Venus Jupiter Conjunction

Have a look at the west after sunset tomorrow, December 1st, 2008. You can see the three brightest objects of the night sky very close to each other. The crescent Moon, the goddess of love – Venus, and the king of the planets – Jupiter, are all close together forming a triangle between them. Venus and Jupiter move very close to each other which is called ‘Conjunction‘. Venus and Jupiter will only be 2 degrees apart.

The above picture is an illustration of the conjunction between Venus and Jupiter and the triangle with the Moon. In India, it can be viewed after sunset and not at 9pm.

Venus is very bright, its magnitude being -4.02 (Lesser the magnitude, brighter the object). Venus can sometime reach the magnitude of -4.6. With the rest of the sky consisting of faint stars, the triangle between the three brightest objects of the night sky will be eye-catching.

MoonLITE Mission

Britain is set to launch its maiden moon mission to study the phenomenon of mysterious moonquakes, weeks after India’s spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 successfully entered the lunar orbit.
The 100-million-pound unmanned mission ‘MoonLITE‘ would aim to understand the cause of mysterious quakes that vibrate through the lunar rock and put it into the satellite’s orbit before firing a series of probes into the moon’s surface.

The launch of MoonLITE (Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecommunications Experiment), will be announced next month after which engineers would work on the technical designs with an aim to launch the satellite between 2012 and 2014.

Backed by NASA, the spacecraft would also examine the chemical composition of the rocks and even search for water on the moon’s surface.

The existence of moonquakes has puzzled scientists as the moon does not have the tectonic plate activity that causes quakes on the earth.

The MoonLITE mission is expected to fire four suitcase-sized penetrator probes into different points around the lunar surface.

Bright Meteor Over Canada

A huge fireball was seen in the sky on 20th November 2008 over Edmonton, Canada. A video has been captured of this bright meteorite that fell onto Earth. Here is one of the most rarest and the latest video of a meteorite.

Mission Aditya

After the Success of Chandrayaan 1, ISRO has now developed a Sun Mission called ‘Aditya‘. Aditya has been approved by the government and the work has been started. Aditya is planned to be launched by 2012. Aditya will study the outer most region of the Sun called ‘Corona‘.

The temperature of the solar corona goes beyond million degrees. From the Earth, corona can be seen only during total solar eclipses mainly due to the bright Solar disc and the scattering of the sunlight by the Earth’s atmosphere. One has to go beyond the atmosphere to be able to mask the bright solar disc and study the corona.

Sun’s Corona during the Solar Eclipse

“That’s a mini satellite. In fact, the design is just getting completed. During solar maxim…which is happening…we would like to see the type of emissions which are taking place in the Sun and how it interacts with the ionosphere and atmosphere and so on. A basic understanding of the physical processes and continuous monitoring would help in taking necessary steps towards protecting ISRO’s satellites either by switching them off or putting them on a stand-by mode as warranted by the background conditions.”, says Madhavan Nair.

The satellite will remain in Earth’s orbit and will study the Sun’s Corona, sun spots and the Solar flare. ‘Aditya’ mission lies behind the international Sun missions ‘Yohkoh‘, launched by Japan, collaborating with US and UK in 1991 and ‘Hinode‘ in 2006. But ‘Aditya’ will be an Indian satellite with no collaboration.

Bhuvan vs Google Earth

Yes it is. On March 2009 ISRO will launch its own IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) image portal called ‘Bhuvan’. Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth) will offer detailed satellite views of our planet just like Google Earth and Wikimapia.

Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, bird’s-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google Earth. If a pilot version passes muster, Bhuvan will be fully operational by the March. There are also plans to incorporate a Global Positioning System (GPS) into the online tool. Bhuvan will mainly focus on the sub-continent.

Bhuvan has an edge over Google Earth. Bhuvan has a lot more features than the famed Google Earth. Lets compare Bhuvan with Google Earth.

• Google Earth zooms in upto 200 meters, Wikimapia zooms upto 50 meters but Bhuvan can zoom upto 10 meters. The image is of a very high resolution such that you can get a view from the three storey building.

• Google Earth is a single layer information whereas Bhuvan is a multilayer information.

• In Google Earth the images are upgraded every 4 years whereas in Bhuvan, it is upgraded every year.

• Google Earth has no alternative viewing option. In Bhuvan you have an option of viewing on different dates.

• Google Earth uses international satellites for mapping but Bhuvan uses Indian satellites.

The prototype of Bhuvan will be ready by the end of November and ISRO is hoping to officially launch the service by March 2009.

ISRO is now booming itself since the launch of Chandrayaan.