The night sky has been a canvas of wonder for countless cultures throughout history. Among these, the ancient Malay culture stands out, having turned the celestial sphere into a vital navigational tool long before the advent of modern technology. Famed for their seafaring prowess, the Malay people crafted intricate ‘star maps,’ a testament to their ...
Behind clouds of interstellar dust, a cosmic drama is playing out deep in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon. The Chamaeleon I dark cloud is one of the closest places to Earth where stars are born. It is only 550 light-years away. In this “stellar nursery,” newborn stars break through the darkness and light up huge ...
Beneath the vast expanse of the Southern Hemisphere sky lies a tapestry of stories woven by the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Long before telescopes and satellites, these indigenous communities mapped the heavens with a precision that rivals modern astronomy. Their stories, passed down through generations, speak of celestial phenomena that science has only recently begun ...
Astronomers have been trying to fit the cosmic puzzle of how the universe changed from a dark, featureless void into a glittering expanse of stars and galaxies for decades. Now, a faint whisper from the dawn of time, a radio signal emitted just 100 million years after the Big Bang has given scientists an unheard-of ...
Water in the great, cold nurseries where stars birth has a cosmic fingerprint. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found, for the first time, a rare form of water ice surrounding a young star remarkably similar to our infant Sun. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this finding implies that some of ...
June is the prime time to see the Milky Way’s brilliant core as it is presenting its best performance of the year. For stargazers, this is “core season” the window through which the brilliant heart of our galaxy flows across the night sky like a celestial river of stars. But catching this cosmic show calls ...
At the core of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), a cosmic behemoth is challenging preconceptions. Renowned for being the first black hole ever directly photographed, the supermassive black hole M87 has just exposed another amazing secret: it devours matter even faster and spins at a blistering 80% of the maximum speed in the universe. Using ...
The night sky of June is expected to show a pair of amazing conjunctions one with the elusive Mercury and the other with a remarkably near encounter between the Moon and Mars. These events serve as a reminder of the clockwork accuracy of our solar system and an opportunity to see planetary motions that even ...
Cosmologists have believed for a long time that dark energy the mysterious factor that accelerates the expansion of the universe–was a constant, indestructible presence. However, the latest information obtained from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) indicates this is not the situation. Instead, the impact of dark energy may diminish as time passes, a finding ...
Throughout history, the field of astronomy has expanded our understanding of the universe and our place within it. From ancient stargazers to modern astrophysicists, humanity has consistently sought to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. This curiosity and thirst for knowledge have driven incredible discoveries that not only shifted our perspective of the universe but ...
Soham Mahajan, B.Sc. Media
Soham Mahajan, B.Sc. Media
