Massimo Luciani

The 4MOST instrument mounted on the VISTA telescope (Photo AIP/A. Saviauk)

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On October 18, the 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), mounted on ESO’s VISTA telescope in Chile, saw its so-called first light in its initial observation tests. With its system made of 2,436 optical fibers, 4MOST can capture light from a field of view with a diameter of up to 2.5 degrees, which in practice translates to an area equivalent to 16 times the size of the full Moon. The light is directed into three spectrographs that divide it into color components in the visible light range, providing individual spectra. This will enable a cosmological survey encompassing 25 million objects in the first five years of its operation.

Super Heavy 15 and Starship 38 at liftoff (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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It was the afternoon in the USA when SpaceX conducted a new flight test of its Super Heavy rocket and Starship prototypes, launched from its base in Boca Chica, Texas. This is the 11th test involving the entire system of Elon Musk’s company, which is supposed to revolutionize space travel with an unprecedented transport capacity and being totally reusable. They are advanced prototypes with the Super Heavy identified as Booster 15, at its second flight, and the Starship Block 2 identified as Starship 38 or Ship38 or simply S38.

An optical-frequency image from the Legacy Surveys overlaid with radio emissions from the LoTSS survey, revealing the area of ​​the odd radio circle RAD J131346.9+500320

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the discovery of three odd radio circles, including a pair cataloged as RAD J131346.9+500320. The discovery was made by examining data collected during the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) thanks to the collaboration of citizen scientists in the RAD@home program. A team of researchers examined these objects, and in particular, what appears to be a pair of intersecting rings, concluding that they’re the most distant discovered so far and that their emissions are the most powerful detected from these still poorly-known cosmic objects.

The cosmic wave in red and blue, with stars above the galactic disk in red and the ones below it in blue

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics” reports the results of a study that provides evidence that a sort of giant cosmic wave is crossing the Milky Way, propagating from the center outward from the galactic disk, causing a corrugation. A team of researchers led by Eloisa Poggio of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe to map the motions of thousands of young giant stars and Cepheids within the corrugation, reconstructing the wave that generates them. The cause may be the aftermath of an ancient collision with a dwarf galaxy, but follow-up studies are needed to assess this and other possible explanations.

The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), and Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) space probe blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket (Image NASA+)

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A little while ago, three space probes were launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center. After approximately one hour and 23 minutes, they successfully separated from the rocket’s final stage within about 13 minutes and set off on a course that will take them to the area known as L1 (Lagrange 1), about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, where they will begin their scientific work studying various aspects of space weather.