Report on the Observing Session, 6th December 2008

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.

There was lot of excitement as BAS had met after a really long time - a lot of gossip, a lot of tech-talk, and stray off-topic discussions

Late into the night, Akarsh set up his camera on Ravindra's tripod and took a few astrophotographs. This was followed by the usual "ghost" photographs - innovative experiments with the camera!

As more fog accumulated, we all went off to sleep!

Amar has posted a report here. [NOTE: When Amar means observing - he means faint objects - mostly galaxies!]