Had Chandrayaan been really less than forthcoming??

I find the Chinese attitude both interesting and dismaying.  It is similar to one that I experienced with Indian Space Research Organization during the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mission.  When the Chandrayaan spacecraft was running into difficulties after a few months in lunar orbit, the organizational instinct was to deny any problems and be less than forthcoming with the press about the status of the spacecraft.  Spaceflight is inherently difficult and things break all the time.  It is beyond ridiculous to cover up a problem by pretending that it doesn’t exist.  Similar behavior patterns characterized the early Soviet space program, in which we never heard about mission failures, but successes were given widespread publicity.  It seems that to date, China is adhering to that model

                                                                                            --------------SPUDIS

Is this true?? Did we(ISRO) really acted like there were no failures...Though its true, is it really that dismaying?? Isn't it the nature of human to boast abt successes and deny failures?? Little bit disappointing with this article of Spudis...Though I still love his writings ;)
Ofcourse, this could be strange to people those who confirmed pockets of water with bistatic rada experiment and later denied it with radar observations of arecebo. Anyways your truthful ness is to be praised here.

Why Volcano...In simple language

This is the explanation I have come across in Lunarnetworks blog...This is soo simple and understandable in a go..I just loved it...See why volcanism and How volcanism in a few lines

It is necessary to understand some elementary facts about planetary geology.  Planets generate heat and this heat must be dissipated.  Typically, the heat generated from both the original energy release during formation (accretion) and from the decay of radioactive elements (e.g., uranium) melts the interiors of planets, forming bodies of liquid rock called magma.  This magma is usually less dense than the rocks from which it forms and thus, rises upwards towards the surface.  Sometimes, the molten rock cannot ascend any higher from the deep locations where it comes from and freezes in place – geologists call this type of frozen rock body an intrusion, because it intrudes into pre-existing rock as a liquid and then solidifies by crystallizing.  When magma actually reaches the surface of a planet, it can erupt onto its surface as lava; this activity is called extrusive because the molten rock extrudes onto the surface and then solidifies as lava flows.

Central Blackholes influence Star birth: Herschel

 We very well know that the black hole at the centre of the galaxy has a great influence on the life cycle of galaxy. This is certainly true when it comes to the case of star birth in a galaxy. But no one knows how and it wouldn't have proved true even today if it wasn't for the Herschel Space Observatory. To study the star birth, astronomers have to look at the galaxies with their telescopes. As we all know that almost all the galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and due to the accretion problems of these black holes, it is highly impossible to get a clear view of whats happening in the galaxy and thereby the star birth. But grateful to the SPIRE camera of Herschel Observatory its now made entirely possible to watch the interior of a galaxy inspite of the outshine produced by the accretion disks. “Herschel provides a new perspective and is conducting a number of surveys of galaxies near and far, in order to unravel the mysteries of the formation and evolution of galaxies across cosmic time,” said Dr. Göran Pilb’ratt, the ESA Herschel project scientist. Everything is quite casual till here but now when they compared the images obtained on the SPIRE camera with the wavelengths of the accretion material, it revealed the most intriguing thing. Time to wow :-) Studies with Herschel revealed that a galaxy with fastest growing black hole is the galaxy with less star formation and vice versa. So lets wait to get these results confirmed by an even accurate team of astronomers :-)

Hoping the results to be true signing of for today Yours Astro baby :-)

Ref: sci news
Date: 10-05-2012

Japan loses the astronomy professor

58 year old Japanese astronomy professor Koichiro Morita was found dead with brain bleeding at his appartment. He was one of the main members of the team who had constructed the Alma radio telescope facilities. deep condolence....our astro world has lost one more gem....may his soul rest in peace :-)

Ref: La Tercera newspaper, Japan.
Date: 8-5-2012

Tycho helps NASA in studying Venus transit

Tycho crater...the most explosive location on the lunar surface

Guys...you are well aware of Tycho crater on the moon right? Yeahhhhhh that is not all about it...It has helped something to come onto the tv screens now. The thing is astronomers used it as mirror to see the planet Venus's transit around the Sun. We cannot directly focus our telescopes to the Sun due to its heat intensity. So the telescope is being focused at this crater Tycho which helps by capturing reflected sunlight and isolate the sunlight portion falling onto the Venus. So this is all the concept behind the scene. So now this whole technique has got so many applications like it can help us study the planet's physical and chemical atmosphere. Secondly the spectroscopy study is made possible by an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The whole experiment will be carried out for 7 hours during the transit to get accurate wholesome observations.
     I was really wondering why they are so focused at Venus's transit while there are hell lot more things to focus upon...may be now you are too ;-) Let me tell ya folks one thing...next transit will be at 2117...amazed? but its true...as we know the most important of the astronomical events occur very rare and this is one such!! So wishing the Hubble space telescope team a very good luck for this event, signing off for today.....

Yours Astro baby Pranu :-)
Ref: rdmag news
Date: 8-5-2012

A black hole's homicide

Its been long huh but have come up with something really interesting to share with you dudes. Heard about the recent homicide being undergone by a supermassive black hole? No? Jeez....then definitely I have got something to perk you up at your systems. Look Johns Hopkins University's department of physics and astronomy have discovered a black hole devouring a wandering star and was caught red handed when it is on its way gulping up this sun-like star (it might even more wow you if I tell you that the whole thing happened just in few weeks!). It waited for the star to come into its ergosphere and then shred it away once it got it's extraordinary gravitational force.It had undergone such a destruction that it outshone all other stars in it's galaxy. Not to get too scientific but the destruction thing was so strong that helium gas was flowing in a stream moving at 32 million kilometers an hour and this is exactly what helped them in figuring out it as a black hole swallow up. This is the first ever discovery of this kind of black hole devouring getting caught on the telescopes though one was found the last year as then it ended up as a real mystery. Letting you folks go into the evidences they're able to see the glow of accretion gas and they're also able to find the spectral composition of the accretion gas as mostly helium. This was made possible using data from the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory in Arizona. As an obvious guess the star is reckoned to be a helium cored star ;-)

using data from the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona. Since each element has

Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1aGmY)

using data from the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona. Since each element has Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1aGmY)As an obvious guess the star is reckoned to be helium cored one ;-)

Date- 6 May, 2012.
Ref: cbc.ca news, redorbit.com

Stay glued to get more updates on this :-)
Signing out yours astro-baby Pranu :-)

New Sunspot theory

The sun is entering into the peak of the 11 year cycle and the concepts of sunflares and sunspots have become the burning topic even among the illeterate people. The present theories are based on the principle that the sunspots are the result of heat flowing into the spot where magnetic fields are formed due to lower temperatures existing which are the result of reduction in pressure due to hydrogen atoms present at that spot. But the new theory put up by the researchers at Hawai explains this in a different way. They, Instead of looking at the hydrogen atoms in the sun, started looking up at the hydroxyl atoms which break up into hydrogen and oxygen at even lower temperatures than that of the hydrogen atoms. Thus they declared that those are hydroxyl atoms leading to the sunspots.

You know when it is a strange topic, that too related to astronomy, people drive themselves crazy with n number of theories. So only thing we as observers need to do is consider the principles and concept of every theory in order to build up a perfect theory. Anyways stay glued for more updates regarding the upcoming theories about the sunspots because you know this is the sunspot-season ;-)
Signing off for today yours  Pranu :-)

Ref: Accuweather
Date: 02-02-2012