Europlanet Society promotes the advancement of European planetary science and related fields for the benefit of the community and is open to individual members and organizations. Anyone with an active interest in planetary science (whether academic or industrial, professional or hobbyist) is welcome to join the Society.

Our objectives:

• Expand and support a diverse and inclusive planetary community across Europe through the activities of our 10 regional centers.
• Build the profile of our sector through outreach, education and policy activities.
• Support Europe's key role in planetary science by developing links at the national and international level.

The Society is the parent body of the annual Europlanet Scientific Congress (EPSC), the largest annual meeting on planetary science in Europe. Launched in September 2018, Europlanet Society builds on the 15-year legacy of Europlanet projects funded by the European Commission and provides a sustainable platform for the infrastructure, virtual access facilities, tools and services developed through these. activities.

The Europlanet Society is governed by an elected Executive Board and its activities are supported by Committees and Working Groups drawn from its members. The Executive Office of the Society is hosted and administered by the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg.

The Spain & Portugal Regional Hub is the Europlanet Society node for the Iberian Peninsula. Created in 2019, its purpose is to promote and facilitate the achievement of the objectives of the Europlanet Society in Spain and Portugal by developing links between them and with the rest of Europe through the creation of collaborative work networks in these areas.

The composition of the Committee that coordinates the Iberian Node is:

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Título:  The Atmospheric Composition of the Ice Giants Uranus and Neptune

Centro:  Institut Origines (Aix-Marseille University)

Tipo:  Predoctoral

descripción: 

A PhD scholarship opportunity is open as part of the Institut Origines (Aix-Marseille University, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille), in Marseille, France. The successful candidate will understand and model the abundance profiles of the main volatile species in Uranus and Neptune using numerical simulations to prepare the future exploration of these worlds by a spacecraft mission. The abundance distributions of key chemical species across the planet provide information about the planet’s deep chemical inventory, bringing constraints on the planet formation scenario. Such model predictions are necessary to interpret in-situ measurements performed by entry probes. These distributions also contain the signature of the planet transport processes, and are important to understand how the planet interact with its local environment. The PhD position will be supervised by V. Hue and O. Mousis. The candidate will work in the interdisciplinary environment of the Institut Origines, which will provide opportunities for expanding their knowledge.

The funding is available for a period of three years. The start date would be October to December 2023, depending on the availability of the applicant. Applicants must hold a Master's degree in physics, astrophysics, planetary science, or computer science at the time of appointment. Applicants should submit a letter of motivation, a CV, a list of publications (if available), degrees certification, and request a letter of recommendation. Review of applications will begin upon receipt until the position is filled. All applications received by the deadline will be given full consideration.

Application Deadline: August 1st, 2023

Attention To: Vincent Hue

Thesis advisor: Dr. Vincent Hue
Email and address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Co-advisor: Prof. Olivier Mousis

País:  France

Nuestro compañero Miguel Herraiz, de la Complutense, me ha hecho llegar una nueva oferta de becas de doctorado en el extranjero para su difusión en esta lista. Aquí van los detalles, sobre estas becas vinculadas al ámbito de space weather:

La Universidad de Calabria ofrece dos becas para hacer el doctorado sobre ciencias planetarias. La información está  en el enlace:

Tytle:  Tackling Venus atmosphere from different approaches: theory-modelling, observations and space missions Reference of the FPI contract CEX2021-001131-S-20-1

Centre:  Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía - CSIC

Type:  Predoctoral

Description:

Venus is in the spotlight of the public and scientific community after the selection of 3 missions:  DAVINCI and VERITAS by NASA and EnVision by ESA/NASA. It remains an open question how  Venus and the Earth started so similarly but become such different worlds. Thus, studying Venus is essential for understanding the links between planetary evolution and the habitability of terrestrial planets,  including those outside our Solar System. Several Earth-sized exoplanets have been recently detected in short-period orbits of a few Earth days around low-mass stars. Those planets have stellar irradiation levels several times that of the Earth, suggesting that a Venus-like climate is more likely than an  Earth-like. Consequently, the atmosphere of our closest planet Venus represents a relevant case to address observational prospects of rocky close-in orbit exoplanets.

The successful candidate will be in particular involved in EnVision mission, notably, he/she will join the international consortium of the high-resolution spectrographs VenSpec-H and VenSpec- U. She/he will use a sophisticated 3D model for Venus that has been developed since 2010 at LMD/IPSL in France, in the frame of a collaboration between different European institutions, including IAA-CSIC, to analyze and identify potential physical, chemical, or dynamical processes driving the variability of trace gases above the cloud tops of Venus (70 km altitude, approximately). Heterogenous chemical processes will be implemented and studied, and the impact of complex cloud models and scenarios on the water and sulphur species will be interpreted. These model developments will also contribute to the Venus Climate database (VCD), an online platform containing the meteorological fields derived from the Venus 3D Model and provides the scientific community with a climatology for many characteristics of the Venusian atmosphere from the surface to the exosphere, in addition, a similar but simplified condensation cloud model will be implemented into a  “Generic” 3D model, developed for exoplanets and paleoclimate studies, to simulate H2SO4-H2O clouds  “interactively” in the atmosphere of Venus-analogues around both Sun-like and M-dwarf stars, with the primary goal of providing realistic predictions of future observations of cloudy rocky exoplanets foreseen by the Webb Space Telescope and new-generation instruments and facilities (e.g. ELT).

The PhD thesis advisors will be Gabriella Gilli and Luisa M. Lara

Tytle: 3 PhD positions in IA-Porto for exoplanets

Centre:Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço

Type:  Predoctoral

Description:

The positions are offered in the context of the project "FIERCE: Finding Exoearths: tackling the challenges of stellar activity" funded by the European Research Council under an Advanced Grant with the reference 101052347. The work will be developed at CAUP (in the Porto node of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço), under the scientific supervision of Nuno C. Santos and/or other members of the scientific team of IA.

Fellowship duration: Each fellowship should start between the 1st of September and the 1st of October 2023, renewable on a yearly basis, and has a maximum duration of 48 months

Work plan: The detection and characterisation of other Earths, planets with the physical conditions to hold liquid water and thus potential life-sustaining environments, is a bold objective of present-day astrophysics. This goal continuously pushes the development of new ground- and space-based instrumentation. However, the quest for other Earths is severely limited by astrophysical “noise” from the host stars, whose signatures distort the spectra used to detect and characterize the planets.

The PhD projects, offered in the context of one Advanced Grant funded by the European Research Council, are related with the development of new methods and analysis tools to tackle the problem of stellar noise in exoplanet research. In particular we expect the successful candidates to contribute to the development and exploitation of data from the PoET solar telescope and ESPRESSO spectrograph (ESO) to:

1) develop new approaches to reach the 10 cm/s barrier in Doppler radial velocity measurements needed to find and characterize other Earths orbiting other Suns;

2) model and correct stellar noise in transmission spectroscopy used to study exoplanet atmospheres.

Exoplanet data obtained with the ESPRESSO and NIRPS (ESO) spectrographs may also be made available.

The projects will have a strong impact on the exploitation of data from future ground-based projects and space-based missions such as ANDES@ELT (ESO) and PLATO (ESA).

Title: Massive navigation of planetary images from the PVOL database

Center: Universidad del País Vasco

Type: Postdoctoral

Description:

The Planetary Sciences Group at UPV/EHU in Bilbao, Spain, offers a short post-doc position of 10 months (extendable) to work with amateur images of Solar System planets in the PVOL database at http://pvol.ehu.eus. The contract is funded by the Europlanet 2024 Research Infraestructure as part of its VESPA activities.

The goal of the project is to develop a system to massively map in a semi-interactive way selected ground-based images of the planets, with the main target being Jupiter. These maps will be uploaded into the PVOL database and will be used to investigate changes in the atmospheres of the planet. While most of the work will be technical, science objectives will be linked to: (1) analysis of zonal winds and atmospheric changes on different time-scales; (2) improvement of spatial resolution by combining information of different maps from different observers. In addition, movies of the maps will show the planet’s dynamic atmosphere for outreach purposes.

The candidate will work with Artificial Intelligence techniques to identify the planet’s limb on the image files and fit an ellipse to the planet. Navigation will be provided by using the SPICE system. Formal training on SPICE will be given at the host institution. Most technical challenges will be related to pattern recognition (identifying the planet position and orientation on PVOL images).

Interested candidates should write to Ricardo Hueso (e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

7ª edición de la Reunión de Ciencias Planetarias y Exploración del Sistema Solar (CPESS-7) 

La 7º reunión CPESS ("Ciencias Planetarias y Exploración del Sistema Solar") se llevará a cabo en Valladolid, España, del 11 al 13 de julio de 2023. Está organizado por el grupo de Investigación ERICA del departamento de Física Aplicada de la Universidad de Valladolid (UVa), con la colaboración de otros grupos e investigadores del campo de la Astrofísica de la UVa.

Como en eventos anteriores, el objetivo del encuentro es mostrar las actividades científicas y tecnológicas que se están realizando en el campo de la ciencia planetaria, desde los cuerpos de nuestro propio sistema solar hasta los exoplanetas, pasando por la instrumentación espacial, así como celebrar sesiones dedicadas sesiones de ciencia política y pequeñas misiones.

La participación es gratuita

Síguelo en directo en YouTube: audiovisuales.uva.es

Este evento está financiado mayoritariamente por RIA, con el apoyo de ICE, UVa, Ayuntamiento de Valladolid (AVA) y otros. Colabora, entre otros, el nodo ibérico de Europlanet Society Spain & Portugal - EPS (spainportugal-eps.org)

From June 2 to 5, 2023, a face-to-face workshop has been held at the Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory, organized and paid for by Europlanet, on the use and observation through the Europlanet Telescope Network and, specifically in this case, with the 1.23 m from Calar Alto. The fundamental objective of the workshop, directed by Ricardo Hueso and Itziar Gárate (UPV/EHU), has been to familiarize the participants with the operation of this telescope, and the instrumentation associated with it, in order to facilitate access to these resources of the Europlanet Telescope Network by the amateur community.

1.23 m telescope (Calar Alto)		3.5 m telescope (Calar Alto)

The participants in the workshop, a total of 16 amateurs (Spain and Portugal) selected with the collaboration of the Iberian Hub of the Europlanet Society among relevant amateurs in planetary sciences, have shared experiences and have been able to make observations in two time windows with a total of 4.5 hours that the clear sky has allowed during these days.

The observation objects, two comets and several asteroids, had been previously selected based on their astrometric interest and other particular conditions inherent to them.

The workshop program has included a daytime session on the Europlanet Telescope Network, but most of the activities have been carried out during the nights of these days with observations and practices with the 1.23 m telescope and the Andor iKon-XL 230 camera, installed a few days before and that had not yet been characterized, something that could be done to a large extent during the course of the workshop.

Dear Europlanet members, dear researchers and science communicators,

To celebrate the launch of ESA’s JUICE mission, Europlanet is releasing a new collection of free educational resources themed around icy moons in our Solar System. We are excited to release this new set of resources and lessons. We encourage you to discover them and let us know what you thought of them.

Please see the announcement below and share it as much as possible.

It is important for the sustainability of our outreach activities that the Europlanet community uses and promotes the resources we create. We are counting on you to make this release a success :)

We hope that science communicators, educators and teachers will have the opportunity to use the resources and share their feedback with us!

Best,
Ulysse Pedreira-Segade
Education Officer for Europlanet

https://www.europlanet-society.org/outreach/educational-resources-the-icy-moons-collection/

https://www.europlanet-society.org/juices-adventure-begins/

https://www.europlanet-society.org/outreach/educational-resources/

The official magazine of Europlanet, the European community for planetary science.

This first issue has a strong focus on Mars, including European contributions to current missions, experimental research in labs and in the field, and outreach initiatives to engage the next generation. We look back at the origins of Europlanet and its links to the Cassini-Huygens mission at the beginning of this century. We also have updates on the Winchcombe meteorite and on several new partnerships to support planetary science.

Please check out Issue 1 and share with your networks to help us spread the word.

The second issue highlights some of the exciting science supported by Europlanet's transnational access program, including an experimental project to recreate Martian flows in the lab, field campaigns in Botswana and Greenland, and virtual access to facilities in Korea.

This network currently provides access to 16 different telescope facilities distributed all over the world, with telescopes up to 2 meters in diameter, 14 of which are either robotic or provide service observations, and continue to operate despite COVID-19. Proposals are invited on any topic broadly related to Solar System or exoplanet observations. Short proposals (max 3 pages) and can be submitted at any time; decisions on funding are made on a bi-monthly basis.

Further details on the call and on how to apply can be found at the call website [https://bit.ly/2Br5LDt]; our telescope table [https://bit.ly/31zYpa1] holds a broad range of information and contact data on all the facilities in the network. To apply, please contact the relevant facilities first, agree on observing time, and then submit your funding proposal. If you have further questions on the call or if you are interested in organizing a coordinated observations campaign that would like to make use of the Europlanet Telescope Network, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Proposals are also invited for support to host workshops on any topic related to observational planetary science. Europlanet is particularly keen to support meetings bringing together professional and amateur astronomers, and/or on observations supporting space missions, but all relevant topics will be considered. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to propose ideas or for more information.