This is a few seconds after you declared that your finger smells of soy sauce. You are gross.

Love,
Dada

Converts

Had a bunch of new relatives converted to astrophiles. Hemant and family were down from Bangalore. Spent a quick 45 minutes viewing Jupiter (not very clear, most probably due to localised heat-caused turbulence) and Saturn (beautiful and sharp - one of the best times to view this planet).

The Orion Nebula looked all pretty too, but I wish it had the colours it showed in this recent NASA pictures

Of course, no amount of wishing will make my telescope produce anything close to this. This is because of the Telescope Monetary Principle, which says that the amount of detail you see is directly proportional to the fourth root of the cost of your telescope. My Orion XT8 Classic Dobsonian cost about $500. The Hubble cost about $2500000000. 

Happy birthday to me

I pulled the telescope out as a birthday thing to do. Since Vega was the only star visible from the window,I focused on, and later, around it. Stumbled upon a 2 -star system called Double Double that looked interesting. But I didn't jump to conclusions... Just because they look close, they shouldn't necessarily be a binary. Well, in this case, they were.

And not just binary. A quadruple star system. 2 twins revolving around each other, separated by a tenth of a light year apart. Too bad the nearby Ring Nebula was not visible...

Mr Ajay, Mr Ajay and Vaidehi

Had some astro-visitors today. Quite thankful. Almost felt like my telescope infatuation was on the way down. Ajay Bhatia (friend made at last Vangani trip) landed up to try his hands at the XT8 and Ajay Varma and Vaidehi showed up to reclaim a borrowed pair of binocs and then some.

Viewing was mostly decent because it was a New Moon night. Light pollution wasn't it's usual ugly self, but it was bad enough to reduce the entire Eastern sky to a faint orange, featureless scape.

High points - Jupiter, Orion's Nebula and a very early Saturn. Was quite shocked to find Saturn had naked-eye-visibility at 11 pm. Far cry from 3 and 4 am from about 3 months ago.

There's some talk of a Kelva trip next week. Hope that works out.

And now, it's 6 in the morning. Time to crash. Just downloaded a motherload of Physics books from Motionmountain. Tomorrow will be reading time.

Full moon

Taken with ipad, without adapter on 25.2.13. Also saw Orion Nebula again. Looked for more Messier FFTs but the full moon made sure that wouldn't happen. Also had Ajays binocs for a wide angle view.

2013

One trip to Vangani on Feb 12th, a trip to the terrace for an invisible DA14, and a killer trip to Bhivpuri, with some great learning a from Vikram from Earth and Beyond. Saw the Hubble telescope, learnt to find the Orion Nebula and also saw Saturn again.

Saturn and more

This last week has been exciting. Saw Saturn from Dehu Road at 4 morning, 10th Jan and then saw Andromeda and Orion Nebula and Pleides from Vangani on the 12th of Jan.