Sidewalk Astronomy Night @Titiwangsa 29102011

It's been a long time since our last outing... and yesterday(just now?) we just had our second sidewalk at Tasik Titiwangsa!
It's a huge event as this is organized by Planetarium Negara, so there were more clubs joining the sidewalk astronomy event today! The participants includes :

• ANGKASA (National Space Agency)
• Starhunter Astronomical Society feat. William Chin
• Starfinder Astronomical Society feat. 14 inch bazooka
• Starfield Instruments Supply
• Choon Kiat from Perseids Telescopes Penang
• Mr Shahrin Ahmad from FalakOnline
• and MCKL Stargazer Society!

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We arrived at 7pm for preparation etc. Thanks to Nixon and Adrian for fetching members who got no transportation to there!
Sky was still bright at 7... but when Kee Onn started to set up the telescope it was already dark =P
You know...
He can set it up in the dark! wow~!
No need light! (if we on the light then will become the light pollution lol)
Our nice president also helped all of us to register~ so all of us got a nice goodies bag from the Planetarium Negara and also our dinner...www (stands for ‘haha’ in Japanese 2ch language)

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The event started at 8pm sharp! (SO PUNCTUAL AH MALAYSIAN)
There were Emcee who introduced to the public about the sidewalk, and also announcing who participated in this sidewalk.
The Emcee kept on asking people to register and for those who registered will get a number and can join the lucky draw session!
However, all of us did not get the any number for the lucky draw Orz except Joy! =)
If i not mistaken there were total 5 session of lucky draw!
Besides, there were quizzes for the public too! It's in Malay language... ^^
I think they can get a prize if they answered it correctly!

As usual, VP Adrian takes all the spotlights! This beautiful board about light pollution is made by Apple Ying Yi, our talented handicraft member! Too bad our place was not strategic, there were no light sources to read the board (epic fail).

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It's the first time in my life to see so many telescope at the same time actually haha.
The biggest one is 14inch! According to Mr president it costs the same price as a car!

Here are some of the many telescopes that were featured that night.

This red thingy looks funny. Its an Astroscan Plus, a no frills ideal beginner telescope (http://www.scientificsonline.com/astroscan-plus-telescope.html). The tripod stand must be homemade though. It looks like a Doodle heheh

This long white telescope is of the Starhunters. Pic features from left, Chrono Fong, ???, William Chin and Simpson. Notice the blue box down there? It’s a treasure, the Sky and Telescope Seven Decade Collection DVD!

William’s scope.

A few Meade LX800’s I think from the National Planetarium. “Musytari” is Malay for Jupiter and Bulan for Moon. It has AutoStar features, no less you expect from the agency! With these scopes sidewalk should be done every Saturday!

Some other scopes. This might be Starfield’s if not mistaken.

Kok Ming skodeng from a random scope lol!

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At first we tried to focus on the Moon! Last quarter?
Well the image in the telescope is upside down lah....
After that we changed our "stalking" target to Jupiter!
The largest planet in our solar system!
Using the telescope we can even see the 4 largest moon of the Jupiter which is Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto!

This is what Nixon managed at the eyepiece. Saw Jupiter and his moons?

Besides these two main attractions there was another one!
It's the Summer Triangle!
By joining the Altair, Vega and Deneb you can form a huge triangle in the sky =D
The dimmest one is Deneb but it's still bright enough for us to recognize the triangle!

Towards the end of the event Simpson introduced us some of the famous astronomy players in the Klang Valley!
I realized we're the youngest among the crowd  LOL
Well the weather was a but cloudy... so both the Moon and Jupiter was not always available...XD
Overall it was a very nice experience for amateur like me!
Thanks for everyone who came and made the outing so fantastic!

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As usual, Japanese time! (actually u guys got remember or not!?)
天の川（あまのがわ）：ama no gawa
Meaning: Milky way
Example: 晴れた夜には天の川が見えるよ。 You can see the milky way if the night sky is clear.

The Space Shuttle

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.
Robert Crippen

The Space Shuttle Program by NASA, held from 1981 to 2011, was a defining programme that shaped human space endeavours for the last 30 years. Everyone, every kid is fascinated by the sight of the space shuttle that has dutifully brought humans up to the Mir Space Station, and subsequently the International Space Station to conduct scientific research, experiment long term living in space and providing the groundwork for future, deeper explorations.

On Thursday, our beloved club treasurer Yeang Ching, under her own initiative, offered to share with the club about the story of the space shuttle.

 

Pic shown is the orbiter #0 Enterprise, named after the legendary Star Wars spaceship. It is #0 because it is a prototype and it was never used for real space exploration. The first one to do so is Columbia instead.

Yeang Ching’s main topic is the materials used to build the space shuttle, which is very interesting on its own. Do you know which part of the Space Shuttle gets the hottest during atmospheric re-entry? And what are the few substances that are able to stand such crazy temperatures and are used to line the Space Shuttle’s Exterior? Do you know what are the names of the booster rockets attached to the Space Shuttle? Do you even know how many orbiters were there? She knew it all! :P

Ok well, first off here’s a chronology of what happens during each flight :

When people have asked if I'd like to go in the Shuttle, I said you don't get to fly it, except for landing, which I'd love to do. I wouldn't go unless I could command it.
Wally Schirra

The most dangerous part of the flight, other than liftoff, is the re-entry part where the orbiter can face temperatures of up to 3000 degrees! This is due to friction with the Earth’s atmosphere. Sorta like having your own mother killing you.

As you can see the whitest and hottest part is the edge of the wings. Special protections are applied to these areas so that the orbiter would not melt. There you go!

click for larger image

One of the more famous tiles are the High Temperature-Reusable Surface Insulation (HRSI) tiles which are black in colour and lines the bottom of the orbiter. In this pic a spot check is done on Discovery’s heat tiles while it was docked to the ISS. The tiles are not all black, the one with faded colours are the old tiles. 

Enclosed is a diagram of the materials for the HRSI tiles. Someone commented that it was oddly similar to mahjong tiles lol.

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.
Pete Conrad

Other than that, Yeang Ching has also presented on the launch system of the Space Shuttle!

In the pic, the orange big rockets is known as the External Fuel Tank, and the twin small rockets beside are the Solid Booster Rockets! The club members remembers this well as it cost them a free ice-cream, except for Daisuke! :D

Lastly, a talk on the thermal protection system of the Space Shuttle is not complete with the tragedy of the Columbia Orbiter in 2003. This was due to a heat tile that happened to dislodge during reentry and hit the shuttle’s left wing, causing a puncture and allowed hot gases from the reentry to enter the wing and disintegrate the wing from within, leading to eventual loss of control and breakup of the shuttle. Due to this incident, space shuttle was put on hold for two years, similar to the Challenger incident and improvements were made on the three remaining orbiters, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

That is all for Yeang Ching’s sharing session! Clap clap clap! And congrats to the winners of the quiz session, Priscilla, Daisuke, Yee Lin, Yi Kun and Chee Meng who won a free ice cream to be redeemed on the Oct 29th Sidewalk Astronomy Night!

Well then, see ya next meeting!

The Twilight Zone' wasn't around with the kids. They think going up in space is neat. Within their lifetime, there will be paying passengers on the shuttle.
Christa McAuliffe (teacher astronaut who perished on the Challenger incident)

Stargazers' Moon cake Festival

oops.
sorry for being so inactive these days.... m(_ _)m
Now gonna write about our AWESOME moon cake festival!!!! v(￣Д￣)v ｲｴｲ
actually i wrote the whole thing in chinese in my own blog yesterday...orz anyone interested? lol

All of us had a very special moon cake celebration this year: we celebrated it after the actual date of Moon cake festival! XD
It's on 15 September 2011, Thursday night!
Because it rained in the evening, so the venue had changed from basketball court to the Agora...but never mind we still enjoyed it 8D
(except we lost a chance to look at the starry sky with telescope due to the cloudy weather)

So it looked like this:

Food was served in stalls,
and we had 5 food stall: Onigiri (rice balls), choco-bananas/marshmallow, Miso soup, Yakisoba (Japanese fried noodles), Tori katsu/Tempura (Fried chicken /deep-fried vegetables)!
Of course we had drink stall, too! the one and only: Green Tea stall! *laugh*

This was our registration booth and everyone who registered got a goodies bag consisted of: cutlery, polystyrene "plate", coupons for foods, a pack of snacks, candles, a lantern and a star chart!



Our event officially started at 645, where everyone was asked to sit in Agora LOL for ice breaking games and a brief explanation of the game stalls scoring system! Thanks to Sandra for the explanation ♥


The first ice breaking game was the festival dance!

AWESOME (ﾉ∀＼*)ｷｬ
Ok i forgot how to sing the song but it was really fun! We had chances to change our partner during the games so we get to know more people! (probably) www

The second one was ....Hopping Chair game? o.O

It works like this: if u win the 猜拳(what is this in English? O.o) then u can continue moving forward but if u lose then u need to go back and another people from your group continue! See who can reach the other side without losing! wwww
This was really exciting as some group didnt even notice the game had finished XD

After the ice breaking games the food stalls re-open!


After a while we had story-telling by Arvin and the gang! XD

I REALLY LOVE the way they presented it! It was just so fantastic!
It was a story about the Chang Er and Hou Yi... they adapted the story though XD At the end Hou Yi turned into a super cute rabbit! (*´ω｀*)

We also had a very nice performance by the Llamas!


The audience...www


Shortly after this we had the lantern lighting ceremony and photoshoots!


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The food and games stalls started again!

4 exciting games: the yo-yo-(balloon) fishing, candle blowing, archery game and the rubber throwing game!
*still searching for photos of the game stalls*
I tried some of them and i realized how hard was the game. OTL
I threw about 100++ rubber band but none of them actually hit the wooden stick! (－－〆)

Since it was an moon cake festival of course we had lantern quizzes too!



At about 930 our Emcee

announced that we will soon have another performance by Reuben! (=´∀｀ﾉﾉﾞ☆ﾊﾟﾁﾊﾟﾁﾊﾟﾁ
*waiting for photos...O.o*
Moon cakes were served during the performances!
Hope you guys liked it! XD

After the performance astronomy stall OPEN!
We set up 2 telescope for everyone to have a look at the sky! oops not the sky but the Hotel due to the cloudy weather =X
At the same time Ferdous started to collect the scoring cards from everyone!

Finally about 1015 prize-giving ceremony started...
5 prizes for the lantern quizzes and another 5 for the Game stalls!
Prizes of the lantern quizzes was given out by our president of Stargazers' Society Kee Onn and prizes of the game stalls was given out by Ex-student council president, Bryan.
Congrats!!!!(ﾉ∀＼*)

So our event ends at about 1030!
Thanks for everyone who came to this event and anyone who helped out in this event!
I LOVE YOU XDDDDDDDD

Summer Fes

STARGAZERS' SUMMER FESTIVAL HAS STARTED!
The whole week we were selling FOODS =D

Monday we had DELICIOUS mashed potatoes@RM3 and choco-bananas/marshmallow@RM3~
After i had a taste of the mashed potatoes the whole morning i was thinking about it LOL
I LOVE IT so much XD
And about the choco-marshmallow/bananas, the chocolate was just too good (^q^)


Tuesday we had nachos@RM2.50 and choco-banana/marshmallow!　（　＾ω＾）ﾜｸﾜｸ
We prepared 2 type of sauce... chess sacuse and spicy chicken sause!　(ﾟ∀ﾟ)

A lot of people love nachos...some of them even came back for a second cup of it!♪ヾ(≧▽≦)ﾉ




Wednesday was mushroom soup+bread and choco-marshmallow
Of course, the mushroom soup SOLD OUT!!!　┬|´ω｀*)｡oO(ﾔｯﾀ♪)
SO u can imagine how nice is it XD

and Finally thursday was mushroom soup and choco-marshmallow~
mushroom soup was sold out again... so afternoon we were actually selling choco-marshmallow onlt =P


Thanks for everyone who bought those hyper delicious food for us!　c(´ω｀o)
Last but not least thanks to all stargazer's society members who helped out in this activity! especially Joy, Apple, Hyun Woo and Arvin who made us those SUPER delicious foods!
(人'▽｀)ありがとう☆


After that, we had a small meeting about the moon cake festival at the Agora.
The moon cake festival is gonna to be a "real" festival! =D
Stay tuned and we will update you more information about that!　♪d('∀'ｏ)





月（つき）：tsuki
Meaning: Moon
Example: 月は地球より小さいです。(tsuki wa chikyuu yori chiisai desu). The moon is smaller than the earth.

Giant mushroom, Lil’ Planetarium

Our 10cm radius little planetarium is facing some sort of an identity crisis right now…

For some reason I think it sorta looked like a mushroom… a shabby one. Should I colour it? The colours look really messy there. And using cardboards for such a small model proved to be a costly mistake, it was very hard to match the triangles together and in the process of stapling the joints, I stapled my own fingers a few times.
Anyway, this is the whole process:

1. Make the triangles. Triangle A is a equilateral of 6.2cm side length. Triangle B is a isosceles with two sides of 5.7 cm side length and one 6.2cm.

You will need 10 of the A triangles, and 30 of the B triangles.

2. Put the 30 B triangles into group of fives. Staple the 5.7cm sides together such that the 6.2cm sides all face outwards. When you connect the fifth triangle to the first one, it will form a curved pentagonal shape. The result will be something like this :

Make 5 more of these pentagons and you’re good to go for the next step.

3. Use the A triangles to join the pentagons in this order :

Examples of the process will be like this (A triangles labelled as ‘A’, obviously)

You can already see the dome taking shape . Connect all the 5 pentagons together and you will have an open top dome (which will be covered by the 6th pentagon.
4. Fit in 5 more of the A triangle around the opening at the top.

You will get something like this :

5. And there you go! Fit in the last pentagon on top and you’re done!

6. Optional : Make a base for the dome. Cut out a flap of cardboard and fold it at 6.2cm intervals (you may want to make space as I don’t think it can be really uniformly 6.2cm) Make flaps on your base for joining to the flap of the triangles.

And that is how a mushroom skeleton looks like.

The interior.
To get best results, find a material that hardness is something in between manila cards and cardboards.
Now I need to think a title for the 5m dome… “Giant Planetarium, little….?”