Astronomy | Questions and Answers

Why do we have Day and Night?

Every day we wake up to a bright new day and go to sleep when the sun goes down and the night approaches. But few people try to understand the mechanism behind this routine which ...

Why do we have shorter days in winter?

The amount of sunrays received during the summer and winter varies everywhere. The days are shorter in winters and longer in summers. This variation is attributed to the tilt and the curvature of the earth. ...

How Many Stars Are There In The Universe?

A simple answer could be ‘We don’t know!’ Certainly, there exists estimates that there might be that many stars in the universe but that is a rather broad band of numbers, like minimum this many ...

What Are Shooting Stars?

Shooting stars are also known as meteorites and an amazing fact is that they are similar to the planet earth in composition than any stars in the whole universe! They are objects that were roaming ...

What Are The Planets Made Up Of?

The IAU (International Astronomical Union), held a debate in 2006, in which more than 2500 astronomers from throughout the world participated and they agreed on calling a body a planet if it satisfied the following ...

How do Stars Form?

From the pearls hanging in the sky to the demigods who control our destiny, stars, to different folks have different meanings. But here we will concern ourselves only with what the science says. So how ...

Why do we have a Leap Year?

The significance of one year is that it is the time taken by the earth to complete a full revolution around the sun. A year consists of 365 days according to the Gregorian calendar, which ...

What is Geostationary Orbit?

The term geostationary orbit combines two words, ‘geo’ from Greek, which means ‘the earth’ and ‘stacionarie’, from Middle English, which means ‘stationary’. Thus, the word signifies something that is stationary with respect to the earth. ...

Why Can’t We See Stars During The Day?

After the sunset the stars become visible in the sky. When the darkness of sky increases, the number of stars and their brightness also increases. As the sun come up to the sky, the number ...

What Are Nebulae?

Many big white and black spots can be seen through a telescope, when we look at the sky at night. These black and white spots are called nebulae, the meaning of nebulae is mist and ...

Why Are All The Heavenly Bodies Round?

We all know that earth is round therefore the moon and the sun are also round in shape. Even the stars, the planets and their satellites are also round in shape. Let us study why all ...

Why Do Stars Twinkle?

At night, we see millions of twinkling stars in the sky. In all directions light is radiated by these stars. Even if they look very small in size however, actually they are very big in ...

What Are Constellations?

A group of stars is called constellation. When the stars had been studied by a man in olden days, he observed that a pattern is being formed when he joined the stars with imaginary lines ...

Why Does The Size Of The Moon Appear To Change?

We know that the moon looks like a bright disc on full moon day, but it goes on fading and disappears on the new moon night. Again it starts increasing in size and becomes a ...

What Is An Orrey?

A model of the solar system which is designed to show the locations of different planets is called an orrey. An orrey also tells the relationship between planets. The orrey can be moved using gearing ...

Why Do We Have Seasons?

For an easy answer to this question, we only need to understand that light travels in a straight line but the Earth is slightly tilted on its axis. At certain times as the planet travels ...

Why Isn’t Pluto A Planet Anymore?

For decades, students from elementary school on have been taught that Pluto was a planet, one of the ten largest bodies that move in direct orbits around the sun. This was common and accepted knowledge ...

How Many Moons Does Venus Have?

Venus doesn’t have moons. But that isn’t the end of the discussion. The interesting thing about this lack of moons is that other planets do have moons. So, why doesn’t Venus have objects orbiting it, ...

Why Do Planets Circle The Sun?

Perhaps there is a simple answer to this basic question. Maybe planets circle the sun because they have to. But some people want to know more than this simple law of physics. They want to ...

What Are Sun Spots?

Spots that appear on the sun are not truly spots on a solid surface in the sense that we understand them. Since scientists believe the sun is a massive collection of burning gases (at least ...

How Was Universe Created?

No less an authority than the brilliant Stephen Hawking once said that the universe “popped” up spontaneously from nothing. Hawking himself stated that this is not proven and added that it may take eternity to ...

How Was The Earth Formed?

This is a fascinating question that has occupied men and women for centuries. There is some important geological evidence that can help us understand how this planet, and the others, came to orbit the star ...

How Was The Moon Formed?

It would be accurate to say that the moon is part of the same material that forms every other celestial body in the solar system. The Earth, the other planets and the sun were all ...

How Old Is Earth?

In most people’s estimation, Earth is either as old as the Bible says it is or it is as old as scientific evidence says it is. We may never know precisely which is correct, if ...

What Is A UFO?

It’s a rare case when someone does not know that the letters UFO stand for unidentified flying object. The UFO phenomenon started in the late 1940s and early 1950s and continues today, in locations all ...

What Are Cosmic Collisions?

To someone standing outside, looking at the night sky, all may seem calm and quite peaceful in the universe. But the professionals who study the stars, the planets and the infinite variety of other things ...

What Is A Galaxy?

It is important to understand that, while a galaxy is a collection or mass of various objects in space, it is also a system in which the various pieces interact. Also known by the name ...

What Is Blackhole?

The first thing astronomers and other scientists try to do when the subject of black holes comes up is try to destroy the myths that surround the word. Movies and science fiction novels have shown ...

What Is Satellite?

While most people think of a satellite as a complex instrument that orbits the earth for various scientific purposes, the truth is that a satellite can be anything that orbits another object. Technically, the moon ...

What Is Supernova?

The major result of a supernova is the massive release of energy. A supernova is an event that occurs when a star uses up all of the fuel that has kept it producing enough light ...

What is Chandrayaan?

Rising sun of 22nd October 2009 brought a shining ray for the Indian space research program conducted by ISRO (Indian space research organization). On this fortunate day the land of spirituality, India included itself in ...