🌠 What’s the Closest Star to the Sun? Let’s go beyond our Sun now and meet its closest neighbours in the galaxy. 🔸 Proxima Centauri 📝 Fun Fact: It has been the closest star for the last 32,000 years, and will remain so for another 33,000 years. After that, Ross 248 will take over. 🔸…
🪨 Asteroids and the Asteroid Belt – The Debris Zone Between Mars and Jupiter 🔹 Ceres — The Special One: ❄️ Kuiper Belt, Pluto & Charon — The Cold Storage Beyond Neptune 🔹 Pluto: 🔸 Why Pluto was demoted: IAU defined a planet as one that: Pluto fails the 4th criterion, as many similar-sized bodies…
At its simplest: “A planet is a celestial body that moves in an elliptical orbit around a star.” In our solar system, the Sun is that central star, and the eight planets orbit it in well-defined paths. But all planets are not the same — they can be grouped into two broad families. 🪐 Classification…
The Sun is the heart of our solar system — providing light, heat, and gravitational stability. Key Facts: While the Sun holds ~99.8% of the solar system’s mass, it has only ~2% of the system’s angular momentum, largely due to its gaseous and differential rotation. Internal Structure of the Sun Let’s travel from core to…
When we speak of the solar system, the first thing that comes to mind is the Sun and the eight planets. But it’s not limited to just that. Our solar system is a vast cosmic family that includes: This vast celestial network is held together by a single force — gravity. ☀️ Heliocentric Model —…
The sky that dazzles us with planets, stars, and galaxies did not always exist in its current form. Over centuries, scientists and philosophers have tried to answer how this solar system came into existence. Let’s understand the major theories, from early philosophical ideas to modern scientific explanations. 🌀 Gaseous Hypothesis — Immanuel Kant Imagine the…
So far, we’ve studied the big picture — galaxies, stars, supernovae, black holes — the macrocosm of the universe. Now, let’s end this cosmic journey by zooming into the night sky as seen from Earth — and learn how ancient observers made sense of the stars through Constellations and the Pole Star. ✨ Constellations –…
Let’s begin by imagining this:Just as humans are born, grow, age, and eventually die — stars too go through a life cycle, starting from birth in massive clouds of gas to dying as either white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes, depending on their initial mass. Let’s now understand this entire cosmic life journey, step…
So far, we’ve understood how the universe began, how it’s expanding, and what evidence supports this theory. Now let’s zoom in and study the building blocks of the universe — Galaxies. What is a Galaxy? A galaxy is a massive system — made up of millions to billions of stars, along with gas, dust, and…
Understanding the Basic Terminology First Before jumping into how the universe came into being, let’s become familiar with the key terms — otherwise, the concepts may feel too abstract. Now, a quick foundational understanding of the universe itself: The universe includes everything that exists — from tiny subatomic particles like electrons and protons to massive…
