Caroline Herschel was the First Professional Female Astronomer who discovered comets and star clusters in the 18th century and the first to be awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Society.
Tag: Astronomy
Take A Trip to Mercury!
Let’s take a trip to the planet Mercury. Use your cursor to check out its surface inside! The European and Japanese spacecraft Bepi Colombi is on its way to orbit the planet in 2025 & took amazing images.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
The astrophysicist who co-discovered the first radio pulsar in 1967 but – surprise surprise – the Nobel Prize this discovery received in 1974 did not include her name.
Collecting Soil from Asteroids
Most people don’t know that we have sent out two missions to asteroids that will bring back soil samples! Now that’s no small feat — the asteroids are moving at a speed of 25 Km/s — their speed varies based on their distance from the sun. Meanwhile, the two spacecraft are entering the orbit of the asteroids, identifying sample sites, collecting soil samples, leaving the orbit, sending data back to earth and of course bringing back those soil samples.
Jupiter: Giant of the Solar System
Although it is named after the Roman God of sky and thunder (and king of the gods), ancient civilizations long before the Romans knew of Jupiter. It is one of the brightest objects in the sky and is visible to the naked eye, so it was easy to spot. This blog has amazing images of the God of all the planets.
A History of the Rocket
A brief history of the rocket and the rocket scientists that helped to build it.
This week in science: Philae was found and OSIRIS-REx is travelling to Bennu!
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
The landing of the orbiter and the search for it also gave scientists plenty of lessons for future missions. Now, on September 30, Rosetta will come very close to the comet, make some critical observations and then will descend on to the surface.
The Wanderer has a new friend: Juno visits Jupiter
Humans now have spacecraft orbiting Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter and Saturn.
Kepler 452b: Is there anybody out there?
(Published in The Nation Pakistan)
Ladies and gents, we may very well have found Earth’s cousin, 1,400 light years away from us! NASA scientist John Grunsfeld has called this Earth 2.0. If Kepler 452 b turns out to be a rocky planet (this is yet to be confirmed), this bodes well for further research on whether there is liquid water, an atmosphere and thus some form of life on it.