A new multimillion-rand telescope in the Karoo will offer astronomers an unprecedented view of the stars. The MeerLICHT instrument in Sutherland will be specifically linked to the MeerKAT radio telescope array near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape. Unlike its bigger brother SALT (Southern African Large Telescope), the MeerLICHT is meant …
so far only optical and radio telescopes have been the tools for astronomers. Even with these powerful tools, the stars being far away are usually visible only as point sources of light. But recently, in a highly unusual set of observations, gravity of one star has been used to magnify …
It has long been hypothesised that the composition of the atmosphere has been modified by processes in the interior of the planets. Now, some researchers have done simulations for the atmosphere of Neptune and reported that some of the gases in its atmosphere are originating from deep within the planet. …
astronomists across the world are agog over the comet Hale-Bopp, as during its current run over the Earth, it is spewing tonnes of organic chemicals which could have been the building blocks of life. It is after nearly 4,000 years that Hale-Bopp, a 40-km-wide cosmic snowball of ice and dust, …
all that would be left of the cosmos in the years to come would be a gigantic black space: this is the rather depressing conclusion of a study conducted by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin of the University of Michigan on the future of the universe. The only hopeful feature …
quasars are among the most fascinating objects in the universe. These relatively small objects are believed to be at the far edges of the universe. Given their distances, the amount of energy received from them is truly enormous, leading to one of the great unsolved mysteries of cosmology: what is …
Every star has a life and a subsequent death. But still, each one is different in the amount of darkness it drives away due to its own luminance. Born on November 9, 1934, Carl Sagan was certainly one of the brightest. Sagan died of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer …
Sister Moon you be my guidein your blue blue shadow I will hide. All the people sleep tonightI'm all by myself in your silver light. I would gaze at your face the whole night throughI go out of my mind before you. (Sting) AFTER two years of gazing and careful …
The mosaic of pictures of the south polar region of the Moon by Clementine has 1,500 images, taken through a red filter. The top half of the mosaic faces Earth. Clementine has revealed what appears to be a major depression near the lunar south pole, evident from the presence of …
THE centre of the Milky Way, a wispy band of faint white light, has long been an object of speculation. There have been conjectures that there is a huge black hole at the centre. The latest reports, however, for the first time seem to confirm the existence of a compact, …
RECENTLY, two groups of researchers published their findings on comet Hyakutake. They have detected certain compounds in the comet which could provide us with valuable information about the composition of the nebula from which our Sun and the planets emerged. Comets are also believed to have been a source of …
A RUSSIAN space probe to Mars which lifted off on schedule on November 16 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean, west of South America, near the Easter islands, the next day. The probe carried four thermoelectric generators fuelled by radioactive plutonium. The plutonium isotope …
Ganymede, the Jovian moon, has two planet-like features which were discovered last year: a magnetic field and the trace of an atmosphere. New data from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals that it might have a third planetary feature, an aurora at the poles. Doyle Hall and his colleagues of the …
star-gazers have hit pay dirt. The fog shrouding the mystery of galactic births in universe is gradually giving way to the onslaughts of astronomers' telescopes, which have recently caught sight of galaxies that were in the act of formation. Two groups of researchers, working independently in the us and uk …
in the ongoing saga of unravelling the mysteries of the universe, the latest pictures sent by the Hubble space telescope opens a new chapter on how galaxies are possibly born. The new images show what, according to astronomers, may be galaxies being formed in the early universe out of a …
J J Wiseman and P T P Ho of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, US, have reported the presence of a remarkable system of filaments of molecular gas behind the Great Nebula of the Orion constellation; this constellation is one of the most studied star formation regions in space. …
galaxy formation and early evolution is one of the least understood areas of cosmology and astrophysics. The basic problem is one of detecting faint galaxies located at large distances. The astronomer is limited to observing far-off objects which are very bright, like quasars and radio galaxies. But now, E M …
speculating on life in space has suddenly become everybody's favourite pastime. If it was Mars which hogged the headlines some days ago, it is now the Jovian planet that is having the benefit of astronomists' deliberations. Scientists have for sometime now, thought of Jupiter's satellite - Europa - as a …
the standard cosmological model has been notably successful in explaining many of the observations in our universe. From the cosmic microwave background radiation to the genesis of matter, the model provides us with a simple and elegant tool for understanding the cosmos. Though there have been many refinements and extensions …
the villagers of Pipalia Kalan in western Rajasthan were dumbfounded on hearing a thunderous roar from the north-east sky followed by three consecutive blinding flashes of light on the evening of June 20. Hours later, on coming out of their houses, they found a large pitch black stony object about …
