Overview

“Laboratorio di Astrofisica Sperimentale” (Catania-LASp for short) has been active in Catania starting from the eighties. The eldest of the group, after some training at the Physics department of the Catania University, started the activity at the Catania Astrophysical Observatory. Since then and thanks to several funding agencies (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italian CNR; Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita' e della Ricerca, MIUR; Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI; etc.) and to the help of many colleagues (and directors) of the Observatory the LASp has grown. Today Catania-LASp means a group of 6 people with permanent position plus some students and guests, a laboratory building equipped with high vacuum chambers, facilities for the deposition of ice films, ion and Lyman-alpha irradiation experiments, many spectrometers in the range from 190 nm up to 200 micron, and also raman spectrographs. On December 2002 LASP has undergone a major upgrade of the ion beam production system, the maximum acceleration potential has been increased from 30 to 200 kV.

Through this site a selected sample of Lasp data can be found, in particular transmission and optical depth data of water ice experiments are available for the temperature range from 12.5 to 150 K. The database also includes optical constants of solid state CO, CO2, and CH4 deposited at various temperatures.