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

Success for the first flight of the CLASP solar spectropolarimeter

9 years 6 months ago

The CLASP instrument (Chromospheric Lyman Alpha Spectropolarimeter) was successfully launched by a sounding rocket on September 3, 2015 at 17H UT from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The suborbital flight was nominal. The instrument went nominally through its observing program and the data quality is superb.

Partial eclipse of the Sun, March 20th 2015

10 years 1 month ago

A partial solar eclipse will be visible from Orsay, between 9:21am to 11:30am. At maximum at 10:28, about 80% of the Sun will be eclipsed.

Many researchers from IAS will be present in schools. An observation will be possible at IAS with special eclipse sunglasses, with comments from astrophysicists Frédéric Baudin and Clara Froment.

IAS on the front line with the PLATO mission selected by ESA

11 years 2 months ago

The PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) space-based observatory has been selected on the 19th of February by ESA’s Science Programme Committee for implementation as part of its Cosmic Vision 2015–25 Programme. This mission, planned for launch by 2024, will be able to search for planets orbiting alien stars and to characterize these stars.

ESA missions, including SOHO and Mars Express, continue in overtime

11 years 9 months ago

Meeting in Paris on 18-19 June, ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) gave the go-ahead to continue funding science operations for 10 remarkably productive science missions (including SOHO and Mars Express), all of them working beyond their planned lifetimes and all of them nevertheless continuing to deliver exceptional science.

Mission accomplished for CoRoT

11 years 10 months ago

After a mission that lasted twice as long as planned, CNES’s CoRoT spacecraft—capable of seeing the vibrations of stars and hunting for exoplanets—is to be retired from service. Launched on 26 December 2006, the CoRoT space telescope has been co-led under CNES oversight by the Paris Observatory and the LAM ; IAS has participated to its development and data analysis, and hosts the CoRoT data centre.

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