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The Mars spatial exploration at BU

Wednesday 16 November 2011

The Photothèque Planétaire d’Orsay and the Centre de Vulgarisation de la Connaissance of Orsay Faculty of Sciences present an exhibition about Mars exploration history.IDES and IAS labs, currently involved in Mars space missions, provide their scientific oversight,

Visitors could admire ancient and new pictures of the Red Planet and its satellite Phobos, still mysterious, and they could play scientists in search of the best site for MSL rover landing.

The exhibition will begin Thursday, November 17, 2011 to the Bibliothèque Universitaire of the Faculty of Sciences. It will close on Thursday, December 15.

The planets as Galileo saw them

Four hundred years ago Galileo observed for the first time the planets using his telescope, changing drastically our view of the Solar System.

Galileo’s instruments were home made; some of them have survived till today. We do not know exactly through which telescope Galileo observed Jupiter and Saturn in 1610. It was probably similar to that in the picture, currently at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence: an objective with a diameter of 37mm, trimmed down to a 15mm aperture to reduce optical aberrations.

How did Galileo see the planets through his telescope? Let’s take advantage of computer image simulations to rediscover the amazement of the first planet observer of modern times!

We will roll back in time using Celestia to recover the planet positions in the sky Galileo observed, and reproduce, using MATLAB, the effect of atmosphere and telescope optics on the light coming from the planets.