Awards ceremony. Credits : Jacques Laskar, LTE
This prize is awarded for the best original research work, highlighting innovative theoretical and/or numerical methods in celestial mechanics and astrodynamics.
Valentin Étienne, a first-year PhD student supervised by Gwenaël Boué and Nicolas Rambaux, is developing a new analytical model to study the rotation of celestial bodies and, through this, to constrain their internal structure.
This work is being carried out in close collaboration with Clodoaldo Ragazzo of the University of São Paulo and is being conducted within the Astronomy and Dynamical Systems (ASD) team at the LTE, which brings together theorists in dynamical systems and practitioners in celestial mechanics.
The originality of his work lies in the introduction of a new mathematical formalism to describe the rotation of celestial bodies, as well as in a novel approach to studying the movement of fluids within their liquid layers — a central issue, as this movement directly determines the observable rotational dynamics. It was precisely this second aspect that Valentin Étienne presented at the CELMEC IX international conference, where his work attracted the interest of the scientific community.
Ultimately, this model will provide a tool for exploring the internal structure of layered celestial bodies such as Mercury or the Moon, whose layered organisation subtly but measurably influences their rotational dynamics. By establishing a more precise link between rotational observations and the internal physical properties of these celestial bodies, this research should help to refine our understanding of their stability, formation and evolution.
Find out more :
Read the poster :
Link to the page for the International Conference on Celestial Mechanics – CELMEC IX : https://ugolocatelli.github.io/celmec9.github.io/index.html
