenoble Alpes’ Alexander Sobolev, professor at the ISTerre laboratory (OSUG - CNRS/IRD/UGA/USMB/IFFSTTAR).
This project will investigate two main questions: How has Earth’s chemical composition evolved over time? And what physical (…)

Published on August 20, 2019

A team of astronomers led by Anne-Marie Lagrange, a CNRS researcher at the Institut de planétologie et d’astrophysique de Grenoble (OSUG - CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes), has discovered a second giant planet in orbit around b Pictoris, a star that is relatively young (23 million years old) and close (63.4 light years), and surrounded by a disk of dust
The β Pictoris system has fascinated astronomers for the last thirty years since it enables them to observe a planetary system in the (…)

Published on May 06, 2019
Press release published by the ESA

Small enough to be an aircraft carry-on, the Juventas spacecraft nevertheless has big mission goals. Once in orbit around its target body, Juventas will unfurl an antenna larger than itself, to perform the very first subsurface radar survey of an asteroid.
ESA’s proposed Hera mission for planetary defence will explore the twin Didymos asteroids, but it will not go there alone: it will also serve as mothership for Europe’s first two ‘CubeSats’ to travel into deep space.
CubeSats are (…)

Published on December 17, 2018
Press release published by the ESO

While testing a new subsystem on the SPHERE planet-hunting instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers were able to capture dramatic details of the turbulent stellar relationship in the binary star R Aquarii with unprecedented clarity — even compared to observations from Hubble. This project involved researchers from IPAG / OSUG (CNRS, University Grenoble Alpes).
This spectacular image — the second instalment in ESO’s R Aquarii Week — shows intimate details of the dramatic (…)

Published on October 31, 2018
Press release published by the ESO

ESO’s exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the centre of the Milky Way. New observations show clumps of gas swirling around at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside its event horizon — the first time material has been observed orbiting close to the point of no return, and the most detailed observations yet of material orbiting this close to a black hole.
ESO’s (…)

Published on July 26, 2018
Press release published by CNRS/UGA/Observatoire de Paris/Université Sorbonne/Université Paris Diderot

Observations of the Galactic Centre team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein’s general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field near the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way.
This long-sought result represents the climax of a 26-year-long observation campaign using ESO’s telescopes in Chile.
Obscured by thick clouds of absorbing dust, (…)