In the Shade of a Historic Planet

Explanation: For the first time, astronomers have recovered independent evidence that distant planetary systems exist. Last Friday, a team led by G. W. Henry (Tenn. State) and G. Marcy (UC Berkeley) announced the discovery of a shadow of a planet crossing a distant star. Little known HD 209458, a Sun-like star 150 light-years away, had been suspected of harboring planets from a slight wobble found in its motion. Henry now finds that this wobble exactly corresponds to a planet crossing the face of the star, creating the slight dimming effect of a partial eclipse. The astronomers were then able to make a groundbreaking estimate of the mass and radius of the extra-solar planet, which they find to have about two-thirds the mass of Jupiter but about 60 percent larger radius. The drawing above is an artist's depiction of a planetary eclipse in the HD 209458 system.

First photography taken by the biggest telescope in the world!

Did you hear the latest news ?

In Arizona (U.S.A.) a shot was taken from the strongest and biggest Visual UFO-shaped telescope of some stars, situated 24 million light years away from earth, at "Andromeda Galaxy".

This magnificent telescope has two mirrors; each is 8.4m wide and weigh 16 tons.

Exciting isn't it?

galileo galilee

He was born in 1564, he had great achievements during until his deadness in 1642 (and it is the year that nioten was born), his father was a music teacher and a fine lute player. Galileo Galilee was a Tuscan astronomer, philosopher, and physicist who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations.

Although the popular idea of Galileo inventing the telescope is inaccurate, he was one of the first people to use the telescope to observe the sky. Based on sketchy descriptions of telescopes invented in the Netherlands in 1608, Galileo made one with about 8x magnification, and then made improved models up to about 20x. On August 25, 1609, he demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. His work on the device also made for a profitable sideline with merchants who found it useful for their shipping businesses. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March 1610 in a short treatise entitled Sidereus Nuncius (Sidereal Messenger). On January 7, 1610 Galileo discovered four of Jupiter's largest moons : Io, Europa,Callisto and Ganymede . He determined that these moons were orbiting the planet since they would appear and disappear; something he attributed to their movement behind Jupiter. He made additional observations of them in 1620. Later astronomers overruled Galileo's naming of these objects, changing his Medicean stars to Galilean satellites. The demonstration that a planet had smaller planets orbiting it was problematic for the orderly, comprehensive picture of the geocentric model of the universe, in which everything circled around the Earth.
Galileo noted that Venus exhibited a full set of phases like the Moon. The heliocentric model of the solar system developed by Copernicus predicted that all phases would be visible since the orbit of Venus around the Sun would cause its illuminated hemisphere to face the Earth when it was on the opposite side of the Sun and to face away from the Earth when it was on the Earth-side of the Sun. By contrast, the geocentric model of Ptolemy predicted that only crescent and new phases would be seen, since Venus was thought to remain between the Sun and Earth during its orbit around the Earth. Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus proved that Venus orbited the Sun and lent support to (but did not prove) the heliocentric model.
Galileo was one of the first Europeans to observe sunspots, although there is evidence that Chinese astronomers had done so before. The very existence of sunspots showed another difficulty with the perfection of the heavens as assumed in the older philosophy. And the annual variations in their motions, first noticed by Francesco Sizzi, presented great difficulties for either the geocentric system or that of Tycho Brahe. A dispute over priority in the discovery of sunspots led to a long and bitter feud with Christoph Scheiner; in fact, there can be little doubt that both of them were beaten by David Fabricius and his son Johannes.
He was the first to report lunar mountains and craters, whose existence he deduced from the patterns of light and shadow on the Moon's surface. He even estimated the mountains' heights from these observations. This led him to the conclusion that the Moon was "rough and uneven, and just like the surface of the Earth itself", and not a perfect sphere as Aristotle had claimed.
Galileo observed the Milky Way, previously believed to be nebulous, and found it to be a multitude of stars, packed so densely that they appeared to be clouds from Earth. He also located many other stars too distant to be visible with the naked eye.Galileo observed the planet Neptune in 1612, but did not realize that it was a planet and took no particular notice of it. It appears in his notebooks as one of many unremarkable dim stars.

Did you know?

1- The International Space Station (I.S.S) is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. You can see it with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars as a point of light moving past the stars.


2- The moon has no atmosphere. This means it has no wind or weather, so everything on its surface stays the same. The footprints and American flag left by astronauts in 1969 are still there!


3- One light-year is the distance light travels in one year about 5.9 trillion miles.


4- On Earth we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. Seventy-eight percent of it is nitrogen.


5- Jupiter's four largest moons-Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto-were first seen by Galileo in the 17th century.


6- Because Uranus is tipped way over on its axis, its north pole is in darkness for 42 Earth years.

Niel Armstrong

ARMSTRONG, Neil Alden (1930– ), American astronaut, born in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. After graduating (1955) from Purdue University, he joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, serving as a civilian test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, Lancaster, Calif. In (1962) he became the first civilian to enter the astronaut-training program. In March (1966), Armstrong was command pilot of the Gemini 8 mission, which accomplished the first physical joining of two orbiting spacecraft. In July (1969), Armstrong, as commander of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, became the first person to set foot on the moon. His companions on the mission were Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins. In (1971) be became professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Following the fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January (1986), Armstrong was appointed deputy chief of the presidential commission set up to investigate the disaster.

Being an astronaut

Being an astronaut is one of the most exciting and most demanding jobs in the world, and also out of this world! You brave danger from the moment you rocket away from the launch pad to the moment you touch down on Earth again days or maybe weeks later. Up in the strange weightless world of space, you carry out experiments, launch satellites and go space walking. In the years to come, you might spend months in orbit in space stations, walk on the moon, or even travel to mars.