Geneva Observatory

Geneva Observatory

The Geneva Observatory (August 2013)
Alternative names	Geneva Observatory
Organization	University of Geneva
Observatory code	517
Location	Sauverny, Versoix, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland
Coordinates	46°18′32″N 6°08′06″E / 46.309°N 6.135°E / 46.309; 6.135 (Geneva Observatory)
Established	1967 (1772)
Website	www.unige.ch/sciences/astro/en/
Location of Geneva Observatory
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The Geneva Observatory (French: Observatoire de Genève, German: Observatorium von Genf) is an astronomical observatory at Sauverny (CH) 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,^[1][2] 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.^[2] Mayor and Queloz were awarded (half of) the Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 for this discovery.^[2]

Besides a 1-metre telescope located at the French Haute-Provence Observatory (but owned by Geneva 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 (Euler and TRAPPIST) 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 Eris and Pluto.^[3] 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.^[4]