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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



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



Nov 07, 2023

Euclid's first images

Today, the ESA’s Euclid space mission has revealed its first full-colour images obtained combining observations from the visible and near infrared instruments.

These five images illustrate Euclid's full potential, from bright stars to faint galaxies. Its observations will cover one third of the sky remaining extremely detailed, even when zooming in on distant galaxies.

Here at SSDC, we have been working on the development of the software used to process the images observed in the near infrared.

For more details see ESA web page and ESA YouTube channel.



Oct 10, 2023

Gaia Focused Product released on 10 October 2023!

Waiting for Gaia DR4 release, expected not before the end of 2025, and just a few months from Gaia 10th launch anniversary (19 December 2023), the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is releasing a juicy subset of new data focused on specific subjects.
In particular, this release consists of 5 data products:
  1. Astrometry and photometry from engineering images taken in Omega Centauri high source density region.
    The publication consists mainly of:
    • Astrometric information (position, parallax and proper motion) for 526,457 new Gaia sources as derived from the Service Interface Function (SIF) images (with 130 additional sources with positions only).
    • Photometric information (mean G magnitude and flux) for these same 526,587 sources as derived from the SIF images.
  2. Extended radial velocity epoch data for Long Period Variables.
    The publication consists mainly of:
    • A table with the epoch radial velocity data points for a sub-set of variable stars.
    • Statistical parameters of radial velocity time series for these long-period variables.
  3. Diffuse Interstellar Bands from aggregated RVS spectra.
    The publication consists mainly of:
    • A table of fitted Diffuse Interstellar Band parameters together with the uncertainties of the DIB at 862.1 nm and 864.8 nm for each voxel (volume pixel) which is defined according to the equatorial coordinates and the distance.
    • A spectra table containing the stacked Interstellar Medium spectra for each voxel which is defined according to the galactic coordinates and the distance.
  4. The first results of quasars' environment analysis for gravitational lenses search.
    The publication consists mainly of:
    • A table of 4.8 million sources (named components), based on an analysis of the observations in the neighbourhood of a list of 3.8 million quasar candidates. This table provides the mean astrometry and mean onboard photometry of the sources.
    • The analysis of this table by several artificial intelligence algorithms led to the selection of a list of 381 gravitational lens candidates that are presented in the associated Gaia Collaboration paper. The 4.8 million sources with their scores to be a lens are available at CDS.
    • A table of individual epoch observations linked to their corresponding source (component), with their celestial coordinates and onboard magnitudes.
    • A table of individual epoch observations classified as outliers and rejected by our clustering analysis, with their celestial coordinates and onboard magnitudes.
  5. Updated astrometry for Solar System objects.
    The publication consists mainly of:
    • Updated epoch astrometry of the Solar System objects from Gaia's Data Release 3.
    • Orbits of the Solar System Objects from Gaia's Data Release 3 computed with 66 months of data instead of 34 months.
Most of these data can be queried from GaiaPortal using the "Gaia Only Query" tab.
Diffuse Interstellar Bands data and Lens Catalogue Names can be downloaded as a single file through the "Gaia DR3 --> DataModel and Statistics" tab.
Since Solar System Objects data are not included in our GaiaPortal, updated astrometry for Solar System objects can be accessed through the Gaia ESA Archive.

Further information:
For further information about Gaia FPR please refer to this page.
Gaia FPR related papers are available here.



Jun 06, 2023

NASA-ASI IXPE space mission extended for 20 months

The NASA Program Scientist and NASA Astrophysics Director have signed the extension memo and funding for the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite mission, a NASA+ASI, US and Italian, bilateral Small Explorer (SMEX) mission.
The IXPE space mission will be extended by 20 months by NASA, with a General Observer program from 2024 February through 2025 September. IXPE will be evaluated at the next NASA Senior Review of Operating Missions, for extension beyond that date.
NASA will release the Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for the IXPE Guest Observer (GO) program in the next weeks.

This goal has been obtained thanks to the IXPE international collaboration that has made, the IXPE mission, a successful satellite, both technically and scientifically.
IXPE has explored, up to now, the polarization state of the X-ray photons (2-8 keV energy band) emitted by several classes of compact astronomical objects with extreme gravitational, electric and magnetic fields.

Italy is collaborating on the 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 instrument Calibration Database (CALDB) and has designed and developed, in collaboration with INAF and INFN, the scientific software modules (IXPE FTOOLs) that are part of the Instrument Pipeline, while is contributing in the scientific exploitation of the incoming data (in particular in the topic of active galactic nuclei and blazars and multifrequency follow-up) and in further developments of the analysis software.
The IXPE Team (INAF, INFN, ASI staff) of SSDC is composed by Matteo Perri, Simonetta Puccetti, Riccardo Middei, Marco Laurenti and Stefano Ciprini.

Some links: