A solar eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when the moon obscures the sun for some time. There are different kinds of solar eclipse – total, annular, hybrid and partial. During a total solar eclipse, the moon completely blocks out the sun. In an annular eclipse, the moon obscures only the centre of the sun….
Andromeda, the galaxy closest to the Milky Way, is about 2.5 million light years away. To travel in space, we need to achieve the speed of light, which is about 3,00,000 kilometres per second. Even at that great speed, it will take us about 2 million years (not 2.5 million years due to an effect called…
ALMA stands for Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array. Operational since 2013, it is the world’s most powerful telescope with 66 high precision antennas and is ten times sharper than Hubble. It is built in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an altitude of 16,500ft with almost no humidity or vegetation to block its view of the…
Space and time are woven together to form a fourth dimension called ‘space-time’. The ‘curvature’ is a geometric property of space- time. Einstein identified this property while he was working on his General Relativity theory. The curvature of space-time is directly related to the energy and the momentum of any matter or radiation. A standard…
StarCraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released for Microsoft Windows in 1998, was the first computer game to be played in space. The game is about three species who fight for dominance. The mission specialist of the space shuttle mission STS-96, a StarCraft fan, took a CD of the game with him to space. After…
