>>>> CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT (IN ENGLISH) <<<<

Dopo esser stato abbonato ad Astronomy and Sky & Telescope per quasi vent’anni, ho deciso che molto probabilmente rinnoverò l’abbonamento triennale a Sky and Telescope che scadrà a marzo del 2011. Cliccate sul link qua sotto per saperne di più!

I haven't posted anything on this blog for a long time. For once, I come back with something that  is not related to my main hobby, astronomy. As was the case for many other people, my vacation plans got screwed up by the Eyjafjallajökull icelandic volcano spewing a cloud of ash that caused thousands of flights in most Europe to be grounded.

The entity responsible for issuing periodic updates and forecast on the evolution of the ash cloud is the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center of the UK Met Office.  I managed to turn my missed vacation into a programming opportunity, by writing a very simple java program that turns these bulletins into KML files, which can be visualized using Google Earth's advanced 3-D features:


Click on the link below ("Read more...") for the full story!

Digital composite of solar eclipse at totality (from 28 frames with different exposure times; 600-mm refractor). Pictures by Emmanuele Sordini, processing by Lorenzo Comolli

On January 4, 2009, it was very cold, but crystal clear and sunny. I could not pass up this opportunity, and decided to go snowwalking with some friends on top of Monte Penna, one of Ligurian Apennines' most famous and prominent peaks (el. 1735 m); the conditions were really favorable also for trying to put together a panoramic view of the gorgeous landscape we enjoyed from up there.

This trip turned out to be one of the most beautiful snow walks I've ever done in my life. Click on the link below to read the full report!

On December 21, 2008, I went on a short observing session, which was hautned by several problems with my setup. However, I did manage to pull off a picture of M1, aka the Crab Nebula, with my Vixen refractor and my Canon EOS 350D digital reflex. This object is just a smudge of light of about 7 x 5 arcminutes across, so it's really small compared with the whole frame, which I had to heavily crop. Here is the result:


Some info on the picture: Vixen ED103 SWT refractor, Canon EOS 350D DSLR, 11 x 10-minute individual exposures, 3 dark frames, autoguiding with the MagZero MZ-5m and an 80-mm guide scope. Processing done with DeepSkyStacker and Adobe Photoshop CS3. Zenital sky brightness measured with SQM-L: 20.60.
This shot is plagued by quite a few defects (namely, bad focusing and tracking), but it can make do as my first attempt at shooting M1. More (and hopefully better ones) will come!

Ok, I know: I should have written this post more than a month ago. But I’ve been very busy lately and I have to process my backlog of work, including new updates to this website. After all, they say “better late than never”...
So, here we go: the 2008 edition of the Devoxx conference (formely JavaPolis: by the way, why the heck did Sun have this name changed?) was held (as usual) in Antwerp, Belgium, from December 10th to 12th, after the two-day Devoxx University.
This was my second time at Devoxx, after 2006 when I had managed to take part as a speaker (having held a BoF together with my ol’ pal Fabrizio Giudici ).

Click on the link below for the full report.

The last weekend of September, I took part in the first edition of the Caprauna Star Party, which took place in the Ligurian Alps, the initial stretch of the Alpine range which is also the lowest and closest to the seaside.

The nice venue and the top-notch organization of the star party more than made up for the not so exceptional weather. As for my “imaging loot”, since I had joined in at the very last moment, I hadn’t had enough time to better plan my session, so I improvised and went with two deep-sky classics: M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) and M45 (the Pleiades Cluster). Click on the link below for more details and high-resolution pictures!