The international event to take stock of LGWA, the ambitious project to understand the complex volcanic processes that precede and follow an eruption
The international workshop dedicated to the project has recently ended Lunar Gravitational Wave Antenna (LGWA), at the historic Palazzo della Cultura in Catania.
The event, of international importance, was organized by the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and by the Gran Sasso Science Institute ().
The workshop, which saw international experts from different scientific disciplines interact, had the focus of discussing the project "Lunar Gravitational Wave Antenna (LGWA)", proposed in 2020 to the European Space Agency (ESA) and supported by a consortium of almost 200 partners, including INGV.
The project involves the installation of 4 sensors in a permanent shadow area of the Moon for the observation of oscillations in frequency bands inaccessible by other gravitational wave detectors, providing a notable contribution to the study of supernovae and black holes but also to better understanding of the internal structure of the satellite.
The workshop also included a program of excursions to the summit of Etna, useful for recognizing the lunar analogues in which tests of the instrumentation and methodologies could be carried out before the launch of the instruments, and an extraordinary experience at altitude at the Serra la Ship of the Catania Astrophysical Observatory which hosts, among other things, a multiparametric station for monitoring the volcano.
Illustration and analysis of landforms and terrains, looking for sites that can be used as analogues of lunar soil.
Photo by Antonio Torrisi.
Climb onto the craters of the 2002 eruption.
Photo by Antonio Torrisi.