News

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

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

Stellar evolution along the HR diagram with Gaia

The hybrid workshop started its activities in the INAF National Auditorium “Ernesto Capocci” of the Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory in Naples

The discovery of an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst from the infant Universe

An international effort led by INAF researcher Andrea Rossi discovered and followed up the gamma-ray burst GRB 210905A, one of the most luminous events ever recorded that exploded when our Universe was just less than 900 million years old

A new milestone for the HEMERA Program

During August in Timmins, Canada, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) have managed to launch in rapid sequence 4 balloons in the stratosphere, up to ceiling altitudes greater than 30km

GRB 190829A - A Showcase of Binary Late Evolution

AN UNEXPECTED GAMMA-RAY BURST

An international group led by INAF researchers have confirmed that the gamma-ray burst GRB 200826A, which lasted less than two seconds – typical of short bursts – is associated with the explosion of a massive star, which is typical of long gamma-ray bursts

Announcing the new Director of the Large Binocular Telescope

The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, one of the largest and most advanced optical telescopes in the world, is proud to announce the appointment of its new Director, Prof. Joseph Shields, who will assume the position effective June 06, 2022

The final catalogue of the Gaia-ESO Survey is public

ESO has just released the final catalogue of the Gaia-ESO Survey (GES), a large public spectroscopic survey carried out with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. INAF has played a key role in all the aspects of the survey.

AN ARTIFICIAL EYE FOR BILLIONS OF GALAXIES SAMPLES

An international group of scientists, including researchers from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, has used artificial intelligence (AI) to measure the size of galaxies as far away as about seven billion light-years from Earth