2016 – A Pretty Good Year?

That header, the title above, seems strange to type out and read – saying it and hearing myself say it is even stranger. At this point I have to admit even I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic or not. But was it really that terrible a year? As horrible as we’re all imagining it?…

A Beautiful Idea: Why Explore Space?

It’s good to be home! After a week sweltering in China for work and turning into a human puddle in 80% humidity, it’s nice to be back in Delhi… where I can swelter and turn into a puddle in 70% humidity…  Anyway, my heat-woes aside, I’m kicked to be sharing this with you folks something…

God of Gravity

So… I had a strangely hilarious little exchange with someone over at Google+ (yes, I’m one of those rare animals that actually uses it!) and it made me chuckle aplenty and even made me think of something I’d not really considered before about “gravity”, the think we take so for granted. …or I could just…

The Fountain of Youth – IN SPACE!

This brilliant image, courtesy of NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows an interacting group contains several galaxies, along with a “cosmic fountain” of stars, gas and dust that stretches over 100 000 light-years. Resembling a pair of owl’s eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding galaxies can be seen in the process of merging at the…

Supernova… Et tu, Eta Carinae.

As seen on Cosmos: Eta Carinae! At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost…

Hubble spots the Eye of Sauron! In Space!?!

Floating at the centre of this new Hubble image is a lidless purple eye, staring back at us through space. This ethereal object, known officially as [SBW2007] 1 but sometimes nicknamed SBW1, is a nebula with a giant star at its centre. The star was originally twenty times more massive than our Sun, and is…