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 …
IN 1877 Italian astronomer Giovanni pwelli observed on the planet curious markings that he called 11channels). The discovery caused r to wonder if these channels A the creation of intelligent kas. In the 1890s, American Omer Percival Lowell went so far maest that the channels were is of crop fields …
IN DAYS of yore, the heavens were a vast expanse of terror. Unusual movements in the sky evoked a sense of wonder and fear. Solar and lunar eclipses were thought to be caused by monsters devouring the sun and the moon. Comets -- which seemed to appear from nowhere, zipped …
Are we alone in this vast universe? Perhaps. Perhaps not. However, those who believe in the plurality of life have so far had little luck in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. But recently, astronomers at the University of Illinois in Urbana, USA, detected one of life's building materials, the amino …
NEW discoveries in astronomy are sometimes linked to serendipity. It was by chance that astronomer Alexander Wolszczan and his team at the Pennsylvania State University found evidence for what appeared to be the first planetary system outside our solar system. Another 3 years of data on the finding has confirmed …
US SPACECRAFT Galileo has recently sent pictures of a tiny moon orbiting 243 Ida -- a 56 km-long asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This is the first confirmed evidence of a natural satellite kowtowing to an asteroid (Nature, Vol 368, No 6470). The miniature moon, astronomers …
Meteorite buffs are given to complaining that these bolts from the cosmic blue almost always land unsighted (provided, that is, they escape annihilation by friction in the Earth's atmosphere). But for once, a meteorite landing was caught by camcorders when they maundered off a football match their owners were filming …
FIRST the myth: the spectacular light dance -- the massive vibgyor curtain of northern and southern lights that shift every decade or so from their polar homes to produce vivid displays in the temperate skies -- is orchestrated by solar flares, which are streaks of fiery clouds flying away from …
JUPITER will be the site of violent activity when fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the planet in the second or third week of July. The once-in-a-millenium event will offer astronomers a grand 6-day fireworks spectacle. The comet, now broken up into 21 large chunks, will bombard the planet and …
THE TITLE reminds you of the Edwardian English poet, Walter De La Mare's The Listeners: "'Is there anybody there,' said the traveller?" While De La Mare's traveller rode through time seeking responses, Drake's creatures hover through space. Earth has possibly never been visited by an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that …
ASTRONOMERS say the sun is losing its brightness and some billions of years from now -- a short period in astronomy -- it will disappear into cosmic darkness. But life on earth may still continue as particle physicists have conceived of a sun in the lab. Particle-hunters in the US …
India's largest optical telescope is likely to be located in the Himalaya at a height of 4,000 metres by the turn of the century. The Union government has cleared Rs 1.5 crore of the Rs 50 crore project -- for design studies to be done by the Indian Institute of …
ON NOVEMBER 6, 1993, a relatively rare celestial phenomenon enraptured Indian skywatchers. From many parts of the country, at 8.36 am, they witnessed a black spot -- the planet Mercury -- graze past the Sun. This phenomenon, known as the transit of Mercury, last occurred on November 13, 1986, and …
LEWIS Carroll would have been delighted to put Alice into this wonderland. And James Thurber's Walter Mitty would have found in it an excellent refuge from his importunate wife. Virtual Reality (VR) is the latest in fantasyware -- a three-dimensional, computer-simulated landscape in which, unlike the dreamworld created by novelists …
BRITAIN is to spend L29.5 million over the next 10 years on an international project to enable astronomers to witness the birth of a planet. The project, Gemini, involves setting up two eight-metre telescopes that will detect both planets in the making as well as stars being formed in galactic …
SHAKESPEARE was wrong when he described Julius Caesar as "constant as the northern star", because the brightness of the North Star is variable, changing by a few per cent every four days. But the Bard will be right next year when the star's brightness will become constant, predict astronomers (New …
IS THERE a tenth planet in our solar system? Astronomers who have observed Uranus and Neptune deviate from their calculated orbits, attribute such irregularities to the gravitational pull of an unknown planet, usually referred to as Planet X (Nature, Vol 363, No 6424). But Myles Standish of the Jet Propulsion …
WERE IT not for the Moon, the climate on Earth would be dramatically different, say French geophysicists who have studied the effect on climate of the Earth's obliquity. The term refers to the angle through which Earth's spin axis leans away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane. The obliquity …
AUSTRALIAN astronomers have chanced upon a rare type of pulsar (a word coined from pulsating star) -- a cosmic source of regular and rapid pulses of radiation, usually at radio frequencies. The pulsar is lurking at the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Named PSR J0437-4715, the pulsar is …
AN AMERICAN satellite has provided firm evidence that cosmic rays -- showers of energised particles from space that bombard the earth from all directions -- are produced within earth's own galaxy -- the Milky Way. Speculation was rife on whether these radiations emanated from within the Milky Way or outside …
THANKS to the Bubble Space Telescope, scientists can now actually see ancient galaxies being forI The instrument, unlike earthbound telescopes, can be aimed at galaxies 4 billion light years away. Because le the light that is picked up was emitted 4 billion years ago, it provides a view of the …
