AstroSat:

Syllabus: Awareness in Space.

Context:

India’s Astrosat space telescope has witnessed the birth of a black hole in space for the 500th time.

A black hole is a place in space where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape its pull.

What is a black hole?

A black hole is a place in space where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape its pull.

According to Nasa, the gravity in black holes is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.

About AstroSat:

AstroSat is India’s first multi-wavelength space telescope, which has five telescopes seeing through different wavelengths simultaneously — visible, near UV, far UV, soft X-ray and hard X-ray.
Onboard the AstroSat is a 38-cm wide UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT), which is capable of imaging in far and near-ultraviolet bands over a wide field of view.
AstroSat was launched on 28 September 2015 by ISRO into a near-Earth equatorial orbit.
It is a multi-institute collaborative project, involving IUCAA, ISRO, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bengaluru), and Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad), among others.
It has been studying Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB).

What are Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB)?

GRBs are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies.
They are the brightest and most energetic electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe.
GRBs shine hundreds of times brighter than a typical supernova and about a million trillion times as bright as the Sun.
When a GRB erupts, it is briefly the brightest source of cosmic gamma-ray photons in the observable Universe.

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

Mains Link:

What do you understand by Quasar? What do quasars have to do with black holes? Explain.

[Q 5) Consider the following statements:

1. GRBs are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies.
2. They are the brightest and most energetic electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe.

Choose the correct answer using the codes given below:

Sources: PIB.