On February 6, six researchers, including two from the Royal Observatory of Belgium, shared their knowledge on solar storms and space weather with a special audience during the eleventh Battle of the Scientists. 2,700 enthusiastic primary school children, 500 of whom were in the auditorium and 2,200 via livestream, voted for the most insightful presentation. The Belgian Space Weather Centre [...]
Last Monday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a new Picture of the Week. It is an image of a pair of stars and its surrounding nebula. The two stars constitute the binary system AFGL 4106, which was recently studied in a recent Astronomy and Astrophysics paper, of which René Oudmaijer of the Royal Observatory of Belgium is a co-author. [...]
The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and Belnet are delighted to announce that – as part of the BOOSTED project – the first span of the Belgian time and frequency network is operational since December 4, 2025. [...]
In 2025, 137 earthquakes were located by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in or near Belgium. On Belgian territory, no earthquake was large enough to have been felt. [...]
December 5, 2024 – 1 year ago, the duo satellite Proba-3 left Earth to head to space. The telescope ASPIICS, whose task is to make perfect total solar eclipses from space, was onboard. The launch went flawless.
December 5, 2025 – exactly 1 year later, ASPIICS has already delivered a wealth of amazing pictures of the solar atmosphere close to its [...]
Brussels, 3 December 2025 – By measuring the rate at which young stars grow, astronomers discovered that contrary to earlier expectations, young stars appear to grow much faster in the later stages of their formation than at the onset. So, much like humans, intermediate mass stars undergo a growth spurt and have a voracious appetite during their adolescence. This finding, reported by [...]
November 12, 2025, very early in the morning. Colleagues from the STCE, the Belgian Space Weather Centre, admired the northern lights from their terrace in Brussels and are amazed by the show of colours. After all, it is quite exceptional to be able to observe this phenomenon in Belgium (let alone in the middle of a city with a lot [...]
Tuesday, September 30, 2025, marked the beginning of a 3-day workshop gathering international members from the BELA and MORE experiments onboard the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. [...]
On 26 September 2025, come to the free WiseNight festival at the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. [...]
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details in the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302. From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a never-before-seen portrait of a dynamic and structured planetary nebula. Those new [...]