Lyrids Watch 2012

A bunch of us from the old and new committee went to Selesa Hillhomes, Bukit Tinggi for a leadership discussion and stargazing - hunting the Lyrids meteor shower! It was cloudy at first, but we persevered and at about 3a.m. the skies cleared up and we were up for some serious astronomy adventure!

In between discussions  of activities for the new semester (we promise that it'll be an exciting one!), we counted meteors and got a count of 15 in 3 hours! The sources says that Lyrids are 10 per hour, so in average we got 5, not bad.

The skies above are also gloriously filled with stars, we took the chance to do some astrophotography :-) and surprise, surprise - we pictured the Milky Way!

 In this picture... there is Sagittarius and Scorpio... and the Milky Way in between.

The white 'clouds' is the Milky Way! This picture is taken by our new publicity director Qin Ni!

We also docked our DSLRs to the Astroview 100mm (some of you remember him as 'Steve') and got some pictures of faint star clusters. It's not as spectacular as the Hubble images, but still amazing in its own right!

M4 Globular Star Cluster ->

<- M6 Butterfly Cluster - do you see a butterfly shape?

M7 Ptolemy's Cluster - legend has it that it was commonly called as the 'nebula on Scorpio's tail' until astronomers with telescopes zoomed in and found this pretty cosmopolis of stars.

This is all for our adventure. Cheers for the new 4th generation Stargazer Society - and potentially the best one yet! 

Rocket Man by Elton John

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time...

Smiles

With all my heart, I swear

To the ends of the earth and time

I’ll gladly stand in the frontline

No matter what comes may

I’ll vanquish them, or die trying

Because your smiles are worth my life.

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

Whitney Houston, The Greatest Love of All

The Stargazer Society Manifesto

Welcome to this blog by the Stargazer Society, an intercollege astronomy society that now encompasses members across a few colleges and universities in the Klang Valley.

As the title implies, here I will list out the manifestos of the Stargazer Society : -

1. An outreach-based astronomy society which main mission is to promote astronomy  to the public.
2. An inter-institutions society that connects astronomy enthusiasts around colleges and schools in Malaysia.
3. A all-encompassing astronomy society that embraces all aspects from the sciences to the mythologies of astronomy. 

From time to time we will organize stargazing parties around KL, the most important factor is where the telescope owner stays :D. We aim to form a local chapter in the colleges and schools our members study in, and weekly activities that focuses on astronomy can be held. Oh, and if you're interested, please join our Facebook group too at Stargazer Society FB.