Luigi R. Bedin

Luigi Rolly Bedin (born July 16, 1973, in Padua), is an Italian astrophysicist and researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics of the Padua Astronomical Observatory. His research focuses on stellar populations in open and globular clusters, exoplanets and nearby brown dwarfs. He is the discoverer with his team of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin I. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union.

Biography

Training Luigi Rolly Bedin was born in 1973 in Padua. He obtained a master's degree in astronomy in 1999 at the University of Padua. He was awarded at the same University of Padova with a PhD in astronomy from a doctorate in 2003. His PhD thesis mainly carried out at the department of physics and astronomy of the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) under the direction of Professor Ivan R King.

Associate researcher in the astronomy department of UCB, between 2000 and 2002, University of Washington, STScl. ) on various topics concerning globular clusters.

In 2003, he was a fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Garching.

Professional career From 2004 to 2007, Bedin was associate researcher at the European Southern Observatory in Garching.

From 2007 to July 15, 2011, he was an astronomer in the instrumental division of the Baltimore Space Telescope Science Institute. He shares his work between scientific activities and functional tasks for the institute and for the Hubble Space Telescope Observatory (calibration, user support, maintenance missions and support of the institute in general).

Since July 18, 2011, he has held a full-time scientific position at the National Institute of Astrophysics of the Astronomical Observatory of Padua.

Luigi R. Bedin, principal investigator of major HST programs is also leader of several observation projects for the world's main installations : HST, ESO/VLT, LBT and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Research His main scientific research concerns stellar populations in open and globular clusters, neighboring dwarf galaxies, the dynamics of globular clusters and cosmic distance scales. Since 2019 he has also worked on the search and characterization of exoplanets and nearby brown dwarfs, such as Luhman 16.

He discovered, with his team, an isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxy as old as the universe hidden in NGC 6752. The discovery is published in international media in 2019. The galaxy bears his name : Bedin I.

Luigi R. Bedin is an active member of divisions A, B, F, G of the International Astronomical Union:

He studies the rotation axis of comet 19P/Borrelly.

Research in astrometry and photometry from space with HST is enriched with JWST : calibration and instrumentation, extrasolar planets, clusters of globules.

He is co-author of a study on intermediate black holes with the discovery of a homogeneous dark mass of around 800 M ☉ corresponding to an intermediate mass black hole at the center of the cluster closest to Earth, the globular cluster Messier 4.

In 2024, from JWST imaging of the nearest globular clusters, it detected excess infrared emission among white dwarfs in NGC 6397, a potential indication of destroyed ancient planetary systems and possible insights into the properties of the dense hydrogen atmosphere of these white dwarfs.

Tribute 2018 : The dwarf galaxy Bedin I discovered with his team.

Publications He has published in several specialized journals such as ApJ, AJ, MNRAS, Nature and A&A, more than 210 peer-reviewed research articles accepted by international reading committees.

Notes and references