* Astronomy

The Italian instrument, launched on 14 September, has obtained the first images of helium in the Sun's corona
For the first time, a telescope has trained its eyes on the Sun and managed to photograph the helium emissions that burst from the corona of our star. The credit for this achievement goes to SCORE, (Sounding-rocket Coronagraphic Experiment), the Italian instrument for studying the Sun's external atmosphere, which was successfully launched (after various postponements due to technical and meteorological problems) on board a NASA rocket from the White Sands Missile Range base in New Mexico on 14 September. The mission, part of the HERSCHEL programme (HElium Resonance Scattering in the Corona and HELiosphere, homonymous with the ESA infrared telescope), is the fruit of collaboration between ASI and NASA and was developed in Italy by research groups from the INAF-Astronomical Observatory and ALTEC in Turin, and the Universities of Florence and Pavia.

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