Highlights

Unlocking the secrets of the first Quasars: how they defy the laws of Physics to grow

New evidence has been discovered explaining how supermassive black holes formed in the first billion years of the Universe's life. The study, conducted by INAF researchers, analyses 21 distant quasars and reveals that these objects are in a phase of extremely rapid accretion. This provides valuable insights into their formation and evolution, together with that of their host galaxies

Filippo Zerbi elected as chairperson of the SKAO Council from 2025

Italian astrophysicist Dr Filippo Zerbi has been elected as the next chairperson of the SKA Observatory Council, the intergovernmental organisation’s governing body

The first 3D view of the formation and evolution of globular clusters

A study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics marks a significant milestone in our understanding of the formation and dynamical evolution of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters

Roberto Orosei is 2024 AGU Biogeoscience Section Carl Sagan Lecture Recipient

Il CUG Informa 4/2024 en

News Letters del CUG in inglese

THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES A STAGGERING QUASAR-GALAXY MERGER IN THE REMOTE UNIVERSE

An international research group led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics utilised the James Webb Space Telescope to witness the dramatic interaction between a quasar inside the PJ308–21 system and two massive satellite galaxies in the distant universe

FATE: forecasting optical turbulence to push the Very Large Telescope to its full potential

The FATE project began in November 2022 and entered the commissioning phase in September - December 2023. Once completed, it will enter in the operational phase in which ESO will be able to optimise observing strategies for the VLT and start planning those for ELT

MeerKAT+: the MeerKAT Extension

The handover of the first dish of the MeerKAT extension signals an important milestone for the SKA-MID construction

The first discoveries of the Webb space telescope in Rome: public lecture on 29 February

On Thursday 29 February at 6 pm, Prof. Roberto Maiolino of the University of Cambridge (UK) will hold a public lecture on the theme "The invisible Universe revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope" at the Department of Physics of Sapienza University of Rome

The AGILE satellite re-entered the atmosphere

After 17 years of thriving operations, the AGILE Italian scientific satellite re-entered the atmosphere, thus ending its intense activity as a hunter of some of the most energetic cosmic sources in the Universe that emit gamma and X-rays

The National Institute for Astrophysics at the forefront of solar storm forecasting

The tool, developed by the INAF-Turin Astrophysical Observatory in collaboration with ALTEC and the University of Genoa, allowed accurate detection of the November 5 CME about 9 hours before the onset of the geomagnetic storm

GRB-SN Association within the Binary-Driven Hypernova Model

The GRB-SN association, probably the most constraining property of GRB theoretical models, is the subject of a new article by an ICRA-ICRANet collaboration, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

The polyhedric scientist and his sharp tones

Tomaso Belloni passed away suddenly on August 26th. He was a leading scientist of the Italian astrophysics community and was well known internationally for his work on compact objects in the X-ray and gamma-ray bands

Farewell Krakow, see you in Padua for EAS 2024

The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) ended today in Krakow, Poland. Next year, Padua will host the annual EAS meeting from 1st to 5th July 2024

SWIFT: THE MOST BRILLIANT GRB DETECTED IN OPTICAL

A team of researchers has observed the very first stages of a gamma-ray burst (GRB), which turned out to be the brightest in the optical bands detected until now

JUICE: MAJIS COMPLETED COMMISSIONING IN FLIGHT

Among the remote sensing instruments on board the ESA JUICE spacecraft, as for JANUS, RIME and 3GM - all built with funding from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) - MAJIS was also successfully turned on and tested in orbit (commissioning phase): both channels proved to work very well

JUICE: JANUS SENT ITS FIRST IMAGES ACQUIRED IN SPACE

The instrument Jovis, Amorum ac Natorum Undique Scrutator (JANUS) passed the commissioning phase with full marks. It is a real test during which - 8 million km from the Earth - it opened its electronic "eyes", sending the so-called "first light", i.e. his first series of images, to the technicians and researchers

Professor Leonid Lytvynenko passed away

FIRST IMAGE OF A REGION OF THE MILKY WAY FROM THE PEGASUS SURVEY

Led by INAF and Macquarie University, a portion of our Galaxy has been imaged in great detail as part of the PEGASUS survey - a radio astronomy project designed to discover more about the Milky Way

Studying the birth of exoplanets with chemistry

A new study led by Elenia Pacetti, PhD student at La Sapienza University and INAF, jointly uses ultra-volatile, volatile, and refractory elements in the atmospheres of giant planets to develop a unified method to shed light on how and where giant planets form. The new work, published in The Astrophysical Journal, paves the road to the exoplanetary studies of the ESA mission Ariel