observing

The date 28th Feb 2009, just a day ahead and a year back was the last such event (1st March 2008). This was the third BAS star party in alliance with TANASTRO members from Chennai, at the 3500ft high Yelagiri Hill, the mid-point for both the cities. They were joined with some boys from IIT-Madras. Before this, there was a trip to remember for the 6 of us BAS members, to the nearby Kavalur observatory. We were Utkarsh, Vanthika, Me, Madhu, Sandeep and Rakesh. We departed in a Qualis booked by Utkarsh (Akarsh's younger brother) which picked up people from within Bangalore city and then onto the congested Hosur Road, after which began the serene and excellent B'lore-Vellore-Chennai highway.

7 years later, this was my 6th visit to Kavalur Observatory, a place only 150 km from B'lore, that I have always revered and worshipped. I am overly thankful to two of my mentors, Dr Shylaja (Bangalore Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium) for making it happen, and Dr Rathnashree (Director, JNP, Delhi) to initiate the idea. This trip happened for the 7 students from the REAP course, JNP and I accompanied them. We were supposed to have the 40-inch telescope for one entire night of imaging some bright Messier objects, and comets. We met at Indian Institute of Astro-Physics (IIAP) head office, Koramangala at 8am and divided ourselves in the shuttle (two Ambassador cars). It was a 3hr drive on the super, clean, empty and broad Hosur-Krishnagiri-Vellore highway (NH-46). The sky was pretty hazy, lowering our chances, and I expected B'lore city itself to have been much clearer then.

This was a BAS Observing Session coming after months! Shweta, Sathya, Madhu, Akarsh, Amar, Ravindra, Rakesh, Sunil and Pavan attended the event.

Sathya and Co. set up the School's 8" Telescope and trained it at the setting moon and took a few shots. Amar had brought his Oberwerk 25x100 binoculars with Paralellogram mount from his home, all the way. Amar had left the base to support the tripod, but the Engineers and Instrumentation folk (Madhu, Sathya, Ravindra) put together their brains and used a rope to tie up the tripod in place! Soon, the 25x100 was set up and ready for observing.

Skies were hazy and not much could be done. We observed some bright objects - the usual M45, M42, M41, M35, M76, M1, M44, M79, H and Chi Persei, M46 with its tiny line-of-sight planetary nebula. The primary reason for lack of interest was the haze, which rendered bright objects like M1 really faint.

A small BAS meeting happened, where we decided that we must draft a plan for the IYA 2009. We also did a small introduction to the night sky for beginners showing constellations like Canis Major, Auriga, Orion, Lepus, Taurus.