The ESA Hera Planetary Defence mission was sucessfully launched from Cape Cañaveral in October 7, 2024, with the goal of studying in detail the near-Earth binary asteroid system (65803) Didymos-Dimorphos[1]. The smaller of the two objects, asteroid Dimorphos, was impacted by the NASA DART spacecraft in September 26, 2022, as part of the first test

Massive protoclusters at z ∼ 1.5 ‑ 4, the peak of the cosmic star formation history, are key to understanding the formation mechanisms of massive galaxies in today's clusters. However, studies of protoclusters at these high redshifts remain limited, primarily due to small sample sizes and heterogeneous selection criteria. For this work, we

IntroductionThe C≡N functional group (hereafter CN) can be incorporated into a diverse range of molecular structures, ranging from simpler cyanides like HCN to semi-refractory salts like NH4+OCN- and larger and more complex polymeric refractory material. In astrophysical settings, CN-bearing compounds form and evolve through thermal, photochemical

Massive young clusters with rich populations of high-mass stars are ideal laboratories to explore their evolutionary paths. Despite being the most prominent cluster in the Perseus-arm Cas OB8 association, NGC 663 remains comparatively little studied. We present a comprehensive investigation of its properties, integrating astrometric, photometric

To warn about potential asteroid or comet impacts, we must first observe and discover these objects through dedicated NEO surveys. Most current and planned surveys are ground-based and use visible light, but they face limitations like weather dependency, limited sky visibility, difficulty detecting at low galactic latitudes, and inability to

Near-infrared imaging is a powerful technique in observational astronomy, but the bright background – primarily from the Earth's atmosphere – makes the detection of faint features particularly challenging. To recover low surface brightness (LSB) structures in such data, we present NASIM (Near-infrared Automated low Surface brightness reduction In