Kepler data reveals a frost giant

I’ve been most fascinated lately by studies of planet formation. Every small detail is like that one letter in the crossword you need to fill all the other boxes in, every discovery a cornerstone that holds together a unique piece of the universe. For example, using just the find that the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b has a very short day of eight hours, astronomers could speculate on how it was formed, what its density could be, and how heavy it could get over time. And it isn’t surprising if a similar tale awaits telling by Kepler 421b.

The secrets of how planets form

Astronomers who were measuring the length of one day on an exoplanet for the first time were in for a surprise: it was shorter than any planet’s in the Solar System. Beta Pictoris b, orbiting the star Beta Pictoris, has a sunrise every eight hours. On Jupiter, there’s one once every 10 hours; on Earth, …

Our universe, the poor man’s accelerator

That cosmic inflation may have happened at a higher-than-anticipated energy means physicists have access to the young universe through astronomical data.

Ambitious gamma-ray telescope takes shape

I wrote a shortened version of this piece for The Hindu on July 4, 2013. This is the longer version, with some more details thrown in. — Scientists and engineers from 27 countries including India are pitching for a next-generation gamma-ray telescope that could transform the future of high-energy astrophysics. Called the Cherenkov Telescope Array …

On September 5, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe to study the Jovian planets Jupiter and Saturn, and their moons, and the interstellar medium, the gigantic chasm between various star-systems in the universe. It’s been 35 years and 9 months, and Voyager has kept on, recently entering the boundary between our System and …

Some more questions concerning Herschel…

The Herschel Space Observatory, a.k.a. Herschel, was the largest space telescope at the time of its launch and still is. With a collecting area twice as large as the Hubble Space Telescope’s, and operating in the far-infrared part of the spectrum, Herschel could look through clouds of gases and dust in the farthest reaches universe …

EUCLID/ESA: A cosmic vision looking into the darkness

I spoke to Dr. Giuseppe Racca and Dr. Rene Laureijs, both of the ESA, regarding the EUCLID mission, which will be the world’s first space-telescope launched to study dark energy and dark matter. For the ESA, EUCLID will be the centerpiece of their Cosmic Vision program (2015-2025). Dr. Racca is the mission’s project manager while …