My gateway to the Heavens!!

Check this out guys... my first telescope. A birthday gift from one of my cousins. Its a Dobsonian 10 inch Zhumell. There is a star party on the 4th of November. Cant wait to get a view through this beauty!!

Good news - Its a 10 inch, so it has got a lot of light gathering capacity... hope to get some nice views of our moon, Jupiter, some nebula and a few galaxies.

Bad news - Its a Dobsonian... does not have an equatorial mount. Since the relative position of stars, planets and our Earth keeps changing, tracking though this telescope would be tough. Taking pictures is almost impossible.

Bottom line - Great telescope for starter amateur astronomers.

Clear Skies!

Opportunity's latest picture of Mars

This image from the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" shows surroundings of the rover's location following an 81-meter (266-foot) drive during the 2,363rd Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's mission on Mars (that was as of Sept. 16, 2010). The terrain includes light-toned bedrock and darker ripples of wind-blown sand. Today it is the 2380th Martian day. By the way a Sol means Solar day.
FYI - 1 year on Mars in around 668 Sols.

Source: nasa.gov

Life on Alien Planet near Earth???

This is in continuation to my previous blog... Help yourself reading my previous blog too.

One of the planet's discoverers said in a briefing yesterday that "the chances of life on this planet(Gliese 581g) are 100 percent." How do we prove this? Scientists say there are several ways, but the best approach is as simple as "Listening for signals". This planet is 20.5 light years away from Earth, so human built probes won't be getting out there anytime soon :) By the way a light year is the distance traveled by light in 1 year.

Chances of life on an Earth size planet

An Earth-size planet(Gliese 581g) has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold- just good enough for life to exist. Though there are 400 other planets that might have a life sustaining capability, scientists say, Gliese stands a very high chance.

Below is an artists illustration of how the planet might appear.

NASA's footage of first man on moon...LOST!

Really??? May be you knew, but I did not..

I cant believe this! NASA's footage of the historic Apollo 11 1969 mookwalk was lost somewhere in NASA's archives or it got erased(???) during reuse, and was found only recently...in bad shape!

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

Great Man Hawking!

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

Origin of our universe - a new thought!

Many of us now tend to believe that the origin of our universe is the big bang. Recently I had a thought ... What if big bang was not the origin? What if it were just one of the events or for that matter one of the millions of big bangs that might have taken place? What if the universe was contracting and expanding?
All these were questions that came to my mind until I realized that scientists were already working on this thought of mine...$&;#%#