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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Feb 14, 2024 | 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. AGILE, built by ASI with contributions from INAF and INFN, Italian universities and industry, has been a unique and hugely successful space program in the landscape of Italian space activities. Observations acquired by the satellite were received on the ground by ASI's Luigi Broglio Space Center station in Malindi, Kenya. The data were then sent to the Telespazio Control Center through the ASINet operational network, and then to the ASI Space Science Data Center in Rome, which is responsible for all scientific operations: from management, analysis and archiving to distribution of the data and related catalogs accessible to the international community. AGILE's scientific output consists of more than 800 bibliographic references, including more than 160 refereed articles and 12 mission catalogs published through January 2024 (also available as interactive SSDC webpages here). AGILE's major scientific discoveries include: the first detection of galactic cosmic ray sources in Supernovae remnants, evidence of extremely rapid particle acceleration from the Crab Nebula with a rapidly rotating pulsar at its center (Bruno Rossi Prize 2012), and the detection of transient gamma-ray emission associated with relativistic jet emission from the galactic black hole binary system Cygnus X-3. During its operational life, AGILE has also revealed many transient events of cosmic origin such as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), searched for high-energy emission associated to neutrino events and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), detected thousands of solar flares, as well as events of terrestrial origin such as Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs). AGILE has contributed with a leading role in the search for possible counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) sources, and AGILE's follow-up observations have provided the fastest response and most significant upper limits above 100 MeV on all GW events detected by the Ligo-Virgo-Kagra collaboration to date. With the AGILE's re-entry, the in-orbit operational phase comes to a close, but a new phase of scientific work on the satellite legacy data archive opens: AGILE may still hold future surprises. Additional links: COMUNICATO STAMPA CONGIUNTO ASI-INAF-INFN (in italian): ASI news, INAF news
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Jan 11, 2024 | IXPE receives the 2024 Bruno Rossi Prize We are pleased to report that the 2024 Bruno Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society has been awarded to Martin Weisskopf, Paolo Soffitta and the IXPE team "for their development of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer whose novel measurements advance our understanding of particle acceleration and emission from astrophysical shocks, black holes and neutron stars". IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) is a joint NASA-ASI mission that was launched in December 2021 under NASA's Small Explorer (SMEX) program. The mission exploits the polarization state of light from astrophysical sources in the X-ray energy band with a polarization sensitivity improvement of two orders of magnitude over the previous polarimeters obtained with X-ray polarization detectors provided by ASI. Italy collaborates on the primary scientific mission goals with a team of scientists of ASI, INAF, INFN and Roma Tre University. The Italian participation includes also the provision by ASI of the “Luigi Broglio” ground station (Malindi, Kenya) and of the Space Science Data Center (SSDC). The SSDC has provided the Calibration Database (CALDB) and has designed and developed, in collaboration with INAF and INFN, the scientific software modules that are part of the Instrument Pipeline. The software is written in FTOOLS style and is fully integrated in the HEASoft package maintained and distributed by NASA/HEASARC. The Instrument Pipeline IXPE FTOOLS are run at the Science Operation Center (NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center) to generate the official IXPE scientific data archive. This is the 6th time that a space mission for which the SSDC plays an important role has been awarded a Rossi Prize, after BeppoSAX in 1998, Swift in 2007, Fermi in 2011, AGILE in 2012 and NuSTAR in 2015. Link (in Italian): ASI news
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