Long-term observations with the HARPS-N spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo are helping astronomers investigate a compact system of four young planets, but the strong activity of their host star makes their masses difficult to measure. Physical and architectural properties of young planetary systems can look very different from those of the mature population. Studying them offers a rare opportunity to investigate how planets form and evolve before their architecture settles into its final configuration. One particularly interesting example is V1298 Tau, a star approximately 20 million years old that hosts four confirmed transiting planets.

An international collaboration among researchers from France, Chile, Germany, Poland, and Italy has compared the cross-correlated radial velocity (RV) curves of five Cepheids, obtained simultaneously in the V band (with HARPS-N) and the H band (with GIANO-B). They found that, for all stars, the V-band RV curve amplitude is approximately 5% larger than that of the H band. This amplitude difference can be explained to first order by the wavelength dependence of the geometric projection factor (i.e., the ratio between the true pulsation velocity and the observed radial velocity), which is directly linked to the expected limb darkening in the V and H bands.

The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) is pleased to announce the IV Edition of the National Competition "Giovani Astronomi al Telescopio Nazionale Galileo", organised in collaboration with the Società Astronomica Italiana (SAIt) and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF).

The celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the inauguration of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo will take place on Tuesday, 22 September, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory.