News

Bob Fletcher, a teacher in Australia, was the first to spot a very faint object moving across images made public by NASA A brown dwarf over 100 light years away from the Sun has been discovered using a new citizen science tool that helps astronomers pinpoint new worlds lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. Just six days after the launch of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 website in February, four different users alerted the science team to the curious object, whose presence has since been confirmed via an infrared telescope. “I was so proud of our volunteers as I saw the data on this new cold world coming in,” said Jackie Faherty, a senior scientist at the American Museum of Natural History and one of Backyard World’s researchers. “It was a feel-good moment for science,” said Ms. Faherty. The Backyard Worlds project lets anyone with a computer and an Internet connection flip through images taken by NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. If...

The heavy-lift GSLV Mark III rocket, slated to be launched by space agency ISRO tomorrow, would open up opportunities for India to launch 4-ton class of satellites of foreign countries, according to a senior space scientist. Tomorrow’s launch of the first developmental flight of the rocket is a “great milestone” as ISRO is almost doubling the capacity to launch satellite from 2.2-2.3 tons to 3.5-4 tons, former ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan said. Click Here! “Today if India has to launch communication satellites beyond 2.3 tons, we have to go abroad (to launch them). We (will) have self-reliance in launching communication satellites (once GSLV Mk III becomes operational), and also we will be able to attract foreign customers,” he said. “It’s rather a simpler vehicle, and a vehicle with better payload fraction. And it’s going to be future workhorse vehicle (of ISRO),” he said. Mr. Radhakrishnan was closely associated with the GSLV Mk III programme, approved in 2000, as directo...