This copper telescope was one of the first instruments to be used at the Observatory of Brussels (ROB) between 1835 and 1856. Built by Rienks in Friesland, it has a bronze mirror measuring just 18 cm in diameter.
Today’s professional telescopes are fitted with far bigger mirrors (up to 10 m in diameter), enabling them to observe celestial bodies of low luminosity. The astronomers of the ROB use these telescopes along with space probes in order to study the planets, asteroids, stars, and the Sun.
Copper telescope with bronze mirror, purchased in 1825 by King William I of the Netherlands and donated to the Observatory of Brussels in 1829.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) is a scientific research institute which studies the Earth and the Sun, the stars, planets, and other objects in the Universe.
In addition to its research activities, the ROB fulfils assorted public-service missions such as the speaking clock, management of Belgium’s seismological network, management of its national gravimetric database, monitoring and forecasting of solar activity and space and coordination of the European network of GPS stations providing location references.
The ROB also manages the Planetarium at the Heysel in Brussels.
www.observatory.be
This radiometer was used on board a Space Shuttle flight in November 1983. Far more accurate and more reliable than its predecessors, this instrument made it possible to measure fine variations in the misnamed “Solar Constant”. From this point on, Belgium has been helping to bring about a quantum leap in research.
Hot on the heels of this experiment, radiometers designed at Belgium’s Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI-IRM), having already been fitted on board several US Space Shuttles, are today found on board European meteorological satellites and will soon be used on board Asian satellites. If we cannot fully control the planet’s climate, we can at least contribute to understanding what makes it tick.
The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium is familiar to the general public primarily on account of the daily weather forecasts it provides on Belgian radio and television.
However, this overlooks the bulk of the scientific research work it performs in the fields of hydrometeorology, climatology, and geophysics – work which is based on validated observations collected through its networks.
The Institute endeavours to study meteorological and geophysical phenomena (tsunamis, heat waves, torrential rain, etc.). Its specialists appear regularly in the media to explain the causes and repercussions of these phenomena.
www.meteo.be
The Rosetta space probe, a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), in which the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy participates, was launched in 2004, and is expected to reach the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet in 2014!
This probe will analyse, in particular, the comet’s gaseous composition, thus providing valuable information on our own atmosphere, its evolution and further on the origins of life on Earth!
The Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) develops an expertise in the field of aeronomy, a science interested in the Earth’s atmosphere and the Sun’s action on our planet, but also in cometary and planetary atmospheres. Solar wind, magnetic storms, global change, greenhouse effect, aerosols, ozone, and air quality are topics with which the institute is daily confronted.
BIRA-IASB is one of the pioneers in these fields and in the development of forecasting models; it is also active both in the field of scientific research and in the field of services having a socio-economic orientation, like the monitoring of changes in the atmosphere’s chemical composition (ozone, CO2, pollution, ...) and how these changes affect citizens' health and economic life (transport and mobility).
www.aeronomy.be
The Essebi meteorite – part of the memory of the Solar System.
This meteorite, which fell to Earth on 28 July 1957 in the north-eastern Essebi region of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, belongs to the rare group of ‘carbon chondrites’. The fragment preserved at the Royal Museum for Central Africa is the focus of detailed research into the birth of the Solar System.
Essebi is one of ten meteorites known to contain amino acids, thus showing that organic molecules – the raw materials of life – were present at a very early stage in the formation of the Solar System. Its characteristic isotopic anomalies offer vital information for understanding the dawning of the history of the Solar System and the evolution of the Universe before the birth of the Sun.