Category Astronomy

MYSTERIES OF THE UFO (UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS)

Whether it is the possibility of making contact with alien life, or the mere thrill of the unknown, UFOs have always intrigued us.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a UFO! Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOS are exactly the stuff that legends are made of, and have since time immemorial held people in its thrall. From conspiracy theories of their sightings, portrayal in books and movies, their link to alien invasions, and more, have ensured that the topic has remained relevant even with the change of governments and lapse of time.  Naturally, a day dedicated to these mysterious flying saucers was just waiting to happen. Earlier, June 24 was allotted as the day of celebration, for, according to aviator Kenneth Arnold, it was on that day that nine unidentified objects had flown over Washington in the 1990s. However, July 2 was officially allotted as World UFO Day to commemorate the supposed UFO crash incident that occurred in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

The Rosewell Incident It famously refers to the 1947 recovery of balloon debris from a ranch near Corona, New Mexico, by U.S.Army Air Forces officers from the Roswell Army Air Field, and conspiracy theories which emerged decades later, claiming that the debris involved a flying saucer and that the truth had been hushed up by the US government.

Throughout 1947, people across the U.S.. and other countries had been reporting sightings of strange objects in the sky and claiming that. they were alien-piloted spacecrafts In the midst of this the flying saucer furore, in July that year, some unusual material fell on the ground near Roswell. Soon after, an information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued an unauthorised press release stating that a flying disk” had been retrieved from a local ranch. The Roswell Daily Record immediately printed the story headlined “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”

The officer was admonished and the Army duly retracted the statement and said that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. While the incident slowly died down, it eventually laid the ground for several hoaxes in the future.

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WHAT IS JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE?

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared space observatory that launched on Dec 25, 2021, from ESA’s launch site at Kourou in French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT; 9:20 a.m. local time in Kourou), aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket.

NASA released the first scientific images from Webb at a live event on July, 12. Explore the first images in more detail and what it means for JWST science in our recently published article.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope — NASA’s largest and most powerful space science telescope — will probe the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond. It is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, huge space instruments that include the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the cosmos.

The release of the first full-colour images and spectroscopic data will mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. James Webb was launched in December to succeed the revolutionary – but now ageing-Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope uses a 19.7-foot-tall primary mirror to collect light. That light is bounced to a smaller secondary mirror, which then redirects it onto the telescope’s instruments, including a camera that records an image.

While Hubble looks mostly in the visual and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, Webb will look at longer wavelengths in the infrared, to see what the universe looked like around 100 to 250 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

Early alignment imagery already demonstrated the unprecedented sharpness of Webb’s infrared view. However, these new images will be the first in full colour and the first to showcase Webb’s full science capabilities.

Credit : Space.com 

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WHO WAS THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN TO WALK IN SPACE?

On June 18, 1983, Sally K. Ride was onboard the space shuttle Challenger for the STS-7 mission, thereby becoming the first American woman to go into space. Apart from making two space flights, Ride championed the cause of science education for children.

The first decades of space exploration was largely dominated by two countries the US and the Soviet Union This period is even referred to as the Space Race as the two Cold War adversaries pitted themselves: against each other to achieve superior spaceflight capabilities.

While the two countries were neck and neck in most aspects. the Soviets sent a woman to space much before the US. Even though Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in June 1963, it was another 20 years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space

Urged to explore

Ride was the older of two daughters born  to Carol Joyce Ride and Dale Ride. Even though her mother was a counsellor and her father a professor of political science. Ride credits them for fostering her interest in science by enabling her to explore from a very young age.

An athletic teenager, Ride loved sports such as tennis, running, volleyball, and softball. In fact, she attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles on a partial tennis scholarship. She even tried her luck in professional tennis, before returning to California to attend Stanford University.

By 1973, Ride not only had a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, but had also obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She got her Master of Science degree in 1975 and obtained her Ph.D. in Physics by 1978

Restriction removed

Having restricted astronaut qualification to men for decades,  NASA expanded astronaut selection with the advent of the space shuttle from only pilots to engineers and scientists, opening the doorway for women finally. Having seen an ad in a newspaper inviting women to apply for the astronaut programme Ride decided to give it a shot

Out of more than 8,000 applications, Ride became one of six women who were chosen as an astronaut candidate in January 1978. Spaceflight training began soon after and it included parachute jumping, water survival, weightlessness, radio communications, and navigation, among others. She was also involved in developing the robot arm used to deploy and retrieve satellites.

Ride served as part of the ground-support crew for STS-2 and STS-3 missions in November 1981 and March 1982. In April 1982, NASA announced that Ride would be part of the STS-7 crew, serving as a mission specialist in a five-member crew.

First American woman in space

On June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space. By the time the STS-7 mission was completed and the space shuttle Challenger returned to Earth on June 24, they had launched communications satellites for Canada and Indonesia. As an expert in the use of the shuttle’s robotic arm, Ride also helped deploy and retrieve a satellite in space using the robot arm.

Ride created history once again when she became the first American woman to travel to space a second time as part of the STS-41G in October 1984. During this nine-day mission, Ride employed the shuttle’s robotic arm to remove ice from the shuttle’s exterior and to also readjust a radar antenna. There could have even been a third, as she was supposed to join STS-61M, but that mission was cancelled following the 1986 Challenger disaster.

Even after her days of space travel were over, Ride was actively involved in influencing the space programme. When accident investigation boards were set up in response to two shuttle tragedies – Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 Ride was a part of them both.

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WHAT IS JUPITER’S IO MOON?

Io or Jupiter I, is the innermost and third-largest of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is the fourth-largest moon in the Solar System, has the highest density of any moon, the strongest surface gravity of any moon, and the lowest amount of water (by atomic ratio) of any known astronomical object in the Solar System. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after the mythological character Io, a priestess of Hera who became one of Zeus’s lovers.

With over 400 active volcanoes, Io is the most geologically active object in the Solar System.

This extreme geologic activity is the result of tidal heating from friction generated within Io’s interior as it is pulled between Jupiter and the other Galilean moons—Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Several volcanoes produce plumes of sulfur and sulfur dioxide that climb as high as 500 km (300 mi) above the surface. Io’s surface is also dotted with more than 100 mountains that have been uplifted by extensive compression at the base of Io’s silicate crust. Some of these peaks are taller than Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth’s surface.  Unlike most moons in the outer Solar System, which are mostly composed of water ice, Io is primarily composed of silicate rock surrounding a molten iron or iron sulfide core. Most of Io’s surface is composed of extensive plains with a frosty coating of sulfur and sulfur dioxide.

Io’s volcanism is responsible for many of its unique features. Its volcanic plumes and lava flows produce large surface changes and paint the surface in various subtle shades of yellow, red, white, black, and green, largely due to allotropes and compounds of sulfur. Numerous extensive lava flows, several more than 500 km (300 mi) in length, also mark the surface. The materials produced by this volcanism make up Io’s thin, patchy atmosphere and Jupiter’s extensive magnetosphere. Io’s volcanic ejecta also produce a large plasma torus around Jupiter.

Io played a significant role in the development of astronomy in the 17th and 18th centuries; discovered in January 1610 by Galileo Galilei, along with the other Galilean satellites, this discovery furthered the adoption of the Copernican model of the Solar System, the development of Kepler’s laws of motion, and the first measurement of the speed of light. Viewed from Earth, Io remained just a point of light until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it became possible to resolve its large-scale surface features, such as the dark red polar and bright equatorial regions. In 1979, the two Voyager spacecraft revealed Io to be a geologically active world, with numerous volcanic features, large mountains, and a young surface with no obvious impact craters. The Galileo spacecraft performed several close flybys in the 1990s and early 2000s, obtaining data about Io’s interior structure and surface composition. These spacecraft also revealed the relationship between Io and Jupiter’s magnetosphere and the existence of a belt of high-energy radiation centered on Io’s orbit. Io receives about 3,600 rem (36 Sv) of ionizing radiation per day.

Further observations have been made by Cassini–Huygens in 2000, New Horizons in 2007, and Juno since 2017, as well as from Earth-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit : Wikipedia 

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WHICH ASTEROID IS MADE OF METALS?

Nasa has discovered a rare and highly valuable asteroid called ’16 psyche’. It was found by nasa’s hubble space telescope. The asteroid is located in our solar system’s asteroid belt between the planets of mars and jupiter.

According to a study published by the planetary science journal on monday, asteroid ’16 psyche’ is located roughly 370 million kilometres (230 million miles) from the earth and measures 226 kilometres across (140 miles).

The most interesting thing about the asteroid is what it’s made of. Unlike other asteroids made up of either rocks or ice, psyche is made up of metals.

One of the study’s authors tracy becker said that they usually come across meteorites that have metal deposits but since psyche is made up entirely of metals, it is quite unique.

Psyche’s size and presence of metal deposits means that it could be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000), which is equivalent to ten thousand times the global economy in 2019.

Researchers used the ultraviolet spectrum data collected by the space telescope imaging spectrograph on the hubble telescope during two observations made in 2017.

The data showed them that psyche’s surface could be made of pure iron but they also found that the presence of iron composition as small as 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet reports. Psyche is believed to be the dead core of a planet that might have failed during its formative stages or it could also be the result of many violent space collisions.

Nasa has already targeted the exploration of asteroid psyche with the launch of nasa discovery mission psyche, which is expected to be launched in 2022. The psyche space probe will be sent atop a spacex falcon heavy rocket and will reach the asteroid by 2026, and hopefully uncover its exact metal content and other facets.

Credit :  India times 

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WHY SOMETIMES WE CAN SEE MORE THAN THE CRESCENT MOON?

Although we usually see only the brightly lit part of the moon during its crescent phase, we sometimes see the other part too, though dimly lit.

What’s the reason?

Earth reflects the sun’s light falling on it just like the  moon does. The earth, in fact, is a better reflector than the moon. The oceans which cover three-fourths of the earth’s surface, reflect a lot of solar radiation back into space. So just as we have moonlight here, there is earthlight on the dark side of the moon. It is this earthlight which makes the moon beyond the crescent dimly visible to us.

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