Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2020

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. Via San Clemente, 53 24036 Ponte San Pietro - BG - 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 copy- right law. A single copy of the materi- als available through this course may be made, solely for personal, noncom- mercial use. Users may not distribute such copies to others, whether or not in electronic form, whether or not for a charge or other consideration, with- out prior written consent of the copy- right holder of the materials. The publisher makes available itself with having rights for possible not charac- terized iconographic sources. Advertising - Administration Astro Publishing di Pirlo L. Via Bonomelli, 106 25049 Iseo - BS - ITALY email admin@astropublishing.com ASTROFILO l’ January-February 2020 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 4 16 20 22 36 The background of the discovery of Pluto The history of astronomy is full of exciting episodes worthy of the imagination of the best novelists. The events that led to the discovery of Pluto are such an example. A young farmer from Kansas builds a tele- scope with pieces of agricultural machinery and begins to observe the sky. An astronomer realizes his... First giant planet around white dwarf found Researchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star. The planet orbits the hot white dwarf, the remnant of a Sun-like star, at close range, causing its atmosphere to be stripped away and form a disc of gas around the star. This... Contract signed for ELT’s mirror M5 cell structure ESO has signed a contract with SENER Aerospacial for the design and production of the support cell for the M5 mirror of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). SENER Aeroespacial will carry out the design, vconstruction and verification of the cell for the M5 mirror, as well as its control system and auxiliary... Hubble captures a dozen sunburst arc doppelgangers This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows an astronomical object whose image is multiplied by the effect of strong gravitational lensing. The galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc, is almost 11 billion light-years away from Earth and has been lensed into multiple images by a... SOFIA confirms a collision between planets Collisions between planets do not only occur in novels and science fiction movies. Astronomers have discovered that one of these catastrophic events occurred not too many years ago in a planetary system relatively close to us. Events of this kind also occurred in our solar system shortly after its formation... ALMA witnesses planet formation in action For the first time, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have witnessed 3D motions of gas in a planet-forming disk. At three locations in the disk around a young star called HD 163296, gas is flowing like a waterfall into gaps that are most likely caused by planets... The smallest dwarf planet yet in the Solar System Astronomers using ESO’s SPHERE instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed that the asteroid Hygiea could be classified as a dwarf planet. The object is the fourth largest in the asteroid belt after Ceres, Vesta and Pallas. For the first time, astronomers have observed Hygiea in sufficiently high... Mars 2020 will land in Jezero Crater While waiting to see the ESA’s ExoMars 2020 mission rover in action, let’s get ready for the next NASA mission, Mars 2020, which will see a rover hunt for traces of possible fossil life inside an impact crater that, billions of years ago, housed a lake into which a river delta poured. The conditions for epochal... Counter-rotating flows around a black hole At the center of a galaxy called NGC 1068, a supermassive black hole hides within a thick doughnut- shaped cloud of dust and gas. When astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study this cloud in more detail, they made an unexpected discovery that could... Hubble studies gamma-ray burst with the highest energy ever seen Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. They emit most of their energy in gamma rays, light which is much more energetic than the visible light we can see with our eyes. In January 2019, an extremely bright and long gamma-ray burst (GRB) was detected by a suite of telescopes... 24 32 38 40 50