What is astronomy according to you?
Astronomy is a close cousin to astrophysics. In simple words, Astronomy is the study of the sun, moon, stars, planets, comets, gas, galaxies, gas, dust and other non-Earthly bodies. We focused on observations of outer space bodies. We study their compositions, Properties and how these celestial bodies work.
Why should anybody be interested in astronomy?
From the very ancient time, astronomy has very vast impact on our life. Now days can you imagine your life without time?? From the concept of time to GPS and defence satellites to MRI technology and the computer language Forth, breadth and depth of concepts, inventions and applications can be traced back to astronomical roots so by this way you can improve people’s everyday life. Other than all this it helps us to understand our origin and helps us to evolve human life.
Few Interesting Facts About Space
- The comfy beds that you use came into existence because of the Astronomy they were initially made for soft landing of the space shuttles on the outer space bodies.
- Space is just 100 km far from us.
- Polestar is not the brightest star
- Earth does not take 24 hours to spin around its axis rather it just takes 23 hours 56 minutes
- Space is completely silent because there is no air which means the sound has no medium or way to travel to be heard.
- Andromeda galaxy is the only objects which are not a part of our Milky Way galaxy which is visible through the naked eye in the night sky (Everything else that you see in the night sky is part of your own galaxy Andromeda)
Where does space begin?
Space begins at just 100 KM from the earth surface. The point from where space begins is known as “KARMAN LINE”.
The sky is Blue In short – Before Sunlight reaches to us it passes through Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Now, the Blue light is scattered more than the other colours because it travels as shorter, smaller waves (Light rays with short wavelengths have more energy than other colours) and this is why we see a blue sky most of the time.
To understand this in detail please go through the below explanation – There are two factors Atmosphere and lightwave In our atmosphere there are water and air (gas) molecules are present at different layers of the atmosphere. The actual colour of the light is white but when it peers through any refractive material it splits into 7 colours that are VIBGYOR (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red). When the sunlight passes from these gas molecules which are presents in the earth atmosphere then they split in VIBGYOR pattern but all the colours have different wavelengths, One with small wavelength travel farther distance because sorter wavelength contains high energy so among all these 7 colours Blue colour has the shortest wavelength which means it has the highest energy among them all that is why the sky scatter this blue colour most among all the 7 colours, so it easily reaches to our eyes this is why Sky appears blue.
Sky dark at night – Now answer to this question is not as simple as it appears!! See in the day time we have sun so it gives us light and this light is scattered by the particles present in our atmosphere before reaching to us and thus the sky looks blue to us but as soon as the sun sets then there is not enough light so the scattering process (due to which sky looks blue in the daytime) stops at night because of the absence of the sun. So the sky looks dark. Originally the space is black.
Where in the galaxy are the most stars born?
Stars are born within the clouds of dust and gas which is called nebulae (For example M42, The Orion, Nebulae). Most of the star-forming regions are in the outer parts of the galaxy.
How hot must a star get before it becomes a star? Why does it need to get so hot?
Once the temperature reaches 15 million degrees Celsius then a star born. This much high temp is needed so to start the nuclear fusion process which is a key factor for the star formation. As soon as this fusion process starts converting hydrogen atoms into helium atom these clouds of dust & gas started to take the shape of a star and further creates a protostar. This is the first step in the evolution of star life.
Isn’t this fascinating? Do you want to know more? Then, please do wait for the next blog post on Astroport, Till then keep chasing the stars
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