News

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.

VISTA Stares Deep into the Cosmos

ESO's VISTA telescope has created the widest deep view of the sky ever made using infrared light. This new picture of an unremarkable patch of sky comes from the UltraVISTA survey and reveals more than 200 000 galaxies. It forms just one part of a huge collection of fully processed images from all the VISTA surveys that is now being made available by ESO to astronomers worldwide. UltraVISTA is a treasure trove that is being used to study distant galaxies in the early Universe as well as for many other science projects.

The Feeding Habits of Teenage Galaxies

New observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope are making a major contribution to understanding the growth of adolescent galaxies. In the biggest survey of its kind astronomers have found that galaxies changed their eating habits during their teenage years - the period from about 3 to 5 billion years after the Big Bang.

Solar Storm and auroras in progress

NASA claimed the second strongest solar storm just happened since the beginning of the new solar cycle. The comments of INAF’s solar astrophysicists Alessandro Bemporad and Mauro Messerotti.

The Hercules fighting galaxies

A new spectacular image from the VST (VLT Survey Telescope) the Italian instrument realized from INAF - OA Capodimonte in collaboration with ESO.

Re-Ionization: When and How?

National Workshop. April 11-12, 2012. IASF Milano, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano

X-ray Astronomy: towards the next 50 years!

International conference, Oct 1st to Oct 5th, 2012, Milan (Italy)

The Time Machine Factory

We are pleased to announce that the conference "The Time Machine Factory" will be held in Torino (Italy), from October 14 to 19, 2012. The conference is being organized by Osservatorio Astrofisico of Torino- INAF, INRiM and Politecnico di Torino.