Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale

Scientists using data from the GOLF instrument onboard the ESA/NASA SOHO solar observatory have found long-sought gravity modes of seismic vibration that imply the Sun's core is rotating four times faster than its surface. IAS is Principal Investigator of the GOLF instrument and has participated to this study.

PLATO - Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars -  was adopted during a meeting of ESA’s Science Programme Committee held on June 20, 2017. This means that the mission can now move from the blueprint to construction stage. In the coming months industry will be asked to bid to supply the spacecraft platform.

For the first time, scientists have explored the magnetic field in the upper solar atmosphere by observing the polarization of ultraviolet light from the Sun. They accomplished this by analyzing data taken by the CLASP sounding rocket experiment during its 5-minute flight in space on September 3, 2015. Now that ultraviolet spectropolarimetry, the method used in the CLASP project, has been proven to work, it can be used in future investigations of the magnetic fields in the upper chromosphere and the transition region to better understand activity in the solar atmosphere.