Paolo Padovani

Paolo Padovani is an Italian astronomer working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), specializing in the study of active galactic nuclei, including the study of quasars and blazars, evolution and multifrequency studies, and extragalactic backgrounds. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles.

His research interests include active galactic nuclei radio sources, blazars, unified schemes and deep radio surveys.

In 2004, Padovani and several other astronomers at the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO), coordinated between the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility and the European Southern Observatory in Munich, discovered 30 supermassive black holes that were previously obscured by dust clouds.

In 2018, Padovani was involved in the association between IceCube neutrinos and the blazar TXS 0506+056 at redshift = 0.3365. This blazar is the first non-stellar neutrino source, as the only astronomical sources previously observed by neutrino detectors were the Sun and supernova 1987A, which were detected decades earlier at much lower neutrino energies.