Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 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’ July- August 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 The United Arab Emirates look at Mars The Emirates’ rulers have given a significant boost to their state space program by launching an un- manned mission scheduled to reach Mars in 2021. The impact that this initiative will have in techno- logical, scientific and socio-economic terms in that region of the Arab world will be much deeper... 4 The Dawn spacecraft reaches Ceres The largest and most massive dwarf planet of the inner solar system has been closely photographed for the first time by an unmanned spacecraft which entered into its orbit. The mapping of its surface and the chemical and spectrometric surveys will allow to characterize the conditions and processes... 12 Hubble finds giant halo around the Andromeda Galaxy Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the immense halo of gas envelop- ing the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest massive galactic neighbor, is about six times larger and 1,000 times more massive than previously measured. The dark, nearly invisible halo stretches about a... 24 VLT discovers new kind of globular star cluster Globular star clusters are huge balls of thousands of stars that orbit most galaxies. They are among the old- est known stellar systems in the Universe and have survived through almost the entire span of galaxy growth and evolution. Matt Taylor, a PhD student at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago... 26 First detection of reflected visible light from 51 Pegasi b The exoplanet 51 Pegasi b lies some 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was discovered in 1995 and will forever be remembered as the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like the Sun (two earlier planetary objects were detected orbiting in the... 30 SDP.81, an unprecedented Einstein ring Using the ESO's Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array, some teams of astronomers took full advantage of the natural phenomenon of gravitational lensing to investigate the internal structure of a galaxy 11.7 billion light-years away. Never before had it been possible to reach such a high-resolution... 36 Dark matter may not be completely dark after all For the first time dark matter may have been observed inter-acting with other dark matter in a way other than through the force of gravity. Using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s VLT in Chile, along with images from Hubble in orbit, a team of astronomers studied the simulta-neous collision of four... 44 Astronomers set a new galaxy distance record An international team of astronomers, led by Yale and the University of California, Santa Cruz, pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the Universe was only five percent of its present age. The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the... 46 Complex organic molecules discovered in infant star system New ALMA observations reveal that the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star MWC 480 contains large amounts of methyl cyanide (CH3CN), a complex carbon-based molecule. There is enough methyl cyanide around MWC 480 to fill all of Earth’s oceans. This star is only about one million years... 50 Hubble traces the migration of white dwarfs in cluster 47 Tucanae Astronomers using the NASA/ ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, collected a census of young white dwarf stars beginning their migration from the crowded centre of an ancient star clus- ter to its less populated outskirts. The new results challenge our ideas about how and when a star... 52