Hello!

My name is Vito and I’m a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Padova, Italy. Sometimes I still don’t realize that I’m studying astronomy in the same place where Galileo made his major discoveries!

The main focus of my thesis is the detection of substellar companions around young B stars through high-contrast direct imaging, and the statistical analysis related to their occurrence: different models for giant planet formation predict different properties of the derived populations, and this is especially true for massive stars, which have never been studied in depth. To answer these questions, my team is actively participating to the BEAST survey based on SPHERE@VLT.

But, you know, things have been a real mess in the last 15 months! Actually, due to closing of Chilean telescopes and the postponement of >95% of the original schedule, my main project has become so elusive to be potentially one of the best candidates for non-baryonic dark matter.

Soooo, during the last year I’ve been studying the environment where these giant stars dwell with the aim to develop kinematic ways to constrain their age, comparing the results with the usual dating techniques, and putting all together in a Python tool.

I’m looking forward to begin this School and to meet everyone 😁