Articles & Publications

 This time it is Central Russia, the Chelyabinsk region, 1500km away from Moscow. The town is home to many factories and a nuclear power plant. On Friday 15th February 2013, it witnessed a fireball streaked through the clear morning sky, followed by loud bangs. The impact on mountains injured many people, as the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings. Most of those hurt suffered cuts and bruises and many remained in hospital. This “strange thing” was later declared as part of a large meteoroid partially burned up in the lower atmosphere, resulting in a number of meteorites falling earthwards. Fig. 1 A [...]

Our beloved planet, the Earth, is only life sustaining planet in the solar system. However, life on earth has always been under tremendous threats from different natural disasters. These disasters not only emanate from the surface and subsurface of earth but it is well known that the interplanetary space around earth is littered with dust and materials from the creation of the solar system.Among these objects, rocky metallic asteroids and comets, produced during the formation of planets, move with ferocious speed around the Sun. The comets and asteroids move in earth cloud in Kuiper beltand between Jupiter and Mars, respectively. But in [...]

The following universities in Pakistan offer degrees in astronomy: Department of Space Science, University of Punjab. Headed by Dr. Muhammad Ali, the department owns the following telescopes: 14" GPS LX200 Meade SCT 6" Grubb achromatic refractor The 14" telescope is used very rarely, the reason being cited as its hand-controller which has developed some issues. Many students at the department have never seen the instrument. The 6" is a classic, manufactured in the early part of the the twentieth century. It is housed in an observatory which unfortunately remains permanently locked and nobody is allowed to enter. Institute of Space and Planetary Sciences (ISPA), University [...]