Super Blood Moon in Easter sky on May 26 evening
Kolkata, May 19: A rare Super Blood Moon will be seen in the eastern sky on May 26 evening, just after a total lunar eclipse.
Kolkata had seen its last total lunar eclipse, 10 years ago, on December 10, 2011, Director of M P Birla Planetarium and renowned astrophysicist Debiprasad Duari said Wednesday.
"On the night of May 26, the sun, earth and moon alignment will be such that from earth it will be viewed as a full moon and also eclipsed for some time. Moon on its journey around the earth will be passing through earth's shadow for a few moments and will be totally eclipsed," Duari said.
The total lunar eclipse will be visible mostly from Eastern Asia, Pacific Ocean, most parts of North and South America and Australia.
The partial eclipse of the moon will start at around 3:15 pm and end at 6:22 pm.
For most of India, the moon will be below the eastern horizon during the total eclipse and so people of the country cannot observe a blood moon, but in some parts, mostly from eastern India, people will see only the very last part of a partial lunar eclipse, that is also very close to the eastern horizon when the moon is just rising.
On that evening, the "moon rise in Kolkata will be at 6:15 pm and the interested people will just possibly get a few minutes glimpse of the partial eclipse which will end at around 6:22 pm," he said.
For the other metropolis like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai the eclipse will not be seen as during the eclipse phase moon will be below the horizon at these places.
"Most of the country will have to be satisfied with a penumbral eclipse, which is not very much discernible with naked eye, when moon passes through a slightly shadowed region of the Earth and is not very spectacular," Duari said.
"But, forgetting the critical COVID-19 situation, people can then see a bright and bigger full moon on that night. At perigee a full moon looks 30 per cent bigger and 14 per cent brighter than an average full moon. That is the reason the full moon will shine brighter and also look bigger on that night," he said.
Moon will be at its perigee on that day exactly at around 7:23 pm, at a distance of 3,57,309 km from Earth.
Explaining the reason behind calling it a blood moon, Duari said as the totally eclipsed moon takes a dark blackish red colour (it) is called a blood moon.
"This happens because of the comparatively less deviation of the red part of the moon light through the earth's atmosphere and falling on the moon's surface," he said.
The next total lunar eclipse will occur on May 16, 2022, but, it will not be visible from the Indian subcontinent.
But on November 8, 2022 a lunar eclipse will be seen from India.
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HC to hear NIA's plea for death penalty for Yasin Malik on April 22
New Delhi (PTI): The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted four weeks to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to respond to a reply filed by separatist leader Yasin Malik to its appeal seeking death penalty for him in a terror funding case, and listed the matter for hearing on April 22.
As Malik, who was virtually appearing from Tihar jail where he is serving life sentence in the case, accused the agency of "wasting time" and causing him "trauma" by "taking dates" in the appeal filed in 2023, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja said there was no urgency in the case.
"There is no urgency. This is for enhancement of sentence. You are already on life sentence," the bench remarked.
The court gave four weeks as "last opportunity" to the NIA to file its rejoinder.
NIA counsel submitted that Mailk filed a lengthy reply to the agency's appeal, which even had content "not related" to the case, and the rejoinder was being vetted.
He also objected to Malik's claim of NIA seeking repeated adjournments, and said Malik himself took one year to file his reply to the appeal.
He further informed the court that the agency was seeking an in-camera hearing in the matter.
A trial court in Delhi awarded Malik -- chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)-- life sentence on May 24, 2022, after holding him guilty of various offences under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The NIA filed an appeal in 2023 in the high court seeking enhancement of his life term to the maximum punishment of death penalty.
In its plea before the high court for enhancement of sentence to death penalty, the NIA said if such "dreaded terrorists" are not given capital punishment on account of pleading guilty, there would be complete erosion of the sentencing policy and the terrorists would have a way out to avoid capital punishment.
A life sentence, the NIA asserted, is not commensurate with the crime committed by terrorists when the nation and families of soldiers have suffered loss of lives and the trial court's conclusion that Malik's crimes did not fall within the category of the "rarest of the rare cases" for grant of death penalty is "ex-facie legally flawed and completely unsustainable".
In his reply filed to the NIA's appeal, Mailk said that he spent nearly three decades as a key figure in a state-sanctioned "backchannel" mechanism, working with a succession of prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, and even business tycoons to foster peace in Jammu and Kashmir.
In an 85-page affidavit submitted before the Delhi High Court, Malik shared details about his journey from his school days to links with terrorists and meetings with political leaders.
He claimed the state was attempting to "erase" the history of engagement.
Malik said "being a scapegoat in politics isn't a new thing, it's a kind of a new normal but being a sacrificial goat is something which goes beyond the shard of high handedness of morality, if at all politics had one".
