One of India's most Powerful Supercomputers Installed at IISc
Param Pravega, a supercomputer that is touted to be one of the most powerful in the country, was installed at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
It has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
The premiere institute had already established a supercomputing facility several years ago and in 2015, installed SahasraT which at the time was the fastest in the country.
Feb 03, 2022
WMO Declares 770-km Lightning in 2020 as Longest Single Bolt Recorded
A bolt of lightning that stretched nearly 769 kilometres across three US states in 2020 or equivalent to the distance between London and the German city of Hamburg was declared as the longest recorded single flash by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The record lightning struck in April 2020, across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas in the southern US, with the exact length at 768 km, or 477.2 miles.
Trace Gas Orbiter Spots 'Tree Stump' Crater on Mars
ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spotted an ice-rich impact crater in Acidalia Planitia, a Martian plain between the Tharsis volcanic province and Arabia Terra to the north of Valles Marineris on Mars.
The 'tree stump' crater is located in the vast northern plains of Acidalia Planitia, centered at 51.9°N/326.7°E.
This feature could easily be mistaken for a tree stump with characteristic concentric rings.
Tree rings provide snapshots of Earth's past climate and, although formed in a very different way, the patterns inside this crater reveal details of the Red Planet's history, too.
Feb 02, 2022
Astronomers Identify Second Earth Trojan Asteroid: 2020 XL5
2020 XL5 will be an Earth Trojan asteroid for at least 4,000 years.
Although Trojan asteroids have been known for decades in other Solar System planets such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, it wasn't until 2011 that the asteroid 2010 TK7 was found to be the first Earth Trojan asteroid.
Trojans are objects sharing an orbit with a planet, clustered around one of two special gravitationally balanced areas along the orbit of the planet known as Lagrange points.
Feb 01, 2022
Massive Gas Giant Found Circling TOI-2180
A team of professional astronomers and citizen scientists discovered a giant exoplanet orbiting the G5-type star TOI-2180.
TOI-2180 is a bright, slightly evolved G5 star about 380 light-years away in the constellation of Draco.
Otherwise known as TIC 298663873, HD 238894 or SAO 31031, it hosts at least one planet.
Named TOI-2180b, the alien world has the same diameter as Jupiter, but is 2.8 times more massive.
TOI-2180b is special because it takes 260.8 days to complete a journey around its star, a relatively long time compared to many known gas giants outside our Solar System.
The planet also contains 105 times the mass of Earth in elements heavier than helium and hydrogen.
SpaceX launches Italian Earth-observation Satellite
SpaceX launched the Italian Earth-observation satellite after scrubbing the scheduled liftoff for the fourth time in a row. The latest call-off was due to the presence of a ship in the "no-go zone" at Cape Canaveral ahead of the launch.
The Constellation of Small Satellites for the Mediterranean basin Observation (COSMO)-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) is the follow-on mission to COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) satellite, which will monitor the Earth and provide data risk management, cartography, forest & environment protection, natural resources exploration, land management, defence and security, maritime surveillance, food & agriculture management. The system consists of two satellites, which are designed to observe Earth using synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
Jan 30, 2022
Astronomers Detect Titanium Oxide and Several Metals in Atmosphere of WASP-189b
The temperature of a planet's atmosphere decreases with increasing altitude, unless a shortwave absorber that causes a temperature inversion exists. Ozone plays this role in the Earth's atmosphere. In the atmospheres of highly irradiated exoplanets, the shortwave absorbers are predicted to be titanium oxide and vanadium oxide. Using high-resolution transmission spectroscopy, astronomers have now detected titanium oxide in the atmosphere of the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-189b. Moreover, they have detected metals, including neutral and singly ionized iron and titanium, as well as chromium, magnesium, vanadium and manganese.
WASP-189 is a 730-million-year-old A-type star located 322 light-years away in the constellation of Libra.
Also known as HD 133112, the star is larger and more than 2,000 degrees Celsius hotter than the Sun, and so appears to glow blue.
Discovered in 2018, WASP-189b is a transiting gas giant about 1.6 times the radius of Jupiter.
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