Space Tidbit

"The exact temperature of the thermosphere can vary substantially, but the average temperature above 180 miles (300 km) is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius) at solar minimum and 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) at solar maximum. (Though these temperatures sound hot, you would not actually feel warm in the thermosphere, because the molecules in that layer are too far apart.)"

Link

Our Amazing Neighbourhood

Is it not beautiful? :) This is what you will see on the sky if you lie down on the lawn of your home on a dark silent night, on grass, with sweet earthly scent around, slight dew and once in a while gentle breeze.

Full Resolution Image here

Article on Space.com
A new panoramic image of the full night sky — with the Milky Way as its centerpiece — has been made by piecing together 3,000 individual photographs. The panorama's creator, Axel Mellinger of Central Michigan University, spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. "This panorama image shows stars 1,000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," Mellinger said. To combine these images, a simple cutting and pasting job would not suffice. Each photograph is a two-dimensional projection of the celestial sphere. As such, each one contains distortions, in much the same way that flat maps of the round Earth are distorted. In order for the images to fit together seamlessly, those distortions had to be accounted for. To do that, Mellinger used a mathematical model — and hundreds of hours in front of a computer.


If this is not enough to amaze you, then check this out.

Mega-star explosion most distant object ever seen

This is the most distant star-burst captured. and it is 13.1 billion light years far. You cant even imagine how far that is.

(AFP/HO/A.J.Levan & N.R.Tanvir)

GRB 090423 is the small, very red source in the centre of this image. The red colour is indicative of its great distance - about 13.1 billion light years - since all the optical light has been absorbed by intergalactic hydrogen gas, leaving only infrared light. All the other galaxies and stars in the image are much closer to us and just happen lie in the same part of the sky.

Astronomy humbles you.

Move Over 'Dark energry', 'Big Wave' is here!

Interesting times :) Scientists have proposed a 'new' theory to explain the expansion of universe. Its called 'Big Wave'.

Time for a bit of story telling. When some 15 billion years ago as the Big Bang occurred, the universe as we see came in to existence. All these stars and galaxies were formed. Our own solar system came in to existence some 5 billion years ago. When Newton discovered gravity, this had an ominous sign for our universe - it would ultimately collapse on itself due to gravity. To erase our fears of this inevitable crunch came Albert Einstein who proposed that Universe was 'expanding' rather than contracting. He arrived at this conclusion mathematically wherein to balance the force of gravity he introduced the 'cosmological constant' as the fudge factor. He himself admitted that it was the 'Biggest Blunder' he committed because it just did not make sense. This cosmological constant worked against the pull of gravity and thus enabled the universe to expand.

Turns out, the universe IS expanding as it was confirmed by Edwin Hubble in 1929 when he stumbled upon the red shift pattern of galaxies. As a light emitting body moves away from you, the strength of light decreases resulting in shifting towards the red end of the spectrum. But this was truly unsettling. What was causing the universe to expand? and why should it be expanding when it should be contracting instead? And what if it did not contract and kept on expanding? Will it result in the Big Rip in which everything will be torn apart?

But it was a general belief that ultimately the gravity will take over this cosmological constant so universe will become stationary if not start to contract. Fast forward to mid 1990s and scientists are boggled by the recent discovery that universe is not just expanding - its expanding very fast and its speed is rising!

The observations stated that the universe we see around us, had the visible matter of only 4%! Where the hell was the rest of 96% of our universes mass?! The Biggest Blunder of Cosmological Constant not only looked neat now but it had to be made to wear new clothes. In came the concepts of Dark Energy and Dark Matter. Dark Energy constituted 74% of the matter and Dark Matter 22%. Dark Matter has been confirmed for its presence as it has affected objects near it but it can not be detected because the light does not interfere with it.

Dark Energy which constituted 74% of our universe's mass was still elusive. In fact it too is a fudge factor introduced to balance the mathematical equations. Now scientists have come up with a new explanation for the expansion of this universe. Call it a new opinion and its called 'Big Wave'. According to it the universe is not expanding rather a wave in space-time is making it 'appear' as if its expanding very fast. This Big wave was created by the Big Bang. Blake Temple of the University of California states it in the following manner.

Temple compared the wave to what happens when you throw a rock into a pond. In this case, the rock would be the Big Bang, and the concentric ripples that result are like a series of waves throughout the universe. Later on, when the first galaxies start to form, they are forming inside space-time that has already been displaced from where it would have been without the wave. So when we observe these galaxies with telescopes, they don't appear to be where we would expect if there had never been a big wave.

uh huh :)

Man is still searching for the 'truth'. Happy hunting.
And yeah you can read that again from the top :)

New Mass of Milky Way?

According to scientists, new measurements have been made regarding our galaxy, The Milky Way . Space.com has the article.

Scientists have dramatically revised the mass of the Milky Way, saying our home galaxy is half again as heavy as previously thought. The Milky Way is now on par with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy in terms of heft. The Milky Way spins a lot faster than was thought, too.

....

These high-precision measurements, presented here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, indicate that the galaxy's speed at the position of our solar system (at a distance of 28,000 light-years from the galactic center) is about 600,000 mph (970,000 kph) to 100,000 mph (160,000 kph) faster than previously thought.

That increase in speed increases the Milky Way's mass by 50 percent, said team member Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and that added heft makes our galaxy a much more serious contender against Andromeda.

The interesting thing, as pointed out in the comments too, is that 50% reevaluation of figures regarding mass and speed of Earth.. is way too much! What is the state of Astronomy or astrophysics to be specific? Are the instruments that unreliable that the next 'new' instrument revises up the figures by such huge amount? Does it not question the whole range of figures and measurements that we have had till date? Were we wrong when it comes to analyzing space?

All those models whereby supposedly we would have been smashed by Andromeda - wrong now? after all Milky Way is almost at par with Andromeda now. Now we should be the ones 'gulping down' Andromeda eh?

Suddenly the space-time instant that I am now in.. seems void.

Colliding Galaxies

You know what.. galaxies are just an astounding piece of nature! I am just left amazed whenever I see pictures of them. They are so pretty... and the size of them.. absolutely mind boggling. Still there seems such an order in their huge size, weight, stars, gravity and dark matter!

Hubble Telescope has released some new images and they provide breath taking aftermath of galaxies after their collision!

(All pictures and text below courtesy Space.com)

"Galaxy mergers are now known to be more common than was previously thought. They were even more common in the early universe than they are today. The early universe was smaller, so galaxies were closer together and therefore more prone to smash-ups. Even apparently isolated galaxies can show signs of past mergers in their internal structure."

"This game of celestial bumper cars is driven by the gravitational pulls that galaxies exert on one another. Typically the first sign of a collision is a bridge of matter connecting two galaxies as gravity's first gentle tugs tease out dust and gas. As the outer reaches of the galaxies begin to interact, long streamers of gas and dust, called tidal tails, sweep back to wrap around the galactic cores."

You know in some million years.. our galaxy 'Milky Way' will split by our giant neighbor 'Andromeda'?! That should be fun! :p By the way our galaxy is a cannibal too! Scientist also say that the universe is expanding.. and in future there will be no stars in our night sky because every galaxy would have drifted apart. Why do galaxies have to act like humans?

Moon Split!

Ok here is an other one related to my theme of recent postings. I am sorry but I "do" have to talk on it. I got a forwarding in which it was stated that 'muslims' have graphical evidence that supports the miracle attributed to Prophet Muhammad that he split the moon in two halves in reply to the questions posed on him by the people of Mecca regarding the authenticity of his Prophethood.




If anyone has a least bit knowledge of astronomy - he/ she would tell you that "the evidence" can be anything but a sign of split. You can see the craters formed on either side of it.. they seem deeper than the split-line. Secondly, the split-line is very small! The image which has been provided is a zoomed in one on one of the areas of Moon. If you zoom-out of this pic somehow.. you will not be able to see the line!

A rocky celestial body like earth, moon, Mars, Mercury... the surface has various features. Mountains, ridges, canyons, craters and albedos. Check the surface of one of the moon of Jupiter - Europa.



See any markings? appear similar? to me they do at least.
Finally. See this image of Moon. I got it from somewhere I cant remember. Credit to anybody to whom it belongs :| sorry



This is a very detailed pic of almost half of Moon. And I for one can't see a split line in it. You can clearly see the crater Copernicus, Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Serenitatis.

This also brings us to another aspect of this post. Did moon Split occur? hmm. Very tricky one. I'll be giving my opinion in next post.

Check My Other Posts:

- Moon Split - The Miracle?
- Prophets and Miracles
- Planet Mars and Islam!

Planet Mars and Islam!

No seriously! Mars does figure in Islam! one way or the other! As I wrote in my previous post that one receives a forwarding in email regarding motion of planet Mars and the closest ever proximity of it to Earth, one also gets an other email for the 'believers' that the motion of Mars is explained in Islam already! Go figure!

But first the text of that email...

Sunrise from the West

(Nasa's Report):

The science of astronomy states that the speed of planet Mars has been decreasing in its course toward the eastern direction in the few past weeks to the level we notice the "waver" between the east and the west and on Wednesday the 30th of July the planet movement stopped going toward the eastern direction..

Then in the months of August and September...Mars changed its course in the opposite direction to the West- and that until the end of September..which means the sun will rise now from the west on Mars!!

And this weird phenomena of the opposite movement called "Retrograde Motion" Most scientist state that all the planets will go through the same once at least and our planet Earth is one of them. Planet Earth will move in the opposite direction some day and the sun will rise from the west!!

This might occur soon and we are unaware!

The rise of the sun from the west is mentioned in the hadith and this is the major sign of the day of judgment, most if not All, the minor signs have occured. Wake up.

Our beloved messenger Mohamed (Peace Be Upon Him) said:

"One of the signs of the hour..the sun will rise from the west, where no longer tauba (forgiveness) will be granted" !!

And the strange thing..most of our Shariah scholars mentioned that the rise of the sun from the west occurs only once..on that day..thewest..then again from the east..and continues until Allah wishes..and this is similar to what is happening to Mars..it stops, then it changes its course of direction for a short period of time..then returns to way once it was.

Check the following link:

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/mars_retrograde_030725.html

I don't know but reading this made my marbles follow a retrograde motion! For heavens sake. Retrograde motion of Mars is an optical phenomenon. Mars does not actually start to go in reverse! It appears to the human eye to be reversing back becasue of the relative motion of Earth and Mars around the Sun and the Earth being in the inner orbit as compared to Mars!

Even if one follows the link that has been provided in the text - one can read all about it (update 4th September 2012: The link no longer works. Follow this one). But No! we muslims will take for granted anything as being true if it has been labeled under the tag of 'Islam'!

First we keep ourselves ignorant about science. The we love to place Islam and Prophet Muhammad in it! and guess who gets mocked? I just request people out there not to put Prophet's name and keep placing Islam in everything not even remotely related to them.

And I really do not like people branding Prophet Muhammad as 'local hakeem' or astronomer with a very poor knowledge suggesting herbs to remedy certain ills or explaining motion of planets. Really I do not.

Muslims should be the ones respecting Prophet Muhammad. They on the other hand provide sufficient material otherwise.

Also Check the following posts.


- Moon Split - The Miracle?
- Prophets and Miracles

Two Moons in the Sky!

Every year around August I receive an email forwarding (and most probably you would have too) that mars will be closest to Earth in gazillion years so do not miss the chance of watching it. There will be two moons in the sky!

Hell No! nothing can be farther from the truth! Mars was at its closest in August of 2003! Every year people keep asking me questions.. is it true? and every year I keep telling them no its not the case!

And its not Two moon in sky! When I watched Mars in 2003 - naked eye of course cuz I do not have a telescope :( - it was this brilliant orange kinda star! still no better than Venus! Damn Venus is very beautiful and bright in evenings!

So next time if you find this sort of mail in your Inbox.. delete it!

Man I love the sky :)

P.S: I am writing this after 2 months cuz I realized my blog was missing my interest elements of Astronomy and Egyptology! Better late than never!

Check My Other Posts:

1 - Prophets and Miracles
2 - Moon Split - The Miracle?
3 - Planet Mars and Islam!