LIRA welcomes an international delegation to the Meudon campus as part of the International Physics Olympiad 2025

23 juillet 2025 Par Raphaël de Assis Peralta LIRA welcomes an international delegation to the Meudon campus as part of the International Physics Olympiad 2025

On Tuesday 22 July 2025, LIRA welcomed an international delegation of 40 participants (32 student-candidates and 8 accompanying adults) to the Paris Observatory’s Meudon campus as part of the 55th International Physics Olympiad (IPhO), organised for the first time in France.

A scientific trail on an exceptional site

Visites à Meudon d’une quarantaine d’étudiants de sept pays participant à la 55e édition des Olympiades Internationales de Physique, ayant lieu pour la première fois en France.
Crédit : Raphaël de Assis Peralta (LIRA - Observatoire de Paris-PSL)

Taking place from 18 to 24 July 2025, this year’s International Physics Olympiad will bring together more than 400 brilliant physicists from over 80 countries to take part in high-level scientific competitions, visits and meetings. In all, the event will welcome more than 1,000 people to the Île-de-France region, providing an exceptional opportunity for intellectual, human and cultural exchanges.

In Meudon, the delegations from seven countries - Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania and Liechtenstein - were welcomed for an immersive half-day at the heart of contemporary astronomy and physics, following a visit that morning to the Paris site where our colleagues from the LTE welcomed them.

This event is part of the official IPhO 2025 programme, organised by the Société Française de Physique (SFP), chaired until last March by Daniel Rouan, astrophysicist at the LIRA and member of the Académie des Sciences.

An immersion in contemporary research

Présentation du « Small prototype of a Cerenkov Telescope (GATE-SST) par Mathieu Servillat (du LUX) et Julien Cailleux (UNIDIA).
Crédit : Raphaël de Assis Peralta (LIRA - Observatoire de Paris-PSL)

The delegations were welcomed by Alain Doressoundiram (Deputy Director of the LIRA), Daniel Rouan and Raphaël de Assis Peralta, astrophysicists at the LIRA, for a convivial lunch, before setting off to discover several of the site’s emblematic scientific instruments :

  • The Space Technology Complex (CTS) - where some of the instruments that will be sent into space are built - presented by Jérôme Parisot
  • The Meudon Spectroheliograph - an instrument that has been observing the Sun without interruption since 1908 - with Isabelle Bualé
  • The GATE-SST prototype telescope - dedicated to the observation of high-energy particles (Cherenkov telescope) - presented by Mathieu Servillat (from LUX) and Julien Cailleux (UNIDIA)
  • The Grande Lunette de Meudon - a historic monument and flagship of French astronomy - guided by Miguel Montargès
  • And a closing lecture - "Black holes : a golden observational era" - by Irène Urso.

This day illustrates the commitment of LIRA and Paris Observatory to promoting science among young people and welcoming the international scientific community, particularly in such a prestigious context as the International Physics Olympiad.

To find out more : IPhO 2025 event

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