December, 2007

The Bangalore Astronomical Society shall be holding two star parties in the month of January.

• Star Party at Kalyani Nisargadhama - 4,5,6 Jan, 2008 @ Kodachadri, Shivamogga.
• Star Party at Ramanjeri, Thiruvallur, With TANASTRO - 12th, 13th January 2008, Tamizh Nadu.

We invite your keen participation in both these events. All potential participants are requested to read the above event announcements and register accordingly.

The Bangalore Astronomical Society, in association with Summiters Outdoors Pvt Limited is organising a star party at Kalyani Nisargadhama, a picturesque venue in the abode of the Kodachadri hills of the Western Ghats.

The venue, roughly 400KM from Bangalore, is located in the pristine heart of the Ghats and apart from the scintillating skies we expect it to provide (And that there be no weather issues thereof), There 're also ample oppurtunities for trekkers and adventuring enthusiasts, with scope for water sports and more.

Accommodation, Transport, Food and all logistics shall be taken care of. If you have other preferences on this, You are to kindly let us know. The schedule shall be to

Me, Dr Suresh and 2 other TANASTRO members went to Ramanjery for an observing session yesterday..... The sky was brilliant and since it is a farm in the middle of nowhere it was wonderful.... It was an Open cluster bonanza..... M41,M93,M37,M34,M50,M35,M46 were observed through my scope and M31 through Dr Suresh`s LX 200..... M37 was awesome yesterday and was the star of the night......... There were no signs of cloud and visibility was great even though there was the Dew factor..... The moon played the spoilsport after midnight hampering any observation close to it.....Tried to locate Comet Tuttle but was extremely difficult and left me disappointed.... Anyway since on January 12th we will not be having a moon am hoping that we will have a great time.....

General meeting. Agenda as discussed previously. Its a general Catch up activity

Venue yet TBD. Meeting to happen from 4 to 6PM.

For details, You may contact us or contact Rakesh on 9986073871

All Are invited.

I had been to Hemant's house (very close to B'lore Airport) yesterday December 24th, to observe the Moon and mainly the Comet Tuttle. Moon was Full and as usual splendid, and haze had crept in by night. We first setup the 12" f/4.5 Dob scope on his terrace amidst light pollution. I right away aimed for the Cassiopeia region and Comet Tuttle, which I knew would be pretty difficult to locate. Within seconds I came to the field and began hunting, knowing Moonlight was the biggest hindering factor for this diffuse comet. With some staring and unease, I got an illusion twice, very slowly being perceivable above a double star. I didn't concentrate much as I was speaking over phone to another BAS member.

The ISS passed Chennai skies today at 6:21 PM.... It was travelling from Northwestern direction to the Southeastern direction...... With the naked eye it looked like Jupiter surging through the sky...... It was visible for 5 min.... I tried taking a video of it..... This is the link for the video....

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvQmwft99cM

The equipment used was a SONY DCR TRV 18E.... I had used a zoom of about 60x approximately( Digital zoom)...... It is not exactly an amazing video since the object was moving very quickly through the sky and I was using a very large zoom.....   

The night of Saturday - 8th of Dec 2007 witnsessed one of the biggest BAS star parties of the year. The count of people present at the gathering numbered 37, and the atmosphere was one of unabated zeal. While the skies at Hampi turned out less exotic than the city itself owing to haze, humidity and other spoilsports, The star party however, went on at it's usual tempo.

The three of us ,Dr Suresh, Vijayakumar and myself planned to go to mahabalipuram for an observing session but after seeing large clouds moving in on the horizon we decided against it and went instead to Veera Reddy nursing home( close to Dr Suresh`s place). Our equipments were Dr Suresh`LX 200, his new 25*100 Celestron binoculars and a 20*80 binos. It turned out to be a surprising night with the clouds clearing out and making way for a clear night.Dr Suresh took amazing pictures of Mars and Moon.I tried spotting objects with the 25*100 but found it extremely difficult to hold them in place.They weigh over 4 kg and my advice to anyone buying those is to first make a tripod for it as Dr Suresh is fabricating one now.

The Bangalore Astronomical Society shall be participating in TANASTRO's annual star party at Ramanjeri Village, Off Thiruvallur (Near Sriperumbadur, enroute to Chennai), Tamizh Nadu, on the 12th and 13th of January 2008.

TANASTRO is our closest active neighbourhood Astronomy Association, based in Chennai. This event is due to be our second star party in association with them, the first one having happened on the 17th and 18th of February 2007, earlier this year. You can read the report here .

We invite astronomy enthusiasts, one and all to attend this event. You are kindly requested to Sign Up as soon as possible. Signups for this event shall close on Jan 8th, 2007.

The Bangalore Astronomical Society along with Texas Instruments astronomy club had organized an observation session at TI on 23rd of November 2007. This event was restricted to TI employees and their family members.

BAS members who attend the event were Pavan, Amar and Hemant. Chaitanya from Texas instruments helped us a lot in organising this event. The event started at 6:00 PM with focus on Moon. Jupiter was really low and only a few people could get a view of the moons of Jupiter. Moon was the main focus of the night and every one enjoyed seeing it at different zoom levels from 50x to 500x.

Objects to follow were Mars and the Orion Nebula. While Mars was disappointing, Orion Nebula kept its promise of being one of the best objects in the sky.

If someone learnt that the five of us (Amar, Pavan, Anindita, Srinidhi[1], me) were going for an observing session yesterday afternoon, they'd have thought we're senseless. The sky was completely overcast, except for one small patch of blue, probably spanning a few square degrees. But when Amar is around, that is totally explicable.

While none of us expected the skies to clear at all (I had gone there to have a long late-night chat with Pavan and Srinidhi), Amar was as usual optimistic[2]. And this was yet another of those times when it cleared, even before midnight. It cleared even before dinner. I was overwhelmed! I never expected that we'd get such good skies looking at the afternoon's overcast skies.

This was a term I came across on a documentary in Discovery Channel about comets. It seems interesting, even a little romantic, to think that intelligent life on earth began with a bang. A bang caused by a comet crashing into the planet dominated by reptiles and generally not so intelligent creatures. Understandably the crater had been located (somewhere in Arizona I think) and reams of research and material about how the oxygen molecules were formed yak yak etc were written, stored, archived even documented as a story.

Check out great podcasts based on Spitzer other telescope through iTunes under NASA:The Hidden Universe.

hi all!

Johannes Kepler performed an experiment to calculate the distance between earth and mars, and hence he managed to find out the distance between the sun and mars in terms of the distance between sun and earth.

the experiment is as follows :

 I felt that there must be atleast one article on this, which is why I'm writing it.  Of course, everything here will be as I see it, and you may have a totally different perspective, in which case, I encourage that you post a blog entry as well. :-D

Now... I know that the title of this blog post is rather inappropriate - that's because I wouldn't want to put a lengthy title like:

"Why you would want to attend a Star Party - that too - one as far away from home as it can get, when the nights nowadays are so cloudy that you could statistically expect subsequent nights to be cloudy as well."

Let me answer that question from my perspective.

Of course, as you have already figured out, this is to convince you people who registered for the BAS Hampi Trip (considering the important fact that *you will not get a refund*) that:

4:30 PM, 01-12-2007 : My phone beeps, there's an SMS from a familiar number.

5:30 PM, 01-12-2007 : I was located at the IITM Main Gate, lots of coffee spilt all over my pant, attributed to my low level of intelligence resulting in an experiment of drinking coffee in the IITM Electric Vans

~ 6:20 PM 01-12-2007: Just as I cross the S.P. road, somebody familiar waves to me from the car and the car stops a few metres ahead.

~ 8:00 PM 01-12-2007: A new Orion Atlas computerized Equatorial Mount carrying an Orion ED80 Apochromatic Refractor and a long-focal-length Orion refractor to be used as a guidescope stood in all majesty on the terrace of a resort in Mahabalipuram, a few feet away from a Meade 10" Lightbridge.