London – The Department of Physics and Chemistry of the University of Palermo has been published in the journal Nature Communications thanks to an article on the transit of Venus. The magazine called it “of particular newsworthiness”. The study was carried out by Fabio Reale, Angelo F. Gambino, Giuseppina Micela, Antonio Maggio, Thomas Widemann and Giuseppe Piccioni. According to the study, the size of Venus changes with the wavelength of the light used to measure it. In particular, the measurement of the radius of the planet and its atmosphere (the radius) performed during the 2012 transit using X-ray bands and the ultraviolet extremes gave values from 70 to 100 km bigger than those measured with the optical band. (9colonne)
