ASTEROID FACTS

   Asteroids are sometimes called minor planets.They are lumps of rock orbiting the sun, mostly in the asteroid belt between the orbits of mars & jupiter.

    The first largest asteroid, ceres, is 936km in diameter & was found on new new year's day 1801.Since then thousand have been founed .Twelve of them are more then 250km in width & 26 are larger then 200km in diameter. As telescope have improved more and more smaller astroied have been detected .There are probably about 100,000 asteriod larger then 1k in diameter. Some experts think ther may be as many as 1.2 million.

  Vesta the fourth asteriod to be discovered in 1807, is the only one bright enought to be seen whithout a telescope.

    Astronomer belive that, on average , one astroied larger the 0.4km strikes earth every 50,000 years. some 65million years ago a 10km diameter astroied crashing to earth may have been responsible for wiping out the dianasour. It would have caused a catastrophic explosion, affecting the climate and chemical composition of atmospher and destroying the plants and animals on which the dianasour fed. As recently as 1991 a small astroied cam within 170,600km of earth, the closet recorded near miss. On 30 jan 2052 an asteriod is predicted to pass as close as 19,678km

     Toutastis (asteriod 4,179) was discovered in 1989. It is named after the celtic god toutatis, whose named is used as an oath by the cosmic stripe character Asterix the gaul. Toutatis measures 4.6 by 2.4 by 1.9km. It passes earth every four year and is one of the largest space object to come so close to us. On 29 september 2004 Toutatis came within 1,555,818km of earth.Its next visit was on 9 november 2008, when it came within 7,524,773km.

BLACK HOLES & SUPERNOVAE

BLACK HOLES

A black hole is a spherical, non- rotating body .Its surface gravitional attraction force is so, high that even a light cannot escept from it. It absorbes all the light passing through it like a perfect black body so,it is called black hole & its surface is called "event horizon".

If all the masses of our sun can be put within a sphere of radius of about 3km, it would become a black hole. If our sun is suddenly collapsed into a black hole , the orbit of the planet would be unaffected. Black hole can not be directly observed and indirect method of identification of black hole have been devisied by scientist.

SUPERNOVAE

The word supernovae was found by swiss astrophysicits & astronomer Fritz Zwick. Supernovae are the death explosion of massive stars that resulting, in brightness followed by gradual fading.during this period it produce as much as the energy as the sun doesn't produce in his entire life time .Supernovae are rear - the last one in our galaxy was seen in 1604 by the german astronomer johannes kepler. There are two type of supernovae

type la & type ll

STAR

LARGEST STAR

The largest star up to now is the M-class supergiant Betelgeuse, or Alpha

Orionis.It is the top left star in the constellation of orion, which is 301 light year away from the earth.It has a diameter of 700 million km, which is about 500 time greater than of the sun.

BRIGHTEST STAR

 

The brightest star as seen from the earth is sirius , known as the dog star, in the

constellation of canis major.It has the diameter of 149,598,020km & more than 24 times brighter then sun.The star Cygnu OB2 no.12, discover in 1992, is so far away that it cannot be seen from the earth. It may be the brightest star in the galaxy - up to six million times as bright as our sun.

It is the brightest star. It’s about 3-and-a-half times brighter than the Arcturus.This star twinkles & its color changes sometimes at first-time when it was observe it was report Sirius as a UFO. But slowly they came to know it was a star

TITANIC MOON

Titan is the largest of saturn's 34 moons. it is 5,150km in diameter larger then

the planets mercury and pluto.Dutch astronomer chrstiaan huygens discovered titan in 1655.we still have no idea what it's surface looks lke because titan has a dense

atmosphere containing nitrogen,ethane and other gases which shroud it's surface -not unlike that ofearth four billion years ago.information sent back by te space probe voyager 1 during 1980 and recent radio telescope oservation suggested that titan may have ethane "ocans" and "continents" of ice or other solid matter.cassini,a space probe launched by nasa and the european space agency ,arrived in saturn's orbit on 1 july 2004.On 14 january 2005 it launched the huygens probe on to the surface of titan and sent back scientific data.

NEPTUNE'S MOON

Triton, was discover in 1846, is the one & only known large moon in the solar system with a retrograde orbit. It revolve round its planet(neptune) in the opposite direction to the planet's rotation.

OUR MOON'S FAR SIDE

Till october 1959 our moon was unknown to all becauese the far side of the moon

always face away from the earth.But it was found when Soviet Luna 3 probe send picture back to earth.It was very surprise to see it at that time.

LONGEST SPACE WALK

The record for the longest spacewalk was broken in 10-11 march 2001, when mission specialists James voss & Susan Helms stepped outside the space shuttel Discovery STS-102 to do construction work on the space station.Their EVA(Extra Vehicular activity)lasted 8hr 56min.It is longest longest spacewalk .

LARGEST AND SMELLIEST FLOWER

  The flower of the refflesia,or stinking corpse lily measures almost 1m across and weighs 11kg. it is also one of the world's smelliest flowers,with an odour like rotting flesh.the smell attracts flies which pollinate the plant.This flower is found in south east Asia & doesn't have any root, stem & leaf.This plant is parasite.

SMALLEST FLOWERING PLANT

   Wolffia, a kind of duckweed,is just 0.6mm long andd weighs about as much as two grains of salt.its seeds are also the tiniest known-they weigh only 70 micrograms,as much as a single grain of salt.

LARGEST SEED

The seeeds of the coco-de-mer palm are up to 30cm long and weigh an amazing 20kg.

TREEs

   The world's tallest tree is called the stratosphere giant .It grows in the rockefeller forest ,humboldt red woods state park,california.at 112.32m,this red wood is almost three times the height of the statue of liberty in new york.most of britan's tallest trees are in scotland,is the record-holder at 54.5m

BIGGEST LIVING THING

The general sherman giant sequoia in sequoia national park ,californa,usa, is the world's largest living thing.it is 83.8m tall and measures 2.53m round it's mighty trunk.including it's huge root system, the tree weighs about 2000 tones.It contains enough timber to make shelves for almost a million books.if all this timber was made into pencils and they were laid end to end ,they would more than reach round the equator.

OLDEST TREES

The bristlecone pines in california and nevada,usa,are almost 5,000 years old and were long believed to be the oldest trees.Latest research suggests that creosote bushes in the usa's mojave desert may be even older-some of those plants began life nearly 12,000 years ago.other long -lived trees include

In 2005 fish were discover in indonesia that measure just 7.9mm long, making them the smallest known vertebrates .They were adult females of paedocypris progentica, a member of the carp family.

BIG FISH

The wale shark is probably the biggest fish in the world.Whale shark are usually up to 12m long through one caugh off thiland in 1919 was reckoned to be 18m long.Despit being enormous, these giant fish eat only planktons - tiny animals & palnts that flow in waters. basking shark also eat planktons, but most other big fish are hunted.

MARINE MAMMALES

The biggest creatures in the sea are whales, which are mammals not fish.The blue whale is the largest creature that has ever lived.Whale spend all their lives in the sea, but ther are other mammels that spend most of their lives in the sea, but there are other mammels that spend most of their times in water & some times on land.These include seals, sea lions & otters.

WORLDWIDE WEB

Arbella an orb-weaving garden spider, arrive at the US Skylab-3 on 28 julay 1973.she spend almost 60 days in orbit in an experiment to test the effect of weightlessness on her web-weaving skills.

CANE OF WORM

On 1 febraury 2003, space shuttel columbia sts-107 broke up on re-entry and its crew of seven astronauts were killed.On-broad animal experiments involving silkworms,spiders,carpenter bees,harvesters ants and japanese killfish were destroyed but, amazingly, canisters of worm were recovered alive.

MONKEY BUSINESS

Able, a female rhesus monkey and baker, a female squireel monkey, were launched by USA on 28 may 1959.They did not orbit and succefully return to earth .On 29 november 1961 enos, a male chimpanzees and monkeys anrek and bion, who orbited on 14 december 1983 in one of a series of bion satelite experiment, which also carried tortoise,insects,fish,newts and frog.

SPACE DOG & CATS

   laika, a femal samoyed husky, became the first animal to reach in orbit after being lunch by the USSR i spuntik 2on 3 november 1957.There was no way to bring her down and she died after ten day inspace.more dogs were lunched in test before human cosmonauts were into orbit.two femal samoyed huskies,Belka and Strelka,orbited successfully on 19 agaust 1960.strelka later he gave birth to six puppies, one of which was given to US president John F.kennedy .On 18 october 1963, a french veronique AGI rocket launched a cat called felix into space and returned him safely to earth by parachute.