November 27, 2009
This post is about the terror brought about by astronomy. Just personal considerations and feelings: nothing to be taken very seriously and born from the desire of sharing with others (who might feel the same way but never dared to […]
November 26, 2009
I realized that I never wrote about my scientific research (which actually is one of the two sides of my professional life, the other being my functional duties for the European Organization for Astronomical Research). As you may have noticed […]
November 23, 2009
This has been an “all-astronomy” week-end. It started when I got back from the office. I had promised my kids we would have watched Jupiter and its satellites early in the evening. And so we did. In the days before […]
November 19, 2009
I occupy my free time doing very different things. One of them is archaeoastronomy. There will be a post on this topic, which I found quite intriguing (meanwhile you can find some more info here). One of the most common […]
November 18, 2009
The 30th of November is approaching, and this brings back to me memories of the time when I first read some excerpts of The Dialogue on the Great World Systems and the Starry Messenger. This must have happened during my […]
November 17, 2009
Last year, while spending a nicely warm morning in Northern Italy, I got a phone call from Avik Harutyunyan, a post-doc working in La Palma at the Italian National Telescope “Galileo”. He was quite excited. The discovery of a bright […]
November 16, 2009
Although not among the core activities of a professional astronomer, popularizing science to the public is a fundamental task. Since a researcher is not necessarily a good communicator (you can be an excellent piano player, but you might be absolutely […]
November 10, 2009
I am working on somthing more substantial for this blog. The outcome of this activity should appear soon. Meanwhile, asked by Helen Gavaghan, editor of Science, People and Politics, I have written a review of “The Age of Wonder” by […]
September 3, 2009
After attending the “Stellar Death” conference in Santa Barbara-California (I will report about it in a forthcoming post), I am now kind of relaxing in north-eastern Italy (I will report on this as well, lots of interesting stuff). Tomorrow evening, […]