All About Space

Using the latest techniques in space technology, astronomers at NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture picture of a newly discovered planet orbiting star outside our solar system.

NASA's newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, is estimated to be roughly three times Jupiter's mass and 10.7 billion miles from its host star, Fomalhaut. NASA's images show Fomalhaut b orbiting the bright southern star Fomalhaut, which is said to be 16 times brighter than our sun and 25 light years away in the constellation Piscis Australis (Southern Fish).

New planets were found circling the start HR 8799, infact there were 3 planets as shown in the image. The star is about 128 light-years (that's 128 x 9.5 trillion kilometres) from Earth.

The HR 8799 solar system is only about 60 million years old, compared to the 4.6 billion years our planetary neighbourhood has been around. The trio of planets are 5.3 to 6.6 times hotter than Jupiter.

Scientists estimate that HR8799, roughly 1.5 times the size of the sun, is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. The individual planets in this planetary family are estimated to be seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.To determine whether the faint objects orbiting HR8799 were indeed planets and not other stars, astronomers studying the three newly discovered planets (HR8799b, HR8799c and HR8799d) compared images from studies conducted in different years.

In all the documented pictures, the three objects were found to be orbiting in a counter-clockwise direction around HR8799, proving that they were planets and not just background objects coincidentally aligned in the image.

The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) hit the moon surface on Nov-14-2008 at 20.31 hrs. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region.Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments – a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 20:06 hrs (8:06 pm) IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

Today Chandrayaan-1 entered lunar orbit.The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) lies at about 7502 km. Chandrayaan-1 takes about 11 hours to go round the moon once in this orbit.

This is my first post related to space and UFO's. As you all might be aware that the Mission was launched from Indian Space port of Sriharikota on Oct-22 at 6.22 hrs IST. It was a perfect launch meeting all the launch objectives.

Chandrayaan-1 will approach the Moons orbit on November 8, 2008. The spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

Below you can see the types of orbits the vehicle takes from earth to reach moon.