Geneva Observatory

Geschichte

The Geneva Observatory is an astronomical observatory at Sauverny in the municipality of Versoix, Canton of Geneva, in Switzerland. It shares its buildings with the astronomy department of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. It has been active in discovering exoplanets, in stellar photometry, modelling stellar evolution, and has been involved in the European Space Agency's Hipparcos, INTEGRAL, Gaia, and Planck missions.In 1995, the first exoplanet of a main-sequence star, 51 Pegasi b, had been discovered by two scientist of the observatory, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, using the radial velocity method with the 1.9-metre telescope at Haute-Provence Observatory in France.Besides a 1-metre telescope at the French Haute-Provence Observatory, the Geneva Observatory also operates the 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope. In cooperation with the Belgian University of Liège, it supports TRAPPIST, a 0.6-metre telescope specialized in observing comets and exoplanets. Both telescopes are located at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. In 2010, TRAPPIST was also involved in the controversial size-comparison of the two dwarf planets and Pluto. The Geneva Observatory also participates in the Next-Generation Transit Survey, an international collaboration with several Universities from the United Kingdom as well as from Chile and Germany. Located at Paranal Observatory in Chile, the ground-based, robotic search facility for exoplanets began science operations in early 2015.

"L'Observatoire Astronomique est rattaché au Département d'Astronomie de la Faculté des sciences de l'Université de Genève. L'Observatoire est actif dans les domaines de la formation des galaxies, de l'évolution stellaire et des exoplanètes."