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Astronomy Club
Science and Technology Council
Students’ Gymkhana
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Presents
CYGNUS
The Wall Magazine
2002-2003 I
Club Coordinators
1. Amar V. Chandra
2. Ashutosh K. Gupta
3. Jaya Jha
Other Contributors
1. Anshuman Sinha
2. Vinay Mishra
3. Saujanya Golwalker (Alumnus!)
Special Thanks To
1. Abhinav Sharma
Quiz Corner
Try finding out the answers to the following questions. Look out the
next issue of Cygnus for the answers. If you get the answers, do post
those on iitk.gymkhana.
1. Recently a new Couiper Belt Object has been seen in sky, which is largest ever seen
minor planet. Can you tell the name of second largest Minor Planet (KBO)?
2. What is a Great Year?
3. Which Star is the brightest star in sky?
4. What are Meteor showers? Can you explain why these happen?
5. What is special about the relation between revolution and rotation of Pluto?
6. What is “Butterfly of Tunguska”?
7. What is the name of Constellation Orion in Hindu Mythology?
8. Which is the galaxy, closest to us?
9. In which Zodiac sign brightest object is in Messier Catalogue?
10. What is the diameter of Celestial sphere?
On the lighter side
Laws Of Observational Astronomy
The most popular part of the activities of Astronomy Club at IIT Kanpur is Observational
Astronomy. With the years of experience the club has been able to formulate the following laws.
Additions from experienced people are invited.
1st Law: The skies are never clear within 3 days of new moon.
Explanation: There is not enough solar energy reflected off the moon to dissipate the clouds
those days.
2nd Law: Rare astronomical events usually occur within 3 days of full moon and/or within 30
apparent degrees from the sun.
Explanation: Gravitational interpretation of Murphy's Law. *
3rd Law: When observing, the object you want to see will always be below the horizon or less than
10 degrees from the horizon with the most light pollution
Explanation: Since frustration is related to Entropy, it must always increase.
4th Law: Supernovae, comets, and asteroids are always discovered by someone else
Explanation: No matter where you are, the sun will always set earlier somewhere else, and
therefore someone else will find it first.
5th Law: 90 percent of meteors occur behind you when everyone else is facing you (so they can
all say, "ooh! You missed a good one!”)
Explanation?? Invited!
*Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong, it will.
Mythology cannot go unnoticed
Aquarius- In Greek Mythology
1. Abduction of a Child: Ganymede was the son of King Tros, after whom the city of Troy was
named. The story of Ganymede is rather horrifying if you bother to think about it. What it concerns
is the abduction of a child from his parents. Ganymede was abducted one day while he was
keeping watch over a herd of his father's sheep. In one story it was Eos, the Goddess of the
Dawn, who abducted the boy. She had a passion for young men. Then Zeus noted the beauty of
the boy and stole him away from Eos.
2. The Eagle Steals the Boy: In the more common version of the story it was Zeus himself that
was taken with the beauty of the shepherd boy and sent his eagle down to steal away the boy in
its claws. Some say that the eagle was Zeus himself, who had transformed into the shape of the
royal bird. The boy was carried off to the top of Mount
Olympus to become the serving boy to the gods, pouring out from his jar the mixture of water and
nectar quaffed by the gods in their revels.
Learn about the Celestial Objects
Comets: Their origin
Couiper Belt: The birthplace of comets
Comets have an important place in human history. Astronomers and scientists are crazy about
the origin and motion of comets. There is general belief in scientific community that the answer to
the key question of the origin of solar system lies in the comets. Comets are basically spatial
objects of ice and cold gases. Their central part extends upto10-12 Kilometers. As they approach
the sun, the central part acquires a large amount of heat .Due to heat gases and dusts vaporize
and create an atmosphere around them. This atmosphere is called "Coma" and it can extend up
to 1 million Kilometers
The rays coming out of the sun push the upper part of coma and the dust and gases makes a tail,
which increases in the direction opposite to that of the sun. This tail can extend up to a range of
10-100 million Kilometers. Big comets have tails of maximum length of an order of 30 crore
Kilometers.
Our solar system has an age of 450 crore years approximately .If all comets were of the same
age, then all of them would not have been there today. But as we know, they are swirling around
proudly. It means that the age of comets is less than that of the solar system.
Now the question arises that if comets were born some few million years ago, then where they
were before that. This question was first answered by Dutch astronomer Jane Ourt in 1950.He
proposed that there is an icy spherical object at a distance of 75 trillion Kilometers from the sun.
This region, called 'Ourt Cloud', was assumed to be the birthplace of comets. If any star passing
closely affects this spatial object, then some comets leave the cloud and enter into the solar
system. The large planets like Jupiter, Saturn etc. destroy some of the comets. Some change
their paths and come out of the solar system and rest move towards the Sun with continuous
increase in tail length and start revolving around the Sun.
Our earth and other planets revolve around the sun in fixed parallel orbits, except Mercury and
Pluto. These orbits have an angle of 7 &17 degrees with respect to the earth's orbit respectively.
But comets emerging out of the ‘Ourt Cloud’ have disordered orbit.
Comets are mainly of two types. Those of the first type take more than 200 years for revolution
around the sun and others takes less than 20 years. 'Ourt Cloud’ hypothesis gives a correct
explanation about the orbit's inclination and number of comets with large period.
But for almost all the comets with small period, orbit is not too much inclined with respect to the
earth's orbit. To explain this difference in inclinations, it was suggested that initially all comets
with large period had a large inclination but the gravitational attraction of big planets, especially
Jupiter, reduced this angle. All astronomers were not too much satisfied with this explanation.
In 1951 Gerard Couiper gave a suggestion that there must be a flat belt in the outer portion of
solar system beyond Neptune and Pluto. This belt should be very less dense and hence the
particles there did not combine to form the planets. Due to large distance from the Sun it should
be very cold and like central part of the comets it should be consisting of dust and gases. This flat
belt is called
'Couiper Belt'. Couiper assumed that all small period comets emerge from this belt. It is worth
mentioning that most of comets have maximum distance from the sun, which is nearly same as
that of Neptune's orbit.
So if couiper belt is present than these solid objects should be visible. But at that time, telescopes
were not so powerful so as to look beyond Pluto’s orbit. So no objects could be identified and
people forgot about Couiper Belt.
But at last Martin Duncan of Toronto University, with some of his colleagues, identified some
comets. In 1988, a study showed that number of comets with small period is very large. Then
again the question arose that if these objects were not from the Ourt cloud, from where had they
come?
In 1992, astronomers David Jewitt and Jen Lugot found a planet sized object with their 2.2 m long
telescope. Slowly moving this comet was beyond Pluto's orbit. It got the name '1992 QB1'. In
1993 another object was identified in a direction opposite to this one. Then people started finding
more and more such spatial objects.
Till now 43 of such objects have been identified. All these objects have orbits inclined with
respect to the earth's orbit. This inclination is same as that of the comets with small period. The
number of these objects is not very high, however existence of Couiper belt can't be neglected.
All these objects are situated outside the Neptune’s orbits. According to an approximation,
Couiper Belt consists of around 35000 such objects with a size of approx 100 kilometers.
Now many astronomers believe that the comets with large period have come from Ourt Cloud
and the comets with small period have come from the Couiper Belt. After the discovery of Couiper
Belt many astronomers believe that Pluto is not a free planet but a large object emerged from
Couiper Belt. If new discoveries prove this fact than we will loose one planet from our solar
system and number will reduce from 9 to 8!!
Enough Scopes for Art
Astroart
It is not just about the “same old stars” (though even this, I do not believe is true!), images of
galaxy and supernovae in IR Region etc.
Here is something very comprehensible to Human eyes. We are presenting before you the
mounting of the telescope through Astroart. To learn more about it, wait for the coming issues of
Cygnus, or post your queries on iitk.gymkhana or search Google!
1. The Telescope
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3. Adding Counter weight
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2. Plain Mounting
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,-------'`~~~~~~~~`'-------,
`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` David Riley
What do the coordinators say
Tradition is to be continued and enriched
1. We are grateful to our earlier coordinators of terms 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 (i.e. since
we are here) for leaving an enriched tradition of activities, learning and fun at Astronomy
Club and we assure that we will try our best to add new colours to the flower they have
grown.
2. We expect more and enthusiastic participation from Junta in the activities of the club. A
list of planned activities is being given here. We expect more suggestions from you.
3. We expect guidance from faculty and seniors and enthusiasm and support from our
friends.
Planned Activities
Come, Enjoy, Learn and Gain
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Regular Observation Sessions
A Freshers’ Astronomy Quiz after Freshers’ Nite in August-2002
An Astronomy Debate after first mid-sems (2002-2003 1st Semester)
An astronomy festival open to all students and faculty members after 2 nd mid-sems
(2002-2003 1st Semester)
1st Discussion of our discussion series will be during the Astronomy festival.
Two more discussions in the 2nd Semester of academic year 2002-2003
Three more issues of Cygnus
Persuasion of the plan of the observatory
Before We End
Quotes Not to Be Quoted ;-)
1. Black holes are the places where Mother Nature is dividing by zero.
2. Living on Earth in expensive, but it does include a free trip round the sun.
3. If you can read this you are not looking through Hubble Scope Telescope!
But you can quote this one: That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind. A
thin man ran... made a large stride... left planet... pined flag on moon... on to Mars!