Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2015

Editor in chief Michele Ferrara Scientific advisor Prof. Enrico Maria Corsini Publisher Astro Publishing di Pirlo L. Via Bonomelli, 106 25049 Iseo - BS - ITALY email info@astropublishing.com Internet Service Provider Aruba S.p.A. Loc. Palazzetto, 4 52011 Bibbiena - AR - ITALY Copyright All material in this magazine is, unless otherwise stated, property of Astro Publishing di Pirlo L. or included with permission of its author. Reproduction or retransmission of the materials, in whole or in part, in any manner, with- out the prior written consent of the copyright holder, is a violation of copyright law. A single copy of the materials available through this course may be made, solely for personal, non- commercial use. Users may not distrib- ute such copies to others, whether or not in electronic form, whether or not for a charge or other consideration, without prior written consent of the copyright holder of the materials. The publisher makes available itself with having rights for possible not characterized iconographic sources. Advertising - Administration Astro Publishing di Pirlo L. Via Bonomelli, 106 25049 Iseo - BS - ITALY email admin@astropublishing.com ASTROFILO l’ January-February 2015 BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION FREELY AVAILABLE THROUGH THE INTERNET English edition of the magazine S U M M A R Y Red dwarfs and life: the downside Anyone who frequently reads about space and astronomy news, soon realizes that in this branch of science there are very few absolute truths, such that even the more renowned theories are continually being called into question by new discoveries. It can happen that a research team reaches a certain... 4 SpaceShipTwo, a serious blow to private spaceflight Space travel is the one activity that par excellence sees mankind pushing itself and the technology that it uses to the limit. The risks involved are higher the more innovative the project undertaken is, and it is virtually inevitable to run into unexpected events that can cost dearly. We had a demonstration... 10 VLTI detects exozodiacal light By using the full power of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer an international team of astrono- mers has discovered exozodiacal light close to the habitable zones around nine nearby stars. This light is starlight reflected from dust created as the result of collisions between asteroids, and the... 18 Curiosity finds clues to how water helped shape martian landscape Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposit- ed in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years. This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes... 21 Evicted? Possible black hole found 2,600 light years from home An international team of researchers analyzing decades of observations from many facilities — including the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Haleakala and NASA's Swift satellite — has discovered what appears to be a black hole booted from its host... 24 Hubble surveys debris-strewn exoplanetary construction yards Astronomers using NASA's Hub-ble Space Telescope have com- pleted the largest and most sensitive visible-light imaging survey of dusty debris disks around other stars. These dusty disks, likely created by collisions between left-over objects from planet formation, were imaged around stars as young... 27 MUSE reveals true story behind galactic crash The new MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has provided researchers with the best view yet of a spectacular cosmic crash. The new observations reveal for the first time the motion of gas as it is ripped out of the galaxy ESO 137-001 as it ploughs at high speed into a vast... 29 Spooky alignment of quasars across billions of light-years New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other... 32 The party's over for these youthful compact galaxies Researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered young, massive, compact galaxies whose raucous star-making parties are ending early. The firestorm of star birth has blasted out most of the remaining gaseous fuel needed to make future generations... 36 HL Tauri, an (almost) revolutionary image Almost two years ago, the array of 66 antennas that form the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillime- ter Array became fully operational, but the wide range of possible configurations with which it can be utilized has so far only provided a taste of the enormous potential of this instrument. As also... 38