In our visual storytelling blog series titled the ‘Nature India Photo Story’, we feature photo stories that explore the realms of science, wildlife, environment, health or anything else that smells of science. Read more
Until several years ago, most cinematic and artistic depictions of black holes — including many in the pages of Nature — failed to match the known facts. A black hole (the remnant of a runaway gravitational collapse) often looked like a space whirlpool, or perhaps a simple black sphere representing the event horizon — the surface that constitutes a point of no return for anything that falls inside. This would be pictured either against a background of stars, or surrounded by an ‘accretion disk’. (Think Saturn’s rings, but made of superheated plasma and spiralling in at close to the speed of light.) … Read more
Last night when news of APJ Abdul Kalam’s death spread thick and fast on social media – many heartbroken with the scientist/ex-President’s death and many wishing the news wasn’t true – one thing became clear. That this was not just the death of a scientist, a leading light of India’s space programme, or of the ‘People’s President’ – it was the demise of an adorable, all-round-good-natured, immensely accessible human being, rooted in his humble beginnings and untouched by the highs that fame brought. Read more
Director of Mumbai’s Nehru Planetarium Arvind Paranjpye shared with us this lovely scarlet image of the sun today. The image shows a a very large sunspot dotting the surface of the sun these days. “It is large enough to be seen with naked eyes. However, one should not look at the Sun without proper protection, such as solar goggles used for observing solar eclipses,” he cautions. Read more
About a year and a half back in September 2010, this picture bagged top honors at the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition in the under-16 category. The photograph will now make it to an official annual book on the competition held by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, UK. Read more
This week, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to launch its radar imaging satellite RISAT-1 on board the organisation’s workhorse, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Read more
Bollywood star Shahid Kapoor made it to celestial stardom, quite literally, when some fans chose to buy a star in his name in the Orion constellation last week for his birthday. Last year, Shah Rukh Khan got his name etched on lunar soil when fans named the ‘Sea of Tranquility’ crater after him. Read more
News of another lovely celestial event has come in from the Nehru Planetarium in Mumbai. Arvind Paranjpye, who has just moved to the planetarium as its Director from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, informs us of an opportunity to see all the ‘naked eye’ planets at night between February 23 to March 2. Read more