The Blue Moon

31st October 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

Tonight, a blue moon will appear for all time zones on Earth. This astronomical event has last happened for all time zones in 1944 and won’t happen again until the year 2039 for all time zones.

https://www.universetoday.com/20321/blue-moon/

It sure will be a spooky one taking into account that Halloween is right around the corner. Blue moons are rare since they appear once every 2.5 years on average. The last seen blue moon for a specific time zone was in March 2018.

The moon will ‘not’ turn blue itself. The blue color can be seen due to t the scattering of the light coming from the moon by smoke or dust particles in our planet’s atmosphere. Such effects are not at all related to the moon’s phases.

Moreover, this moon also qualifies for the title of a ‘mini-moon’ since it will occur when the moon is approximately at the farthest point from Earth in its orbit. The mon will be approximately 406,394 km away from Earth which is significantly farther away than its average distance of about 384,400 km.

https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/close-encounter-what-if-the-moon-orbited-much-closer-to-earth.html

Nebulae – The Most Beautiful Places in the Universe’

25th October 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

Nebulae are giant clouds of gas and dust in space. Some of them may have formed due to the explosion of stars into supernovae. Nebulae are places where stars form and the Sun also formed from the elementary particles in a Nebula. In our universe, there are countless Nebulae with some visible to the naked eye in a clear night sky as well.  

This is the third blog of my ‘Nebulae – The Most Beautiful Places in the Universe’ series. In this blog, I will highlight the Helix Nebula.

 

The Helix Nebula is located 650 light-years away from Earth in the Aquarius Constellation. Similar to the Dumbbell Nebula in my previous blog, this Nebula is also a planetary Nebula and is cataloged as NGC 7293.

Credits: NASA

This Nebula resulted in an old Sun-like star that shed its outer layers in a supernova explosion. The same may happen to our Sun in 5 billion years too.

 

The structure of this Nebula resembles the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings which many of you may have noticed too. The bright purple circle in the center of the Nebula is the ultraviolet and infrared glow of the disk of dust that orbits the white dwarf that is present at the very center of the Nebula.

 

Before the star exploded into a Supernova, its comets and maybe planets would have orbited the star in a normal way but when the star ran out of Hydrogen and Helium to burn for Thermo-Nuclear fusion, it blew its outer layers off and the celestial bodies that orbited the star would have been tossed away and into each other. The inner planets of the star system would have probably either burned up due to the heat oof would have been swallowed completely by the expanding star.

Nebulae – The Most Beautiful Places in the Universe

18th October 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

Nebulae are giant clouds of gas and dust in space. Some of them may have formed due to the explosion of stars into supernovae. Nebulae are places where stars form and the Sun also formed from the elementary particles in a Nebula. In our universe, there are countless Nebulae with some visible to the naked eye in a clear night sky as well.  

This is the second blog of my ‘Nebulae – The Most Beautiful Places in the Universe’ series. In this blog, I will highlight one of my favorite Nebula, The Dumbbell Nebula.

 

The Dumbbell Nebula was discovered by Charles Messier in 1746. It resides approximately 1200 light-years away from Earth in the Vulpecula Constellation.

Credits: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

This Nebula is also known as M27 and was the first planetary Nebula that we ever discovered. It isn’t a planetary Nebula because it hosts planets but it is classified as a planetary Nebula because of its planet-like appearance when viewed by smaller telescopes. Just like the Crab Nebula, this Nebula is also the result of an old star that sheds its layers in a Supernova explosion.

 

This Nebula hosts many layers of gas and dust as we can see in the image. Some point at the stars inside the range of the Nebula whilst some remain as isolated clouds. The sizes of the clouds of gases in the Dumbbell Nebula range from 17 billion to 56 billion km. The shapes and sizes of these clouds change as the Nebula expands due to inertia from the explosion. Moreover, such clouds have been discovered in other nearby Nebulae as well which suggests that it’s a universal evolutionary scheme.

 

 

Mars At Its Brightest

September 11th, 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

Currently, the red planet Mars is at its brightest and biggest in the night-sky as it has lined up with Earth on the same side of the Sun. This phenomenon occurs every 26 months on average and hence, Earth and Mars get the closest to themselves in orbit. This is also the best time for missions to take on a trip to Mars due to the closer distance.  

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/10/10/mars-at-its-brightest-since-2003-as-moon-visits-venus-what-you-can-see-in-the-night-sky-this-week/#2e2838c92d13

On the night of Tuesday, 13th October, the ‘opposition’ will take place and Earth Mars and the Sun will align in a straight-line making Mars the brightest till 2035 when it will take place once again. None of us should miss this event because it may be the last time for some people to see it. Regardless of that, no astronomy enthusiast shall miss this beautiful event.  

Moreover, Astrophotographers in the Northern Hemisphere will be overwhelmed due to the fact that on this occasion, the elevation of the red planet in the sky is higher than normal which means that telescopes will not need to look through the Earth’s disturbing atmosphere which can lead to distortion in images. 

Alan MacRobert, a senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine says, "Just look southeast after the end of twilight, and you can't miss it. Mars looks almost scary now, compared to how it normally looks in the sky."

 

Supermassive Black Hole Supports General Relativity

October 4, 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

Einstein’s general theory of relativity has remained at the brink edge of being proved for decades now. It still remains as a theory due to the fact that we don’t know yet, how the general theory of relativity can be reconciled with quantum physics. However, there are still countless phenomena that prove this theory. The best of them is the total Solar Eclipse that took place in 1919.

The experiment conducted on the event of this eclipse proved that light from distant objects is bent by the gravity of massive objects which in this experiment was our very own parent star, the Sun; whereby the blocking of the Sun's light allowed us to directly observe the light from the star that was behind the Sun which appeared to be in a different location than it normally is. 

However, recently researchers at the University of Arizona have found that a 'shadow' cast by the supermassive black hole that is known as M87 at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy proves that Einstein was correct. 

https://www.cbs46.com/first-photo-of-a-black-hole-supports-einsteins-theory-of-relativity/article_e97bcb42-45e3-5c3f-b07f-9df771c4fbc2.html

The team has found that the intense gravity of the Black Hole bent the fabric of Space-time which acted as a magnifying glass which caused the shadow of the black hole to appear larger than it normally should be.  

When measurements were taken, the researchers found that the size of the black hole shadow was close enough to the size predicted by the mathematics behind general relativity.  

This black hole is located 53.49 million light-years away but thanks to modern technology, scientists could uncover it and study it. This is the same black hole that the researchers studied using the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019.  

 

https://alkhaleejtoday.co/international/5059618/The-first-image-of-a-black-hole-supports-Einstein%E2%80%99s-theory-of.html

Michael Kramer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and EHT collaboration member said, “Blackhole images provide a completely new angle for testing Einstein's theory of general relativity”. 

With such successful studies and discoveries, the theory of general relativity may soon become a law that would give us an extremely enhanced view of the universe.