INAF, the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, is Italy's national research institute for astronomy and astrophysics. Its observatories and institutes are spread across Italian cities, and several of them run telescopes of their own. Among them are the Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio (OAS) in Bologna and the historic astronomical observatory of Padova.
OAS Bologna was formed in January 2018 and runs the 152 cm Cassini telescope at Loiano, about 37 km from Bologna. The Padova observatory began in 1767 in a converted medieval tower, La Specola, which now houses its museum. It became an independent institution in 1923 and part of INAF in 2002. It also runs the 182 cm Copernico telescope at Asiago, which took its first photograph on 8 March 1973.
Where I come in
From September 2025 to March 2026 I was a visiting PhD student at INAF-OAS Bologna, in Andrea Miglio's group, where I built simulation pipelines for the proposed HAYDN mission. During that secondment I also commuted from Bologna to the Padova observatory, which is listed as one of my affiliations on the TASC10/KASC17 poster.