On Friday 17 May at 9.30 the astrophysicist and popularizer Gianluca Masi will propose a fascinating “Journey into the Universe: from the Earth to the edges of the Cosmos”. The initiative, organized by the municipal administration on the initiative of the Mayor Riccardo Mastrangeli, will be held at the Vittoria municipal theater (via Amendola) and will see students from the higher education institutions of the capital as guests.
The starry sky has always been a central element of man’s emotional and rational experience. Over the course of centuries and millennia, through the careful observation of its phenomena, the firmament has revealed its mechanisms, allowing us to better understand who we are and where we are.
The Earth, our planet, a celestial body itself, is the ideal starting point of the journey proposed by Gianluca Masi and which, by pushing the gaze towards increasingly remote regions, enhances the extraordinary beauty of the Cosmos and the charm of the physical laws that they govern it.
Planets, stars, nebulae and galaxies will parade before our eyes, precious elements of a story that describes the birth and evolution of the universe itself and which invites us to search billions of light years away, in search of age-old answers: who we are, where we are and why we are here.
A sky and a space that no longer belong only to our imagination, but which become concrete, ambitious objectives for our future, when we will regularly fly from the Earth to the Moon, up to Mars. An imminent scenario, in which young people will be protagonists, explorers of those frontiers that only two centuries ago seemed unattainable and which today, thanks to the tenacity of many women and men, are closer every day.
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Gianluca Masi was born in Frosinone and raised in Ceccano. Graduated in Physics, astrophysics specialization, at the “La Sapienza” University, he obtained the title of PhD in Astronomy at the “Tor Vergata” University. He has published around 1000 professional contributions, has discovered dozens of asteroids, numerous variable stars, and is the co-discoverer of three extrasolar planets and the transient ASASSN-15lh, among the brightest supernovae ever identified. In 2006 he founded the Virtual Telescope project. His scientific and photographic contributions appear regularly on Ansa, BBC, CNN, Newsweek, New York Times, RAI and other prestigious national and foreign media, radio and TV. He has held numerous conferences both in Italy and abroad. He actively deals with the relationship between the science of the sky and the world of art, also dedicating himself intensely to photography. Among the numerous awards received, the asteroid (21795) was named “Masi” by the International Astronomical Union for its scientific merits, it won the “Shoemaker NEO Grant” from the Planetary Society, the “Tacchini Prize” from the Italian Astronomical Society and the “Ruggieri Award” of the Italian Amateur Astronomers Union. Coordinator for Italy of Asteroid Day and Astronomers Without Borders, he is a member of the International Astronomical Union and the European Astronomical Society. He is associated with the National Institute of Astrophysics and Ambassador of the “Dark Skies for All” project of the International Astronomical Union. He is a scientific curator at the Planetarium of Rome.
