ESA

In the summer of 2000, four identical ESA spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at the start of the most detailed investigation ever of the interaction between the Sun and Earth. 10 years later, the Cluster quartet continues to unravel the secrets of the invisible particles and magnetic fields that envelop our Earth.

This meeting is designed to bring together Earth, Solar System and Exoplanet specialists to discuss recent results and the way ahead, and put our own climate in the wider context of the trials and tribulations of planetary atmospheres.

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has detected water vapour in a location previously thought to be impossible - in the atmosphere of an ageing, red giant carbon star. The rich and detailed data provided by Herschel can be explained within a new framework in which ultraviolet photons play a key role. These results are reported in the 2 September issue of Nature.

Three Announcements of Opportunity have been issued recently concerning INTEGRAL, XMM-Newton and Suzaku. A summary is provided below, along with links to the complete information package for each announcement.

JENAM is the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting organized each year in one of the European countries jointly by the European Astronomical Society and one of the national astronomical societies. JENAM 2010 will be the 18th Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society and the 20th Annual Portuguese Meeting of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

A newly developed image analysis technique has significantly improved the sensitivity limits reached by the IBIS imager on board INTEGRAL, resulting in the deepest survey ever compiled of the entire sky in the energy range between 17 and 60 keV. Pushing the instrument towards its very limits, the novel method discloses a vast number of previously undetected faint sources, galactic and extragalactic alike.

After an in-depth consultation with the European scientific community, the ESA-appointed Fundamental Physics Roadmap Advisory Team (FPR-AT) has released its final report.

Two studies have recently been completed at ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF): the Space-Time Explorer (STE) study and the Planetary Entry Probes (PEP) study. The CDF Internal Final Presentations on the outcome of each study are now available, together with the study summaries.

Through the present Call for Missions the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration solicits from the broad scientific community proposals for the competitive selection of mission concepts to be candidate for the implementation of one medium-size (M-class) mission for launch in 2022, following the launch of the first L-class mission. The deadline for submission of proposals is 3 December 2010, 12:00 (noon) Central European Time.

Scientists are able to learn about the atmospheres and surfaces of planets by studying their spectra - the different wavelengths of light which they reflect or absorb. However, when researchers study spectra of Venus, the hottest planet in the Solar System, they run into a problem. Its high temperatures and pressures seriously affect the data.

In the nearly five decades since the Mariner 2 fly-by, we have learned much about Venus' dynamic atmosphere, yet a good understanding of how the Venus atmosphere works and how it interacts with the surface is lacking. Major questions remain unanswered in dynamics, chemistry, surface-atmosphere interactions, radiative balance, climatology, and evolution of the Venus atmosphere. At this workshop a number of these issues will be explored; a sampling of suggested topics for the workshop is given below: Nature, process, and consequence(s) of surface-atmosphere interaction? Timing and cause of water loss from Venus' surface, and impact on atmospheric evolution Venus' runaway greenhouse effect and implications for Earth's climate evolution? Nature, period, an atmospheric impact of the global cataclysm that resurfaced Venus? Atmospheric dynamics, including origin of the superrotation of the Venus atmosphere, possible coupling between Hadley circulation and the hemispheric vortex circulation?It is anticipated that the workshop will have a number of comprehensive presentations that will assimilate available spacecraft and ground-based observations as constraints to answering some of the major questions about the atmosphere of Venus. The workshop will also present an opportunity for fostering coordination between various international missions to Venus to maximize science return. The workshop will be followed by the 8th VEXAG meeting on 2 September 2010.

An international team of astronomers using gravitational lensing observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step forward in the quest to solve the riddle of dark energy, a phenomenon which mysteriously appears to power the Universe's accelerating expansion. Their results appear in the 20 August 2010 issue of the journal Science.

The scientific community in the ESA Member States is invited to respond to the four Announcements of Opportunity being released for Euclid and PLATO. For each mission, proposals are solicited for a) Payload and Science Ground Segment components and b) Independent Legacy Scientists in the mission science team.

Curling around itself like a question mark, the unusual looking galaxy NGC 4696 itself begs many questions. Why is it such a strange shape? What are the odd, capillary-like filaments that stretch out of it? And what is the role of a large black hole in explaining its decidedly odd appearance?

Planetary and brown dwarf companions to evolved stars have only recently been discovered. The aim of this conference is to discuss observational results and techniques as well as theoretical predictions for the formation and the fate of the orbiting substellar objects as well as for their impact on the evolution of the host stars. Supernova fall-back disks and planets around neutron stars shall also be discussed. Central to the conference is to explore the impact of new and upcoming space missions like Kepler, Gaia and PLATO for this emerging field. The main topics of this workshop are: Influence of planets on evolved stars The fate of planets The stability and habitability of planetary systems around evolved stars Debris disks around white dwarfs Planet formation around evolved stars Detecting substellar objects around evolved stars Substellar objects in binary stars

Researchers using the four spacecraft of ESA's Cluster mission have uncovered the long journey that energetic ions undergo during geomagnetic storms and how they ultimately precipitate into the Earth's atmosphere. Such precipitation affects the composition of the ionosphere, preventing GPS and communications satellites from operating correctly.

The first scientific results obtained with Herschel are appearing, this week, in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Based on data collected during the first few months of operations with this ESA observatory, the 152 new publications tackle a multitude of different astrophysical subjects, ranging from nearby Solar System bodies through newly-forming stars in our Galaxy, all the way to very distant galaxies. These first results provide a clear indication of the profound contribution that this mission will make to astronomy.

An all-sky image from Planck's recently completed first survey highlights the two major emission sources in the microwave sky: the cosmic background and the Milky Way. The relic radiation coming from the very early Universe is, to a large extent, masked by intervening astronomical sources, in particular by our own Galaxy's diffuse emission. Thanks to Planck's nine frequency channels, and to sophisticated image analysis techniques, it is possible to separate these two contributions into distinct scientific products that are of immense value for cosmologists and astrophysicists, alike.

An assessment study of a Space-Time Explorer (STE) mission has recently been completed at ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF). The study objective was to examine the possible architecture and implementation of a fundamental physics mission, which would set out to test Einstein's theories of special and general relativity by comparing high-precision atomic clocks in space and on ground.