Press release

A star, eventually !

Published on November 13, 2020

Snow line observations reveal the unsteady history of a very young protostar It is a story many parents are hoping for: Imagine there’s a very young kid that seems like a real low-performer, but then it turns out that secretly it has its very powerful moments — such that the odds are pretty good it will become a real star, eventually. In fact, this is very much what an international team of astronomers found when they examined the very young protostar IRAM 04191+1522 (IRAM 04191, in short). (…)

Pluto is covered by snow-capped mountains like on Earth, but not for the same reasons

Published on October 14, 2020
CNRS Press Release

In 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft discovered spectacular mountains on Pluto covered by bright deposits, strikingly resembling snow-capped mountain chains seen on Earth. Such a landscape had never been observed elsewhere in the Solar System. Could Pluto’s atmosphere behave like Earth’s?

Exoplanets: unveiling the beta Pictoris system

Published on October 05, 2020

CNRS researchers at the Observatoire de Paris – PSL, Université Grenoble Alpes, Aix-Marseille Université, Université de Paris, and Université de Lille, together with their international partners, have for the first time detected the light emitted by the exoplanet β Pictoris c, initially discovered thanks to the tiny variations in the velocity of the star β Pictoris that it causes. A very accurate estimate of its position was used to point the GRAVITY interferometer at the exoplanet, (…)

How to feed a baby star

Published on September 08, 2020
Gas reaches young stars along magnetic field lines

IPAG Astronomers have used the GRAVITY instrument to study the immediate vicinity of a young star in more detail than ever before. Their observations confirm a thirty-year-old theory about the growth of young stars: the magnetic field produced by the star itself directs material from a surrounding accretion disk of gas and dust onto its surface. The results, published today in the journal Nature, help astronomers to better understand how stars like our Sun are formed and how Earth-like (…)

Rainbow comet with a heart of sponge

Published on September 07, 2020
Press release published by ESA

A permeable heart with a hardened facade –the resting place of Rosetta’s lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is revealing more about the interior of the ’rubber duck’ shaped-body looping around the Sun. A recent study suggests that the comet’s interior is more porous than the material near the surface. The results confirm that solar radiation has significantly modified the comet’s surface as it travels through space between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth. Heat from the Sun triggers (…)

Astronomers Find Elusive Target Hiding Behind Dust

Published on June 08, 2020

Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them. They used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reveal one such region that previously had eluded detection, and that revelation answered a longstanding question.
The regions around the young protostars contain complex organic molecules that can further combine into prebiotic molecules that (…)

ESO Telescope Sees Signs of Planet Birth

Published on May 25, 2020

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
“Thousands of exoplanets (…)

Astronomers capture rare images of planet-forming disks around stars

Published on April 30, 2020

An international team of astronomers including researchers from the Grenoble Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics (OSUG - CNRS, UGA), has captured fifteen images of the inner rims of planet-forming disks located hundreds of light years away. These disks of dust and gas, similar in shape to a music record, form around young stars. The images shed new light on how planetary systems are formed. The results were published on April 30 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. To (…)

New simulations reveal black-hole jet ignition secrets

Published on April 21, 2020

Jets, which are powerful collimated outflows, are routinely observed as being launched from black holes, yet their origin has remained elusive for decades. New computer simulations reveal for the first time the mechanisms of their ignition. These results have been published in the Physical Review Letters on April 6th 2020.
It has long been thought that the rotation of the black hole is the source of jet power, acting like an electric motor driving currents. However, how the plasma carrying (…)

ESO Telescope Sees Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole, Proves Einstein Right

Published on April 16, 2020

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), involving IPAG / OSUG [1], 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 (…)