Stars

Stars

A Star is a luminous heavenly body that radiate energy. With naked eyes, we can see nearly 3000 stars in the night sky and many more with the help of a telescope. The stars are remotely located and appear as tiny dots of light. Their light travels long distances to reach us. The atmosphere disturbances do not allow light to reach us in a straight line path. Because of this the stars appear to twinkle. The Sun is the nearest star to the Earth. The next nearest star is Alpha Centauri.

Satellites

An object that revolves around a planet in a stable and consistent orbit is called a satellite. Satellites can be classified into two categories – natural and artificial.

Natural satellites

All natural objects revolving around a planet are natural satellites. They are also called moons. Most moons are spherical, the ones that are not usually asteroids or meteors that were captured by the strong gravity of a planet. All planets except mercury and Venus in our solar system have moons. Earth has only one moon- whereas planets like Jupiter and Saturn have more than 60 moons.

Artificial satellites

Artificial satellites are man-made objects placed in an obit to rotate around a planet – usually the Earth. The world’s first artificial satellite launched was Sputnik-1 by Russia, Aryabhatta was the first satellite launched by India.

These satellites are used in television and radio transmission, studying agriculture yield, locating mineral resources, weather forecasting, locate different places on earth.