Astrosat, Chandra and Hubble jointly detected massive cosmic explosion
October 31 , 2017 2580 days 1264 0
Three space-based observatories Astrosat, Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope and a ground-based observatory HARPS have simultaneously detected a massive coronal explosion on the nearest planet-hosting star 'Proxima Centauri'
‘Proxima Centauri’ group of stars which hosts an Earth-like habitable planet orbiting within (Proxima Centauri) its habitable zone
The exercise to investigate the fate of this Earth-like planet orbiting the ‘Proxima Centauri’, around 4.25 light years away from the Sun, involved a team of scientists from India, the US, Chile, France and Germany.
‘Proxima Centauri’ is a well-known flaring star where a large amount of energy is released as a result of magnetic reconnection and such stars (like Proxima Centauri) are known to flare on timescales of a few minutes to hours.
Astrosat is a multi-wavelength astronomy mission built by a consortium of institutes across India led by ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC, Bengaluru); Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) , Mumbai; Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru; Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram); Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA, Pune); and Space Applications Centre (SAC, Ahmedabad) in collaboration with University of Leicester (UK) and the Canadian Space Agency.
The Chandra programme is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama (USA).