Piero Salinari has suddenly left us. Piero was a “giant” of ground-based Astronomy, one of the pioneers of Infrared Astronomy (we owe to him, together with Oberto Citterio, the IR telescope TIRGO) and undoubtedly one of the world’s leading experts in adaptive optics. His was the adaptive system of LBT; he was also the Project Scientist of the ESO’s ELT at the time of its conception. We at ASTRI/SST also owe him more than a little. Together with Prof. Ballio from Polimi, he supported us in developing the optomechanical system of ASTRI (they were responsibile for the commissioning of ASTRI-Horn, also providing invaluable guidelines for the evolution of ASTRI’s and SST’s current design). They took also part in various efforts to unify ASTRI with the French telescope to build the Small Size Telescopes of CTAO (SSTs), within a bilateral commission appointed by INAF and CNRS. He also gave a small but meaningful contribution to the PNRR project CTA+, in which our Gamma-ray community is widely involved, helping us, when we started from proverbial “scratch,” to study the concept of the LST-South, which led to the current system, when in 2022 a small technical working group coordinated by Andrea Busatta was created, including, besides Salinari, a few researchers from Polimi.

 

I remember him at the inauguration of ASTRI-Horn a Serra La Nave, during the CTA consortium meeting in September 2014. While others were at the reception, following him out of the corner of my eye I noticed he was walking around the telescope, scrutinizing every detail with his usual cigarette in his mouth. Shortly after, gathering members of the collaboration, he gave valuable advice on how to modify the design to make the telescope lighter —advice we then adopted. He also pointed out a small error in the design of the lightning protection system which, once checked later, turned out to be absolutely correct.

 

To Piero, who truly was a great person, goes a farewell of friendship and gratitude from the entire collaborations of ASTRI and SST.