Amateur Astronomy for the Visually Impaired (Not Kidding)

No, I’m not making this up.

Check this out:  http://www.giveyoujoy.net/awe/blog/archives/2007/04/you_gotta_be_ki.html

At long last…

At long last I did something that makes me feel worthy of the title “engineer”. I might even be so arrogant as to say “hacker”. Never mind that my current job title doesn’t have the word “engineer” (or “hacker”) in it.

My el cheapo pea-shooter 50mm refractor suffered from a bad case of the shakes. My having to take the scope on to the rooftop didn’t help much; Aeolus likes to make his presence felt these days. Focusing it at say, Jupiter, was no small task – the flush of pleasure at having focused the scope would quickly evaporate as Jupiter described a fast moving ellipse and Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto transformed from bright little pin-pricks into nothing. Thinking back to the times when Jupiter rose at 6 in the evening and could be caught with the scope positioned by the TV (opening the door to the balcony helped), still as a cat about to pounce, only added to the bitterness.

Thus I passed many days cursing myself for not having blown a little more money on that (comparatively) big 4.5″ equatorially mounted reflector. And then, it happened. The paisa dropped. A bulb magically appeared above my head in a text balloon, and shed some of its light in the cobweb ridden interiors of my brain. Struck by inspiration, I ran to the spare room which holds all our junk, including the computer on which I’m typing this, and threw open the cardboard box which was to go to the guy who bought newspapers the next day. My hands scrabbled around in the box like the tentacles of an octopus deep beneath the sea. They then came up for air, triumphant with their discovery – an old scratched CD.

Off came the nut that held the screw on the tripod which pivoted the telescope in the horizontal plane. Off came the telescope itself, and in went the CD between the telescope and the tripod. The scope, screw and nut were returned to their former positions, and lo behold! The action was smoother than before, and the scope settled down from the shakes much, much faster than I had known.

Of the precious few things I’ve done in the recent past that are worth menion, nothing has given me as much happiness as this did. Except perhaps learning to drive a four wheeled beast – and that comes a close second.

Eagle = Dolphin? No, no topology involved.

I borrowed the binoculars back from Samir today. They’re mine to use for the next three days, which makes me deliriously happy.

I think I solved the Cygnus mystery; I was looking at Cygnus all right, but thanks to the heavy light pollution, I couldn’t see some of the other stars in the constellation, which made me think that Cygnus was “flying” at right angles to the direction it should’ve been headed.

The clouds went away today. So did the binoculars – Samir wanted them back to take a look at the skies himself :). I’m getting them back by Friday, and I can keep them over the weekend. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for clear skies over the long weekend. Perhaps I should plan a short trip to some nearby dark location.

Anyway, since the skies were reasonably clear, I decided to shield my eyes with my hands and take a look upwards. I looked westwards, and immediately located the three stooges – Deneb, Altair and Vega. For the first time, I was able to make out the parallelogram shape that gives Delphinus its name. I thought I had successfully traced out Cygnus, but I am not so sure. What I thought was Cygnus seemed to be “flying” in a South-Westerly direction. Later, Kstars told me that Cygnus ought to be flying in a North-Westerly direction. So I don’t know what I saw.

I also located Hercules with a little difficulty. Pity that there are a couple of huge apartment complex towers that obscure the south – I would have loved to see Aquarius. The make-vs-buy debate has reared its ugly head again. Within my head, that is. A few folks I know are visiting yankeeland, and I need to quickly find out if mirror kits are cheaper there. If that is indeed the case, I’m going to request them to get back a mirror kit for me.

It’s been an odd sort of day. I managed to get some work done, I’m not sure that I’d want to call it useful work, though – which isn’t so great.

First Light

Borrowed Samir’s binoculars today. Went to the rooftop of N’s apartment, to try and look at the moons of Jupiter, my having read in my pocket star atlas that it’s possible to do this with a pair of 10x binocs. Samir’s pair is a variable zoom 8x-24x (50mm) Dakota, with the left tube kaput. Which effectively makes it a monocular :) There were three of us present there, me, N and The Great Man.