Tag Archives: ganti

Launching a hundred satellites

Posted on March 2, 2017 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti India’s space agency ISRO recently launched a rocket with one hundred and four satellites as payload and released each satellite in succession flawlessly into the intended orbit. Apart from setting a record, some trends became apparent to … Continue reading →

Posted in March 2017, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

So far away…

Posted on January 3, 2017 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti “Betelgeuse is 640 million light years away. It is a red giant, and is almost dying”. How do we know this, when it is difficult to find out what is happening in Syria or Russia? After all … Continue reading →

Posted in January 2017, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Cosmic Fireworks

Posted on December 3, 2016 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti Stars are born, they live, and then they die. Like any living beings. They are born when lot of gas and dust comes together under the influence of gravity and a nuclear furnace gets lit. Hydrogen powers … Continue reading →

Posted in December 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Astronomical Vantage Point

Posted on November 3, 2016 by ST Editors

By Prasad Ganti Last winter, I was driving across Pennsylvania in the middle of the night from the western border with Ohio to the south eastern border with New Jersey. I saw Orion the hunter, the most prominent constellation in … Continue reading →

Posted in November 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged | Leave a comment

Rocket Science

Posted on October 4, 2016 by ST Editors

By Prasad Ganti Recently, SpaceX’s rocket Falcon 9 blew up on the launch pad, after having had several successes with Falcon 9 in the past. A further failure last year was reported when its rocket blew up in space. Regardless, … Continue reading →

Posted in October 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Juno, the wife of Jupiter

Posted on September 9, 2016 by ST Editors

By Prasad Ganti NASA’s Juno spacecraft traveled for five years before reaching Jupiter on July 4, 2016. It will orbit around for 20 months studying Jupiter’s atmosphere before crashing into it. The last spacecraft to visit and study Jupiter was … Continue reading →

Posted in September 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Galaxies too die

Posted on June 6, 2016 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti About three decades ago, when I came out of college I heard that all Stars are born and eventually die, it was a shocking revelation for me. Like it is for a child who learns that a … Continue reading →

Posted in June 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Reusable Launch Vehicle

Posted on April 19, 2016 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was recently launched from Cape Canaveral. It was a routine launch on a routine mission except for a couple of differences, which are important steps for a brighter future. SpaceX or Space Exploration … Continue reading →

Posted in May 2016 | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Star Wars – The Force Awakens

Posted on April 2, 2016 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti The seventh “Star Wars” movie was released in December of 2015. After almost a decade after Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas, there were uncertainties over how much would it stick to the original cult classic. … Continue reading →

Posted in April 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“The Martian” and Ernest Shackleton

Posted on January 26, 2016 by ST Editors

by Prasad S. Ganti “The Martian” is a science fiction book written by Andy Weir. It was made into a movie starring Matt Damon as a Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded on Mars who was certain to be the first … Continue reading →

Posted in January 2016, Sidereal Times | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Neutrinos and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics

Posted on November 17, 2015 by ST Editors

by S. Prasad Ganti Last year I wrote about neutrinos, the mystery particles, based on the book I read entitled “The Neutrino Hunters” by Ray Jayawardhana. This year, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to Takaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald who … Continue reading →

Posted in November 2015, Sidereal Times | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Optimizing the U.S. Ground-Based Optical and Infrared Astronomy System

Posted on May 30, 2015 by ST Editors

by S. Prasad Ganti Recently, the committee on a Strategy to Optimize the U.S. Optical and Infrared System (OIR) in the Era of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) came up with set of recommendations. This is a summary of … Continue reading →

Posted in June 2015, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Supernovae

Posted on May 3, 2015 by ST Editors

by S. Prasad Ganti April’s guest lecture was about supernovae and their remnants. It reminded me of something special about them. Although they seem to be esoteric objects in the Universe, far, far away from the earth, and far away … Continue reading →

Posted in May 2015, Sidereal Times | Tagged , | Leave a comment