Highlights

Thanks to the HARPS-N spectrograph, the TNG can see Venus

TThe HARPS-N spectrograph succeeded in measuring from the Earth the velocity of the clouds in the atmosphere of Venus thanks to its high precision, competing with the Japanese Akatsuki probe, which has recently begun to study the atmosphere of the second planet.

The X-ray Universe 2017

The symposium (Rome, 6-9 June 2017) is the fifth meeting in the series of the international symposia "The X-ray Universe". The intention is to gather a general collection of research in high energy astrophysics. The symposium will provide a showcase for results, discoveries and expectations from current and future X-ray missions.

IXPE mission: Italy and NASA for new X-ray astronomy

NASA has announced that it is funding a new mission to study the high-energy Universe: it will be called IXPE (Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer) and will allow astronomers to explore with unprecedented details some of the most extreme astronomic objects, including stellar and supermassive black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. The mission, scheduled for the end of 2020, will count on a considerable Italian contribution through the Italian Space Agency(ASI), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF).

Most accurate 3D map of the Universe developed

A successful result obtained by the international team of the VIPERS (VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey) project, coordinated by the National institute for Astrophysics (INAF)

The new frontiers in the knowledge of the Universe. An interview with Nichi D’Amico

How did our Universe evolve? Is there life outside of Earth? What is the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy making up 95% of the Universe? The answers to these and other great scientific questions are today entrusted to powerful telescopes located on Earth and in Space, which are equipped with important, “made in Italy”, technologies developed by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). ResearchItaly, the portal of Italian research, talked to the President of INAF, Nichi D’Amico, about current and future research projects and their potential impact on the economic and social system of our country.

Fifty thousand orbits for AGILE, the all-Italian satellite

On 19 December 2016, at 06:08:53 UTC (+1 in Italy), a few months after celebrating its ten years in orbit, the AGILE satellite reached the significant milestone of 50 thousand orbits around the Earth since the day of its launch, 23 April 2007.

ExoMars mission sends first “spectacular” images from Mars

The CaSSIS team – explained Co-Principal Investigator Gabriele Cremonese from the INAF Observatory of Padua – is also working on the development of a software that makes 3D models from the images provided by the stereoscopic camera.

The Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in second place in the world ranking of Nature

The scientific journal Nature has announced in recent days the list of the 100 best in the world scientific institutions with regard to international collaboration and scientific production: the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics is in second place overall.

ASTRI has 20-20 vision!

Wanted: an affordable telescope with a constant angular resolution over a wide field of view

The First Pietro Baracchi Conference

Italo-Australian Radio Astronomy in the Era of the SKA. 1-4 November 2016, ARRC Building, Perth, Western Australia

Novae the Beryllium and Lithium factory

Paolo Molaro, astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics and head of a team of researchers, has discovered a high abundance of Beryllium-7 in the material expelled from Nova Sagittarii no. 2, a star discovered by amateur astronomer John Seach in 2015 in the constellation Sagittarius, one of the brightest celestial objects in its class in recent years, among the few visible to the naked eye.

New discoveries about gamma-ray bursts

Nature Communications recently published a study on the so-called short gamma-ray bursts (SGRB) carried out by an international team of scientists, including Stefano Covino and Paolo D’Avanzo from INAF/ Brera Astronomical Observatory

Fast Radio Burst, an open question

Less than ten years ago, a new class of celestial phenomena were discovered, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). They are transient radio impulses lasting a few milliseconds, so rapid that it is not possible to understand from which part of the sky they come from. They are sometimes detected by radiotelescopes, and were observed for the first time in real time in 2014 by Parkes radiotelescope in Australia.

JUNO probe successfully completes first Jupiter flyby

A flyby of planet Jupiter at a speed of more than 200 thousand kilometres per hour, up to a distance of about 4,200 kilometres from the surface of the gas giant. This is the target reached on 27 August by JUNO, NASA’s mission that has Italy as the main partner of the US Space Agency.

Can asteroid Ceres “heal” its own scars?

Contrary to expectations, Ceres – the largest celestial body in the asteroid “main belt”, a region located between Mars and Jupiter – shows less craters than expected on its surface, as shown in a study led by Simone Marchi, associate researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), recently published in Nature Communications. The study is based on data from DAWN, the NASA mission in which Italy participates with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and INAF.

Alien Olivine on Vesta?

The olivine found on the surface of the Main Belt's asteroid studied by the Dawn mission may have been deposited in the last billion years by other celestial bodies, as a consequence of their impact. These are the results of a series of simulations conducted by a team of researchers led by Diego Turrini (INAF)

Super-Massive And Supersonic: The First Black Hole Studied With The Sardinia Radio Telescope

Using the brand-new Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), a giant parabolic dish of 64 meters diameter, a team of astronomers from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and the University of Cagliari have produced a detailed image of a super-massive black hole proceeding at high speed towards the core of the distant cluster of galaxies designed as 3C 129

CTA will have its permanent headquarters in Italy

The National Institute for Astrophysics wins the European competition: the board of the project has decided that the headquarters of the international organization leading one of the most prestigious infrastructure of modern physics will be located in Italy

Milky Way in Hi-GAL, a luxurious infrared map

The European project Hi-GAL has released the first map of our Galaxy obtained from the observations of the Herschel space telescope

Starlight on show: a constellation of initiatives on the birth of Astrophysics

The Starlight, the Birth of Astrophysics exhibition is now open: organized by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) under the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism (MIBACT), the exhibition will be open until 21 June 2016 at the INAF facilities in Arcetri (near Florence), Rome, Capodimonte (near Naples), Palermo and Padua.