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Showing posts from May, 2023

op Astronomy Events in May 2023

  May 5: Penumbral Lunar Eclipse May 6: η-Aquariid Meteor Shower May 8: Venus at its highest altitude May 9: Uranus at solar conjunction May 11: Moon at perigee May 13: Saturn-Moon conjunction May 17: Lunar occultation of Jupiter May 19: New Moon May 23: Conjunction of Moon and Venus May 24: Conjunction of Moon and Mars May 25: Moon at apogee                          

From Wormholes to the Fifth Force: 2021’s Biggest Breakthroughs In Space and Physics

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  Neutron Star – Black Hole merger Whenever two massive objects collide, they send out ripples in the fabric of spacetime. These ripples are called the gravitational waves , and they serve as the signature of the merger that has occurred. Over the years, researchers have observed dozens of mergers of pairs of black holes and a couple of mergers of neutron star pairs. But for the first time in June 2021, scientists announced the detection of a colossal merger of a black hole and a neutron star taking place about 900 million light-years away from Earth, and that too, twice.  An illustration depicts the warping of time and space as a black hole is about to swallow a neutron star | Image: Soheb Mandhai/LIGO India/AP   The first merger involved a black hole about nine times the mass of the Sun and a neutron star about two solar masses. Ten days later, the second collision was detected involving a black hole nearly six times the Sun’s mass, devouring a neutron star...
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 https://www.secretsofuniverse.in/november-2022-blood-moon/ The Reason Behind a Blood Moon A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, casting its shadow across the lunar disk. However, the Moon doesn’t completely disappear out of view. Instead, it takes a reddish-brown hue when the eclipse reaches its totality. That’s why a total lunar eclipse is called a blood moon eclipse. The reason behind this phenomenon is simple. When the Moon is eclipsed, only the refracted light from the Earth’s atmosphere reaches it. So the green and the blue light are scattered, but the red wavelengths get filtered out. Some of that red light is refracted, or bent, as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere and ends up shining on the Moon with a ghostly red light. This is Rayleigh scattering, the same physics behind the red color of the Sun during sunrise and sunset. The redness of the Moon depends on atmospheric conditions resulting from fires, volcanic erup...