Pictures of Moon Taken from Telescope

Hubble unveils image of NGC 2074

In commemoration of the Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.
During Hubble's 100,000th orbit around the Earth it peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies.

The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars.

The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at the bottom center of the image.

In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies.

M101

Messier 101 (M101, NGC 5457) was discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and added as one of the last entries in Charles Messier's catalog. It was one of the first "spiral nebula" identified as such, in 1851 by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse.

Although extended 22 arc minutes on photos and quite bright, only the central region of this galaxy is visible in smaller telescopes, best at low powers. Suggestions of the spiral arms can be glimpsed in telescopes starting from 4 inch as nebulous patches. Several of these patches (i.e., spiral arm fragments) were assigned their own catalog numbers by William Herschel and later observers; according to the NGC and Burnham, there are 9 such numbers, 3 of which go back to Herschel who has found them on April 14, 1789, while the RNGC states that five of the others don't exist (ne); it mentions however that deVaucouleurs has them as knots: NGC 5447 (H III.787), 5449 (ne), 5450 (ne), 5451 (ne), 5453 (ne), 5455, 5458 (ne), 5461 (H III.788), 5462 (H III.789), and 5471.

On photographs, however, the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 is revealed as one of the most prominent Grand Design spirals in the sky. While quite symmetric visually and in very short exposures which show only the central region, it is of remarkable unsymmetry, its core being considerably displaced from the center of the disk. Halton Arp has included M101 as No. 26 in his Catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies as a "Spiral with One Heavy Arm".

M101 is the brightest of a group of at least 9 galaxies, called the M101 Group. The brightest companions are NGC 5474 (type Sc, 10.85 mag vis) to the SSE and NGC 5585 (Sa, 11.49 mag; Glyn Jones and Burnham misprinted this as 5485) to the NE. Other probable group members are NGC 5204 (Ir, 11.26), NGC 5238 (SB(d)m, 13.35p), NGC 5477 (Ir+, 13.8), UGC 8508 (Ir+, 14.5 p), Holmberg IV (UGC 8837, Ir+, 13.1 p), and UGC 9405.

The distance of M101 has been determined by the measurement of Cepheid variables with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994/95 to be about 24 +/- 2 million light years, by the HST H0 Key Project Team (paper III, 1996). Kenneth Glyn Jones mentions earlier Earth-bound attempts of 1986, when two Cepheids were claimed to have been detected (yielding distance estimates between 20 and 26 million light years). It is also in good agreement with a distance determined from the Planetary Nebula Luminosity function, by Feldmeier, Ciardullo and Jacoby (1996) which is 25.1 +/- 1.6 million light years. According to the recent recalibration of the Cepheid distance scale, the "true" distance of M101 should be closer to a 10 percent higher value (27 million light years).

At the new distance from the HST and Hipparcos, it has a linear diameter of over 170,000 light years and is thus among the biggest disk galaxies, and its total apparent visual brightness of 7.9 mag corresponds to an absolute brightness of -21.6 magnitudes, or a luminosity of about 30 billion (3*10^10) times that of our sun.

Three supernovae have been discovered in M101: The first one, SN 1909A, appeared on January 26, 1909 and was discovered by Max Wolf; it was of peculiar type and reached mag 12.1 (Glyn Jones reports that the discovery took place in February, and the SN reached only mag 13.5). The second supernova 1951H was of type II, occurred in September 1951 and reached mag 17.5, while the third, SN 1970G, also type II, was discovered on July 30, 1970 by Michael Lovas, and reached mag 11.5. The remnant of Supernova 1970G was later detected in X-ray light and e.g. observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) satellite

Types of Stars and Star Groups

Everytime in the night sky when we look up we see the stars. But

• Do you know how many different types of stars are there?
• Do you know how many types of galaxies are there?
• Do you know that stars are of different colours?

So here is something to give a knowledge about the night sky....

Types of stars:-

1. Binary Stars
They are pairs of stars moving in orbit around their common centre of mass. They are also known as double stars. An optical pair appears to be double because two stars lie in the viewer's line of vision. Examples of double stars are Phakt in Columba and Arcus in Crux.
2. Black Dwarf
It is the remains of a dead white dwarf star after its heat is radiated into space.
3. Black Hole
It is what remains of a super collapsed star, whose gravitational pull is so great that no light can escape.
4. Brown Dwarf
It is a star whose mass is too small to have fusion occur at its core because the temperature and pressure there are too insufficient. It is also not very luminous.
5. Main-Sequence Stars
It is an ordinary star, one of about 90% of the stars that can be seen from Earth. It is much smaller than a giant star. It burns hydrogen into helium through nuclear fusion within itself. An example is our Sun.
6. Nebula
It is a cloud of gas or dust, and is considered to be the birthplace of a new star. There are three basic types: emission, reflection, and dark.
· An emission nebula glows brightly because its gas is energized by the stars formed within it. An example is the Orion Nebula.
· A reflection nebula is one in which sunlight reflects off the grains of dust within it. An example is the one which surrounds stars of the Pleides cluster.
· A dark nebula is a dense cloud of molecular hydrogen which absorbs light behind it. Examples are the Horsehead Nebula in Sagittarius and the Crab Nebula in Taurus.
7. Neutron Star
It is the tiniest star, having collapsed into a superdense state. It is thought to have formed when a large star exploded as a supernova.
8. Nova
It is a star that brightens suddenly, lasts a few days, fades away, and returns to its normal state.
9. Pulsar
It is a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits pulses of energy.
10. Quasar
It is a quasistellar object, very far away and very bright. It gives off more energy than one hundred giant galaxies.
11. Red Giant
It is a large, bright star, many times larger than the Sun, but with a cool surface. It is believed to be in the end stage of its life cycle. Examples are Aldebaran in Taurus and Ras Algethi in Hercules.
12. Supergiant
It is the largest and most luminous type of star, being a dying star. It has used up its hydrogen fuel and has begun to expand and cool. Examples are Antares in Scorpius and Betelgeuse in Orion.
13. Supernova
It is an exploding supergiant, being the death of a star. The Crab Nebula was formed by a supernova.
14. Variable Star
It is a star whose brightness changes. This is usually caused by pulsations within it. Examples of variable stars are Polaris in Ursa Minor (Cepheid) and R Centauri in Centaurus (Mira).
15. White Dwarf
It is a very dense, small, hot star in the last stage of its life. It occurs when a red giant sheds its outer layers as a planetary nebula. The electrons and protons have been packed as closely as possible by gravity. An example of the white dwarf is the Pup, companion star of Sirius in Canis major.
16. Wolf-Rayet Star
It is a hot, luminous star that is rapidly losing mass in a wind. It represents a late stage in the life of massive stars.

Types of galaxies:-

Galaxy:- It is a system of stars, dust, and gas held together by gravity. There are three basic types: spiral, elliptical, and irregular. ·

1. A spiral galaxy is a flattened, discus-shaped collection of stars, having a central bulge. Examples include the Milky Way and Andromeda. ·
2. An elliptical galaxy ranges in shape from a sphere to a flattened globe. Examples include the Sagittarius Dwarf and M31. ·
3. An irregular galaxy has no pattern of shape. Examples include the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Types of colours of different stars : -

Star Colours :- They are, in descending order of temperature, greenish, blue, blue-white, yellowish-white, yellow, orange-yellow, orange-red, red, infrared.

NASA SCIENTISTS GET FIRST IMAGES OF EARTHLY FLYBY AESTROID :

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,have obtained the first images of asteroid 2007 TU24 usinghigh-resolution radar data. The data indicate the asteroid is somewhat asymmetrical in shape, with a diameter roughly 800 feet (250 meters) in size. Asteroid 2007 TU24 will pass within 1.4 lunar distances, or 334,000 miles (538,000 kilometers), of Earth on January 29 at 12:33 a.m. Pacific time (3:33 a.m. Eastern time).

"With these first radar observations finished, we can guarantee that next week's 1.4-lunar-distance approach is the closest until at least the end of the next century," says Steve Ostro, JPL astronomer and principal investigator for the project. "It is also the asteroid's closest Earth approach for more than 2,000 years."

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL have determined that there is no possibility of an impact with Earth in the foreseeable future.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 was discovered by the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey on October 11, 2007. The first radar detection of the asteroid was acquired on January 23 using the Goldstone 230-foot (70-meter) antenna. The Goldstone antenna is part of NASA's Deep Space Network Goldstone station in Southern California's Mojave Desert. Goldstone's 230-foot (70-meter diameter) antenna is capable of tracking a spacecraft traveling more than 10 billion miles (16 billion kilometers) from Earth. The surface of the 230-foot reflector must remain accurate within a fraction of the signal wavelength, meaning that the precision across the 41,400-square-foot (3,850-square-meter) surface is maintained within 0.4 inch (1 centimeter).

Ostro and his team plan further radar observations of asteroid 2007 TU24 using the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on January 27-28
and February 1-4.

The asteroid will reach an approximate apparent magnitude 10.3 on January 29-30 before quickly becoming fainter as it moves farther from Earth. On that night, the asteroid will be observable in dark and clear skies through amateur telescopes with apertures of at least 3 inches (7.6 centimeters). An object with a magnitude of 10.3 is about 50 times fainter than an object just visible to the naked eye in a clear, dark sky.

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. The Near Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers, characterizes and computes trajectories for these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

New Planet found in Leo

Spanish and UCL (University College London) scientists have discovered a possible terrestrial-type planet orbiting a star in the constellation LEO.The new planet, which lies at a distance of 30 light-years from Earth, has a mass five times that of our planet but is the smallest found to date. One full day on the new planet would be equivalent to three weeks on Earth.

The team of astronomers from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) working with Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, a visiting astrophysicist at UCL, made the discovery from model predictions of a new exoplanet — planet outside our solar system — orbiting a star in the constellation Leo. Simulations show that the exoplanet, dubbed GJ 436c, orbits its host star, GJ 436, in only 5.2 Earth days, and is thought to complete a revolution in 4.2 Earth days, compared to Earth's revolution of 24 hours and full orbit of 365 days. On Earth, a full day coincides quite closely with the rotation period. On the new planet these two periods do not coincide, since the orbital translation period and the rotation period are very similar. For this reason, a full day on the new planet would take four planetary years, or roughly 22 Earth days.
Most of the 280 or so planets discovered to date are gas giants similar to Jupiter, although some with masses below 10 times that of the Earth have already been found. Planets with masses of between one and 10 times the Earth are often dubbed super-Earths. In this case, current models predict that the new planet is a rocky type and has a radius some 50 percent larger than the Earth.

Constellations

What Are Constellations?

So just what are these constellations you keep hearing about? You may go outside some night and see all kinds of stars, and maybe you have even spotted the Big Dipper (northern hemisphere) or the Southern Cross (southern hemisphere), but what about Leo the Lion or Pisces the Fish? What are they?

Looking at the Constellations

The first thing you need to know is that constellations are not real!

When you look in a sky atlas, you might see diagrams like this:
Obviously, this is very different from the photo above. This type of schematic draws the stars as different sizes to represent different brightnesses. In addition, there is a standard way to connect the stars that allow astronomers and others who use charts like this to quickly tell what they are looking at. In almost every star atlas, you will see Orion drawn with these same lines.

You might also notice that every star on the chart is labeled (sorry that it came out a little blurry). This chart is useful because it accurately shows the relative positions of the stars in this small region of the sky. In addition, other things besides stars are also labeled on the chart. For example, Barnard's Loop on the left and M42 in the bottom middle are pointed out. Barnard's Loop is a cloud of faintly glowing gas, which can't be seen without a telescope. M42 is the Great Orion Nebula and it is the red splotch in Orion's Sword in the photo above.

the swan song of the year gone by...

i shine out...... wings of fire and ice
little glory and little spite
reach out hands stretched....wobbly unsure
a sip of sky .....clear...tasteless...pure
i rise and rise and shine ...
and then come down to feel
to touch the ground with my soul...a taste of the real
i come down in innumerable shards...
those of whatever i do not know..
but those that were part of me ...for sure
no tears ... no sorrow...is it joy ? or fear?...
???????
and lesser mortals frenzy around ...
calling it a happy new year!

Do You Know??

1. The name of the 3 stars that form the "Orion Belt"( Orion is a constellation and can be very easily identified in the sky) are Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka

2. The nearest galaxy to the Milky Way is LMC (Large Megellanic Cloud)

3. Most planets and satellites rotate west to east, but Venus rotates east to west.

4. A year on Mercury takes 87.97 Earth days; it takes 87.97 Earth days for Mercury to orbit the sun once.

5. ENCELADUS is a satellite of Saturn and where water fountain is found which is composed of water vapours and ice crystals

the dark side of light....

I hated the darkness around me…
I yelled and cried and cried……..
Pleaded for light…. But it never filtered through my window….
Should I change … and embrace this kohl around me…
Should I become the flesh of its flesh...... the blood of its blood……..
I tried ….. but my heart would never let me……..
I wailed… and …. Sobbed…..and then ..
…………………..more of it…..


Only to learn in years …… that it was this darkness that defined me
Only in years ….. I realized…….
I was born to be a star!

Types of Telescopic Objects

Open Clusters:

Open clusters are groups of stars held together by mutual gravitational attraction. All Open Clusters are part of our Milky Way galaxy that supposedly originate from large cosmic gas/dust clouds. They are considered to be relatively young in cosmological terms, in the hundreds of millions of years.

Globular Clusters:

Globular clusters are concentrated, gravitationally bound ranging anywhere from ten thousand to one million stars. They populate the halo or bulge of the Milky Way and other galaxies with a significant concentration toward the Galactic Center. Spectroscopic study of globular clusters shows that they are much lower in heavy element abundance than stars such as the Sun that form in the disks of galaxies; elements that are essential for life to form. Thus, globular clusters are believed to be very old and formed from an earlier generation of stars (Population II).Recentestimates for age range from 12 to 20 billion years, not too much younger than the universe itself.

Galaxies:

Galaxies come in a variety of types and shapes. The most well known is the spiral type. Our own Milky way is a spiral galaxy. The famous Andromeda galaxy is our closest galactic neighbor and is a spiral as well. A lenticular galaxy is shaped like a spiral but does not have the defined spiral arms. Lenticular galaxies are very old, containing mostly Population II stars. Irregular galaxies are believed to have taken their observed shapes due to gravitational distortion. Elliptical galaxies are simply elliptical is shape and do not rotate.

GALAXIES

GALAXIES

- Their Structures and Evolution

The very first question that comes in the mind is that whether all these galaxies are same or there is some difference among them? How do they differ and what are their underlying similarities?

Let's confront ourselves with their similarities first: -

• Each of the galaxies is enormous in size
• Each one contains huge number of star
• Even the smallest known dwarf galaxies are too large

You may regard a Galaxy as an island of stars. At first site, all of them appear as a hazy patch in sky but as you focus your vision you will discover that they have some characteristic geometry. Differences do lie in their appearances. Out of 2000 observed galaxies only 3% have no symmetry so they are called "Irregular" type of galaxies. The rest are either elliptical called ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES or spirals called SPIRAL GALAXIES. Former type is less abundant only 20% and the latter ones occupy most of the list i.e.77%.

Irregular Galaxy: -

As already pointed out these type don't have any symmetry. They are very few in numbers. The nearest to us, belonging to this type is known as the Large Magllenic cloud (LMC) and the Small Magllenic cloud (SMC). These are the most celebrated of its kind. Other well known includes M82 and NGC5192. LMC and SMC are important for studying irregular galaxies in details and observing star evolution in these galaxies. Unfortunately, it is not visible from mid-northern latitudes. Whenever if you ever have a chance to go Madras or any other southern place, don't forget to gaze at it!

Elliptical Galaxy: -

These are quite abundant in our universe. Out of observed galaxies, 20% are of this type. These galaxies are beautifully symmetric but featureless. Since an ellipse has eccentricity as one of its parameters, one parameter is needed to say more precisely about what type of elliptic the galaxy is. For astronomical uses term ellipticity is used to do so, which is defined as

10*(1-b/a)

where a is semimajor axis and b is semiminor axis of the ellipse we are considering (i.e. the galaxy).

For e.g. Galaxy having semimajor and semiminor axes as 10' and 5' is E5 as

10(1-5/10) = 5

Thus a galaxy appearing circular need not be a circle it may be elliptical. Most flattened one is E7. Regular galaxies flatter than this are all spirals. Celebrated elliptic galaxies are M87 (Virgo), NGC205 (the satellite galaxy of andromeda).

Spirals Galaxy: -

Most bright galaxies are Spirals. The type is divided in two major categories.

1.Normal Spirals (designated as S)

2.Barred spirals (designated as SB)

NORMAL SPIRAL

The normal type can be arranged in a sequence determined by how tightly the arms are wound and the extent to which stars and nebulae can be resolved. The loosest coiling is in type Sc and tightest is of type Sa.

Some of the celebrated normal spirals are M51(Whirlpool galaxy : Sc) & M31(Andromeda galaxy : Sb)

BARRED SPIRAL

Minorities of spirals have a bright bar that slices across the nucleus. Similar characterization can be given to barred spiral depending upon the tightness of the spiral arms. A celebrated one is NGC1300 in Eridanus.

"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
A thin man ran... made a large stride... left planet... pined flag on moon... on to Mars!"

Do You Know??

Do You Know??

• That just a pinhead of the Sun's raw material could kill someone up to 160 kilometer away!

• That Saturn has such a low density that it would float if put in water!

• That Jupiter’s magnetic field is so massive that it pours billions of Watts into Earths magnetic field every day!

•  That the energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago - it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun!
• That the star known as LP 327-186, a so-called white dwarf, is smaller than the state of Texas yet so dense that if a cubic inch of it were brought to earth it would weigh more than 1.5 million tons