The Ministry of Education and Merit (MIM), in collaboration with Società Astronomica Italiana (SAIt), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), and Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), announced the Third Edition of the National Competition “Giovani Astronomi al Telescopio Nazionale Galileo”. The competition aims to promote and enhance students scientific and technological skills by offering opportunities for growth, teamwork, and exploration of the wonders of the Universe.

An Italian research team has precisely characterized the mass and orbital parameters of HD 72659 c, an exoplanet located in the so-called “brown dwarf desert”, by combining data from HARPS-N (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher – Northern Hemisphere) installed at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), astrometric measurements from Gaia (ESA), direct imaging from SPHERE on the Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from literature.

The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma), did not miss the opportunity to observe the new interstellar object whose discovery was announced on July 1, 2025. This visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, 1I/‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2017 and 2019. Like them, it was detected on its journey toward the Sun, on a hyperbolic orbit at high speed (about 60 km/s) when it was still 3.3 AU from our star (about 495 million km). Shortly after the announcement of its discovery by the ATLAS telescopes, its cometary nature was confirmed thanks to the coma surrounding its bright nucleus.