I am back!

Hi All.

Firstly, my deepest apologies for not putting any new posts for the last 3 years! A lot was happening back then and I just got too busy to publish. This year has been quite busy as well, especially because I joined a new company ;)

Time is a horse that no one can tame, it just keeps on running ... running away. I had meant to put up a  post last December, but got busy, and one thing led to another and next thing I know, it is the start of July!

I will try to pickup momentum as time goes, starting with one post a month, and maybe increasing it to two a month.

As always, if there is anything that you would like me to cover, feel free to email me at nivleshc@yahoo.com and I will do my best to accommodate it.

By-the-way, if you are in the Southern hemisphere, and you were to look towards North-West just after sunset, you will see two bright objects, one much brighter and bigger than the other. The bigger and brighter of the two objects is Venus and the other Jupiter! Visually, one could easily conclude that Venus is so much bigger than Jupiter, but that is as far from the truth as you can go. Jupiter is the biggest of the planets in our Solar system, and one can go as far as to say that its huge gravity has made our solar system what it is today! However, it is much further away from us while Venus is very close, reason why it looks much bigger. Last night, the two were so close, you could not tell them apart, however tonight they are further apart and will keep getting so for the nights to come. Saturn can be found close to the Scorpion constellation.

Did anyone get affected by the leap second that was added at midnight UTC on 1st July? (the UTC clocks ticked from 30/06/2015 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 and then to 01/07/2015 00:00:00). The addition of that extra second was done due to the fact that earth's rotation is getting slower, which means a day measured using earth's rotation is getting longer. You can read more about the leap second wikipedia.

Also, while on the topic of Astronomy and Space, New Horizons, the space probe which was launched in 2006 to do a flyby of Pluto, is getting closer and closer as we speak to its goal. It will do a flyby of Pluto on the 14th of July, 2015, providing lots of information and photos of Pluto and its moon Charon. Previous to New Horizons, the best photo of Pluto was a pixellated image by Hubble. However, now that New Horizons has started transmitting photos, it is amazing to see the blocky pictures of Pluto turn into circles! Check out the latest photos on www.space.com

Though it might be late, but then again, it is never to late to wish you all a very happy New Year. Here's to lots of posts this year .. and to the awesome photos of Pluto and Charon in the coming weeks!