The delivery process of the flight model of the Instrument Control Unit (ICU) of the PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) was successfully completed at the beginning of December 2024. The unit, built by Kaiser Italia, was shipped to the prime contractor OHB München (Satellite Prime Integrator) after authorization by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Designed and built by a team that includes INAF...

The La Palma Interferometry project (LPI) is an innovative initiative in intensity interferometry within the visible light range, based on a system of Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) sensors. In its first phase, the project plans to conduct observations with the 3.6-meter Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG). The TNG will contribute to the development of a cryogenic dewar and the characterization of the SPAD-based sensor. This instrument will be temporarily installed as a guest instrument...

A recent study within the GAPS collaboration (Global Architecture of Planetary Systems ) used two of the instruments permanently mounted on Telescopio Nazionale Galileo to study the atmospheres of the extrasolar planet TOI-5398 b. Namely, HARPS-N (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher in North hemisphere) and GIANO-B (near-IR high-resolution echelle spectrograph of the TNG) were used in the GIARPS configuration to characterize the atmospheric properties of TOI-5398 b, a warm Saturn...

The Radcliffe wave is a recently discovered filamentary gas structure that encompasses most of the star-forming regions in the solar neighbourhood. Its spatial structure and kinematic properties have been studied in sufficient detail in the last years. However, no study has characterized it from a chemical point of view, to investigate its nature and the composition of the natal cloud that gave rise to it. Now, for the first time since its discovery in 2020, a team of astronomers from INAF...

On October 22 and 23, CodyTrip ‐ an innovative online school trip format created by Alessandro Bogliolo from the University of Urbino ‐ touched down on the Island of Stars, La Palma. CodyTrip engages tens of thousands of participants each year in exciting educational experiences that unveil the wonders of various places, cultures, traditions, and knowledge. More than 40,000 individuals from Italy joined the virtual journey to the volcanic island, renowned for hosting the world's largest...

An international team of astronomers has recently announced the discovery of a new exoplanet around the Barnard's star, the nearest isolated star to the Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which is at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just a little over three Earth days. The team's observations also suggest the existence of three other exoplanet candidates, in different orbits around the star. Located just six light-years away, Barnard's Star is the second closest star system...

A new study based on Chandra and TNG data shades light on the distant galaxy cluster PSZ2 G282.28+49.94. Discovered at microwave wavelengths in the Planck all-sky survey, this object attracted the interest of astronomers due to the cometary-like shape of its intracluster medium (ICM), as inferred from X-ray data (see Fig. 1). The Chandra data allowed the characterization of the thermodynamical properties of the ICM, while the spectroscopic data taken with DOLoRes@TNG were crucial to study the...

Ten young TESS transiting planet-hosting GK stars were observed with the HARPS-N spectrograph (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher in North hemisphere) installed at Telescopio Nazionale Galileo within the Global Architecture of Planetary Systems (GAPS) programme. The aim of the study was to derive stellar atmospheric parameters and elemental abundances of 18 chemical elements in a homogeneous and accurate way through methods based on spectral line equivalent widths and spectral...