Star Trek

Something about the Earth and the beyond.

Amazed and confused at the disqualification of Pluto as a planet in our Solar System? Try and picture the immense magnitude of the Universe and maybe you’ll find a method behind this madness. Visualise this: You’re a 5-feet something dude/dudette. You live on this Dharti Mata, Planet Earth. The Earth is 40,000 kms round and revolves around the Sun (yeah, our Surya). Our Surya is big--big enough to hold 1.3 million Earths. So if you imagine this Surya as a regular kharbooza, the Earth is like a tiny pinhead in comparison. (To see how a piece of rock called Pluto looks in this scheme of astronomical sizings, go to www.rense.com/general72/size.htm)

Zoom out from our Solar System. You will find that our galaxy, the Milky Way has some 200 billion "Suns" in it. Our Sun is just a little spec in the Milky Way--which is about 1,00,000 light years across in width. Now let's try and view that number in some perspective. Light, traveling at 3,00,000 kms a second, takes eight minutes to reach us from our Sun. But from another sun, near the centre of our very own Milky Way galaxy, light takes 27,000 years to reach us! (This sun we are talking about is called the Pistol Star. It is 100 times bigger than our Sun and 1,00,00,000 times brighter--making it the biggest and brightest star known.) For an amazing depiction of the macrocosm-to-microcosm universe--starting from our Milky Way at 10 million light years away from the Earth, to a leaf on tree in Florida, USA, down to its subatomic chlorophyll universe of electrons and protons--go to: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

If we zoom further back, stepping out of our Milky Way Galaxy, what will we see? Two more galaxies right next to our Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda (referred to as M31) and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33) in the constellation Triangulum. Both M31 and M33 are actually visible without a telescope if you know where and when to look. The "Great Galaxy" in Andromeda is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and about twice as wide--with some 300 billion suns! East of Andromeda, is the M33, another spiral galaxy. This is 2.3 million light years away from us. And the M31? A mite further at 2.9 million light years. So the light that we see emanating from M31 currently was actually emitted from the galaxy around the time mankind first discovered fire!

That's not all. The Milky Way, the M31 and M33 are what astronomers look upon as the "local group" of neighbouring galaxies--because they are in the same part of the sky. Beyond this, astronomers can see billions of galaxies. So what is at the edge of the Universe? Don't know, can't say. Not yet. Maybe, there is not edge or end to the Universe at all...

Fascinating, isn't it? And chilling too, to realise how small and utterly insignificant we humans are in this awesomely gigantic Universe. The Internet is strewn with hundreds of websites on the magic and mysteries of this Universe. Here are some of best astronomy, space and earth science freeware and sites that have skimmed across my horizon.

Celestia
A real-time space simulation freebie that lets you explore the Universe in 3D. Trek through the Solar System, to over 100,000 stars, and even beyond the Milky Way. The exponential zoom lets you delve into space across a huge range of scales.
www.shatters.net/celestia

World Wind
This NASA GIS program is like a high-res world map layered with satellite info. Zoom from satellite altitude to anything on Earth--Grand Canyon or Gobi Desert. LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data give you a feel of the Earth’s terrain. Like Google Earth? Nay, much more.
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

Stellarium
Among the best star chart proggies around. It takes your location, calculates local sunset/sunrise, moonset/moonrise and then shows what you will see at night (and evening and morning twilight).
www.stellaruim.org

Orbiter
This demos some advanced principles of spaceflight like orbital mechanics, interplanetary navigation, and related matters. The graphics are better than most commercial programs.
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

Orbitron
An artificial satellite tracking proggie, has info of almost all spacecraft in orbiting Earth. Spy satellites? Pata nahin but it can show up 20,000 orbiters).
www.stoff.pl

Other Celestial Orbits

BOINC
http://boinc.berkeley.edu

Space
www.space.com

Google Earth
http://earth.google.com

SOHO
http://ares.nrl.navy.mil/sungrazer

SETI @home
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

J-Track
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack