LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory)
What is LIGO? It is the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory and a wonder of precision engineering. It comprises of two enormous laser interferometers located thousands of kilometres apart, each having two arms which are 4 km long. It exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to detect and understand the origins […]
Spitzer Space Telescope
The Spitzer Space Telescope is the final mission in NASA’s Great Observatories Program – a family of four space-based observatories, each observing the Universe in a different kind of light. The other missions in the program include the visible-light Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO), and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO). The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in the year 2003. It is a space-borne, […]
Square Kilometre Array (SKA)
It consists of a supercomputer that will process the enormous amounts of data produced by the SKA’s telescopes. The total compute power will be around 250 PFlops — that’s 25 per cent faster than IBM’s Summit, the current fastest supercomputer in the world. Significance: When complete, the SKA will enable astronomers to monitor the sky […]
Why do we need telescopes?
To watch the object of faraway we need to have a bigger eye over which we can collect more light coming from an object. With more light we can create a brighter image, we can then magnify the image so that it takes up more space on our retina. That’s where the telescopes come, telescope […]
Saraswati supercluster
A team of Indian astronomers have identified previously unknown, extremely large supercluster of galaxies called Saraswati Saraswati supercluster is one of the largest known structures in the nearby universe. It is 4 billion light years away from Earth and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns. It has 43 galaxies that […]
ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY
A team from the University of Colorado at Boulder is working on making the concept of artificial gravity a reality. Meaning: Artificial gravity means spacecraft generating their own gravity by spinning around in space. Concept: These researchers are examining ways to design revolving systems that might fit within a room of future space stations and even […]
Heliosphere, Heliopause and Interstellar Space
The sun creates heliosphere by sending a constant flow of particles and a magnetic field out into space at over 670,000 miles per hour. This stream is called the ‘solar wind.’ Heliopause marks the end of a region created by our sun that is called the heliosphere. It is the boundary between our Solar System […]