Look up at the night sky, and the geeks among you will be immediately pointing fingers. But these are the critical ones, out to find fault. These are the gazes of admiration over the beauty of the universe. There is Orion, Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor. The constellations, named after ancient mythology.
But now no more. NASA has decided it is time to become cooler for the modern nerds. It has named the newer 21 constellations with tributes like Albert Einstein, The Hulk, Godzilla and the TARDIS from ‘Doctor Who’.
But why, suddenly the spurt of new names, and discovery of 21 newer constellations. It is to celebrate the 10th anniversary of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. It tracks gamma rays in the universe, the source of light that is invisible to the naked eye. Since its launch in 2008, it has mapped out 3,000 different sources of gamma rays, 10 times more than scientists knew existed before.
Fermi’s view of the gamma-ray universe has revealed all sorts of objects to astronomers, including never-before-seen views of solar flares, cosmic explosions, and other highly energetic and often violent processes in space.
So, basically, it has illuminated parts of the universe, that earlier telescopes could not reveal.
Image Credit: usatoday
It is in commemoration of this, that NASA has announced 21 unofficial constellations, beyond the official count of 88. It has decided to name constellations like the Schroedinger’s Cat (which gained fame after the series The Big Bang Theory), Machiavelli’s Little Prince, a Saturn V rocket, the Starship Enterprise, the Incredible Hulk, and even the Eiffel Tower, all studding the Northern Sky. The Southern Sky has the black widow spider, a portrait of Einstein and even the hammer of Thor.
Finding these will indeed be an illuminating exercise for the geeks with an inclination towards astrophysics. You can actually search for these on Fermi’s interactive page.
Man has always had an unexplained fascination for outer space. So, if you are done with the older constellations, it is time to look up for some new names in the night sky.
