News

Gruber 2018 prize awarded to Nazzareno Mandolesi and Planck telescope team

The general assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Vienna has recently awarded the Gruber Prize 2018 for Cosmology.

INAF reveals details about an elliptical galaxy

New clues about galaxy formation process come from the very detailed images of a group of elliptical galaxies studied by an international team of astronomers led by the National Institute of Astrophysics-INAF.

What is the shape of galaxy clusters?

The 3D shape of galaxy clusters is ellipsoidal, according to a study conducted by an international team of astronomers, recently published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters

First detection of the simplest organic acid in the protoplanetary disk surrounding a Sun-like young star

Using ALMA, an international group of astronomers have reported the first detection of formic acid towards the TW Hydrae protoplanetary disk, located at only 190 light years from our Sun

The Governor-General of Australia visits INAF in Rome

His Excellency the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, Sir Peter Cosgrove, and his wife, Lady Cosgrove, today visited the Headquarters of INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics

THESEUS: a new window on the early Universe and the multi-messenger transient sky

The European Space Agency announced the three space missions selected for ESA’s fifth medium class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme. One of them is THESEUS, in which the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics plays a major role

The remote galaxy that is “dying out”

An impetuous outflow of ionized gas and carbon monoxide leaks from galaxy Xid2028, located at 9.6 billion light years from us, having a supermassive black hole in the centre. The discovery by INAF researchers.

K2-3: A system of three likely sub-Neptunes

A team led by astronomers from INAF presented a new study aimed at determining accurate masses for the three planets in orbit aroud the M-dwarf star K2-3

INAF hosts the preliminary round to set up the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory-ERIC

At Headquarters of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics INAF, the kick-off round of the multilateral negotiations to establish an ERIC organization to the manage the Cherenkov Telescope Array project as part of the EU’s ESFRI infrastructure roadmap had take place

Extrasolar planets: Italy to lead the construction of the SHARK instruments on the LBT

The Italian institutes involved in the construction of SHARK are the INAF Observatories of Padua and Rome, responsible for the two channels, together with the Observatories of Arcetri, Milan and Trieste and the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Padua

INAF researcher wins a Consolidator Grant 2017

Two black hole systems are the investigational topic of DEMOBLACK: one of the projects that have been granted the European Consolidator Grant, which was submitted by Michela Mapelli, a researcher of the National Institute for Astrophysics-INAF and Professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria

Light in Astronomy 2017

Light in Astronomy, organized by INAF in collaboration with the Italian Astronomical Society-SAIt, will be a week (13-19 November) dedicated to satisfying curiosity about the Universe thanks to the opening in Italy of INAF premises, including the astronomical observatories.

Marsis radar reveals that on Mars all that echoes is not ice

The low dielectric constant of the Meridiani Planum deposits is consistent with a thick layer of ice-free, porous, basaltic sand. This study is fundamental to identify techniques that may help find the planet’s areas with accessible water ice.

A 3D step towards sorting out the Gamma-Ray Bursts zoo

A powerful tool for characterizing and classifying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) to allow their use as tracers of the expansion history of the universe has recently been presented by an international team of researchers led by Dr. Maria Dainotti

Astronomy: here is astroEDU Italia

An educational platform for students and teachers

Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The updated science case for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, became available for download in English or Spanish on the CTA website library and arXiv

Space, ASI’s Sardinia Deep Space Antenna inaugurated

The SDSA is located at the Sardinia Radio Telescope-SRT: the large radio telescope for the study of the Universe, situated near Cagliari and developed by the National Institute for Astrophysics-INAF in collaboration with ASI, Regione Sardegna and the Ministry of Education, University and Research-MIUR.

Space, Let’s go to Mars

An educational video game to explore the Red Planet

Carina Nebula, INAF identifies new star formations

The Gaia-ESO Survey: Global properties of clusters Trumpler 14 and 16 in the Carina nebula study conducted by Francesco Damiani from INAF of Palermo, involving a number of researchers from the INAF observatories of Arcetri, Bologna, Catania, Padua and Palermo, has been recently published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

2017 GAL Hassin Award to Battiston and D’Amico

This year, the prestigious award of the GAL Hassin Foundationhas been awarded to two major names of Italian astronomy: Prof. Roberto Battiston, President of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), “for his achievements in fundamental and astroparticle physics” and to Prof. Nicolò D’Amico, President of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), “for his achievements in radioastronomy and in particular in the study of pulsars”.