News

Soapbox Science: women scientists in Belgium speak about their research live on social media

On Saturday October 10, from 2 p.m. to 5:10 p.m., seven women scientists in Belgium will tell you about their research during the first Soapbox Science event in Brussels, which will be exceptionally held online due to COVID-19.

Soapbox Science is a science outreach initiative that aims to promote the visibility of women scientists and their research by bringing them on the [...]

Véronique Dehant, winner of a FNRS Quinquennial Prize

On 14 September 2020, the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) awarded Véronique Dehant, researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, the Dr. De Leeuw-Damry-Bourlart Prize in Fundamental Exact Sciences, one of the FNRS Quinquennial Prizes. These prizes reward researchers from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
Link (in French): https://www.frs-fnrs.be/fr/l-actualite-fnrs/1243-le-fnrs-recompense-l-excellence-de-la-recherche-et-decerne-ses-5-prix-quinquennaux-2020 [...]

December 2019 confirmed as starting point of the new solar activity cycle

The reference date and amplitudes of the minima and maxima of the 11-year solar cycle are established on the base of the sunspot number maintained and distributed by the SILSO World Data center since 1981 at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.

Over past years, the rather weak cycle that had peaked in 2014 has been progressively declining, heralding the approach of [...]

Asteroids did not bring oceans to Venus

Within an EoS (Excellence of Science) project, Véronique Dehant, researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, participated in a study on the formation and the evolution of the atmosphere of Venus under the influence of asteroid impacts. This study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, concluded that the asteroids that contributed to the end of the accretion of Venus, and [...]

The EUI telescope is waking up

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched on February 10, 2020 from Cape Canaveral, carrying onboard the space telescope Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). On February 25, EUI got the wake up call. At this stage we can happily report that EUI is awake: its temperature is ok, its computer has been successfully powered on and completed the self-tests and EUI could [...]