AstroBigné seminars season 2016-2017
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27/06/2017
Cécile Favre (star formation)
Towards the molecular complexity in star-forming regions and proto-planetary disks
One of the most important questions in molecular astrophysics is how, when, and where complex organic molecules, COMs (≥ 6 atoms) are formed. Thanks to recent progress in radioastronomy instrumentation for both single-dish and millimeter array (e.g. Herschel, NOEMA, ALMA), new results have been obtained. I will present some notable results on the detection of COMs, including prebiotic molecules, towards star forming regions including photo-planetary disks.
Vianney Taquet (star formation)
PROSPECTS: PRebiotic mOlecules from SPacE to ComeTS
Young low-mass protostars are known to be chemically rich, with the detection of a dozen of interstellar complex organic molecules (COMs). However, it is still unknown whether larger potentially prebiotic molecules, such as glycine, can be formed around young protostars and whether these COMs can survive in the solar nebula. I will present my AstroFIt 2 project that aims to understand the formation and the evolution of interstellar COMs at the origin of the prebiotic chemistry in the inner regions surrounding young low-mass protostars.
Runa Briguglio (adaptive optics)
Lost in the Shells - a journey with the E-ELT M4 Adaptive Unit
The M4 Unit is the E-ELT 2.4 m flat deformable mirror, segmented into six thin shells controlled by more than 5000 actuators - now in the final design phase by the Italian consortium AdOptica. INAF is part of the working group with the task of the optical calibration of the system, starting in 2022 (?). On behalf of the team we will present the Season Premiere of a Science-Fiction series on this hot topic.
13/06/2017
Sperello di Serego Alighieri (science communication)
The new digital planetarium for the Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica of Firenze
At the end of June 2017 the Zeiss opto-mechanical machine of the Florence Planetarium will be replaced by a digital system. The parameters leading to the selection of the new system and the possibilities which will be available will be briefly described.
Luca Fini (software)
The new licensing mechanism for IDL
Starting from IDL vers. 8.6 the licensing mechanism has been modified. This affects mainly the capability to run IDL on a personal laptop when away from Arcetri's LAN. I will briefly introduce the new features.
Maite Beltran (ESO)
The ESO Users' Committee Meeting 2017
I will summarize the ESO UC meeting that was held in Garching in May and also will discuss the main recommendations made by the Committee to ESO.
30/05/2017
Premiazione del Premio Magini 2016: Elisa Bortolas (OA-Padova)
Dynamics of Massive Black Hole Binaries in Galactic Merger Remnants
The coalescence of supermassive black-hole binaries has been studies through numerical simulations, confirming that most of these objects should melt into a single object within a few Gyr at most.
Marco Romoli (UniFI)
Exploring La Palma Starlight Reserve at Roque de los Muchachos
A bunch of astrophysics students of the University of Florence visited El Roque telescopes to learn how one of the most important observing sites for astrophysics works. They had also the opportunity of spending an observing night at the TNG acquiring data on extragalactic targets, selected by them and later analyzed during the classes of the course Complementi di Astronomia.
16/05/2017
Luciano Miglietta (logistics)
The new labs in Arcetri
A short update on the work in progress in the new laboratory area is actually due. The activity started in September 2016 and along the way the originally project has changed using all the area for the new lab. A new area for the mechanical workshop is currently under definition.
Carlo Baffa (teaching)
Hosting secondary school students at Arcetri
With the introduction of mandatory "alternanza Scuola Lavoro" the secondary school students need to attend 200 hours of off-school training or work experience. Thanks the generous collaboration of some of our colleagues, we can cooperate with some schools to use part of this time as an educational and professional guidance for the III and IV year students. This activity is hosted inside the Observatory and we will present some details.
Nicoletta Sanna (instrumentation)
Giano-B@TNG
Since April 2017 GIANO is finally offered to the community as originally designed: direct feeding without fibers. The incoming light is split by a dichroic to HARPS-N (visible) and GIANO (NIR), allowing the simultaneous use of the 2 high resolution spectrographs. The AOT36 TNG REM Call for Proposals is now open with deadline 19 May 2017.
04/04/2017
Luca Del Zanna (UniFI) pdf
Fast reconnection in relativistic plasmas
Reconnection in magnetically dominated plasmas is often invoked to explain sudden energy release in many high-energy astrophysics scenarios, though models typically fail to provide the required short timescales. Here we present the first simulations of the tearing instability in the framework of relativistic resistive MHD, leading to explosive events occurring on a few light crossing times of the current sheet length.
Francesca Brunetti (library) pdf
Scienza di carta: la comunicazione scientifica nei libri per bambini e ragazzi
Tratterò degli editori e delle modalità comunicative dei libri scientifici per bambini e ragazzi e ne discuterò la diffusione.
21/032017
Emanuele Nardini (AGN)
Transient iron fluorescence: new clues on the AGN disk/corona?
Our recent discovery of rapid Fe-K variability in the Seyfert galaxy Ark 120 poses several challenges to the commonly adopted X-ray emission paradigm in AGN. I will discuss some possible implications for the structure and properties of the disk/coronal system.
Sperello di Serego Alighieri (telescopes)
The future of the TNG
I will report on the workshop on "The mission and the scientific perspectives of TNG in the 2020 astrophysics" held in Padova on 1-3 March 2017.
07/03/2017
Ang Liu (extragalactic)
Searching for bulk motions in the intracluster medium of massive, merging clusters with Chandra CCD data
We search for bulk motions in the intracluster medium (ICM) of massive clusters showing evidence of an ongoing or recent major merger with spatially resolved spectroscopy in Chandra data. We find several cases where significant bulk motions are present in the ICM, including the famous Bullet cluster.
Filippo Mannucci (INAF)
News from INAF
The topics discussed during the last meeting of the INAF directors will be presented, especially about the ongoing process to write the new INAF charter. This talk will be in Italian.
21/02/2017
Guido Risaliti (UniFI)
Quasars as standard candles
The non-linear relation between the X-ray and UV luminosity in quasars provides a way to estimate their distances, and to build a Hubble Diagram covering the whole z=0-6 range. This diagram can be used to constrain the cosmological parameters and to test possible deviations from the standard Lambda-CDM model.
Linda Podio (star formation)
JWST capabilities and early science
I will briefly recall the JWST instrumentation and capabilities and the timeline and requirements for Early Science proposal submission. Then, I will present a couple of science cases in the field of star formation that will be proposed by the JEDI collaboration (JEts and Disks @Inaf) for the JWST ESR.
Sperello di Serego Alighieri (history of astronomy)
The reform of the chinese calendar at Galileo's time
The more than 3000 years old chinese calendar will be described, untill its last reform which happened in the first half of the 17th century following the advice of European Jesuit missionaries.
07/02/2017
Paolo Tozzi (outreach)
Our nights are better than your days
The programme for the Notti d'Estate 2017.
Alessio Turchi (software)
Apache Spark: how to stop worrying and love the data
A very short introduction to "Big Data" technologies and map-reduce paradigm. Apache Spark is a powerful tool that expands the map-reduce paradigm and simplifies the parallel approach to data processing.
Michele Perna (extragalactic)
Outflow incidence and dependence on AGN luminosity
The connection between the growth of super-massive black holes and the evolution of their host galaxies has been investigated analysing SDSS spectra of a large sample of X-ray detected AGNs. I will present some results regarding the nature and the fraction of outflowing gas in AGNs, as well as the nuclear conditions possibly at the origin of feedback phenomena.
24/01/2017
Luca Fini (technology)
The recent attack to our mail server
At the beginning of December 2016 our mailserver was practically put down for several days by a massive attack using a legitimate account with stolen password. I will present a brief analysis of what happened and what we could do to avoid it happening again.
Davide Fedele (planet formation)
ALMA reveals a new planetary system in the making
I will present new high angular resolution millimeter observations of the young protoplanetary system HD 169142 with ALMA. The data reveal a system made of multiple dust rings and gaps with a substantial drop of the gas density inside the dust gap. The resulting gas and dust surface densities hint at the presence of multiple planets shaping the disk structure via dynamical clearing and dust trapping.
Fabrizio Massi (telescopes)
TNG is 20 years old: what future?
A workshop on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo will be held in Padova on March 1-3, 2017. It is intended as a fundamental step towards a major change, introducing new ways of accessing the telescope, new scientific aims, and new rules for proposals.
06/12/2016
Francesco Fontani (star formation)
The magnetic field drives the fragmentation of massive star-forming clouds into individual stars
I will present ALMA observations at 0.25" resolution of a very young massive star-forming clump, IRAS 16061-5048c1, which clearly indicate that the clump fragmentation is dominated by the magnetic field, as suggested by theory.
Fabio Rossi (software)
Introduction to the Jupyter Notebook
It is an application which runs inside your browser, allowing you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and explanatory text, for applications like teaching, data analysis and reporting, experimenting with programming languages, prototyping software.
22/11/2016
Marco Padovani (music & astronomy)
The Resounding Universe
The immensity of the sky and the sparkling stars have inspired mankind from time immemorial and many scientists were music lovers or even musicians themselves: Galileo, Herschel, Einstein... I will highlight the peculiar and intriguing connection between music and astronomy.
Simone Esposito (instrumentation)
Next VLT instruments and adaptive optics
We briefly report about two new AO based VLT instruments planned for the VLT UT4 (the UT equipped with deformable secondary and lasers). Arcetri is technically involved in both and has already being allocated ~60 nights of GTO for one of them. Involving astronomers in the exploitations of such instruments is indeed mandatory and we would like to stimulate interests on these projects.
08/11/2016
Filippo Mannucci (instrumentation)
What will we do with MAORY/MICADO?
The first light of the E-ELT high-resolution camera MICADO fed by the AO system MAORY is expected in 2024. The MAORY science working group is starting to collect updated science cases to create a document on the science allowed by the new telescope. I will present the properties of the instrument and present the possibility for everyone of contributing to the process.
Mikkel Stockman (DARK, Copenhagen)
Counting Holes in the Universe: Statistics of Ly-a voids at z~2-4
Using VLT (UVES) and Keck (HIRES) high resolution quasar spectra (R~50.000) in the range 2 ≤ z ≤4, we compare the observational number of Lyman-α voids to expectations from recent hydrodynamical simulations by Graziano Rossi et al. (2014).
18/10/2016
Matilde Mingozzi (extragalactic)
Investigating the AGN-starburst connection in a nearby Seyfert galaxy
We have analyzed and modelled the CO emission of a nearby Seyfert galaxy, NGC 34, with the aim of understanding the ISM properties in terms of density, temperature and dominant radiation field. NGC 34 represents a galaxy "prototype", therefore our approach can be seen as a pathfinder for future studies.
Antonella Gasperini (outreach)
The "Notti d'Estate" 2016
We present a retrospective look at the Notti d'Estate in Arcetri: an overview and some qualitative and quantitative considerations about the public outreach events of the last summer.
Fabrizio Massi (instrumentation)
Observing with the Sardinia Radio Telescope: a visiting astronomer's account
The Sardinia Radio Telescope has come into operation and an Early Science Programme was run from February 1 to May 31, this year. I spent 3 days observing with the SRT at the end of May in the framework of the programme and this talk will be a brief account of those days from the point of view of a visiting astronomer.
04/10/2016
Giovanni Cresci (seminars)
ANY GIVEN THURSDAY: a survey on general seminars in Arcetri
We briefly review the results of the survey on the Thursday General Seminars, the plans for the new year, as well as some numbers and statistics on the previous seasons.
John Brucato (solar system)
The Sample Return Mission OSIRIS-REx
OSIRIS-REx was successfully launched into space on 8th September 2016 from Kennedy Space Center. OSIRIS-REx is traveling to Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid whose regolith may record the earliest history of our Solar System, it will collect and return samples back to Earth seeking answers to the questions that teach us about the history of the Sun and planets and the origin of life on Earth.
