Stellar and Solar Physics

Our team aims at providing answers to some key questions of solar and stellar physics, such as the heating process of the corona or the structure of solar and stellar interiors. The magnetic field playing a fundamental role in structuring the atmospheres of solar-type stars, it becomes possible to understand the coupling between the internal generation of magnetic field and its external signatures. The two major research topics are thus the dynamic and internal structure of the Sun and stars, and diagnostic and heating of the outer layers.

Dernières news

Camera ‘hack’ lets Solar Orbiter peer deeper into Sun’s atmosphere

2 months 3 weeks ago

A last minute modification of the EUI (Extreme Utraviolet Imager) instrument on board the Solar Orbiter mission provides new views of our star's corona. The corona is a very tenuous medium and dedicated telescopes called coronagraphs are needed to observe it. FSI (Full Sun Imager), the wide angle channel of EUI, is the first coronagraph imaging in the extreme UV.

Solar snake spotted slithering across Sun’s surface

1 year 2 weeks ago

The EUI (Extreme Ultraviolet Imager) instrument on board the Solar Orbiter mission keeps on revealing new types of phenomena in the solar atmosphere. Last in date, an event nicknamed ‘the snake’ features the propagation of a bright front at 170 km/s along a twisted structure know as a ‘filament’, a tube of cool plasma maintained above the surface in the hot corona by the magnetic field.

Another milestone for PLATO

1 year 4 months ago

The PLATO project has reached a new decisive stage in the development of the calibration structure for the cameras intended for flight at IAS. The first EM (Engineering Model) camera to be calibrated by the three Test Houses of the PLATO consortium has just arrived at the IAS. This measurement campaign will allow the three production sites to be validated with the same functional camera, which is a prerequisite for being authorised to host all the flight cameras.

Successful validation tests for the PLATO cameras calibration

1 year 7 months ago

The PLATO project has reached a new stage in the development at IAS of the calibration structure for the flight cameras. The validation tests of the installations started at the beginning of March, on cryogenic vacuum infrastructures deployed in the Saturn thermal chamber, at the IAS calibration station. All the tests have just been successfully completed.

Zooming into the Sun with Solar Orbiter

1 year 8 months ago

Solar Orbiter’s latest images shows the full Sun in unprecedented detail. They were taken on 7 March, at a distance of roughly 75 million kilometres, half way between the Earth and Sun. One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) is the highest resolution image of the Sun’s full disc and outer atmosphere, the corona, ever taken. Another image, taken by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument, represents the first full Sun image of its kind in 50 years, and by far the best one, taken at the Lyman-beta wavelength of ultraviolet light that is emitted by hydrogen gas.

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