After delivering its sample capsule to Earth, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft started its extended mission to perform a flyby of asteroid 2001 CC 21 in 2026 and rendezvous with asteroid 1998 KY 26 in 2031. During the extended mission, the optical navigation camera (ONC) of Hayabusa2 will play an important role in navigation and science observations, but

Zodiacal light (ZL) is sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) at optical wavelengths. The spatial distribution of IDPs in the Solar System may hold an important key to understanding the evolution of the Solar System and material transportation within it. The number density of IDPs can be expressed as n (r ) ∼r -α , and the

Calibration of pixel values is a fundamental step for accurate measurements in astronomical imaging. In astronomical jargon this is known as estimating zero-point magnitude. Here, we introduce a newly added script in GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro) version 0.20 for the zero-point magnitude estimation, named: astscript-zero-point. The script

Diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are absorption features seen in optical and infrared spectra of stars and extragalactic objects that are probably caused by large and complex molecules in the galactic interstellar medium (ISM). Here we investigate the Galactic distribution and properties of two DIBs identified in almost six million stellar spectra

Context. Gaia's readout window strategy is challenged by very dense fields in the sky. Therefore, in addition to standard Gaia observations, full Sky Mapper (SM) images were recorded for nine selected regions in the sky. A new software pipeline exploits these Service Interface Function (SIF) images of crowded fields (CFs), making use of the

Context. The third Gaia Data Release (DR3) provided photometric time series of more than 2 million long-period variable (LPV) candidates. Anticipating the publication of full radial-velocity data planned with Data Release 4, this Focused Product Release (FPR) provides radial-velocity time series for a selection of LPV candidates with high-quality