With that in mind, and considering how many are now planning their summer holidays, we’ve put together a list of handy features that are sure to come in useful during your travels. Read on for the details.

Know Local Air Quality

Nowadays, when it comes to major cities and hotspots in any city, chances are the air quality might not be the best. And if you’re particular about it, you can now check local air quality in that specific area. All you need to do is open the Google Maps app.

Tap on the little icon that sits below your profile. You can tap on it, and then you’ll see various map types and map details. Simply select ‘Air Quality’ under map details, and here you’ll see air quality for local regions.

For instance, if you want to go to Chandni Chowk, you can tap on it, and it will reflect the local air quality.

This can come in quite handy, especially if you’re considering whether to pack a mask or not.

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Use Google Timeline To Track A Place You Visited

How many times has it happened that you visited a specific place while travelling, but because it was an unfamiliar city, you couldn’t recall exactly where it was? Imagine the place served really good pasta, but now you simply can’t remember where it was.

To go back and identify the place, simply open the Timeline in your Google Maps app. But it’s important that you enable this feature in the first place by adjusting your Google Maps permission settings. Using this, you can track your whereabouts from a specific day. It will show your complete activity on the map, allowing you to trace where you went and identify the location.

Check Ticket Prices For Monuments

Imagine you’re visiting New Delhi and want to visit Humayun’s Tomb. In this case, you can simply search for the monument on Google Maps and scroll down to see ticket prices. You’ll find official site prices as well as some third-party listings. You’ll also see information including timings and more.

Scout A Specific Place Beforehand

Keeping the Humayun’s Tomb example in mind, you can check out a location before visiting it. When you search for a place, you’ll see a 360-degree icon above the name. Tap on it to access the local Street View. You can navigate your way around using the arrows, giving you a preview of the area you’re about to visit.

You can also do the same via map details by selecting ‘Street View’. Tap on a specific street and a preview will load.

Download Maps Offline For Places Where There Is No Cellular Reception

If you’re visiting an unfamiliar place and unsure about signal reception, specially in the mountains, considering many of us travel there during peak summer, you should definitely download that specific map offline.

This ensures you don’t lose your way and can navigate easily, even without cellular reception.

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Celestial events have fascinated scientists and astronomers for centuries, yielding valuable insights into the operation of our solar system. The most dramatic of these are solar eclipses—brief periods when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, blocking the light of the sun partially or fully. Some eclipses can be seen from the Earth, while others can be seen only from space. Thanks to advanced satellites like NASA‘s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which monitors the sun around the clock in high definition, these otherwise invisible phenomena are captured in stunning detail. These observations enhance our understanding of solar activity and its interactions with nearby stars.

NASA’s SDO captures rare solar eclipse visible only from space

Sunday, April 27th, brought a rare astral event-one that could not be seen on Earth. There was a partial solar eclipse wherein the moon intercepted between the Earth and sun and blocked about 23% of the face of the sun. The eclipse itself, however, was only observable from space. Luckily, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a satellite orbiting Earth that constantly watches the sun, captured images of the occurrence.
The SDO, which started in 2010, has tools that can view the sun at high definition. It took stunning, unbroken photographs of the event, a “lunar transit.” In this kind of eclipse, the moon appears to be a dark, giant sphere creeping gradually across the sun’s radiating face. Since earthbound observers had no idea that this space event was occurring, the spaceborne location of the SDO allowed it to film the eclipse from beginning to end, giving researchers valuable information and the average observer a glimpse at an event impossible on the surface.
This is just one aspect of a broader NASA initiative to monitor solar activity in real time, allowing us to more precisely witness how the sun acts when it comes into contact with other space objects—even when the interactions cannot be seen from Earth.

What is the Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a standalone satellite that is responsible for monitoring the sun around the clock. Having been launched by NASA in February 2010, SDO orbits the Earth and is positioned in front of the sun to provide never-before-seen information on solar activity. Its ability to capture high-definition photos has made it an important tool in tracking solar events, including lunar transits, eclipses, and solar flares. During its working lifetime, the spacecraft observed numerous eclipses, several of which human observers on Earth were not able to witness.

NASA eyes more eclipses as SDO builds on historic observations

NASA has already forecasted two more eclipses to take place in the next few months. The first will be on May 25, with the moon only covering 4% of the sun. The second will be a darker eclipse on July 25, with the moon to cover 62% of the sun. Both these upcoming eclipses will also likely be seen and photographed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, increasing our understanding of the sun and how it acts compared to the moon. Historical Background of Solar Eclipses from Space
It is not the first instance where eclipses were witnessed beyond the atmosphere. There have been such instances, as during the Apollo missions, where astronauts during moon missions were fortunate enough to experience solar eclipses in their initial flights. Such observations are still of gargantuan significance in space history and solar phenomenon research.

From blood moons to solar eclipses: What’s next in the sky

Apart from the partial solar eclipse picture captured by SDO, NASA has even witnessed lunar eclipses such as this year’s Blood Moon. A lunar eclipse is when the moon, Earth, and sun are in line with Earth casting a shadow upon the moon. The moon moves completely into the inner shadow of Earth, or umbra, during a total lunar eclipse. The moon turns dark red, and it is this that creates the appearance that we know as a “Blood Moon.”
In the distance are some eclipses worth looking at. Next in line are a set of some eclipses worth watching. The next solar eclipse to watch on Earth is Sept. 21 and observable from Antarctica, South Pacific, and New Zealand. Perhaps the most highly expected one, however, is the Aug. 12, 2026 total solar eclipse. It is visible only once in a year and is visible only on a thin path of totality that goes through eastern Greenland, western Iceland, and northern Spain. The moon completely covers the path of the sun in a total eclipse, presenting the observers with a view of the corona of the sun—a view that is witnessed only except for a total eclipse.
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A: The colour of an object is determined by the spectral composition of the light reflected by it. When a surface is dry, the reflected light rays corresponding to the colour of the surface are superposed with diffused white light arising out of random scattering resulting from the roughness and irregularities of the surface. In clothes, this superposition tends to fade the relected colour.

If clothes are immersed in water, all the kinks and interspaces are filled with water. This minimises scattering on the surface. So the reflected light comes out unsuppressed with the basic hue of the cloth. Hence it looks darker than when dry.

The effect is conspicuous on cotton clothes as the fibres are loosely packed with a lot of microscopic air spaces. This increases the surface area and consequently the scattering of light. Hence cotton clothes look light when dry and dark when wet. The effect is not so much in synthetic and silk clothes as their surfaces are smoother and very little water is absorbed by them.

G. Meena Raajeshwari, Coimbatore, and G. Sivaramakrishna, Tadepalligudem.