Category: Space

Indian Team joins GLXP

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 18, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

An Indian team, called Team Indus has joined the Google Lunar X Prize. They have not mentioned much about themselves biographically or provided contact information of any kind. Their about page says:

Team Indus seeks to represent the aspirations of one of the world’s oldest civilizations and youngest population. Headquartered in New Delhi, India we are a team of professionals from Technology, Science, Finance and Media background all of whom have made a habit of pushing boundaries.

Team Indus is a for-Profit organization and plans for GLXP to be the first step towards establishing a Global Innovation brand. We plan to reward all contributors to our team by ensuring long-term commercial interest. We are in the process of setting up a separate non-profit education foundation that will work towards creating a space education & awareness campaign in India. All donations made to Team Indus will be directly passed onto this foundation. All articles, media generated in our pursuit of GLXP will be assigned to this foundation.

We have a few out-of-the-box theories on each phase of the mission, going radical on technology was the obvious choice given the late entry. Our initial planning suggests we will take about 3years to prepare for a potential launch, the launch in all likelihood will be done from India. Team Indus plans to attempt the Endurance and Distance bonus prizes.

It is a privilege to be part of GLXP’s exclusive group of teams, we are excited by the possibilities and eagerly look forward to putting up a good show!

They’re aiming for a launch by 2013-14 which is roughly the timeline that Chandrayaan-II is looking at for its launch! Chandrayaan-II, mind you has been in the works with help from Russia from 2009.

It is a challenge and one that possibly can be tackled. I’ll be following the team closely through their twitter account. I believe that even if they do not launch in the timeline they have set they must work towards launching because of the novelty of such a concept in India!

February 18, 2011
Additions: Hubble Supports Water Discovery

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 15, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

I wrote quite hurriedly about the Hubble Space Telescope providing support to the Chandrayaan-1 discovery of water in the lunar exosphere. I had provided the links to the story to Srinivas and he’s written about in the Times of India [Bangalore, Delhi]. I got a bit worried last night when I saw that the abstract published was presented in the poster session of the meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

With a bit of help from Syed Maqbool Ahmed, PI, CHACE (which made the discovery of water in the lunar exosphere) and Daniel Fischer, I was able to ascertain a few things and I am posting them here for the benefit of everyone concerned.

Daniel informed me that posters are considered “publications” but that a paper in a refereed journal would have greater impact and would be cited more often. It was Syed who finally explained the whole concept to me. The paper in which the result would be published as a paper is expected to happen next month. It is expected to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. One of the persons who presented the poster, Alex Storrs is a co-investigator on the Hubble Space Telescope. Syed explained to me that since they were waiting for the paper to be officially published, they presented it as a poster in the meanwhile.

Trying to find out information about the authors of this poster also took me to a 2009 story in PhysOrg, where Storrs is quoted as saying that initial results did not point any clear evidence for water in the lunar exosphere. It is very interesting that almost a little more than a year later, the same person has confirmed CHACE’s results of water in the lunar exosphere.

February 15, 2011
Hubble Space Telescope confirms water in lunar atmosphere finding

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 13, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

Tirtha Pratim Das of the Space Physics Lab, VSSC wrote an article in the Voyage Magazine, a magazine written by a few people working in the ISRO labs about the Hubble Space Telescope confirming the presence of water in the lunar exosphere.

The Hubble Space Telescope was making observations of the LCROSS impact last year when it spotted a continuous signature of water vapour emanating from the lunar exosphere. Writing in the Bulletins of the American Astronomical Society, Storrs et. all write an article called “The Impact of the LCROSS Satellite with the Moon as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope“, the authors write:

Images immediately before and after the impact show an enhancement in the scattered light near 300 nm within a minute of the event. Spectra show persistent emission of the OH (1-0) band at 283 nm, which may indicate a permanent lunar exosphere of OH as reported by Sridharan et al (2010), rather than OH produced by photolysis of water liberated by the impact event.

Amidst the hullaboo over the ISRO/DEVAS deal, this is good news for ISRO. Congratulations once again for the CHACE and Chandrayaan-1 teams.

[+ Clarifications]

February 13, 2011
Need to Protect the Lonar Crater

ote: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 10, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

Suvrat Kher writing today about the Lonar Crater on his blog, Rapid Uplift talks in the last paragraph about the need not only to protect the impact crater but also the ejecta blanket that surrounds it. The Geological Survey of India protects the impact zone itself but not the ejecta blanket which has been threatened by urbanization and agriculture in the locality of Lonar.

Khagol Vishwa has been running a Save Lonar campaign and perhaps some of the recent studies of the crater will enhance its importance and help the organisation achieve the World Heritage Site status that they are asking for Lonar.

February 10, 2011
India and the Thirty Meter Telescope

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 10, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

Srinivas, Kirk and I went to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) offices in Mumbai for a talk by A N Ramaprakash on India’s Participation in the Thirty Meter Telescope project. At the outset, let me tell you that the talk degraded in the middle on a single point and we walked out of it. But, I still think there were points discussed that are worth putting out in the open.

India’s Decadal Vision Document prepared in the year 2004 called for India’s participation in a very large ground-based telescope in the optical or infra-red spectrum. Work on this recommendation began in 2006. The Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) had been in touch with efforts like the European Extremely Large Telescope project about such possible Indian participation, but also came to the conclusion that a national effort was needed for such an effort based on the work done by Prof. Padmanabhan.

Aryabhata Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Raman Research Institute (RRI) and IUCAA met on September 16, 2008 for a brainstorming session at IIA, Bengaluru to finalise that India would participate in either European Extremely Large Telescope(E-ELT), Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) or the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project based on certain criteria. This included a participation of 10-15% in the project; involvement in the construction and operations in India and a national facility setup for purposes related to the telescope.

Members of the E-ELT, GMT and TMT visited India in October, 2008 and made presentations to the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).

DST asked for a Detailed Project Report (DPR) from the institutions involved i.e. IUCAA, IIA, RRI and ARIES. An Advisory Committee was formed with renowned scientists like Narlikar, Padmanabhan, Kasturirangan and Swarup. Under it were 5 working groups – Technology, Science, Hardware, Software and Human Resources Development were formed along with a Co-ordinating Committee. After many meetings and brainstorming sessions, visits to industry and exposing Indian industry to the idea of working in the project, the Committee presented the DPR set the criteria for selecting a project based on the 2004 Decadal Document.

The criteria included scientific compatibility and capability, synergy with Indian facilities, risk of realizing technologies needed for the project, the partnership model involved and model of project management, cost of project, guarantees and level of contribution that could be made in-kind, possibility of development of human resources in India and suitability for follow up in India.

Ramaprakash then went on to place on record the reasons for the choice of the TMT over E-ELT and GMT.

Ramaprakash said that at first glance, the E-ELT appeared the most appealing because it was an all-around package and involved access to its various facilities. The drawbacks was that becoming a part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) which ran the project needed an act of Parliament. Besides that, it involved a hefty joining fee which was to be paid in cash (as against in-kind). This, for Brazil was $130 million. The annual subscription fee was related to GDP – which was growing for India. This would mean that India could end up paying money for which India did not have any need for and end up subsidizing the smaller European countries. ESO also had the E-ELT as a stand alone partner but the cost involved in participating in E-ELT would be as good as joining ESO. ESO also did not provide guaranteed telescope time despite paying a subscription – as time was based on merits of observation. This made E-ELT a non-option for India’s case.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) was the cheapest and smallest telescope of the bunch. It was a large (14) with small partners. The technology that would be used to build the GMT was considered riskier. The LBT project was one of the worry of the technology aspect of the project. It also required a large contribution in cash. It was also found that the mirror technology was patented by the Steward Mirror Lab, Arizona and hence a problem for the point about Indian contribution in construction of the telescope. Overall, the approach was also deemed to be not scalable for even bigger telescopes.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was a small collaboration (6) of large partners. It was a low technology risk project with many of the technologies demonstrated at the Keck Telescope. The technology was portable and could be made use of in a future Indian large telescope project. The project also guaranteed 70% of the contribution to the project in-kind. It also helped that the observatory was in the northern hemisphere and was hence suitable for follow-up observations, if necessary from India.

The Thirty Meter Telescope Project was hence selected by India for contribution to it.

The DPR was submitted to the DST in January 2010 and revised subsequently as per DST requirements by February 2010. At this point, the RRI opted out of the project on April 14, 2010. It did not state any reason in writing but stated it had other priority projects. Despite this, the DST gave approval for the project and gave the green signal to join the Thirty Meter Telescope with Observer Status. This was done by India on June 24, 2010. From below, when I mention countries, it refers to the institutions involved in TMT from that country.

Ramaprakash then explained the three steps by which an institution/country could partner with the TMT. These were Observer, Participant and Full Partner stages. The Observer status is something that India shares with China in the TMT. It includes participation in non-executive meetings, participation in science advisory roles, access to internal documentation and had no commitment (in-cash or in-kind) to the project but was to show strong intent in joining the project. The second was the Participant stage at which one signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Canada and Japan were at this stage of involvement. The third was the Full Partner stage involved construction and about 20 years of operations.

The load sharing is currently expected among the 6 participants is roughly 30% US contribution, 25% each from Japan and Canada and 10% each from India and China. The National Science Foundation in the US has been asked to provide 25% funding after choosing either TMT or GMT. It has been directed to make this choice as soon as possible. But despite the choice, the actual fund flow would begin only in 2015. Both TMT and GMT are wooing for this money but have claimed to have strategies if this money does not come through. Various organisations in the US are committed to paying the 30% US share. Canada is in some terms sitting on the fence. It has stated that if work does not begin on the TMT by 2014, it would join the E-ELT project. Japan has gone through a government change whilst this project was on and it has led its scientists to present the case again to the current government. As a result of this, the project does not seem to have the support of the Japanese government yet. Chinese institutions have claimed that they will get full funding for the project by the end of the year.

The TMT partners are currently developing the proposal jointly to be presented to the National Science Foundation and using that as the basis for requesting funding in the respective countries’ agencies.

Before going into the status of this project in India, Ramaprakash outlined some of the areas where India could contribute in-kind. This involves polishing of the primary mirror. The primary mirror is made out of 574 segments. The technological challenge is in developing a mass production model for these mirrors to deliver them in time for the project completion. These mirrors have to be delivered at the rate of nearly a segment every two days for them to work within project timelines. He clarified that each segment might need as long as it does to get polished (weeks, months, years) but the challenge was to line them so that a segment is delivered every 2 days. India is competing in this with USA, China and Japan. To provide risk mitigation, TMT will give the work to 2 countries. India is also interested in the segment support assembly, the primary mirror actuators, edge sensors, observation control software, remote observation capabilities and science and data archival capabilities.

This proposal was submitted to DST by the groups in India in November 2010. It includes request for seed funding in prototype development, travel support, human resource development by getting access to observation time in large telescopes. India is in some trouble since we have to convince the TMT project members that it can deliver the 70% in-kind contribution by late 2011.

The DST requirement is that this create the possibility of nearly 300 optical or infra-red astronomers in the country by 2020, increase PhD intake, enhance faculty numbers and participation in TMT instrument construction and use. A slide showing the current number of astronomers in India raised a cry from the audience. It was at this point, that the talk simply spiralled into a slugfest on the possibility on delivering the targets. The audience (mostly astronomers) felt that there would be no way to reach the number of 300. A person even targetted IUCAA (the institution that Ramaprakash was from) saying that the institute could not raise the numbers for which it was developed. As some tempers were lost, Ramaprakash tried to control the talk.

I think rather than taking the project as a challenge, the audience got involved in something un-related. Ramaprakash could have avoided the table which evoked the response that it did from the audience. Also, he tried replying in jest to some serious audience question. Under these circumstances, where the old guard seemed more obsessed with pessimistic views simply showed that astronomy in India had not moved on as thought of and there also seemed to be some friction between older organisations like TIFR and newer ones like IUCAA. All in all, this is bad for Indian astronomy and maybe the reason why young Indians do not turn to this science. The budding and interested amateur astronomy community in India speaks a totally different story! The professional astronomy organisations in the country seem to be in the past century!

February 10, 2011
R K Manchanda on Scientific Ballooning

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 7, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

Today’s Chai and Why session at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu was on “Scientific Ballooning”. Manchanda, who has been working with TIFR for about 44 years was faced with a young school going audience brought there in two buses. Manchanda presented about scientific ballooning work done at the National Balloon Facility, Hyderabad and also shared some of the interesting applications and research from the field of scientific ballooning.

Delving into history, Manchanda said that the first balloon was flown on June 4, 1783 and was a paper balloon flown using smoke. The first scientific application of balloon was made in 1912 to study the source of radiation. He shared pictures of early flights of these balloons from India, some even done by Indian scientists like Homi Bhaba. He shared that some of the first balloon was fabricated in the basement of the TIFR, Colaba campus before the current National Balloon Facility was setup in Hyderabad. He ended by mentioning the example of Lighter than Air (LTA) balloons.

After a brief description of Archimedes Principle, the working principle of the balloons. He said that the research balloons had a thin film of polyethylene and were filled with lighter than air gases like hydrogen and helium. On the point of why we used such research balloons, Manchanda said that these were to bypass the effect of the atmosphere which absorbed certain wavelengths of light. He said that it was mainly used for the study of the Very Cold Universe or InfraRed Astronomy and the Very Hot Universe in the ultraviolet and gamma astronomy. He said some of the science themes that balloons cover are astroscience, Earth Sciences and heliophysics. A new and rising field is called Geo Engineering and the balloons are working towards contributing in the field.

Manchanda believes that balloons had a few advantages. He said that balloons could be launched from anywhere, could be made ready in around 6 months, was low cost and was a very stable platform for long duration flights.

Getting back to the National Balloon Facility he said it was established in 1971. It is one of the 5 such establishments in the world and the only one that fabricates its balloons. He said that besides the science, it was also a technology center and hence also conducted research on ballooning to meet the requirements of future science applications. It was started by a gentleman by the name of Gokhale in 1971 who took over the efforts in Hyderabad. Some of the lab facilities like a 184 meter long table, labs for Quality Control, Telemetry and Data Centers and boasts of a 100% flight success rate (with success even during testing phases). In the QnA session, Manchanda said that the Quality crew worked as the balloon was sewed together. These are hand sewn balloons with about 185 sections. The Facility has carried X-Ray, LIDAR, Gamma Ray and InfraRed payloads. The facility has been used by other countries as well and has even been sent out to countries like the US and Canada. He said that the lab had achieved 100% indigenous development capability.

Talking about the balloon flight, he said it went through various stages like planning, wind sounding, launch operations, tracking and cut off and recovery of payload with parachute. Going in depth, he said wind sounding was done to enable to understand the possible track and inform air traffic controllers. He later showed a video explaining the launch operations (unfurling of the balloon, attaching of the payload, filling the balloon with hydrogen gas, tensioning the payload tether and launch of payload). It was tracked using Google Earth using GPS and other modes. When it was ensured that it was in an empty space, cut off instructions were given. The payload would separate from the balloon, a rope attached to the skin of balloon would tear and empty the balloon and would fall on land with a parachute system.

Talking about applications of the balloon systems since 2001. Called the diversity plan, the Centre has concentrated on tethered vehicle, remote operations, airships and balloons. The work on tethered flight was on science, surveillance, disaster management etc. TIFR has been working with Tata Indicom to fly a tethered balloon to a height of 500 meters which helped provide a cell phone network of 60 km region. Normally, the network infrastructure is deployed on top of a building which provides a 3 km region and could pose as a health hazard. Currently, this balloon is planned for rural operations where deploying a cell network would be very expensive.

Another application is something called a quasi geosynchronous platform. Manchanda said that at altitudes of 18-20 km, there was a region where wind velocities fell to almost zero. Deploying balloon platforms to this height would provide an opportunity for providing communication systems.

Talking about ballooning, Manchanda said they were considering balloon flights from Andamans to mainland India (Chennai) and flights over the South pole from India’s Antarctic Station, Maitri. The flight from Andamans to Chennai would give a flight time of 3 days and covering a distance of 4500 km, which provides a lot of time for conducting experiments. From Maitri, Manchanda said, the circular pattern of winds over the South pole, would allow balloons to fly in circles, remain in eye contact and could travel for upto 3 weeks, extending the time provided for collecting science data.

Answering a question of why Hyderabad was chosen as the site of the balloon facility, Manchanda said that the closeness to Equator provided improvement in sensitivity of instrument measurements due to rigidity of the magnetic fields near the Equator for studying certain kinds of particles.

Answering another question, Manchanda said that the largest balloon would cost about Rs. 50 lakhs while the smallest balloon would cost about Rs. 50,000.

He mentioned that general operation balloons had a thickness of 6 microns while the ones launched before rocket launches from Sriharikota would have films as thin as 3 microns. He said that each hand sewn balloon had to be filled with 1 cubic meter of Hydrogen to lift a kilogram of payload. Balloons were generally only filled upto 40% to allow for their expansion when in rarer atmosphere at high altitudes. He also answered that various factors led to the balloon launch being either in the night or early morning.

R K Manchanda is also working on a payload for ASTROSAT and said that student payloads are accommodated for free as piggyback. He can be reached via email at ravi@tifr.res.in.

February 7, 2011
A fusion power generator in every home?

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 4, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

In my early morning flip-through of the Times of India, I came across this interview with M Srinivasan, a retired BARC scientist and the chairperson of the organising committee of The International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. About 60 scientists are expected to attend the conference to be held in Chennai next week. The thought that made me pause was Srinivasan’s vision of having a nuclear fusion power generator in 20-100 kW category in every home.

The concept is great. It could easily replace the diesel and kerosene guzzling generators that are used in buildings and houses today. It also does away with transmission and distribution losses that comes along with having a central grid style architecture. A recent Google Talk by environmentalist Stewart Brand talked about having a few MW installation of nuclear fission reactors being under design with similar purposes.

Srinivasan describes that cold fusion study in India began with a group of 12 scientists in BARC who were inspired by a Times of India report! Following some work, research came to a standstill in the 1990s and then resumed only in 2008.

There is skepticism among the scientific community about the working of cold fusion. This mostly comes out of the non-repeatability of the original experiment conducted in 1989 by Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah. Following the results which “did not tally with textbook nuclear physics” in the words of Srinivasan, efforts were made to explain the single positive result. Some even went to the extent of saying that the above was not a nuclear fusion reaction at all! Others have even suggested calorimeter errors.

There have been recent demonstrations of working of cold fusion, some as recently as January 14, 2011.

February 4, 2011
PSLV to fly this February

Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 4, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

For the first launch this year, the ISRO has already started preparations for the launch of three satellites on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The launch is expected to take place in the morning between February 20 and February 25, 2011.

The main payload is the Resourcesat-2 satellite that will fly as a replacement for the ageing Resourcesat-1. Improvements have been made in the satellite in terms of avionics and improved swath coverage. After launch, the two satellites will operate simultaneously before the Resourcesat-1 satellite will be retired. Resourcesat-1 was launched in 2003 with a planned lifespan of 5 years. The images provided by these satellites are used for applications like vegetation dynamics, crop yield estimates, disaster management etc.

There are two piggybacking payloads. One is the Indo-Russian collaboration project, YOUTHSAT and a Singapore University satellite, XSat-1.

Youthsat is a project proposed by former Indian President, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam in 2005. It aims to provide an opportunity to Indian and Russian students to work hands-on on scientific instrumentation and data analysis systems. The aim of the satellite is to study solar physics in terms of Solar-terrestrial interactions. The Russian students will study solar activity while the Indian students will work on its impact on the ionosphere. They hope to provide short term forecasts of the impact of energetic solar events on manned and unmanned spacecrafts.

The XSat-1 is Singapore’s first satellite being developed by Nanyang Technological University and various others in Singapore. The satellite is ~120 kg developed to image of the region near Singapore. After collecting the data the satellite will also downlink the data to Singapore.

We wish the ISRO best of luck for this upcoming launch!

February 4, 2011
ISRO-Devas Deal update – my take

Looking at various news items today it seems that former ISRO Chairman, Madhavan Nair continues to attack individuals for blaming him in relation to the ISRO-Devas deal. Here he hits out against V Narayanaswamy, a Union Minister. This is after he hit out at his colleague and current ISRO Chairman, K Radhakrishnan.

On January 11, Deccan Chronicle carried an article stating that the former ISRO Chairman had written a letter to protest of the fact that a Committee looking into the Devas deal had not followed “due process” in submitting that report. Later, The Indian Express on January 25 reported that former ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair, former Scientific Secretary, A Bhaskarnarayana; former Managing Director, Antrix Corporation, K R Sridharmurthi and former ISRO Satellite Center chief, K N Shankara have been barred from holding office in the ISRO-Devas deal. Jaimon Joseph has written out some of the intricacies of that case in this blog post. That post also has this article by R Ramachandran which is worth linking to and reading about.

These are the salient points of the event so far. I don’t think that Madhavan Nair and the others named in that order should have been dealt in the way they were. They should not have heard of such an order from the press. The order came out in January 13. The Indian Express report came out on January 25. The Government seems to have sufficient time to convey this order to the people whom it was brought out against. I think the whole affair could have been handled in a different way, given the stature of the people the order sought to take action against.

Madhavan Nair losing his composure given a newspaper report is surprising. The way he hit out at these people seems unnatural and seems to point to some frustration that he nurtures. However, being a scientist of his stature, he is also responsible for his actions in the public sphere – especially on television. In this context, I can understand the scientists reaction attacking Madhavan Nair for reacting the way he did.

Reacting in this way, without having an official copy of the order and basing it on a newspaper report was a mistake that Madhavan Nair made. The others named in the order maintained this stance better even under pressure from the media for quotes. Today, Sridharmurthy ventured a little more but was more speculation.

The ISRO Chairman, Dr Radhakrishnan’s silence at this point is to be criticised. Even if not to retort against Madhavan Nair’s outburst, I think it was his responsibility to clear the air on bringing out the Devas Report and providing the basis for the action taken against such reputed scientists. This is a situation somewhat akin to Dr Manmohan Singh’s silence at various junctures in the Government cases. I think Dr. Radhakrishnan could also come out on what procedures would be followed by the organisation for something as valuable as the S-band frequencies that India seems to have lost out on.

To conclude, I think the Department of Space and Dr. Radhakrishnan must table the report. I also think Madhavan Nair must pen his thoughts rather than blurt them out on the television. I think the television media has taken some of his comments out of context and might hurt him in the long run. I think the other scientists have conducted themselves extremely well. I hope they too can pen their thoughts on this somewhere. I hope at least now the order is sent out to these scientists so that they can read them and not continue to hear about them from “media sources” or see copies of this order. I also think we need to spare a thought for the employees at ISRO who are passing through a critical phase and I really hope morale does not fail. ISRO is a great institution and I hope that like in a mission failure, it does a critical review of itself and emerges better from this whole controversial environment, it finds itself in.

January 27, 2011

13 Zodiac and Explanation

Explanation from Raghunandan from the Planetary Society, India:

The order of the constellations of the Zodiac (as given by the apparent motion of the Sun over a year) starting with the Vernal Equinox and proceeding eastward along the Ecliptic is

Pisces	The Fishes	March	12	to	April	18
Aries	The Ram	April	19	to	May	13
Taurus	The Bull	May	14	to	June	19
Gemini	The Twins	June	20	to	July	20
Cancer	The Crab	July	21	to	August	9
Leo	The Lion	August	10	to	September	15
Virgo	The Maiden	September	16	to	October	30
Libra	The Balance	October	31	to	November	22
Scorpius	The Scorpion	November	23	to	November	29
Ophiuchus**	The Serpent-holder	November	30	to	December	17
Sagittarius	The Archer	December	18	to	January	18
Capricornus	The Goat	January	19	to	February	15
Aquarius	The Water-bearer	February	16	to	March	11

The Constellations of the Zodiac :

The ancients observed that the Sun, Moon and those 5 funny wandering stars (the planets known to the ancients) seem to be constrained to a particular region of the sky, never traveling really far north or south of a wide band of stars. They divided this sky band into 12 sections based on the old constellations, each differing in width but all of them about 16° high (+8°/-8°) and called them the “Zodiac”. Each division is named for the constellation situated within its limits in the 2nd century B.C.!

The name “Zodiac” is derived from the Greek, meaning “animal circle” (also related to the word “zoo”), and it comes from the fact that most of these constellations are named for animals, such as Leo, the Lion, Taurus, the Bull and Cancer, the Crab. It turns out that this band of the sky is centered on a line called the “ecliptic” which is the apparent path the Sun appears to take through the sky as a result of the Earth’s revolution around it (actually, it is defined as the projection the Earth’s orbital plane into outer space). If we could see the stars in the daytime, we would see the Sun slowly wander from one constellation of the Zodiac to the next, making one complete circle around the sky in one year. Which constellation the Sun was in had to be inferred by drawing all the constellations, then noting which was the last to set before sunrise and which was the first to rise after sunset then assuming the Sun was half way in between.

Source:

January 17, 2011