Institut d'astrophysique spatiale (IAS)

NASA's new James Webb Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionise space observation. It was launched on 24 December 2021 from Kourou, French Guiana. After a 30 day journey, it reached the Lagrange point L2 at 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth in the opposite direction to the Sun. The long-awaited successor to Hubble, Webb is three times larger and has a mirror spanning more than six metres, becoming the world's largest orbital observatory. It took international teams more than 25 years to…

In this animated video, discover the SuperCam instrument, developed by teams from the CNRS, the CNES and their French and international partners, and embarked on the Perseverance rover scheduled to land on Mars on February 18, 2021.

After the Russian "Mars 96” mission had failed, the European Space Agency (ESA) took over the programme and created "Mars Express”. The objectives of sending this new probe to Mars are to map the planet, analyse its subsoil and study its atmosphere. It was launched on June 2, 2003 using a Russian rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, the Mars Express probe reached Mars in only 7 months. Since then, the aircraft has been making a series of rotations around Mars, at the rate of one every 7 hours…

In 2004, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Rosetta mission. Its main objective is to analyse the composition of the nucleus of comet Churiumov-Guerasimenko in order to better understand the origin of water and life on Earth. After a ten-year journey through the solar system, the Rosetta probe succeeded in the double feat of orbiting the comet and then depositing the lander named Philae on the comet's nucleus. Two years of in-orbit and in-situ observations and analyses of Churiumov…

In 2000, the European and Japanese space agencies decided to jointly develop the BepiColombo mission. This mission involves two orbiters. The European-designed MPO will study the surface, interior and lower atmosphere of Mercury. The Japanese MMO orbiter's main objective will be to study the planet's magnetic field. They will cruise together, propelled by a third module MTM until they are put into orbit around Mercury. However, sending out such a mission involves major technical challenges…

Data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck satellite has allowed researchers to create the latest map of the Universe. It shows fossil radiation, the oldest light in the Universe, but with new information: the polarization of this radiation.

The Planck satellite started to observe the universe in August 2009. In 2013, the images collected enabled scientists to extract information about the structure of the universe, focusing their research on polarization in 2014. It is a property attributed to light which is the latest testimony of the interaction between light and matter. The photos made by Planck provide a high quality atlas of the universe showing matter clusters. Scientists explain what the universe is made of, and what is at…

The Planck satellite started to observe the universe in August 2009. In 2013, the images collected enabled scientists to extract information about the structure of the universe, focusing their research on polarization in 2014. It is a property attributed to light which is the latest testimony of the interaction between light and matter. François Bouchet, cosmologist and Jean-Loup Puget, astrophysicist give a mid-term report on the results of Planck. They answer the following questions: - Does…

Scientists from the Institute of Space Astrophysics (IAS) and the ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure), including Cynthia Herrera, a young Chilean doctoral student, and François Boulanger compared the scientific data collected by the new Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope with observations from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The results made it possible for the first time to trace the beginnings of star formation in Antennae Galaxies and to…

À l'occasion de l'Année Mondiale de l'Astronomie (AMA09), le CNRS et le CNES produisent une collection de podcasts vidéo : "Des étoiles plein les yeux", à regarder en baladodiffusion. Après des décennies d'études et de travail, les scientifiques savent à présent où précisément chercher des traces de vie sur la planète Mars. Pas du tout là où on l'imaginait voici quelques années encore. Une découverte qui permet de penser que la découverte de micro-organismes extraterrestres est à portée de…

For the World Year of Astronomy (AMA09), CNRS and CNES produce a collection of video podcasts. Our galaxy is swarming with clouds in which new stars appear, well sheltered in their cosy gas cocoons. The IRAM observatory has specialized in observing these movingly nascent stars. This film is an interview with Pierre Cox (CNRS), astronomer and director of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (institute for millimetric radioastronomy, IRAM - CNRS) in St Martin…

Portrait of Nabila Aghanim, a cosmologist at the Institute for Spatial Astrophycics located in Orsay, who received the CNRS Bronze medal in 2005. She is a specialist in interpretation of fossil radiation, relic of the Big Bang.

Montage des films de la collection Ils ont choisi la recherche.

The Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay shares control of the solar observation satellite SOHO with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In the course of one of the observation series (October 27 - November 10 2000), IAS researchers analyzed images transmitted by the various instruments carried on the satellite and observed coronal mass ejections. The images also show intense magnetic phenomena on the surface of the sun, correlating with solar activity, which reaches its peak every eleven…