Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

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’ September-October 2016 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 8 20 24 30 34 40 46 52 16 An Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri Just over four light-years from the Solar System lies a red dwarf star that has been named Proxima Cen- tauri as it is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye and lies near to the much brighter pair of stars known as... World’s biggest eye is about to open After 5 years and a half of uninterrupted work and an expense of 160 million euros, it was completed on schedule a pharaonic engineering achievement for astronomical research, a radio telescope of one single disk with a diameter of half a kilometer. The architect of the enormous enterprise is China... A stellar laboratory in Sagittarius The small smattering of bright blue stars in the upper left of this vast new 615 megapixel ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18, this star cluster contains stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. This... K2: 104 new exoplanets validated The “second life” of the Kepler space telescope is proving increasingly interesting and discoveries of new exoplanets candidates still follow one another. In just over two years more than 450 have been found, one-third of which were confirmed by large ground-based telescopes. Of all the newly... The Crab Nebula as never seen before The Crab Nebula, which lies 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), is the result of a supernova — a colossal explosion that was the dying act of a massive star. During this explosion most of the material that made up the star was blown into space at immense speeds, forming an... A surprising planet with three suns Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, in the Star Wars saga, was a strange world with two suns in the sky, but astronomers have now found a planet in an even more exotic system, where an observer would either experience constant daylight or enjoy triple sunrises and sunsets each day, depending... Prospector-1: space miner We have long known that in order to colonize space on a sustained basis we must not be dependent on the Earth. This means extracting the raw materials essential for survival directly from rocky bodies of the solar system. A private space company is going to take the first step in that direction, with a mission... Deepest ever look into Orion An international team has made use of the power of the HAWK-I infrared instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to produce the deepest and most comprehensive view of the Orion Nebula to date. Not only has this led to an image of spectacular beauty, but it has revealed a great abundance of faint... Discovered: youngest fully-formed exoplanet ever A team of Caltech-led researchers discovered the youngest fully-formed exoplanet ever detected using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the Kepler Space Telescope. The planet, K2-33b, at five to 10 million years old, is still in its infancy. Planet formation is a complex and tumultuous... White dwarf lashes red dwarf with mystery ray In May 2015, a group of amateur astronomers from Germany, Belgium and the UK came across a star system that was exhibiting behaviour unlike anything they had ever encountered before. Follow-up ob- servations led by the University of Warwick and using a multitude of telescopes on the ground and in...