Talk Dove nasce la luce - a caccia delle prime galassie dell'universo
8 October 2026
GIovanni Gandolfi (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma)
- 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
- In person : Bologna
- Society & Culture In Italian
Program
Studying the sky is like tracing a family tree: the farther we look, the further back in time we see. Thanks to this principle, astronomers search for the very first galaxies ever formed in the history of the cosmos, now observable with the James Webb Space Telescope: the earliest sketches of a cosmos that, much later, would paint masterpieces such as our own galaxy.
But not everything that looks primordial truly is. Cold brown dwarfs, rogue planets, and galaxies with enigmatic properties can perfectly mimic the signal of the universe’s first light. We will tell the story of this hunt for cosmic impostors, starting from some of the most extreme candidates discovered by our team—including “Capotauro,” named after the ancient name for the Bolognese mountain Corno alle Scale—to explore how astronomers estimate the distance to a cosmic object and why unmasking the impostors is the real challenge in understanding the history of the universe’s very first light.
Partners
INAF, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna
Speakers
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Giovanni Gandolfi
Post-Doc
Contacts
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Alessio Mucciarelli