IAP

PLANCK Planck was designed to study the origin and evolution of the Universe in the submillimeter range of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will map the anisotropies, or small variations from place to place on the sky, of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is an "afterglow" of the Big Bang which fills all of space and has a temperature of 2.73 K. Planck will make measurements with an angular resolution of about 5 arcminutes (which can be compared to the 13 arcminutes of its predecessor, WMAP) and a temperature sensitivity of about two parts per million. On November 19 2010, ESA's Science Program Committee approved an extension of Planck mission operations until December 31 2014, subjected to a mid-term review in 2012. The mission extension for the period end 2012 to mid august 2013, for LFI instrument, is now confirmed.

Thomas.Leuthard.Photography Mysterious Pioneer Anomaly May Finally Be Solved A flurry of recent papers could lay to rest once and for all a longstanding mystery in astrophysics: the so-called “Pioneer anomaly,” an as-yet-unexplained deceleration of NASA’s Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft in their wanderings beyond our solar system. NASA launched Pioneer 10 in 1972 and Pioneer 11 the following year, part of a mission to explore the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, and their respective moons. Those “flyby” missions were completed within a few years, but the plucky little Pioneers kept going, eventually traveling beyond our solar system, carrying messages for any aliens they might happen to encounter along the way. The debate has been raging ever since an astronomer named John Anderson first noticed the anomaly in 1980. But it didn’t seem to work. Dark Matter Drag? The discrepancy is 10 billion times smaller than the acceleration due to gravity, but it was unmistakably there in Anderson’s calculations. What could be causing this discrepancy? Radiating Heat?

Hélène Grimaud - Official Website The Heliosphere is Tilted - implications for the 'Galactic weather forecast'? | Press Releases Supersonic shock waves detected at the edge of the Solar System - a new study by European scientists clarifies conditions at our Earth's outermost shield against interstellar charged particles. The local interstellar cloudOur Solar System entered an interstellar cloud 10,000 years ago. Today it is speeding through this nebulosity at Mach 2 behind a supersonic shock wave - in much the same way that a Concorde crosses the Atlantic at supersonic speed. Since its formation 4.6 billion years ago our Solar System has encountered numerous interstellar clouds, knots, filaments, shells and bubbles of different sizes and contents on its path through the Milky Way. For more than 80 years astronomers have been attracted by these past and future encounters, have tried to understand the physics behind them in order to decipher the dynamic interplay between the interstellar material and the Solar System. The heliosphereCharged particles from the Sun spiral out into space and form the solar wind. Notes

Integral Explore the high-energy Universe - competition results 31 May 2012 Students from across Europe have been selected as the winners of the ESA’s ‘Explore the high-energy Universe’ competition. Secondary school students were invited to choose from four projects relating to ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory in which they were challenged to Observe, Research, Design, or Build. To participate, students took on the roles of engineers, scientists, and astronomers to explore the extreme and ever-changing high-energy Universe, including black holes devouring matter, colossal explosions known as gamma-ray bursts, and supernova explosions. Since its launch in October 2002, Integral has been making ground-breaking observations of some of the most exotic and energetic processes in the Universe. Integral: gamma-ray observatory The students utilised similar tools and techniques used in real research. Project 1: Observe variable stars with your own telescope Winner: Ábel Ságodi, the Netherlands

INTEGRAL The satellite was successfully launched on October 2002, the 17th. CNES was prime contractor for the SPI spectrometer, one of the two main instruments, in partnership with numerous French and foreign research laboratories. Since November 2002, the Integral Spectrometer and IBIS delivered their first images and first spectra. The scientific data confirm the excellent operation of SPI and IBIS instruments and of the satellite. INTEGRAL results in some figures: Number of scientific publications on the 12th October 2010: 1397 (numbers by ESA) Scientific impact: between 1000 and 2000 scientific publications (estimation from the numbers of reference of publications recorded by ESA) Number of sources discovered by INTEGRAL on the 7th July 2010: more than 700 (CEA source, Jérôme Rodrigez) dont 20 objets de natures inconnues Number of revolution: 977

Kepler Space Observatory | Alien Planets & Extraterrestrial Life Hunting down alien planets isn't just for professional astronomers anymore. Thousands of citizen scientists have been poring over data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which has so far detected 1,235 potential alien worlds. To date, the amateurs have flagged 50 candidate planets that the mission's sophisticated software may have missed, Time magazine reports. It's all part of a project called Planethunters.org, which enlists the discerning eyes of the masses to pick up patterns in mountains of data. "It really is the wisdom of the crowd," said lead project scientist Meg Schwamb of Yale, according to Time. Thousands of fresh eyes The $600 million Kepler space telescope, which launched in March 2009, finds alien planets by searching for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — it from Earth's perspective. Artist's concept of Kepler-10b, which was detected by NASA's Kepler mission. And that does happen. Happy for the help