CESARE BARBIERI Full Professor of Astronomy University of Padova Voice +39-(0)49-8278221 Fax +39-(0)49-8278245 Dipartimento di Astronomia Vicolo Osservatorio 2  35122 Padova (Italy) cesare.barbieri@unipd.it

Main Current Research Activities

• Responsibility for the design, construction, calibration and scientific operations of the Wide Angle Camera for the OSIRIS system of the cometary mission ROSETTA (the P.I. of Osiris being Dr. U. Keller, MPAe). The camera is characterized by an innovative two mirror optics (the primary being convex), large FoV(12x12 deg), extremely clean PSF and sophisticated baffling in order to detect faint gaseous features close to the bright cometary nucleus. The scientific activity is done inside the Departments of Astronomy, Physics and Geodesy and INAF Astronomical Observatory.
  The hardware activity (optical bench, thermal control, baffle, shutter, front cover, etc.), is supported by CISAS. Other collaborators are from the University of Venice for the baffle optical design.
  Funds are provided by the Italian Space Agency ASI.

•  Applications of Quantum Optics to astronomy in the frame of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELT) instrumentation. A study named Quanteye was done in collaboration with Prof. Dainis Dravins (Lund Observatory, Sweden) and researchers from the UPd Department of Information Engineering (see list of publication). Furthermore, a collaboration (QIPS) has been started with several European institutes and ESA, for quantum communications between ground and space stations.
  
  At the end of 2006 two new major projects have been financed:
  - PRIN 2006  for Astronomy to the Quantum limits.
  - Harrison, the application of time distributed by the GALILEO Satellite Navigation System.
  These activities will be performed until the end of 2008.

• ADAS: Asiago-DLR Asteroid Survey.The 67/92 cm Schmidt telescope at Cima Ekar has been equipped with a 50 arcmin CCD camera optimized for the discovery of Near Earth Objects and asteroids. This activity, done through a convention between the Astronomical Observatory of Padova and DLR Berlin (Dr. S. Mottola, G. Hahn, M. Hoffmann), has lead to the discovery of several hundreds new asteroids, 45 of which have been numbered (situation at 2005).
  For a description of ADASm see Paper SAIt 2003, presented in April 2003.

• Digital Archives: a collaboration with several Italian Observatories and the Specola Vaticana has lead to the digitization of the archive of plates of the Asiago Astrophysical Observatory, and of the Castelgandolfo plates. See The Digitization of the Photographic Archives of the Italian Astronomical Observatories (June 2005), where reference is made to some published papers. FITS files (size ~270 MB, 1600 dpi 14 bit) can be obtained via FTP on request .
  The log-books of all the Asiago telescopes direct image observations and of the Schmidt 67/92cm and Schmidt 40/50cm objective prism observations are available at the Asiago Archive pages including an on-line query page for the digitized plates.

• Other activities in Solar System exploration (see conference Planets Moons and Minor Bodies and publications):

1. Spectrophotometry of asteroids
2. Mass transfer among the moons of the outer planets
3. Search of Trojans of the outer planets on images of the ASTROVIRTEL Archive
4. High resolution spectroscopic studies of the Na atmosphere of Mercury with the TNG.

Main Past Activities

• Construction of the 182cm telescope at Cima Ekar
• Hardware elements for the Halley Multicolour Camera on board the ESA GIOTTO Mission
• Membership in the Hubble Space Telescope Faint Object Camera ESA Team
• New dome of the Schmidt Telescope at Cima Ekar (Asiago)
• Construction of the 3.5m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG ProJect Page)

For all details see Curriculum Vitae (PDF).