“Io nun capisco manco 'o mare. Nun saccio pecche’ a varca galleggia, pecche’ 'o viento 'e tempesta fa onda e mare e polvere 'n terra. Campo a mare da che 'sso nato e nun 'o capisco. Eppure che e’? e’ sulamente mare, acqua e sale, ma e’ funno, funno assai."

Tu, mio, Erri De Luca

qui fuori
e' radunata la materia scura
di cui non siamo fatti

L'intravisto, Elisa Biagini

Or, as Woody Allen said: "I'm astounded by people who want to know the Universe when its hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."

I am currently a staff research scientist at the INAF Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio (OAS) in Bologna, and Research Associate at INFN Bologna.

In the past years, I have been Fellow at ESO, Garching (2001-2004) and Research Associate in the X-ray Group headed by Andy Fabian at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge (1998-2001), where I have also taken my PhD in Astronomy (1995-1998; see Fabian’s PhD genealogy here).

Personal Profile (CV, Papers)

I work on the formation and evolution of Groups and Clusters of Galaxies, focusing my activities on two main topics:

(i) the physical properties of the Intra-Cluster Medium from the core to the outskirts where mass accretion is occurring;

(ii) the use of Galaxy Clusters as cosmological probes through the measurement of their baryonic and dark matter content.

I have been one of the responsible for the activities of the Scientific Working Group on Galaxy Clusters that studied the feasibility of the next generation of X-ray telescopes, from EDGE to IXO and Athena, that has been selected on June 2014 as second Large mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan (launch foreseen in ~2030) to address the science theme The Hot and Energetic Universe by answering two fundamental questions, (1) How does ordinary matter assemble into the large-scale structures we see today? and (2) How do black holes grow and shape the Universe?

Since 2011, I am part of the Athena community, initially as member of the Science Definition Team, then (2013-2020) as co-chair of the Topical Panel 1.2 on the “Astrophysics of galaxy groups and clusters”, and (2020-2024) as co-chair of SWG 1.

I am also involved in the following international projects:

CHEX-MATE (PI)

CLASH (external collaborator)

CLASH-VLT (co-I)

XXL (member)

X-COP (co-I)

Euclid (co-lead of WP7 Astrophysics of Clusters of Galaxies; member of the Galaxy Clusters SWG & OU-LE3 WP)

SKA (co-author of the White Papers)

Since 2014, Mauro Sereno and I are carrying out the “Comparing Masses in Literature” (CoMaLit; resources) project in which we produce an exhaustive analysis of the scaling relations involving the published values of the galaxy cluster masses by applying a general method that allows to infer the mass and the redshift dependence, and the time-evolving intrinsic scatter of the mass–observable relations.

Press Releases & Astronomical Pictures of the Day

of work in which I was involved