Phenomena in Space you need to look out for

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Just like our planet Earth, the space it dwells in is extremely fascinating and beautiful. For centuries, our ancestors have tried to find out more about what happens out there in space and why so. Today we have the answer to a lot of our questions but scientists continuously remind us that there is still a lot of us we have to search for.

There aren’t just other planets but some unpredictable events that take place in space. These are unpredictable because of how unlikely it is to see things like these in our day-to-day lives. Who would imagine a star imploding in their kitchen? Well, people who observe space phenomena won’t expect it to happen in their kitchens but they will surely know where it will happen in the dark, cold space.

Pulsars

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Pulsars are said to be an accidental gift from the universe to physics because of how they were found and the impact they had in the scientific community. Some 57 years ago, these interstellar objects were found by astronomer Jocelyn Bell who wasn’t expecting to find a new object in space. Bell was using a radio telescope in Cambridge, England which were built to measure Quasars, another space phenomenon. When they were making pen traces to represent the radio brightness of what they had been observing, they found something unusual.

Bell and her supervisor Anthony Hewish found that the pulses were very regular and it was quite difficult to believe it was happening naturally. These were rapidly spinning neutron stars called Pulsars which had been predicted but never been observed before. Fun fact about these pulsars is that these spin hundreds of times per second which is super-fast. Today, scientists have found more than 2,000 pulsars out there because of the several missions undertaken by space agencies to find and study them. One such mission is the NICER or Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer mission which was launched in June 2017 by NASA. The Fermi telescope launched in 2008 also helped out in this regard.

If you want to start looking for pulsars, you can start by looking for publicly released images from the telescope and other such missions. You can also follow the news properly to find out about future missions and new discoveries. Some pulsars to look for first are PSR B1919+21 (the first one to be discovered), PSR J0540-6919 (the brightest gamma-ray one), IGR J18245-2452 (said to be a dual personality pulsar), and PSR J1023+0038 (the transformer pulsar).

Nebula

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Nebulas are fascinating. These are giant clouds of gas and dust which give rise to stars. That’s right- these are extremely important and are as beautiful as they are significant.

Nebula is a Latin word which means “mist, vapor, fog, smoke” and is rightly used to refer to cloud-like celestial objects. These are formed either when a dying star explodes to throw out gas and dust or from the cold interstellar dust and gas floating around in space. When certain regions in these clouds become dense enough, they give birth to new stars and are hence, rightfully called “stellar nurseries”. You will find that there are four types of nebulas- supernova nebulas, emission nebulas, planetary nebulas, and dark nebulas. Images of the first three are bright and pretty but dark nebulas are dustier and block light which are just as pretty but look strikingly different.

There are many bright Nebulas which can be spotted easily. Try looking for the Eta Carinae Nebula, the Orion Nebula, Lagoon Nebula, Omega Nebula, the Crab Nebula, the Helix Nebula, and the best- the Eagle Nebula.

The swirls on Jupiter

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Many people know about the Great Red Spot on Jupiter which has been fascinated many generations of astronomers and planetary scientists. But how many people know about the other rest of Jupiter’s swirling landscape which is even more pretty.

Jupiter is a gas giant which means that it doesn’t really have, what you can call, a true surface. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly made of swirling gases and liquids which paint a lovely scenery for the scientists to study.

The Juno mission was launched by NASA to study and send back pictures to Earth. If you look at pictures released by this mission after October 2021, you will be able to spot a lot of these swirls I am telling you about. Look for images of the South pole of this planet because they are completely different from the rest of the planet’s atmosphere- they are striking blue in color!

Galaxies colliding

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One might think that galaxies colliding together is catastrophic and literally the end of the world. This is true but makes for a stunning view as well.

Currently, the James Webb telescope is working wonders and sent back pictures of two spiral galaxies colliding and then, merging. In a vast sea of galaxies, there is the Arp 220 which is 250 million light-years away from us and shines brightly in infrared light. This belongs to a class of ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG). What’s fascinating is that this collision began some 700 million years ago and is still ongoing. This is how slow this process is.

Two galaxies collide because of two reasons: firstly, they must be relatively close to each other and secondly, they need to be traveling with respect to each other at slow speeds. This is because distance between these galaxies would weaken the gravitational attraction which would draw them together. Another interesting fact is that these galaxies are so vast that the stars in them rarely collide with each other- the distance between them is too large!

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