Brussels, 10 June 2024 – A new study reveals for the first time the presence of water frost on the peak of Martian volcanoes near the equator. This discovery was published in a recent Nature Geoscience paper, with contributions from researchers of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB). [...]
The Flemish popular science magazine EOS Wetenschap has recently presented five young scientists in its contest EOS Pipet 2024. Each was chosen for their significant contribution to scientific research. Among them is Cem Berk Senel, postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), who recently published a paper in Nature Geosciences that attracted a great deal of media attention. [...]
On 17 April 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA) selected the Earth Climate Observatory (ECO), a new space mission concept for the measurement of the Earth’s energy imbalance, a critical climate parameter, for Phase 0 study. ECO was proposed by an international team of 12 scientists led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium. [...]
Brussels, 16 April 2024 – Today the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Gaia collaboration teams reveal the discovery of a high-mass stellar black hole of 33 times our Sun’s mass in the Milky Way. The Royal Observatory of Belgium contributed to this discovery thanks to the radial velocity data it helped to process.
Third black hole discovered with Gaia data
A stellar black [...]
Brussels, 11 April 2024 – When astronomers looked at a stellar pair at the heart of a stunning cloud of gas and dust, they were in for a surprise. Star pairs are typically very similar, like twins, but in HD 148937, one star appears younger and, unlike the other, is magnetic. In a newly published Science research paper, scientists, including Laurent Mahy [...]
150 years ago, on February 17, 1874, Adolphe Quetelet, founder and first director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, passed away. He was one of the best-known Belgians of his time. A keen statistician, he is best known as the inventor of the Quetelet index, better known today as the BMI (Body Mass Index). Books have been written about this [...]
February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a day recognised by UNESCO. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 33.3% of scientists are women. This percentage is of the same order of magnitude as that of female researchers at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, which is between 30 and 35% women among its scientific staff. [...]
In 2023, 120 earthquakes and 3 induced earthquakes were located by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in or near Belgium. Six earthquakes were felt by the population near the Belgian territory (Germany). [...]
On Saturday 16 December 2023, the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium awarded two of its prizes to Dr Orkun Temel and Dr Thibault Merle, two scientists working at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. [...]
On December 19, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the launch of the ESA Gaia satellite.
[...]