Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale

The PLATO project at IAS has reached a new stage in the development of the flight camera calibration structure. Indeed, after an intense phase of studies, development, and tuning of the integration and validation activities, the validation tests of the cryogenic and vacuum elements around and inside the Saturn tank are starting this week. All the infrastructures and the control/command for this cryogenic test have been realized under the responsibility of the calibration station team.

Nano-diamonds remain an enigmatic component of cosmic dust. A significant fraction of the pre-solar nano-diamonds extracted from primitive meteorites were associated with distant exploding stars (supernovae). While they have been found in many Solar System bodies, they have been detected in only two proto-planetery disks and one evolved star, and they have never been observed in the interstellar medium. Newly-derived nano-diamond optical constants generated with the THEMIS dust model developed at IAS explain why it is hard to observe nano-diamonds in space.

On February 16, the EUI/FSI telescope on Solar Orbiter has observed an impressively large prominence eruption, and traced it up to 6 solar radii, as it was as large as the Sun itself. This type of event can have consequences on technological applications (loss of satellites, degradation of the GPS signal, etc.)