2016-03-19T09:35:08+00:00
Chess is my obsession and the go to activity to release the stress or escape the burden of mundane reality. But watching the sky was the obsession this week. I even got up at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. on the same night and went out to the ground to identify the stars/constellations/planets which adorn the sky. And Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Orion, Big Dipper, Sirius have welcomed us! Few weeks backs I decided to start looking at the sky; also a fascinating activity to introduce to my son. We had attended a Science Utsav event at Ghatkopar, few months back, where the kids and the adults were shown the Moon and its craters using a telescope. My first ever look at a telescope at the age of 41!! Unfortunately due to unclear skies no other objects were seen. But, since then I wished to explore further. So, started googling to figure out how to start. The astroviewer link gives a skymap for a particular area. Initially, just went outside and watched; also showed son the stars that were visible in the sky. We started observing with skymap's help and Orion was the first constellation we identified. Yeah!! The skymap shows all the 4 directions so you know where to look and you can confirm with the smart compass app on the android phone. The Earth Sky site has these weekly guides which are also useful. On the evening of March 18th around 10 p.m. we identified the Big Dipper. This month, March 2016, the planet Jupiter is visible very clearly in the sky. Some photographs were taken using the smartphone but the final output was not that clear. The smartphone also proved useful. Some android apps which were installed - Smart Compass Indian Sky Map Start Chart - The Star Chart app proved useful; just point towards the sky and it will tell you the constellation - how cool!! We have been doing this for a week... Update: 14/04/2016Finally, we, a bunch of families, spent a night under the skies on April 9th. The program was organised by Khagol Mandal. The first session was about exploring the sky where the presenter used a laser torch to point out various objects. He also gave lot of technical information about stars, temperature, supernova, nebulae etc. The children got bored and impatient as they wanted to watch the sky with telescopes. We were already tired having spent the day doing various activities at Saguna Baug. But, the three sessions with telescopes were fantastic. In each session, 2 or 3 telescopes were setup. We got to see a very prominent ring around Saturn, Jupiter, an open cluster which was full of stars, binary stars of Saptarishi - Vashista and Arundhati, Mars, a globular cluster. The sky was showing a lot more stars than we have been able to see near our place in Mumbai. Kudos to Khagol organisers! The session ended at 5 a.m.