News

Ultra-distant galaxy: MACS1149-JD1

NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have spotted the most distant galaxy ever seen and studied by astronomers.

Dawn's greatest hits

A NASA video lists the main scientific activities of the mission, as it leaves the orbit of VESTA and heads towards Ceres.

Surprises from Kepler's supernova

The supernova observed for the first time in 1604 by Kepler was not only more powerful, but might have also occurred at a greater distance, than previously thought.

A Celestial Witch’s Broom?

The Pencil Nebula is pictured in a new image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago.

Online new calls for next round of the Seventh Framework Programme (2012-2013)

The new calls for next round of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) are now online. Launched in 2007, FP7 has a total budget of EUR 55 billion for research and innovation. On the 10th of July 2012 the largest set of calls for proposals ever under the FP7 was launched, worth a total of EUR 8.1 billion.

Online the results of the AstroFIt 1st Call for Proposals

The ranking lists of the AstroFIt 1st Call are now online on the Programme website. AstroFIt, cofunded by INAF and FP7 People Programme, offers 7 grants to talented researchers from outside Italy. The projects will be carried out at INAF structures for a period of two years.

Course on 'Astrophysical and Space Plasmas'

The International School of Space Science of the Consorzio Interuniversitario per la Fisica Spaziale organizes a Course on “Astrophysical and Space Plasmas”, to be held in L’Aquila, Italy, September 02-08, 2012.

Bignami honored for his latest book

Giovanni Bignami, INAF's president, has recently received the "Enrico Fermi - Cecina" award for popular science with "Cosa ci resta da scoprire" (Mondadori), his latest book. The book is a journey through what is still left to discover in science, and through the innovations which could happen by 2062. The other finalist was Pietro Greco, scientific journalist and co-director of Scienzainrete, author of "I nipoti di Galileo" (Baldini&Castoldi)

Radioastronomy at the speed of light

INAF’s radiotelescope at Noto, near Siracusa, plays a crucial role in European radioastronomy with its 32-meter dish, being one of the most southerly antennas in the European region. Since May 15, it is part of the international e-VLBI network. The VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry).

Dual Site for SKA

The Members of the SKA Organisation agreed on a dual site solution for the Square Kilometre Array telescope, a crucial step towards building the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The ASKAP and MeerKAT precursor dishes will be incorporated into Phase I of the SKA which will deliver more science and will maximise on investments already made by both Australia and South Africa

Open position: Chief Communications officer for the SKA

The SKA Organisation announces the vacancy for the position of Chief Communications Officer.Closing date: 8 June 2012.

Rogue stars ejected from the galaxy are found in intergalactic space

Vanderbilt astronomers report in the May issue of the Astronomical Journal that they have identified a group of more than 675 stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way that they argue are hypervelocity stars that have been ejected from the galactic core.

Vesta shown by NASA's Dawn mission

NASA's Dawn mission has rivealed new images of the giant asteroid Vesta, uncovering new intriguing secrects of its surface. The latest results include stunning colorized images that suggest that the giant asteroid has an unexpectedly wide variety of rocks on its surface and gravity data that show Vesta is curiously dense at the south pole.

ALMA Reveals Workings of Nearby Planetary System

A new observatory still under construction has given astronomers a major breakthrough in understanding a nearby planetary system and provided valuable clues about how such systems form and evolve. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that planets orbiting the star Fomalhaut must be much smaller than originally thought.

Herschel sees dusty disc of crushed comets

Astronomers using ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have studied a ring of dust around the nearby star Fomalhaut and have deduced that it is created by the collision of thousands of comets every day.

Kepler Explorer App: Planets At Your Fingertips

Kepler Explorer, a new app for iPads and iPhones developed by OpenLab, provides interactive displays of recently discovered planetary systems based on Kepler data. The app starts with drop-down menus listing all the Kepler-discovered planetary systems, including our own solar system.The app is now available for free on the iTunes Apple Store.

EXOMARS: Esa goes on with Russian support

After NASA abandoned the EXOMARS project, the European Space Agency (ESA) turned to the support of the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos), which will donate the delivery system, the Proton rocket. The european mission will start in 2016. The comment of the President of INAF and COSPAR Giovanni Bignami.

Billions of Rocky Planets in the Habitable Zones around Red Dwarfs

A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighbourhood. This is the first direct measurement of the frequency of super-Earths around red dwarfs, which account for 80% of the stars in the Milky Way.

The engine of the Crab Nebula

The pulsar at the heart of the Crab nebula is bursting with energy. This was just confirmed by the MAGIC collaboration operating two large telescopes on the Canary islands. MAGIC observed the pulsar and found out periodic emission of short pulses stretching till the energies as high as 400 GeV. This is 50-100 times more than expected from theory.

Black holes: a new theory is coming

Astronomers from the UK and Australia have put forward a new theory about why black holes become so hugely massive, growing so fast that they are ten billions of times heavier than the Sun. Black holes grow sucking in a disc of gas spiraling around the hole. The astronomers are now trying to find some solutions and explanations and they're testing new theories. They are wondering what would happen if the gas came from different directions at the same time. This might explain how these black holes got so big so fast.