Luigi Rolly Bedin
Italian astrophysicist and discoverer of the Bedin I galaxy.
Luigi Rolly Bedin, born in Padua, is an Italian astrophysicist with the National Institute of Astrophysics at the Padua Astronomical Observatory. He studies star populations in clusters, exoplanets, and nearby brown dwarfs. He led the team that discovered the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin I and is an International Astronomical Union member.
Quick Facts
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Padova
- Occupation
- Stellar populations in open and globular clusters, exoplanets and nearby brown dwarfs
Facts from the source article.
Biography
Luigi Rolly Bedin was born in Padua in 1973. He completed a master's degree in astronomy at the University of Padua in 1999, followed by a PhD in astronomy from the same university in 2003. His doctoral research was primarily conducted at the University of California, Berkeley's physics and astronomy department, under the supervision of Professor Ivan R King. From 2000 to 2002, he worked as an associate researcher in Berkeley's astronomy department, and has maintained ongoing collaborations with researchers at UCB, UCLA, the University of Washington, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, focusing on globular clusters. In 2003, Bedin became a fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, where he later served as an associate researcher from 2004 to 2007. Between 2007 and July 15, 2011, he was an astronomer in the instrumental division at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, balancing scientific research with duties related to the Hubble Space Telescope, including calibration, user support, and maintenance. Since July 18, 2011, he has held a full-time scientific position at the National Institute of Astrophysics' Astronomical Observatory of Padua. Bedin serves as principal investigator for major Hubble programs and leads observation projects for several premier facilities: the Hubble Space Telescope, ESO's Very Large Telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Research
Luigi R. Bedin focuses his research on stellar populations within open and globular clusters, nearby dwarf galaxies, the dynamics of globular clusters, and cosmic distance scales. Starting in 2019, he expanded into searching for and characterizing exoplanets and nearby brown dwarfs, including Luhman 16. Along with his team, he uncovered an isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxy, as old as the universe itself, concealed within NGC 6752. This galaxy, announced in 2019, was named Bedin I. He holds active membership in the International Astronomical Union across divisions A, B, F, and G. Bedin advocates for innovations like new telescopes and Starlink satellites to improve space access. He investigates the rotation axis of comet 19P/Borrelly. His space-based work in astrometry and photometry, initially using the Hubble Space Telescope, now also incorporates the James Webb Space Telescope, covering calibration, instrumentation, extrasolar planets, and globular clusters. He co-authored a study identifying an intermediate-mass black hole, a homogeneous dark mass of about 800 solar masses, at the center of Messier 4, the globular cluster closest to Earth. In 2024, using JWST images of the nearest globular clusters, he found excess infrared emission among white dwarfs in NGC 6397. This may signal destroyed ancient planetary systems and offer clues about the dense hydrogen atmospheres of these white dwarfs.
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