Lightcurve Films

On 9-13 February 2026, scientists met at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, to explore past and present conditions for habitability on Venus. The scientists established the state-of-the-art knowledge of the coevolution of the planet's ...

Linda Spilker, Cassini and Voyager Project Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA) talk about the history of the Cassini mission from her experience and perspective at the 20 years Huygens landing and Cassini missions's results symposium ...

This is an excerpt of the public event that took place on 14 January 2005 at ESA to witness the Huygens mission into the Titan atmosphere. The full file can be downloaded from the ESA video repository at https://www.esa.int/esatv/Videos/2005/01/Ca...

Prof. Wing Ip shares some of his memories and episodes of his journey to Titan with the Cassini-Huygens mission in this online presentation for the 20 years celebration of the Huygens landing and the Cassini mission's success, held in Paris in Sep...

In December 2017 two commemorative trees and plaques were revealed in honour of the Cassini / Huygens mission at the Paris Observatory, Meudon site, by the then Director of the Paris Observatory Claude Català. In September 2025 Jean-Pierre Lebr...

A surprise test of the transponder on the evening pass over Paris / Europe on Thursday 15 February 2018 by PicSat's only certified radio amateur Mathias Nowak aka F4HZG, transmitting from Meudon, France aka F4KJW.

PicSat Project Manager Vincent Lapeyrere, together with internship student Mathurin Grenot, is testing the proper working of the star tracker on the PicSat Flight Model. Test in the clean of LESIA / Observatoire de Paris - PSL on 15 November 2017.

PicSat Payload Scientist Mathias Nowak explains about the alignment of the optical elements in the PicSat telescope to make sure optical distortion, called aberration, is minimal, before sending it into space. Mathias Nowak is a PhD student on the...

PicSat passed over Europe several times during the first day in orbit. On the very first pass, around 9h30m local time, the PicSat team detected the beacons that PicSat is sending out every 10 seconds, proving that the satellite is well and alive!

Astrophysicist Flavien Kiefer (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France) talks about the detection of exocomets in the Beta-Pictoris system. He is leading an observational programme at the European Southern Observatory in support of PicSat. This ...

PicSat team member and F4GKR - REF and IARU Region 1 EC member Sylvain Azarian talks about the two different types of data PicSat will be sending to Earth, how anyone be a receiving ground station and how licensed amateurs around the world can use...

PicSat Principal Investigator Sylvestre Lacour presents some of the technology inside PicSat.

PicSat will be operated from its ground station located at the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France. PicSat Project Manager Vincent Lapeyrere talks about the ground station.

Astrophysicist Alain Lecavelier des Etangs (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France) talks about the possible orbits of planet Beta-Pictoris b and the implication for observing any transit phenomenon (part 4). Also see https://picsat.obspm.fr/sc...

Astrophysicist Alain Lecavelier des Etangs (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France) tells how he discovered light variations of Beta-Pictoris from data from 1981 and how he inferred it could be due to the transit of a planet (part 3). Also see ...

Astrophysicist Alain Lecavelier des Etangs (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France) tells about the first images of the Beta-Pictoris disk very close to the star, that he and his colleagues took in the 1990s (part 2). Also see https://picsat.ob...

Astrophysicist Alain Lecavelier des Etangs (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France), tells about how he started working on the Beta-Pictoris star system in early 1990s in the group of Alfred Vidal-Madjar (part 1). Also see https://picsat.obspm....

PicSat Project Manager Vincent Lapeyrere shows PicSat while in the clean room at the Paris Observatory.

An important shock test to prepare for launch, done on Tuesday 28 November 2017 in the clean room at SOPEMEA (France). PicSat passed with flying colours!

An important vibration test to prepare for launch, done on Monday 27 November 2017 in the clean room at the Integration and Test Platform (Plateforme d’Intégration et de Tests - PIT) of the Observatoire de Versailles, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Fr...