News

An Estonian student can be considered one of the absolute winners of this year’s International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) because his team won the team competition. Estonians also had great results individually. The event took place from November 12 to 21, 2017 in Phuket, Thailand. Five students represented Estonia:

On November 15, the 2017 Jaan Einasto international scholarship was granted at Tartu Observatory. This year’s laureateis Taavi Tuvi, physics PhD student at University of Tartu, to whom the scholarship gives the opportunity to visit the Pisa physics group in Italy. “I am very glad to have received the scholarship,” Tuvi said. One of the subjects that Italian physicists are at the forefront of is astro-particle physics, which is Tuvi’s research topic. Therefore Tuvi hopes to develop relations with the group and find ways to work together in the future.

On November 28, 2017, Tartu Observatory was represented at the cooperation festival of entrepreneurs and universities “Right time, right place” held in Tallinn. Services offered by Tartu Observatory were presented – one of the ways this was done was by Riho Vendt and his lift speech.

The Finns have always been great partners and examples for Tartu Observatory: this is why we were happy to celebrate our northern neighbours’ 100th birthday last week. We took a group photo with our Finnish colleagues and held a seminar by telling Finland-related stories. One of them, for example, was about how the Finnish TV made one of our researchers interested in technology in the first place.

The Estonian Research Council has submitted the names of 80 Estonian researchers to the AcademiaNet portal, which brings successful female researchers into spotlight. Among them is Anu Noorma, Research Professor in Applied Remote Sensing and the previous Director of Tartu Observatory.

Dear colleagues! Firstly, many thanks to Anu for leading the observatory for ten years! A lot of work has been done. However, I must note that I am taking the director's responsibility at difficult times. The observatory is in deep crisis, people have run away to who-knows-where, apparently no work is being done, basic services are missing. Anu has even changed her surname.

In a Teams Live Event on 31 March at 14, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs Aune Valk spoke about teaching and studies during the emergency situation and answered the questions posted by UT staff members and students.

I have been the Director of Tartu Observatory for ten years and it has certainly been much more than just one job for me. I am grateful to all the observatory staff and friends for the opportunity to develop the Estonian Space Center with you.

Most of Tartu Observatory's team does their research, teaching and other kind of work from home these days. Although the work always gets done, there are all kinds of home offices: occasionally you just have to be more creative and work with some unusual colleagues. Here are some of our employees' home offices.

Last autumn, Tartu Observatory’s theme park called Vision of Invisible, Feeling of Unknown was created. To festively celebrate the opening, a family day was held a day before Mother’s Day, May 12 2018.

On 10 and 12 January 2017, Junior Research Fellows at Tartu Observatory Maarja Kruuse and Hendrik Ehrpais got a chance to try out being teachers – they participated in the “Back to school“ programme as guests and taught digital lessons. Kruuse talked about how to investigate stars and Ehrpais explained how ESTCube-2 works.

Although one wouldn’t probably connect space science with the work of conservators at first, the two are actually closely connected. On 11 January 2017, Senior Research Fellow at Tartu Observatory Riho Vendt took part of the Society of Estonian Conservators’ research seminar How the Researchers View Heritage and discussed if the skill of building a spaceship belongs to Estonian intangible cultural heritage.

Photographer Tarmo Haud who opened a drone photo exhibit in Tartu Observatory on January 15 2018, earned money for his first camera working at the observatory. Now his skills have even been noted by National Geographic: they picked one of his photos to the Daily Dozen selection.

Estonian satellite programme ESTCube are looking for international trainees to participate in a summer traineeship at Tartu Observatory. The trainees are to work in electronic engineering or software and embedded software development. To apply for the traineeship, send your

Today is the birthday of Jaan Einasto – astronomer who discovered the large-scale structure of the Universe with his colleagues and was one of the first to encounter the question of the existance of dark matter. On his 89th birthday, colleagues from Tartu Observatory Peeter Tenjes, Laurits Leedjärv, Tõnu Viik, and Elmo Tempel talk about Einasto. Peeter Tenjes, Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Physics of Galaxies and Cosmology

The space development project SpaceTEM that became to be very popular last year are looking for new trainees. SpaceTEM give students a chance to attend a compensated traineeship at a space field enterprise or research institution and this time, the list of Estonian and Latvian enterprises that are happy to welcome trainees is even longer than last year.

This week, University of Tartu rector candidates Professor Margit Sutrop and Professor Toomas Asser came to meet with the observatory’s staff. On Monday, March 26 2018, University of Tartu Professor of Practical Philosofy Margit Sutrop visited the observatory. Sutrop is also the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Head of the Centre for Ethics, a member of the Rector’s Office and a member of Academia Europaea.

Tartu Observatory and ESTCube in cooperation with Tartu Hansa Rotary club are accepting applications for the 7th Science Task Force taking place from 2.07-17.08 at Tartu observatory. Science Task Force participants will have the opportunity to learn about science at the observatory or to help developing the ESTCube-2 satellite.

Before a satellite starts its work on orbit, everything that might happen out of reach of the researchers and engineers has to be thought through. In the new HYPERNETS project which includes Tartu Observatory as a partner, an instrument for the support measurements of optical remote sensing satellites is created. The support measurement instruments will form a world-wide network with unified data processing and management.

At the the Astronomy Open Competition held on April 15, Tallinn Secondary School of Science pupils Martin Rahe and Jarl Patrick Paide won the first prizes. The competition took place for the 14th time. Pupils from class 8 to 12 had to solve tasks about Moon observation, gravity waves, the brightness of double stars, and more. The pupils were expected to have substantive knowledge in order to solve the theoretical tasks.