Venus Jupiter Conjunction!!

This is the photo of Venus- Jupiter Conjunction taken on 2nd feb.The conjuction was of the brightest objects seen in the morning sky these days and it wasa an awesome sight with separation of abt 45 arcmin at 5.30 am between planet venus and jupiter on 2nd feb. the photo is taken with 5" telescope and canon digcam.

Geminid meteor photo!!

This is the photo of Geminid meteor taken on 14th dec from vangani. The shower was weak... not as we expected but still i got one faint meteor in my cam field! we couldnt see many fireballs or bright meteors that day. The photo is taken with my canon digcam 4megapixel 4x zoom with just 15sec exposure!

Mars photo!!

This is the first photo odf mars i have taken! With my 5" reflector telescope and canon digcam 4megapixel 4x zoom. i have stacked 10 photos of exp 1/25 each with ISO 400!

Comet Holmes on 29th!

Photo of Comet Holmes taken on 29th oct with canon digcam 4 megapixel 4x zoom and with 5" reflector telescope by A-focal method wit 10sec exposure.

Comet Holmes!!

This is the photo of tail less comet Holmes takem with my 5'' reflector telescope, canon digcam 4megapixel 4x zoom with a

slight exposure of 6sec. its a bright comet visiblt wiht naked eyes right now in Perseus.

Japan's Mission to the Moon Blasts OFF!!

If you think the Americans are going to be dominating lunar exploration, think again. Many countries are considering our heavenly companion, helping to unlock its secrets. The next mission to head off is the Japanese lunar probe Kayuga, which blasted off from the Tanegashima space center at 10:31:01 Japan Standard Time (01:31:01 UTC) on September 14th - after an initial delay due to weather. The spacecraft is currently in Earth orbit, and will leave for the moon on October 3rd. It'll start making scientific observations on October 21st.Once near the moon, Kayuga will split into three satellites; a 3-ton main orbiter which will orbit the planet at an altitude of 100km, and the smaller Relay and VRAD Satellites, which will orbit and gather information about the poles.
There are three main goals for the mission:
Kayuga will be on the moon to study how it evolved and where it came from by looking at the topography and the abundance of elements in the lunar soil, and measuring the Moon's gravity and weak magnetic field. Hopefully, it'll help explain the question: was the Moon captured by the Earth, did it solidify out of the same material and at the same time as our planet, was it somehow fissioned or secreted by the Earth, or is the result of a massive collision by another object.
It'll also study the plasma, energetic particles and electromagnetic field surrounding the Moon.

Finally, the probes will turn their electromagnetic eyes towards our planet to study the plasma surrounding the Earth, and allow us to better understand how our own magnetosphere and ionosphere protect us from the deadly radiation of the solar wind. One of the neatest aspects of the Kayuga mission is its inclusion of a High Definition Television camera to send back movies of the Earth from the Moon. This means that we will be able to see the Earth-rise from the Moon's horizon!

Hubble detects ring of dark matter!!

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a ghostlyring of dark matter that formed during a titanic collision between twomassive galaxy clusters. Because ordinary matter in the cluster showsno evidence of such a ring, this discovery is among the strongestevidence yet for non-baryonic dark matter. Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound structuresin the universe. They typically contain hundreds or thousands ofgalaxies, forming at the knots of the filamentary sponge-likedistribution of matter on very large scales. Numerical simulationsshow how the accretion of matter from the filaments to the knots makegalaxy clusters grow in size. This one-dimensional accretion (along afilament) results in frequent, near head-on collisions among clustersor groups of galaxies, whereas interactions between individualgalaxies usually occur only when there is significant rotation.

The galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 – some 5 x 109 light-years away (z =0.4) – is supposed to have experienced exactly such a head-oncollision 1 or 2 thousand million years ago. The first evidence ofthis was obtained in 2002 by Oliver Czoske, from the University ofBonn, and collaborators. By studying the velocity distribution of thegalaxies in the cluster, they found two distinct groups with oppositevelocity, suggesting that there are two sub-clusters moving away fromeach other along the line-of-sight. Their numerical simulationsconfirm the collision scenario and suggest a sub-cluster mass ratio of2:1. In 2004, when the dark-matter distribution in Cl 0024+117 was studied there was no such a peculiar cluster of galaxies. Ring-like distribution was never seen in other clusters.It is indeed tricky to derive the dark-matter distribution in acluster from the distortion it causes on the shape of backgroundgalaxies, but the analysis of this weak gravitational lensing nowseems to be well under control, with the release of the first 3D mapof the dark matter distribution (CERN Courier January/February 2007)

Quark Star... A new Object!!

The breakdown of matter into its tiniest quark components in a star's core may have triggered the brightest supernova ever seen. If correct, this would be the first time anyone has seen the birth of an exotic object called a quark star.On 18 September 2006, astronomers observed the record-breaking supernova, called 2006gy, and were shocked to find that it was intrinsically about 100 times brighter than typical stellar explosions.
To explain its extreme power, its discoverers invoked an unusual argument based on the creation of pairings of matter and antimatter particles inside a massive star. Some physicists say that when matter is crushed to extreme densities, it settles into a soup of individual quarks. A cubic centimetre of this new type of matter – dubbed 'strange’ would weigh as much as a billion tonnes and would have the unusual property of converting any ordinary matter that touches it into more strange matter, releasing energy in the process.
The energy released by converting the core of a star into strange matter would cause an explosion called a quark nova, observed for the first time in SN 2006gy. the event begins when a massive star blasts away its outer layers in an ordinary supernova explosion. In the process, the star's core collapses to become a dense object called a neutron star. some neutron stars last only a short time because their magnetic properties cause their spin rates to drastically slow down. Because centrifugal force can no longer support the neutron star's core, it collapses even further, transforming into strange matter.The transformation releases a tremendous amount of energy, blasting the neutron star's outer layers into space at close to light speed. The layers then slam into debris from the original supernova, creating an intense glow bright enough to explain the observations of SN 2006gy.
"Strange matter may exist or it may not, It's not proven theoretically – it's an open issue.” Evidence for the quark nova scenario could come from continued monitoring of the aftermath of SN 2006gy, which could show signs of rare elements with an atomic weight greater than 130.

Burts of Gamma Rays from Blackhole...

A black hole has been spotted belching out a burst of gamma rays after gulping down part of a nearby star, something never seen before. Such violent burps may actually be the most common type of explosive "gamma-ray burst" in the universe.
The event was named GRB 070610 after the date of its discovery by NASA's Swift satellite on 10 June 2007.

At first it looked like another ordinary long gamma-ray burst (GRB) in a distant galaxy. These outbursts are thought to be the death cries of massive stars collapsing to form black holes.

But this GRB seems to have a different provenance altogether. They suspect that the black hole in the system had some kind of a giant hiccup while chowing down on matter stolen from its companion star. This gamma-ray hiccup behaviour has never been seen before and scientists are not sure how to explain it. But though the burst was much less powerful than typical long GRBs, such events are still quite violent. A similar system called V4641 Sgr set the record for spewing matter out at the highest speed ever observed in our galaxy during a similar outburst, observed in X-rays, in 1999.

It's clearly an unusual event. There's yet another way that nature found to make GRBs, which is very interesting. Low energy
"The reason we haven't seen something like this before is not because it's rare but because it's a low-energy event," Kasliwal says, explaining that this burst is intrinsically about 100 trillion times less powerful than previously observed long GRBs. Those more powerful long GRBs have only been observed in other galaxies and are thought to occur in our own galaxy less than once every 100,000 years

Four Massive Galaxies Colliding...

Four massive galaxies are colliding in the largest galactic merger ever seen, new observations reveal. The smash-up is shedding light on how the biggest galaxies in the universe form – and why many of them stopped giving birth to stars billions of years ago.

Astronomers classify mergers according to the relative sizes of the galaxies involved. Now, researchers led by Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, have found the largest major merger ever seen. It involves a quartet of galaxies at the centre of a galactic cluster known as CL0958+4702, which lies about 5 billion light years from Earth.Three of the merging galaxies are the size of the Milky Way, while the other is about three times as massive
Star plume
Using infrared observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the WIYN Observatory in Arizona, US, the team also discovered a colossal, fan-shaped 'plume' of old, red stars trailing about 360,000 light years from the merger, apparently tossed out of the galaxies as they spiralled towards each other. "That's the other fairly amazing thing – the number of stars in the plume is about three Milky Ways' worth. Eventually, about half of those stars will likely fall into the merged galaxies – which are expected to coalesce into a single mammoth galaxy in about 100 million years – while the other half will float freely outside it, he says. That suggests other free-floating stars previously found within galaxy clusters were also ejected from their birth galaxies during major mergers. This answers the question of how you form the most massive galaxies in the universe." That is because the most massive galaxies yet observed – weighing about 10 times the Milky Way – are found at the centres of nearby galaxy clusters, which are seen as they are now, 13.7 billion years after the big bang. Interestingly, the four merging galaxies are made of old, red stars, suggesting each had lost the gas necessary to form new stars long beforehand, within 5 billion years of the big bang. That agrees with other recent observations showing that galaxies within clusters – which typically contain hundreds of galaxies – contain fewer young stars than those lying outside clusters. The four newly discovered merging galaxies lie 5 billion light years away, meaning astronomers see them as they were 5 billion years ago!!!

Comet-like Tail of Star Mira!!

A glowing, comet-like tail has been discovered trailing behind a double star called Mira, a phenomenon never seen before. It may contain clues about the star's activity over the past 30,000 years.Mira, which means "wonderful" in Latin, is one of the best-studied star systems in the sky and lies 350 light years from Earth. One star in the pair, called Mira A, is a bloated, ageing red giant that sheds large amounts of gas and dust into space, while the other, Mira B, is a dense stellar corpse called a white dwarf.
Previous studies had shown that some of the material from Mira A's wind has collected into a disc – which could potentially form planets – around Mira B (see Dying star's wind creates planetary nursery).
Now astronomers led by Christopher Martin of Caltech in Pasadena, US, have discovered the long tail, which is visible only in far ultraviolet light. They happened upon it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite, which was surveying the sky at ultraviolet wavelengths.The tail extends 13 light years from Mira – if it were visible in the sky, it would span the width of four full Moons. It appears to trace the path of Mira's motion across the sky over the past 30,000 years, based on its size and Mira's speed, which has been previously measured.
Martin's team believes the tail is created as a result of Mira A's stellar wind – an outflow of gas and dust from the star – hitting ambient gas as it moves through space. Fast-moving electrons generated by the collision then strike hydrogen molecules in surrounding gas, producing ultraviolet light. This creates a glowing trail behind Mira as it travels through the galaxy at 130 kilometres per second. the tail could shed light on why some stars turn into white dwarfs and others explode as supernovae.stars such as Mira A, which start out with a few times the mass of the Sun, avoid this fate by shedding most of their mass in stellar winds to become placid white dwarfs

4 Suns in this SolarSystem!!

Here in our Solar System, we've only got one star: the Sun. That gives us nice predictable daily and annual cycles; night and day, the seasons, that sort of thing. Astronomers have found a newly forming extrasolar planetary system that has 4 stars. The discovery, made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, revealed a dusty disk surround a pair of stars in the quadruple-star system HD 98800.The system itself is pretty complicated, so bear with me as I try to explain it. There are two pairs of binary stars; 2 + 2 = 4 stars in total. These two binary groupings are separated by 50 astronomical units (AU); approximately the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Around one of these binary pairs, astronomers discovered two belts of material.The first belt sits at approximately 1.5 to 2 AU (twice the distance from the Sun to the Earth), and seems to consist of fine grains of dust. The second belts is further out at approximately 5.9 AU and is probably made up of asteroids or comets.
The sunsets would be spectacular.

New Asteroid Group Found!!

A new space rock has been found that devotedly travels around with Mars as it orbits the Sun, bringing the total number of such 'groupies' to four. But astronomers say it was Mars – not its tiny companions – that originally insinuated itself into the rock group billions of years ago.The asteroid, called 2007 NS2, was discovered by astronomers at the La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain on 14 July. Based on its brightness, it is estimated to be about 1 kilometre across.It follows Mars in its orbit, occupying a spot called L5, which lags the Red Planet by 60° as it moves around the Sun. It shares L5 with two other objects, while a fourth object orbits 60° ahead of Mars at a point called L4.Objects that wander into the L4 and L5 points of a planet tend to be confined there by the combined gravity of the planet and the Sun.
How Mars got its Trojans is uncertain, but the Red Planet may have collected them at a much earlier period, just after the dawn of the solar system a little more than 4.5 billion years ago
At that time, an embryonic Mars may have been kicked around the solar system through gravitational interactions with other planetary embryos. Any asteroids that happened to be at the L4 and L5 points of its new orbit would have been trapped there by the Red Planet's gravityEarth has no known Trojans, perhaps because our home planet is too heavy to have been knocked around the same way that Mars was, Morbidelli says. "Mars jumped around because of its small mass, but not the Earth," he says. Mars is just 11% as massive as the Earth.
Although no asteroids are known to occupy Earth's L4 and L5 points, there are a handful of so-called Earth co-orbital asteroids. These objects have corkscrew orbits, slowly looping around Earth, while following its orbital motion around the Sun. This configuration is unstable, so these objects are only temporary companions to Earth.One such object, a 200-metre-wide asteroid called 2004 GU9, has been looping around Earth this way for 500 years, but is expected to eventually drift away.

Jupiter with four Moons!!!

I have taken this photo with my canon 4 megapixel 4x zoom digcam without using any exposure settings! taken from vangani with 8" telescope. I like it coz thefour moons are clearly visible!!

Baby galaxies sighted at dawn of universe

Astronomers have spotted the most distant galaxies known, from an era when the universe was just 4% its present age. Objects like these could be responsible for lifting the veil on the so-called cosmic 'dark ages', by making the universe transparent to light.
Because it takes light from distant galaxies billions of years to reach us, we see them as they were long ago, when the universe was much younger.

Previously, the most distant galaxy known had been found at a redshift of 7 – corresponding to a time when the universe was about 750 million years old (see First generation of galaxies glimpsed forming).
Now, astronomers led by Daniel Stark of Caltech in Pasadena, California, US, have found several galaxies at a redshift of about 9. A redshift of 9 corresponds to an era just 500 million years after the big bang – 4% the universe's present age of 13.7 billion years.

The team used the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, US, to look for distant galaxies. They were able to improve the sensitivity of their search by taking advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where the gravity of nearby objects bends and focuses light from more distant objects.
The team searched parts of the sky surrounding nearby galaxy clusters, where this lensing effect is most pronounced. They spotted two objects that appear to be at redshift 9, called Abell 68 c1 and Abell 2219 c1.
Their light appears to be that of excited hydrogen gas, redshifted by the expansion of the universe. But this alone is not enough for a firm identification, because excited oxygen from a closer object would shine at the same wavelength.
The astronomers were able to rule out the nearby object scenario because excited oxygen should also shine at a second wavelength, which these objects do not appear to do.

Since the astronomers only searched a minute fraction of the sky, even if only two of the objects are truly distant galaxies, this would suggest that these tiny galaxies were abundant in the early universe.
Rough calculations suggest that they would be abundant enough to play a significant part in lifting the veil on the cosmic dark ages. For most of the first few hundred million years of the universe's history, the universe was largely opaque to light because hydrogen atoms absorbed it everywhere.
Radiation from unknown sources later ripped electrons from the hydrogen atoms – a process called reionisation – so that it no longer absorbed light, making the universe transparent.

Previously, astronomers suspected that galaxies were rare 500 million years after the big bang, and that reionisation was largely carried out by objects at redshift 6, which corresponds to about 900 million years after the big bang (see Hubble heats debate over ionised universe).
But the detection of these objects suggests that these earlier objects may have a played a bigger role than previously believed

Scientists have reported the first conclusive evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet. Before we load up the spaceships to search for life, however, consider the fact that this planet, HD 189733b, is larger than Jupiter, and orbits its parent star in just 2.2 days. That's hot hot water.
The discovery was made using the mighty Spitzer space telescope. The astronomers pointed Spitzer at the parent star, and measured the chemical consistency of its light as the planet passed in front - aka, transited. As the starlight dimmed - blocked by the planet - the chemical constituents of the star changed to show a distinctive pattern. Astronomers know that only water can absorb these specific wavelengths of infrared radiation.

This planet is certainly a "hot Jupiter". It contains 1.15 the mass of Jupiter (and 1.25 the diameter), but it orbits its parent star at a distance of only 4.5 million km. In comparison, our own Mercury is a distant 70 million km from the Sun.
It's close, so it's hot. Its atmospheric temperature is about 1000 Kelvin (more than 700 C). With this heat, all the water vapour in its atmosphere can't condense, rain or form clouds.
It's also tidally locked to its parent star, only showing one face to the star at all times (like the Moon and the Earth). This constant facing probably generates fierce winds that sweep around the planet from the day side to the night side.
Not the best place to find life, but still, an amazing discovery

No Stars found in this Dark Galaxy!!!??!!

An international team of astronomers have conclusive new evidence that a recently discovered "dark galaxy" is, in fact, an object the size of a galaxy, made entirely of dark matter. Although the object, named VIRGOHI21, has been observed since 2000, astronomers have been slowly ruling out every alternative explanation. In a new research paper, entitled 21-cm synthesis observations of VIRGOHI 21 – a possible dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, researchers provide updated evidence about this mysterious galaxy. They have now performed a high resolution observations of VIRGOHI21 using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), to better pin down the quantities of neutral hydrogen gas. They also did followup observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, looking for any evidence of stars.Astronomers first suspected there was an invisible galaxy out there when they spied galaxy NGC 4254. This unusual-looking galaxy appears to be one partner in a cosmic collision. All the normal evidence is there: gas is being siphoned away into a tenuous stream, and one of its spiral arms is being stretched out. But the other partner in this collision is nowhere to be seen.The researchers' calculated that an object with 100 billion solar masses must have careened past NGC 4254 within the last 100 million years, creating the gas stream, and tearing at one of its arms. This was the clue that an invisible dark matter galaxy might be lurking nearby. A detailed search turned up a mysterious object called VIRGOHI21, located about 50 million light-years from Earth. Were it a normal galaxy, you would be able to see it in a powerful amateur telescope. But there's nothing there. Even in the Hubble Space Telescope, not a single star is shining from this massive region of space.It was only visible in radio telescopes, which could detect the radio emissions from neutral hydrogen gas located in the cloud. When they first published their research a few years ago, the astronomy community was understandably skeptical, and proposed several alternative theories to explain the mysterious object.For example, there could be additional mass associated with VIRGOHI21, and not just dark matter. The discovery of red giant stars in the region would give some indication that this was a more normal interaction. But Hubble turned up nothing.It's possible that VIRGOHI21 has always been this way, formed from primordial dark matter and neutral hydrogen after the Big Bang. It's been cruising the Universe ever since, disrupting galaxies as it goes.However, there do seem to be ways that galaxies and their dark matter can be separated. Only a few months ago, a ring of dark matter was found surrounding a group of colliding galaxy clusters by the Hubble Space Telescope. Perhaps VIRGOHI21 is the wreckage from one of these cluster collisions; a shred of dark matter hurled out into space.It could be that there are many of these dark galaxies out there. A new sky survey, carried out with the 305-metre (1000-foot) Aricebo radio telescope in Puerto Rico should tease out more of these objects in the future. The survey is called the Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey (AGES).

This is one of my favorite pics of moon! I have taken this with my canon digcam 4megapixel 4x zoom. And this photo is special coz Suresh Mohan expert ameteur photographer of Bangalore gave compliments to this photo!!

One of the biggest news stories of the year was an Earth-sized planet orbiting Gliese 581. Even more importantly, this terrestrial planet is orbiting within the star's habitable zone, where any water will likely be in liquid form. But it takes more than just water to encourage life, you need a nice, stable star. And according to a new survey, Gliese 581 fits the bill there too. The survey was done by Canada's MOST telescope, nicknamed the Humble Space Telescope. MOST focused on Gliese 581 for 6 weeks, watching for any flareups, or drops in light. According to University of British Columbia researcher, Jaymie Matthews, the brightness of the star only changed a few tenths of a percent during their observations. That means its radiation output remains very stable over time. So, Gliese 581c has the possibility of liquid water and stable warming from the star. Good news for potential life on this distant planet.

Moon craters!!
Details: Canon digcam 4 megapixel 4x zoom
5' refelctor telescope by A-focal method