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  • April 2023
    • A paper by Peter Chingaipe on his PhD works has just been accepted for publication in A&A: High-contrast detection of exoplanet with a kernel-nuller at the VLTI.
    • On Wednesday 12th of April, the PhD student from the MPO team, Peter Chingaipe, Romain Mayer and Benjamin Buralli participated to the PhD students day at TAS to present their work through a short talk and a poster session.
  • March 2023
    • Frantz Martinache & Peter Chingaipe participated to the first international workshop dedicated to the instrumental suite VLTI/ASGARD, who took place in Leuven (Belgium) the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of March 2023. Frantz Martinache & mamadou N'Diaye from our team are both Co-I of the BALDR modules (Adaptive Optics in the focal laboratory of the VLTI) and HEIMDALLR (fringe tracker). The Lagrange laboratory will welcome in 2024, the integration and the validation of ASGARD performance before shipment to Paranal, normally planned for the first semester of 2025. More informations on the workshop are available here.
  • February 2023
    • The MPO team welcomed during a MPO apero, Anthony Berdeu, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Observatory, for a seminar entitled: "Data reduction and inverse problem approaches - An efficient (and cheap) way to push the instrumental limits". The whole team warmly thanks him for his presence and his very interesting talk !
  • January 2023
    • The MPO team wishes you all a Happy New Year 2023 !

  • December 2022

    • In the context of the VLTI/GRAVITY+, several members of the MPO and GIR have been involved in the first closed loop correction of the GRAVITY+ system at OCA. More information in the local press release here.

  • November 2022

    • We are delighted to host four new PhD students within our team: Paulina Palma-Bifani (co-supervision G. Chauvin and P. Baudoz [LESIA]), Benjamin Buralli (co-supervision M. N'Diaye and M. Carbillet), Romain Mayer (co-supervision D. Mary and E. Choquet [LAM]) and Adrien Simmonin (co-supervision G. Chauvin and A. Chiavassa, M. N'Diaye). Welcome to all of them!

  • October 2022

    • Raphaël Pourcelot defended his PhD thesis entitled "active correction of the low-order aberrations for the observation of exo-earths with future large observatories". Kudos to Raphaël!

  • May 2022

    • Alohotsy Rafalimana defended his PhD thesis entitled "Atmospheric turbulence prediction for optical link optimization in laser telemetry and free space telecommunications". Kudos to Alohotsy!
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
    • On March 18, Mamadou N'Diaye defended his habilitation (HDR in French) on ground and space instrumentation for the spectro-imaging of extrasolar planets.
  • February 2022 
    • After one year of studies and development, the ANAtOLIA station is now installed on the Calern site near the CATS and MéO stations, more information in the following link (in French).
  • January 2022
    • After 5 years of service, Marcel Carbillet leaves the headship of the MPO team to Frantz Martinache. Thanks Marcel and congratulations Frantz!
  • August 2021
    • This month, Vicenzo Mariani is joining the MPO team as a PhD student. He will be co-supervised by Agnès Fienga (Geoazur) and David Mary. Welcome Vicenzo!
    • The POLARIX project on deformable lenses and the C dome has just been accepted for funding by a European organization (ACTPHAST4R). This project, partly led by Lyu Abe and Marcel Carbillet on the Lagrange side, in collaboration with the Italian colleagues of the CNR of Padova, aims at carrying out the improvement and the qualification of deformable lenses under low temperature conditions, and to carry out an operational prototype for an instrument compatible with the polar conditions (at a stbilized temperature as low as possible)
  • July 2021
    • The MPO team is on Summer break!
  • June 2021
    • Two workshops in the French week of astrophysics (June 7-11, 2021) were successfully chaired by some of our team members: (i) optical interferometry (led by Frantz Martinache for the CS ASHRA) and (ii) astrophotnics (led by Nick Cvetojevic).
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
    • Several members of our MPO team are co-authors of two recent papers using the MATISSE instrument data :
      Varga et al. 2021 and Hocde et al. 2021. More papers wihth VLTI/MATISSE will soon follow, stay tuned 🙂
    • A team led by Aziz Ziad and including several MPO members got a contract with ESA with the project ANATOLIA to study optical links through the atmosphere, see the French press release.
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
    • Starting this month, David Mary will join us in the team. Welcome David!
    • On the 24th, the TAS PhD students' day was held online and two of our MPO PhD young researchers (Peter Chingaipe, Raphaël Pourcelot) presented their research work with brilliance!
  • January 2021
    • Our team leader has officially been promoted as a Full Professor, congratulations Marcel!
    • The MPO team wishes you all a happy new year 2021!
  • December 2020
    • A new paper from Olivier Lai has recently been accepted for publication in MNRAS: DO-CRIME: Dynamic On-sky Covariance Random Interaction Matrix Evaluation, a novel method for calibrating adaptive optics systems
  • November 2020
    • Several MPO team members have recently contributed to the organization of the "Wavefront sensing in the VLT/ELT era V/ AO workshop week II" online workshop, contributing to the sharing of knowledge and exchances within our scientific community around the high-angular resolution topic in the period of pandemic.  
  • October 2020
    • ANR I2C: Intensity Interferometry at Calern - In a collaboration with the Institut de Physique de Nice (INPHYNI) Laboratoire Géoazur and the support of UMS Galilée, Laboratoire Lagrange contributes the the I2C project, supported by an ANR grant. After technical (Guerin et al, 2017) and scientific (Rivet et al 2020) demonstrations, this ANR funding will allow us to improve the sensitivity and increase the baselines at the Calern Observatory, to prepare for deployment at large observatories (such as the VLTI-AT and MaunaKea).
    • Eric Lagadec & Mamadou N'Diaye have participated to the observing run of the stellar occultation by the Polymele asteroid from Senegal. This run led by the Senegalse association for the promotion of Astronomy (ASPA) in collaboration  with IRD, CNRS, OCA, UCA, Paris Observatory-PSL and Paris-Saclay University, has been performed in the framwork of the forthcoming NASA Lucy mission, which launch is expected in October 2021. See OCA press release in French: communiqué.
  • September 2020
    • Romain Laugier has defended his PhD thesis entitled "Robust kernel for high contrast detections at small angular separations". Kudos to Romain!
    • We are delighted to welcome a new postdoc, James Leftley, who will work in collaboration with Romain Petrov on the study of AGNs with the VLTI and in particular MATISSE. Welcome James!
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
    • Frantz Martinache has been nominated as new president of the "action spécifique haute résolution angulaire (ASHRA)! congratulations Frantz!
  • June 2020
    • Alban Ceau has defended his PhD thesis entitled "Kernel: Application and Science potentials of full pupil interferometry" on June 30. Congratulations Alban!
    • This month, Roxanne Ligi has joined the Kernel team to work on SPHERE aperture masking data, welcome Roxanne!
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
    • This month, we are delighted to receive a new PhD student, Peter Chingaipe. He will work on the direct detection of extrasolar planets with kernel-nulling interferometry. Welcome Peter!
  • February 2020
    • Our PhD students Coline Lopez and Guillaume Doyen are now responsible for the MPO science coffee!
  • January 2020
    • The MPO team wishes you a happy new year 2020!
  • December 2019
    • The SPEED team has ended the AIT activities for the visible path. Kudos to the entire team!
  • November 2019
    • Several team members went to the Spirit of Lyot conference in Japan (http://abc-nins.jp/Lyot2019/) to present their research work on high-contrast imaging for the exoplanet and disks observations.
  • October 2019
    • This month, three new PhD students have joined our team:
      • Coline Lopez will develop KERNEL aspects and make part of her research work on the SCExAO instrument on the Subaru telescope. (co-supervision Frantz Martinache and Olivier Guyon)
      • Guillaume Doyen will work on the "wavefront control and shaping  coupled with small inner working angle coronagraph for segmented telescopes" (co-supervision Patrice Martinez and Mathilde Beaulieu)
      • Raphaël Pourcelot will work on the active correcion of low-order aberrations for exo-Earth observations with future large space telescopes (co-supervision Mamadou N'Diaye and Marcel Carbillet).
    • Listen to the interview of our PhD student Romain Laugier (in French) on the podcast of the newspaper Ciel & Espace: https://www.cieletespace.fr/actualites/podcast-la-science-en-chemin-avec-romain-laugier
  • September 2019
    • The website on the prediction of atmopheric turbulence and meteorological parameters is now operational at the following link https://cats.oca.eu. This website includes two services: the first one dedicated to the Calern site with a prediction with 24h in advance, the other one to the prediction on request for any site elsewhere by providing its coordinates.
    • With the come back at the University comes the MAUCA master in which several members of our team are involved in the formation of students (METEOR CSO, Patrice Martinez, METEOR étoiles AGB/MATISSE, Pierre Cruzalebes).
  • August 2019
    • Most of our team members are on vacation. See you in September for the news of our team!
  • July 2019
    • This month, Marcel Carbillet, Eric Aristidi and Eric Cotallorda will visit Ariane group in the context of the PhD of Eric C.
    • From 8 to 12, we will be pleased to receive Ewan Douglas (U of Arizona) and Yinzi Xin (MIT) in the framework of a collaboration MIT-France with Mamadou N'Diaye.
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
    • Several team members will participate to the French week of Astrophysics that is going to be held in Nice from May 14 to 17 in Nice. http://2019.sf2a.eu/
  • April 2019
    • On the 1st, our PhD students Alban Ceau and Romain Laugier as well as several team members went to the PhD meeting day organized by TAS in Cannes.
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
    • Please find out the innovation superheros from our team in the following youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oANOCzpTSY
    • This month, we are pleased to receive Eric Cottalorda as a Ph.D student with CIFRE fundings with Ariane Group on a topic entitled "post-adaptive optics imaging with short integration time" under the supervision of Marcel Carbillet and Eric Aristidi. Welcome to Eric! Lagrange will receive the Ariane Group on the 27th.
  • January 2019
    • From 14 to 18, Jens Kammerer, from the Australian National University, will be visiting us in the framework of his Ph.D thesis under the supervision of Mike Ireland et Frantz Martinache.
    • From 9 to 11, Arthur Vigan from Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) will be in Nice to collaborate with Mamadou N'Diaye.
  • November 2018
    • Our team had recently the pleasure to receive several collaborators with presentation of their works during MPO science coffees: M. Quintavalla and S. Bonora from CNR at Padova on adaptive lenses and Alexis Carlotti from IPAG at Grenoble on the direct imaging of exoplanets and high-spectral resolution in view of the ELTs.
  • October 2018
    • On 4th, Frantz Martinache brillantly defended his Habilitation thesis (HDR in French). His research works are entitled "Pushing the limits of the diffraction further for high angular resolution astronomy". Congrats to Frantz!
    • This month, we are glad to welcome Mr. Alohotsy Jean-Pierre Rafalimanana as a new Ph.D student. He will work on the following topic: Prediction of the atmospheric turbulence for the optimization of the astronomical observation site and opticxal links in free space, under the supervision of Aziz Ziad and Eric Aristidi. Welcome Alohotsy!
  • September 2018
    • Two job offers for the appealing SPEED project are now available! More details at the Job opportunities tab.
  • August 2018
    • Two job offers for the exciting KERNEL project are now available! More details at the Job opportunities tab.
  • July 2018
    • As the administrative manager, Isabelle Lapassat replaces Delphine Saissi to who we wish all the best for her new adventures. Welcome to Isabelle!
  • June 2018
    • Congratulations to Pierre Janin-Potiron, who was awarded the SF2A prize for his PhD. Pierre led his research works at Lagrange within the MPO team and under the supervision of Patrice Martinez and Marcel Carbillet. He is currently a postdoc at LAM. Kudos to Pierre!
  • May 2018
    • We are delighted to welcome Christophe Giordano in our team. Previously postdoc at Arcetri in the Adaptive Optics team led by S. Esposito, he joins the "Atmospheric Optics" section of our team and he will be working on the prediction of the atmospheric turbulence, as a postdoc with CNES fundings. Welcome Christophe!
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
    • Olivier Lai brilliantly defended his Habilitation thesis (HDR in French) on March 28, 2018. His research works were entitled: "20 years of adaptive optics on Maunakea".
      Kudos to Olivier!
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
    • Patrice Martinez from our team succesfully defended his Habilitation thesis (HDR in French) on December 15, 2017. His research works that are related to high-contrast imaging were entitled: "Analysis, modelisation, and instrumental development for high-contrast imaging with future large observatories".
      Kudos to Patrice!