Séminaire de Eric Lagadec

Abstract:

This conference invites you on a journey to Chile’s Atacama Desert, “El cielo mas limpio del mundo”: the purest sky in the world, as the locals say. This is the place where European astronomers decided to install the world’s best telescopes several decades ago, in an arid desert wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. These telescopes enable us to better understand our Universe and our place at its heart. For over a year now, one of these telescopes has been equipped with the SPHERE instrument, the most precise eye ever built to study the stars. I’ll be presenting the latest discoveries this instrument has made about stars and exoplanets, the planets that revolve around other suns, including spectacular images of stars in formation or forming cosmic fireworks during the last moments of their lives.