INDIAN
SPACE MISSIONS
ASTROPHYSICS
PLANETARY SCIENCE
AND SOLAR SYSTEM
COSMOLOGY AND UNIVERSE
THE SUN AND STARS
200

What has the landing point of Chandrayaan - 3 been named?

Statio Shiv Shakti

200

What is the name of the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape?

Event horizon

200

Even though mercury is the closest planet to sun, the highest temperature is recorded in Venus.

What is the underlying cause?

The greenhouse gas rich atmosphere of Venus traps more heat, hence the higher temperature.

200

X would reduce the mass and rotational energy of black holes and consequently cause black hole evaporation. 

The radiation temperature is inversely proportional to the black hole's mass, so micro black holes are predicted to dissipate faster per their mass.

Identify the hypothetical phenomenon X.

Hawking Radiation

200

Which layer of the Sun’s atmosphere is visible during a total solar eclipse as a pearly white halo?

Corona

400

Y, launched in 2015, is India’s first dedicated astronomy satellite to observe stars, galaxies, and cosmic radiation.

Identify Y.

AstroSat

400

If the Sun were replaced by a black hole of the same mass, what would happen to Earth's orbit?

It won't change

400

What is this phenomenon called in which a planet or other celestial body passing in front of a star, blocks its light. 

The method is used to determine planet size and study exoplanet atmospheres.

Transits

400

Jimmy Carter: "This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings..."

Carl Sagan: "... the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

What legendary "present" is being talked about?

The Golden Records in the Voyager Spacecrafts

400

Beyond this mass, the electron degeneracy pressure in white dwarfs fails to counter the gravitational self attraction. Hence, this is the maximum mass that a stable white dwarf can attain. 

What is this constraint named after legendary Indian theoretical physicist?

The Chandrasekhar limit

600

The point where Aditya-L1 is positioned in space is a Lagrange point. 

What is the primary reason behind positioning the same at that point?

The stability offered by the nullification of countering forces. 

600

Pulsars are neutron stars rotating at an incredibly fast rate. They are formed when a massive star collapses in a supernova and its core shrinks drastically into a neutron star with a radius of only about 10–20 km.

What can be the possible principle/reason behind such large pulsations? 

Conservation of angular momentum

600

Which object in our solar system exhibits maximum volcanic activity with lava flowing up as high as 500 km owing to tidal heating.

It is also one of the earliest discoveries in the night sky.

Io (Jupiter's natural satellite)

600

What is the term for the leftover radiation from the early universe that fills all of space?

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation

600

This particle, produced in abundance in the Sun’s core, has an extremely low mass (earlier considered massless), and is electrically neutral.

Identify this elusive particle. 

Neutrino

800

Sriharikota in India, Florida in the US and French Guiana are favoured locations for rocket launches.  

Put funda why most geostationary and low earth orbit launches prefer the launches to happen near the equator and preferably at the eastern coast?

It provides maximum boost from Earth’s rotation, saving fuel and increasing payload capacity.

800

The frequencies of celestial bodies observed is often different from the frequencies radiated. This is attributed primarily to the Doppler Effect. 

What is this the primary reason for the same?

Due to the relative motion in between the source and the observer bodies.

800

Albedo is the fraction of the sunlight that is diffusively reflected by a body. The albedo of Earth is around 0.3 while that of Enceladus, a natural satellite of Saturn has an albedo of 0.99, the highest in our solar system.

What is the primary reason behind such high albedo of Enceladus?


The ice cover of the planet (Ice has high albedo)

800

The effects of gravity on both matter and light reveal that the universe contains much more matter than is accounted for by visible objects; stars, galaxies, nebulas and interstellar gas. 

X and Y account for upto 26% and 70% of total mass and energy and also responsible for the acceleration and expansion of the Universe.

Identify X and Y (in any order).

X: Dark matter

Y: Dark energy

800

How long does it effectively take (on an average) a proton to reach the surface of the sun from the core, if the diameter of the sun is around 1.39 Million km? 

10,000 to 1 Million years

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