Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2018

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 2018 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 14 20 22 24 The first interstellar asteroid Our current technology does not allow us to reach other planetary systems, and this limitation will remain for a long time. This will not prevent us, however, from closely studying asteroids and comets born light years away around stars other than the Sun. The first of those objects has already been discovered a short... Movement of light echo around SN 2014J in M82 Voices reverberating off mountains and the sound of footsteps bouncing off walls are examples of an echo. Echoes happen when sound waves ricochet off surfaces and return to the listener. Space has its own version of an echo. It’s not made with sound but with light, and occurs when light bounces off... First light for ESPRESSO ESPRESSO has achieved first light on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. ESPRESSO was designed and built by a consortium consisting of: the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva and University of Bern, Switzerland; INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste... Chicxulub: perfect timing... for us! Two Japanese researchers have concluded that the evolution of mammals from the Cretaceous to today would have been entirely different if the asteroid which put an end to that period, 79 million years long and dominated by dinosaurs, had fallen on areas with different petrological properties. The mass... ALMA discovers cold dust around nearest star Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. It is a faint red dwarf lying just four light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). It is orbited by the Earth-sized temperate world Proxima b, discovered in 2016 and the closest planet to the Solar System. But there is more to this... Closest temperate world orbiting quiet star discovered A team working with ESO’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the La Silla Obser- vatory in Chile has found that the red dwarf star Ross 128 is orbited by a low-mass exoplanet every 9.9 days. This Earth-sized world is expected to be temperate, with a surface temperature that may also be... NASA’s JWST early science observations revealed Astronomers around the world will have immediate access to early data from specific science observa- tions from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will be completed within the first five months of Webb’s science operations. These observing programs were chosen from a Space Telescope Science... Ozone ups and downs Climate scientists studying three decades of ozone measurements from seven satellites see a positive trend in global recovery thanks to international efforts to curb ozone-depleting substances. The part of Earth’s atmosphere with high concentrations of ozone gas protects life on Earth from the Sun’s ultra... Fake images in astronomy 2017 has emphasized the theme of fake news as if that phenomenon had never existed before, whereas it is ancient as humanity itself. Likewise remote is the origin of fake images, representations or altered interpretations of reality, which can be used for different purposes. This phenomenon is also widespread... Hubble observes exoplanet that snows sunscreen NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found a blistering hot planet outside our solar system where it “snows” sunscreen. The problem is the sunscreen (titanium dioxide) precipitation only happens on the planet’s permanent nighttime side. Any possible visitors to the exoplanet, called Kepler-13Ab, would... 34 38 40 42 44