May 23, 2024 | Euclid: Five new amazing images ESA's Euclid space mission has released five new images that show different and amazing aspects of our Universe, in space and in time, from star forming regions to very distant galaxy systems. The five targets shown here are (clockwise from top left) the Dorado Group, Messier 78, NGC 6744, Abell 2764, and Abell 2390. This new set of images accompanies the first phases of Euclid's scientific main survey, which aims at answering the biggest open questions of cosmology and revealing the dark side of our Universe. The quality of these images, and in particular the level of detail that can be achieved, demonstrates that Euclid has the potential to fulfill its ambitious scientific goals. These images complement the publication of a series of technical papers, which present the first scientific results and describe all the aspects of the preparation and commissioning of the instruments mounted on the Euclid space telescope.
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Apr 23, 2024 | HERMES First Light On Board SpIRIT! The University of Melbourne, the Italian Space Agency, the Australian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics have announced the successful scientific operations of the HERMES instrument on board the SpIRIT satellite. The HERMES payload successfully collected light particles known as photons during a brief observation lasting about 10 minutes – a significant milestone astronomers call “first light”. HERMES scientific data are received, processed and archived at the ASI Space Science Data Center (SSDC). SSDC also developed the scientific software for data calibration and cleaning and hosts the Science Operation Center (SOC) of HERMES. ASI Press release: https://www.asi.it/2024/04/la-prima-luce-di-hermes-a-bordo-di-spirit INAF Press release: https://www.media.inaf.it/2024/04/23/prima-luce-hermes
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Apr 22, 2024 | First release of Mini-EUSO Earth emission data in the Ultra Violet range We are pleased to announce the first release of Mini-EUSO UV Earth emission data. Mini-EUSO is a wide field of view UV camera operating from the International Space Station since 2019. Goal of this experiment is the understanding of the experimental conditions in view of future ultra-high-energy cosmic ray observatories from space. Mini-EUSO acquires data at night-time between -51 and +51 degrees of latitude with a time resolution of 2.5µs and with single-photon counting capability. We present here the integrated emission measured over 1.5 years (from Nov. 2019 to May 2021), in terms of average photon counts per frame [Remote sensing of environment, 284 (2023) 113336]. Three data sets are presented: World, Europe and North Africa and North America, each of them containing data from a specific geographical area and with a specific spatial resolution. Data can be downloaded in different formats: .txt, .png and .kmz, the latter being compatible with the implementation in tools like Google Maps®. An interactive tool is available to select subsamples of such data. Users can select intervals in latitude, longitude, maximum and minimum count rates and visualize, directly on the web interface, the resulting image. For each selected sample the corresponding data sets can be downloaded in the above-mentioned format. We encourage the community to use this tool for scientific and educational purposes. Feedbacks are highly appreciated.
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Apr 15, 2024 | SSDC SED Builder opens up to polarimetric information We are pleased to announce an improved version (v5.0) of the SED Builder, the SSDC web tool designed to build and handle the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of astrophysical sources. In addition to the large amount of available features and plotting options to analyze SED's properties, the tool is now able to display the polarimetric information, that is both angle and degree of the polarization of the radiation as a function of the photon energy. This is carried out selecting the new "Polarization plot" option, with two additional graphs for angle and degree of polarization appearing over the main graph with the SED, all of these sharing the X axis that corresponds to the energy of the radiation. The possibility of building a polarization plot is currently exploited in the X-ray energy band, using published data from the IXPE mission that have been accurately collected at SSDC for this purpose, and is planned to be expanded to other bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, for which catalogs with polarimetric information is available. The SSDC SED Builder provides open access to data from catalogs and from specific publications. If you use any of these data sets in a publication, please make sure to give proper credit to the papers and/or the external services from which data have been taken. Detailed credit information can be retrieved by clicking the “Data citation policy” button present on the SED Builder webpage. If your research benefits from the use of SSDC services, we would appreciate the following acknowledgement: "Part of this work is based on online services provided by the ASI-SSDC."
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