May, 2007

Dr B S Shailaja will deliver a talk on 'How amateurs can contribute to the scientific aspects of astronomy' @ The Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, High Grounds, Bangalore on 3rd June 2007m 4:30PM

For further details regarding this event, please contact us.

Try reading this...

   http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/physicistspredictthedeathofcosmology

BAS monthly meeting for may will be held on 27th May 2007 @ our usaul venue in Cubbon Park

The meeting will start at 4PM and end at 6:30PM

The meeting agenda includes general annoucements, discussions, inputs on activities for the season and foremost of all - the launching of BAS memberships.

For Venue details, Please visit the Venues Page at - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/venues

You may alternatively contact us for any queries - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/contact

** Visitors are welcome. All prospective members are invited to pick up the forms ** 

BAS intends to organise a public skywatch event on the gibbous-moon weekend on 26th May - Saturday.

Venue likely to be finalised ASAP. You may contact us to stay in touch for further developments.

The agenda shall be a skywatch with objects of the like of Saturn, Moon and (possibly) Jupiter on the observing list. Event likely to begin at 6.PM and end at 9PM.

 //Edit : THis event has been called off due to terrible skies !

Reporting this on behalf of akarsh, with due credits to myself for doing the stellarium-ing for 1hr and on the phone line too.

The venue happens to be SIddhapur, Somewhere in Kodagu district of Karnataka. The place in specific happens to be a resort with plenty of '25W' lamps around the place as akarsh reports. Obviously, he wasn't very dark adapted at all.

The stars considered for the NELM 'test' included random picks in the Canes Venatici, UMa and Bootes regions.

Following are the stars akarsh confirmed to be have been able to see.

• 9Cvn - Canes Venatici Ofcourse. Magnitude - 6.37.
• HP 62172 - Canes Venatici. Magnitude - 6.36.
• HP 60791 - Canes Venatici again. Magnitude - 6.53 !
• HP 66440, HP 66380..pretty tight double in UMa, 6.75 and 6.95 respectively ! Combined brightness might come to something around 6 perhaps.
• HP 66475 - 6.53, UMa
• HP 66704 - 6.33, UMa
• HP 71243 - 6.37, Bootes

This apart from numerous other 6+ mag stars that I dint  bother logging.

10/10 for this dude's observing provess. I got him doing magntude estimates of random stars and he got within 1/10ths of a magnitude close always !

6.53 Mag needs great skies for sure, but good eye acuity as well.  Keep in mind he wasn't dark adapted neither was he in 'dark' as such for there were the annoying lights around him. He and I agreed upon that such a sky with no lights around and with dark adaptation should let you hit the mag7 barrier.

FYI, he 'confirmed' my claim of being able to spot M4 Naked eye (I 'think' I saw it, Yelagiri - Apr 2007)... Only that these skies were a tad better than Yelagiri and akarsh's eyes quite a bit better than mine (atleast so far as the luminance modes go)...

Seems a deserving candidate for a Bortle Class 2. We need to go there, sometime.

Amidst clouds that tried their best to make the first International Sidwalk Astronomy Night 2007 as dark and gloomy as it could possibly get, Hundreds of visitors at Gauruda Mall, Brigade Road, Bangalore got peeks at their favourite ringed planet on saturday, 19th May 2007.

The venue itself remained volatile until the last minute, we managed to obtain the neccesary permissions to set things up from the mall authorities at around 5PM. Earlier we'd changed minds from having multiple locations unto one centralised one in the wake of unforseen hassles. We however had sought individuals with telescopes to put them up for the public wherever they were.

donno much details bt it....duz ny1 kn more bt it?

An interesting webpage that was once posted on "The Majestic Universe" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/majestic_universe):

http://astro2.byu.edu/sdb/YouMightBeAnAstronomer.html

Hilarious! Especially, if you've done any astronomy. 

Well, if the title isn't descriptive enough, this is close to what it's going to be all about - http://home.g-net.net/~andy/astbloop.htm

Or, rather in our context, we can go about adding them memorable (mis)quotes, slips of tongues and such.

I'd start but I'd prefer somebody else starting the honours. I can assure you some of these will tickle your funny bone and be much worthy of a bookmarking. 

While some of you might know that May 19th happens to be International Sidewalk Astronomy Night - a night dedicated for folks to take their telescopes out and put it up for the public to have a peek through and get a taste of what it's all about.

So far as a BAS event goes, we'll be deciding on a venue shortly where we intend to put up atleast 3-4 scopes.

There will also be the people of the like of Mr Venkatesh in our group who'll be holding events in the neighbourhood.

This is to make a solemn appeal to all who posess any kind of astro equipment to do something similar. You may alternatively contact us to volunteer for the BAS event intended to be conducted.

Further info regarding the event is available on - http://home.earthlink.net/~sidewalkastronomynight/

BAS Memberships are now open for the taking and into due effect from 15th May onwards.

Full info has now been posted in the Memberships Section - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/memberships.

We request regulars at our activities and everybody otherwise to get your memberships as soon as possible. We thank you all for your support to the community through the year.

The Bangalore Astronomical Society organised an observing session on May 12th 2007. Though participation was rather less, the event was pretty good. The event was held at Hosahalli, a village about 70km away from Bangalore and a frequent observing site of the Bangalore Astronomical Society. Amar Sharma, Balachandra, Shashank H.J., Akarsh Simha, Utkarsh Simha and S Abhiram were the participants. Equipment included a 12" f/4.5 Dobsonian, three 10x50 Olympus binoculars, a 8" f/8 Equatorial Newtonian Reflector, a Nikon FM10 SLR Camera, and a Sony Digital HandyCam . Skies were hazy and partially cloudy in some patches.

The participants enjoyed the views of Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon, and several deep sky objects including the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and the Ring Nebula (M57). Advanced observers like Amar and Shashank attempted more challenging and faint celestial objects, especially faint globular clusters in the halo of the Milky Way. The younger participants also took photographs of bright celestial objects like Jupiter and the Moon. All the participants were fascinated by the view of the Ring Nebula and Jupiter through the 12" Dobsonian with a 4.8mm TeleVue Nagler Eyepiece. Several different filters were used to enhance the contrast of the cloud bands of Jupiter. The view was enthralling. Globular cluster M13 was well resolved at high magnification by the 8" f/8 telescope. An Ultra High Contrast (UHC) filter was used to enhance views of the Eagle Nebula, the Swan Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula. The Milky way was bright and spanned the sky till the constellation of Cygnus. The Dark Rift was visible through the Milky Way.

Hey All,

The essence of this post is: http://www.cloudynights.com - go there for yourself and see the difference.

Well , we all know that our sun has, on its surface or photoshere, sunspots which are of relatively lesser temperature,but doe anybody have any idea why is it so?There has to be a reason why the tempe

Not just the monthly star party, but also part of the BAS Sky survey programme. Hesarghatta is one sky we'd like to check out =)

How amazing it would be if we had skies like these...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070508.html

Check out Death valley,California

Platform- Runs on Windows,MAC OS X and Linux

System requirements- 300 MHz processor, 128 Mb RAM, 16 Mb video memory Graphics card, Open GL

Plus points- Nice visuals and lots of add-ons available

License- Free

Download location- http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html

Introduction

This book titled "Software Reviews" is intended to serve as a collection of reviews on various features, pros and cons of various available Astronomical Software. It is not wholly dedicated to Desktop Planetariums and Night Sky simulators, but to a larger genre of software that are related to astronomy. The motive is to help the reader to choose the software that is best for his intended usage.

For those who have never heard about the all famous "Linux", it is a FREE Operating System, just like Microsoft Windows, but in my opinion, far far better and more flexible.

One of the interesting features of Linux is that it comes bundled with a lot of software. Since software is free, you don't get to waste money on some proprietory software that need to be installed on your system. Just as I sampled some very interesting applications bundled with Red Hat Linux 7.2, I came across one "KStars" (http://edu.kde.org/kstars)

I was much enthused by the fact that it could simulate the night sky! I was astonished! Somehow, I fell in love with the nice names "Beehive Cluster" and all that. I never knew that some day I'd actually get to see these objects! After this, I used to go to the terrace and locate various stars. Very soon, I was able to locate several bright stars.

Linux kind of inspired me into astronomy!

This is just something I wanted to share.

(PS: Linux is my other obsession, other than astronomy!)

APOD has an interesting thing up here:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070415.html

 It shows how everything is changing - even what we think is apparently constant... within a night!

I never knew that there could be such significant changes over one night!