Stargazer Society-a brief summary

Just in case you're wondering, we're the stargazer society @ Methodist College (somewhere in Malaysia ).


Before i proceed, congratulations to ADRIAN, ex-president and VICTOR, ex-R&D director who scored so perfectly well in their recent A-Levels finals.
Adrian: 3A* and 3 marks away from the 4th A*
Victor: 4A*. Woah
Oh, and Kee Onn, ex-ex-president is currently pursuing his aerospace engineering degree at the University of Minnesota. He got 3 A* too. Don't get me wrong, i'm not boasting about how good they are, just sharing our joy. PLUS, it's his birthday today so happy birthday!

As for now, it has been 4 solid months since our last AGM so here's a short summary of what happened.
JULY-Orientation Month
Welcome to MCKL July intakes!
After a brief introduction of our club, we discussed about planets in our universe and the constellations in 2 of our meetings.

AUGUST
We held this TANABATA event in collaboration with the Japanology Club. It was indeed successful and we had a superb night. Stories of Vega and Altair were shared with our fellow MCKLians. If you missed the fun, well don't worry as we'll be organizing another spectacular event next year! Be sure to watch out for the upcoming notices. Thanks for the feedback at the facebook event page. It couldn't have been this successful without your participation.

Next-Perseid Meteor shower
Went for a stargazing trip @ bukit tinggi. Stayed at Selesa Resort and it was pretty good ( this is not an advert ). The whole trip costed us less than RM 30. [ Now you see why you should join stargazer society? I mean where can you get outings at such cheap price and yet it's still very FUN ] They saw about 10-20 meteors but I missed all of them as I was constantly drifting back into my dreams(was too sleepy). Luckily (or not), all of us saw a bright flash which lasted long enough for us to gasp in awe and hold our breath (we did all that in one second). It was completely amazing though we didn't know what it was.

It was a 2 day 1 night trip and to kill time while waiting for the sun to set, we traveled all the way down the hill to have our dinner.

Stay tuned for updates and more pictures!
gaze. adore. explore.
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" If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare" -Ralph Waldo Emerson ", very true.

Touring the Summer Milky Way Superhighway Part 1/2

The Summer Milky Way is a treasure trove of eye candies - star clusters, nebulae and the likes of it. On my recent trip to Mersing I had the pleasure to try my newly acquired Oberwerk 22x100 giant binoculars on what I dubbed the ‘Milky Way Superhighway’. And oh boy was it such a treat!

Guide map to the 'Milky Way Superhighway’. M(number) is the ‘code’ for the said deep sky object, a list compiled by a French guy Charles Messier in 1771. The lists includes some of the best views in the night sky and the Milky Way Superhighway are home to quite a few of them.

1. Identify the twin stars on Scorpio’s tail, Shaula and Lesath (yes they have their names). Draw a line in between these two stars and extrapolate to reach your first star-tourist attraction – M7 Ptolemy’s Cluster. Pause for a while and gaze at this beautiful star cluster, discovered by Ptolemy in 130 AD and described as ‘the nebula that always followed Scorpio’s tail’. Obviously it is not a nebula, but telescope observations didn’t take place until the 1600’s. And Charles Messier made it his 7th celestial object of comet wannabes.

2. Well then, you noticed that there seems to be some ‘tendrils’ protruding from the fairly straight 5-star formation. Follow the direction of the two ‘tendrils’ with the lesser separation to reach M6 Butterfly Cluster. Note that as the night progresses the orientation of the cluster in the binoculars/telescope might not resemble the one shown in this page so take note!

The Butterfly Cluster lives up to its name, it is a beautiful cluster shaped like a butterfly. The only lone red star in a sea of blue only adds to its uniqueness.

3. Now we will take a slightly long hike and leave the province of Scorpio.

The hike to M8 Lagoon Nebula is a little tricky. First, go back and forth from M6 to M7 to gauge the distance between the two clusters. Then, at an angle of 90 degrees to the side where the red star is at M6, turn your knobs three times that distance, then turn another 90 degrees to the other side to find M8.

You might not find it the first time round. Try to ‘scan’ the right side of the sky when you’re turning the knobs (as indicated with the yellow arrows) during your hike to the Lagoon. If you are using a finderscope do also check your positio with Alnasl and the other star to gauge your distance and check whether you’re heading in the right direction.

Well then, you think you’ve reached M8! Why don’t you see the characteristic red glow of the nebulae? If you’re expecting that, sorry to tell you that our eyes will never see the colour of a nebula, it is simply too faint. Only cameras can capture that red glow. In fact, we don’t even see colours in our own Milky Way, it just appears as a thin hazy cloud to us.

If your sky is good you can see some wispy hazy smudges in your telescope/binoculars. These are really the best you can see already, it’s called the ‘nebulosity’ of the object. But if you don’t, do not fret! We have a way to I.D. the M8 -

This is a 1-second exposure from my telescope. Notice the pattern of stars in the red circle – it resembles a three leaf clover :-) yeah, that’s how you identify this fella!

Just beside the clover you will see another few groups of stars. Take your time to identify the patterns of stars if you can observe no nebulosity. It’s hard, but it’s quite worth the hunt. The M20 Trifid Nebula is actually a very nice and colourful two-coloured nebula.

4. Now let’s go on to the M23 “Heart-shaped” open cluster.

Draw a line from the clover formation of M8 and the triangle formation on M20 and extrapolate to navigate to M23. M23 is at a magnitude (brightness scale) of 5.5 so it might be a little tough to find it under city or suburban skies or with telescopes with less aperture. I did it with my 4-inch though.

The “heart-shape” name was my moniker for this cluster because it was the way how I identified it. The heart will be quite distinct if you manage to locate this cluster. This cluster is pretty small though, be prepared to see a small heart unlike the picture featured here.

 

 

Well then that’s all for Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2!

23-days old Moon Tour

Identified by eye using a moon map.

Up there you have Sinus Iridium, Latin for 'Bay of Rainbows'. Makes you wanna build a seaview apartment there, eh? It does face a sea, but a sea with no water - a 'mare', and in this case it faces the lunar sea Mare Imbrium.

Go down and you can see Copernicus Crater, a crater estimated to be form 800 million years ago. It is not shown here but nearing the Full Moon phases you can see that it displays a prominent ray system that makes the Full Moon looks like a watermelon. :P

Example of the ray systems at work.

Apollo 12 is the first manned spacecraft to rendezvous with a lunar rover - Surveyor 3. And yeah, they are the ones who found some bacteria on the lunar rover, thought it was aliens at first but later found out that its some flu germs that someone sneezed on during assembly of the rover.

Apollo 13, the ill-fated mission was supposed to go to the Fra Mauro Highlands. Apollo 14 did the job instead, sampling the lunar soil there which helped determine the time of the impact that caused it and eventually the age of the Moon.

Craters are abound in the southern hemisphere. You can see that Clavius Crater features a small impact on top of a larger impact crater. Geologists use this to deduce the age of the impact craters - surely the larger one came earlier than the younger one!

Bullialdus crater features a sharp pointy edge at the centre of the crater (if your eyes are sharp enough). This tells of the process of the impact basin formation and the viscosity of the lunar magma at the time of impact, a certain moment in the Moon’s history. If the lunar magma is too liquid at the time of impact it won't form such a crater!

For more details go to : http://www.lpi.usra.edu/nlsi/education/hsResearch/crateringLab/lab/part1/background/

The Greatest Show on Earth

.... is none other than the famed Venus Transit! Occuring in 8-year pairs every 105 years, the recent ones was on 2004 and 2012 - the next one will be on 2117! It's literally a once-in-a-lifetime event!

And by luck I didn't miss out on anything! Got to observe the transit and even photograph it with a self-assembled solar filter on my telescope. 

<- The setup - Orion Astroview 100mm f/6, Canon 550D, self-assembled solar filter and shade. 

Down : An example of the pictures I took during the transit. The small round black dot on the left side is Venus (yes it's that small!) Other black dots are actually sunspots on the sun. 

 Final moments of the Transit of Venus compiled.



^- A compilation of my shots over the course of the eclipse. We never got to observe the starting as our location made the transit started before the Sun rose over our area. Weather was cloudy too, but we managed to observe it!

Is this image worthy to be your computer wallpaper?
Link to original file (~4MB)http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/12/17/2692122/wallie%20vt.jpg


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 We, the whole Stargazer Society gang went to the National Planetarium to join in their observation activities.

 Many of the public and schools also attended the event! I even see some daycare centres brought their kids too! Gotta love their enthusiasm :-)












Visitors observing the Transit through a                 This is a weird looking setup but it's actually
Meade LX200... this baby is at least worth           quite ingenious! You can see the Sun's image
RM20,000 I presume! Lucky fellows!                  in it!

Below : The Sun's image in the cardboard thing. It was actually reflected from the sunlight through the tube on a small screw. I didn't get to picture the whole setup, the crowd was impatient and too excited!

Over there I was interviewed by a couple of reporters, the one in the picture being a theSun local newspaper reporter. The weird setup on my telescope must've attracted them! The club name and mine appeared in the newspaper but sadly no pictures :-\ 

But in overall, it was a really good experience! 

Taking photos of star clusters

Just sharing my attempts at taking the photos of star clusters, an object I find most pleasingly pictured via a Canon 550D Camera docked to the Astroview 100mm.

First you have to focus on the subject. I focus by swinging the rack and pinion focuser back and forth until I get the sharpest image in my opinion.

Then, the photography settings - I usually use an exposure of 1-2 seconds max to reduce star trailing. ISO is cranked up to the region of 1800-6400.

Below are some of the images I've taken through prime focus. You may have seen them on facebook but here it's much clearer :)