Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 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’ May-June 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 18 22 30 Lunar and martian skylights, back to the caves Illustrators and designers have almost always represented future human settlements on the Moon and Mars in the form of modular structures easily visible from above. It is instead very likely that the first extraterrestrial bases will be hidden underground, within geological formations capable of defending... MUSE data points to isolated neutron star beyond our galaxy Spectacular new pictures, created from images from both ground- and space-based telescopes, tell the story of the hunt for an elusive missing object hidden amid a complex tangle of gaseous filaments in the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. New data from the MUSE instrument on... An extra luxury hotel in Earth orbit “Making space accessible to everyone” − this is the most often used slogan by private aerospace compa- nies that, more and more numerous, propose themselves as tour operators able to offer vacations in Earth orbit. While all of the projects proposed so far have yet to succeed, the latest arrival, known as Aurora... WASP-39b: a lot of water in its atmosphere Much like detectives study fingerprints to identify the culprit, scientists used NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to identify the “fingerprints” of water in the atmosphere of a hot, bloated, Saturn-mass exoplanet some 700 light-years away. And, they found a lot of water. In fact, the planet, known as... MATISSE sees first light on ESO’s VLT interferometer MATISSE (Multi AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment) observes infrared light — light between the visible and microwave wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, covering wavelengths from 3– 13 micrometres (µm). It is a second-generation spectro-interferometer instrument for ESO’s Very Large... Powerful flare from Proxima Centauri detected with ALMA Using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers dis- covered that a powerful stellar flare erupted from Proxima Centauri last March. This finding, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, raises questions about the habitability of our solar system’s nearest... The Silurian Hypothesis − Something to think about We know so little about life on Earth before the appearance of hominids that there may have even ex- isted industrial civilizations prior to ours without us being aware of them. Now, two scientists propose how to look for the traces of those hypothetical civilizations. If those ancient Terrans respected the... Kepler solves the mystery of fast and furious explosions The universe is full of mysterious exploding phenomena that go boom in the dark. One particular type of ephemeral event, called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT), has bewildered astronomers for a decade because of its very brief duration. Now, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope — designed to go... First galaxy in the local Universe without dark matter Galaxies and dark matter go together like peanut butter and jelly. You typically don’t find one without the other. Therefore, researchers were surprised when they uncovered a galaxy that is missing most, if not all, of its dark matter. An invisible substance, dark matter is the underlying scaffolding upon which galaxies... Astronomers discover S0-2 star is single and ready for Einstein test Astronomers have the “all-clear” for an exciting test of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, thanks to a new discovery about S0-2’s star status. Up until now, it was thought that S0-2 may be a binary, a system where two stars circle around each other. Having such a partner would have complicated the upcoming... 32 36 38 48 52