Combined with its fully coated optics and innovative Wi-Fi technology, the Celestron Astro Fi 130 offers dazzling views of a wide variety of celestial objects – from the rugged, cratered surface of the Moon and rings of Saturn to deep-sky objects such as the Hercules Globular Cluster and the stunning star forming Orion Nebula (Messier 42). Packed with the latest technology, control the Celestron Astro Fi with ease using the free Celestron SkyPortal app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, which takes away the frustration of locating challenging objects and allows you to get observing straight away. Fully equipped, this portable and versatile reflector comes with an accessory tray, a StarPointer finderscope, two Kellner eyepieces and a star diagonal, ensuring you have everything you need for your evening under the stars.
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150
THE UNIVERSE IS STILL MYSTERIOUS
Scientists determined the energy and matter NOIR content of the universe, discovering that the ‘everyday matter’ made of atoms – themselves composed of protons and neutrons – accounts for just five per cent of the ‘stuff’ in the cosmos. That means everything we see on a day-to-day basis is just a drop in the cosmic ocean, with the rest composed of dark matter, accounting for around 25 per cent, and dark energy, accounting for a whopping 70 per cent.
Despite all of our advancements and discoveries in the name of science, we still have no idea what 95 per cent of the universe is. One of the reasons this is so important to know is that dark energy pushes galaxies apart on a large scale, almost like an ‘antigravity’, while dark matter seems to act to hold them together both internally and in galactic clusters. Understanding this cosmic tug-of-war is key to knowing how the universe will continue to evolve, how it will eventually end and if this could be a ‘Big Rip’ scenario in which the fabric of spacetime itself shreds.
NEWTON’S LAWS OF GRAVITY
148
Formulated by Isaac Newton in 1687, N Newton’s law of gravitation revolves around the statement that any particle of matter in the universe attracts any other with a force, the strength of which varies as a product of their masses and inversely varies as the square of the distance between the masses increases. Though Einstein expanded on this and showed that gravity isn’t a force, without this development, many of the discoveries listed here wouldn’t have been possible.
Unfortunately, the story of Newton being inspired by an apple falling on his head is very likely apocryphal.
147
PUSH IT TO THE LIMIT
AAS Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar calculated the dividing line between a star that can go supernova and one that can’t, determining that a star would need 1.4 times the mass of the Sun when it runs out of fuel to explode and leave a supernova in its wake. This is the Chandrasekhar limit.
146
THE SUN WILL NEVER GO SUPERNOVA
One consequence of the AAS Chandrasekhar limit is that astronomers can be pretty sure that our star, the Sun, will never go supernova. That means our star will end its life as a smouldering white dwarf – a stellar remnant.
145
THE IRST WHITE DWARF DISCOVERY
AAS white dwarf star was discovered on 31 January 1783 by William Herschel. The white dwarf 40 Eridani B is part of a three-star system with a second white dwarf, discovered in 1862. The first example of a
144
VAMPIRE WHITE DWARFS BLOW THEIR TOPS
AAS A white dwarf star may be the end stage for the Sun, but some dead stars can spring back to life if they are feeding on material from a companion star, eventually erupting in a Type Ia supernova explosion.
143
LET THERE BE LIGHT
In 1672, Newton AAS separated white light into its constituent wavelengths, discovering that colours are the result of variations in wavelength and frequency. This breakthrough became vital in understanding the composition of stars and planetary atmospheres via a technique called spectrometry.
142
THE BIRTH OF A GAS GIANT
The realisation that Jupiter is NASA composed of mainly gas can be traced back to 1690, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini first noticed that the atmosphere of the planet undergoes differential rotation – different zones across the planet rotate at different speeds – suggesting it isn’t a solid body. Between 1932 and 1955, scientist W. R. Ramsey began theorising that because of its low density, Jupiter may be a giant body consisting mainly of hydrogen gas, which becomes metallic at high pressures and high temperatures. This suggested that not all planets in the Solar System, and eventually beyond, are rocky like Earth.
ESA
141 LIFE CYCLE OF A STAR The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram charting the relationships between various stellar characteristics began to take shape in 1911 as astronomers began to realise that some of the variety they see between stars is the result of viewing them in the different stages of their evolution.
140
BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
A gravitational wave breakthrough came in August 2017 when astronomers made the first and only detection of both gravitational waves and light“This event provided a new path to testing the rate of the expansion of the universe, identified the previously unknown origin of many of the heavy elements and confirmed the long-held hypothesis that neutron star mergers produce short gamma-ray bursts.”
