Awesome solar eclipse of '09. The longest solar eclipse of the century.. 6:39 seconds of Totality.. Witnessed by the largest crowd ever..
Understanding it thru science with a hint of religious beliefs, makes a perfect recipe for a solar eclipse in Asian countries !! ..I wish I would have been in India to have a glimpse of it..
Picutres from boston.com
Pictures from sacbee.com
When was the last time you visited a graveyard or a cemetery? ..What are the chances that while in cemetery your car won't start back again.. wooooooh ..wait..wait.. when your car is down, keys are not connected.. and suddenly...whole electrical system goes wacky, All the RPM, Speedometer indicators were running haywire in a wild rush !! ... woooooohhh.. Spooky :) !!
Was in "San Diego Darshan" mode with my cousin sister Deepti. While driving back from Pt Loma, I thought abt visiting Rosecrans cemetery nearby. One of the greatest amateur astronomers, Robert Burnham Jr, is buried there. I wanted to visit him (?) for a long time, but never got a chance. ..that was the moment and I pulled over. We went thru grave locater to find out the exact location of the grave, out of thousands of graves lying around.. Finally we found it and decided to drive there.. Got into the car..and thats it..
Car wasn't starting.. Tried turning the keys once, twice, thrice.. Nope.. it wasn't !!. I took out the keys..and suddenly all dials, indicators started moving from one end to another end.. WOW !! Deepti and I were frozen on our seats... lil scared ..of ghosts ..esp of "Ms Carina Lee", whose grave was just next to our car :) !! ... The old classic DD TV Show "Kile Ka Rahasya" music was playing in my head :) !!
After 30-45mins panic mode, a nice gentleman helped us to jump-start the car. Again after 15 mins, while i was in the middle of the intersection of Harbor and Lauren, Car died again.. All dials were moving randomly again and this time car was making weird noise too, as if breathing for life !! Being on the airport road, bunch of cars honking, yelling at me ..I was in the middle of the intersection, just helpless, on the phone, for more than 15-20mins.
Luckily a towing services guy showed up in next lane. ..Iranian guy, who decided to help me only when I told him Indians and Iranian people do have connections.. :) Couple of dollar bills jump started the car again..
Local mechanic replaced the battery and my car is alive now.. So much of spookiness because of a car battery..
Seems like, Robert Burnham Jr, indeed wanted me to spend some time with him in that cemetery. Sorry Sir..I didn't get a chance to say hello at that time.. will definitely visit soon.. but this time I will park outside the cemetery.. just as a precaution :) !!
On Diwali, bought a new telescope. time to upgrade from 6" bazooka to 10" canon. I was using Jon's 10" dob for a while, but now.. bought my own... Orion Intelliscope XT10 Dobsonian.
Mirror: 254mm, 10"
Focal Length: f/4.7, 1200mm
I have realized that, for a beginner, lil bit experienced, the dob with 10" aperture is perfect. It can fit all my needs and will serve me well atleast for couple of years. More objects I learn abt, dob always gives me a glimpse... More magnification I put, dob always show me details.. atleast to keep me satisfied.
After learning heavy star-hopping thru Jon's 10" dob, I have realized that for some of the objects it was lil bit tricky to locate few that don't have any reference stars nearby.. or bumping accidentally into new objects while star hopping and wasn't aware abt what i am looking at.. so I also bought a object locator.
Today I tested the whole system and its pretty good...
Time to begin cosmos hunting soon thru my new eyes.
Did u watch the solar eclipse? Obviously you didn't.. Me neither. I wish I would have been on north pole or in china atleast.. 
The celestial event of 132 seconds is so impressive that the mere video of it poped up a "wow" factor in me!! The corona is fabulous... Its like... black-hole with wings :)
Have u seen movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which mentions abt precise moment of planetary alignment, where all nine (?) planets line up perfectly... That must be the "greatest" view (really ??).. hssh.. but Angelina Jolie wastes time in the cave fighting with stupid people :)
Any way, any such nine(?) planetary alignment is never possible (stupid movies :D) so lets just enjoy our two neighbors aligned, atleast next time, on 22nd July 2009 from India.
Phoenix has landed.. This is first time I tracked Mars probe landing "Live".. NASA tv was broadcasting activities in JPL mission control room during phoenix landing... Commentator was mentioning the status of phoenix probe, its location, trajectory, signal strength continuously ... Tension in the control room and the excitement after flawless landing was indeed breathtaking..
This Hollywood style video shows the Phoenix landing drama !!
Phoenix is already active and sending photos.. Lets start digging.. let's quench our thirst, hope we will find "water" !!
Hiked to Torry Pines hill, on Saturday. Its just a mile walk.. but gains elevation pretty quickly.. Wide view of ocean from top of the hill is indeed marvelous.
I was just in time to see sunset. On west side, near horizon, there were few clouds and beautiful "red ball" was passing through it. Obviously there wasn't anything different than usual sunset, until I pointed my binocular. Binoculars revealed a totally different view of sunset. Because of clouds on the horizon, top part of the red sun had a "green tinge". The green tinge remained for 5-10 seconds and vanished.. Again, when sun passed through next layer of clouds, the green tinge reappeared on top part of sun above clouds.. Seemed like for every layer of clouds, green tinge appeared..
..and today, unexpectedly, I saw green tinge in the sunset.. With naked eyes, I didn't see anything, but binocular revealed this green tinge. To confirm that it wasn't binoc optical aberration, simple google search revealed wealth of information.. People have not only seen green tinge, but they have witnessed "green flash" and "blue flash" ..
Indeed a "earthly" event to witness..
PS: Think before pointing your binocs to the Sun.. With normal Sun, it will surely damage your eyes, but I felt the brightness of Setting sun also, through binocs.. but "green tinge" sight was too beautiful to control myself :)
(Photo credit : Galax Lux, Mario Cogo)
The Book Du Ciel is up.
It is the log of observations through my 6' dobsonian reflector. Generally, I log everything in my notebook, but I guess BookDuCiel is better platform to save everything.
The only trouble might be to scan & upload my sketches, but at this point, lets not worry abt them..
Last month I bought new dobsonian telescope. It is Celestron Starhopper 6. It has 6 inch mirror with the focal length of 1219mm.
The focal length is more than I presumed. When I ordered it, I didn't realize that tube will be so lengthy. It is light, but when I carry it, I feel like I am carrying a missile launcher on my shoulders. I hope the cops or Tierra Del Sol border patrol guys will understand what I am carrying :)
I think I should name my dob as "Bazooka" !!
Any way, life is pretty interesting these days because of the Bazooka. The first time when I pointed it to Deep Sky objects like M13 Hercules cluster or M22 Sagittarius cluster, I was spell bound. The M22 looks exactly like this from my telescope. The M17 Swan nebula was beyond my expectations. From my Bazooka, it looks like this ...in black & white.. simply beautiful..
The simplest but the best object to watch is ..Moon... just unbelievable.. I am watching moon everyday.. Because of its phases, everytime it reveals different sets of craters and marias..
Hshhh.. I am already in love with the Bazooka !!
This memorial day long weekend was surely going to be miserable-and-in-turn-memorable for me. I didn't preplan anything and the last minute plans of hiking in Joshua National Park got shelved. So I presumed it was gonna be really boring weekend.
But looking at weather conditions, I decided to buy a telescope from the local frys store. I got a 3.1 inch f/9 refractor, Galileo FS-720. Its surely not a high end equipment... expensive than my estimate.. but still good enough for a beginner.
The obvious choice for observation was moon. Sight of moon was indeed fabulous through 24mm eyepiece. My 10x60 binocs has surely given me a good look at moon before, but at 25-50x zoom with a telescope stabilized on a tripod, opened new doors to lunar-heaven. I was able to see various marias, craters like Copernicus, Plato, Pythos, Eratosthenes, Kepler, Tycho etc. Increasing the magnification till 100x revealed finer details on Tycho and Copernicus. Dilip and Ranga were watching moon through telescope for first time and I was able to see their excitement while they were looking through the eyepiece.
Saturn was also a good catch. I have seen it before through 6 and 22inch reflectors, but wasn't sure how it will look like through 3inch. It wasn't that difficult to spot. Through 24mm eyepiece, saturn rings were not easy enough to observe, but 10mm eyepiece revealed the rings clearly. I was able to see the gap between the planet and the rings easily. Infact Saturn's largest moon Titan was also visible at 4'clock position from Saturn. In an effort to keep Saturn within the high magnification view with my manual tripod, I wasn't able to observe it in full detail. Any way better luck next time..
Watching Venus was okay. I was able to see its phase.. green tinge at the edge of Venus is surely a puzzle to resolve. Mizar-Alcor double in Ursa Major was also good to watch.
Any way, handling the telescope first time in my life, is indeed a memorable experience and has surely made my long weekend really short :)
Visited NASA-JPL facility yesterday.. JPL is in Pasadena, approx 2 hrs drive from SD.. It was open for general public over the weekend.. This is an annual event. I missed it last year, so was really curious and following it for a while !!
It was an awesome experience.. NASA-JPL showcased most of their ongoing research, current spacecrafts deployed in space, most of the spacecrafts being deployed till 2010 and details of most of their previous missions..
The best part of the whole open-house was real-life models of their missions.. full scale models of mars rovers spirit/opportunity launched in 2004, mars reconnaissance orbiter (MRO) launched in 2005, Phoenix mars lander to be launched in Q4-2007, Mars science laboratory (MSL) scheduled for 2009, Voyeger launced in 1977 and now at the edge of solar system, Cassini spacecraft for saturn etc.. They showed operational Mars rover (spirit/opportunity)... I have always seen small models of spirit/opportunity, but watching full scale rover was breath-taking... It was abt the size of a dining table.. Its rocker-bogey wheel-suspension system makes it move like an insect, crawling over the rocks. I talked with a JPL engineer "Scott" who worked/s on the ground controller software for rover. Rover is running vxWorks 4x on a RISC 20Mhz processor with 256 MB flash memory.. Rover talks with base station (MRO) with 128Kbps speed.. I was really surprised by the fact that they are using totally aged hardware.. I believe COTS is always the bottleneck in these projects considering their testing cycles :)... but Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is surely a breakthrough.. its the rover that JPL is launching in 2009.. Its huge... size of an SUV.. I wasn't able to take off my eyes from that machine... Full scale operational rover was crawling like an insect all over the rocks.. infact that guy is using 200 Mhz processor :) !!
The 3D hi-resolution images from rovers and MRO were all over the place.. Infact these wall-size images were so huge that I felt like standing on the mars :) !!
Got a chance to talk with Cassini's project manager, Engineering team of Deep Space Network, Ulysses solar spacecraft etc. Saw demos of infrared telescope, search of extra-solar planets etc.. JPL also opened their Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where they have built these rovers. Its their mechanical engineering facility where they manufacture the skeleton of the rover. They showcased their state of the art welding techniques, EDM cutting techniques for aluminum-titanium alloys.
Last but not least... There was a small booth which talked about India's ISRO Chandrayaan-1 mission also :).. JPL is deploying a spectrometer for scanning minerals on moon with Chandrayaan !!
Though JPL open house talked a lot abt mars exploration, they didn't mention anything about 2018 moon landing missions.. "Apollo on steroids".. I was looking for more info on that one.. but probably I missed the booth or JPL is not contributing much.. or still its in preliminary stage with launch vehicle rather than spacecraft..
Any way... Overall it was amazing visit.. This is first time I was visiting NASA lab.. In the morning, when I was entering JPL facility, I had so many questions in my mind .. and.. after 6 hrs, I left JPL with new set of questions :) !!
Talking with "Scott", rover software guy, popped some older questions.. and stirred my life again :) !! ..In Qualcomm I am working on the similar stuff "Scott" is working in JPL.. but me being in Wireless domain is different than his Astronomy domain.. means.. if I can work on the exact same technical stuff, I am doing currently, but apply it in astronomy domain.. then it will be like..."heaven" :) !! but will it ever possible ?? ...and thoughts abt ISRO pops up again... Hshhhh .. Hoping the dream will become reality soon !!
Oh GOD,
Why are you so "depressed" these days? Why are you "hiding" yourself from us? Why there are so many "storms" in your life.. causing "murkiness" in my life?
Your "fuzziness" has affected my "seeing". You have "cried" in last 4 months. Because of that I have lost my "transparency".
Last week you showed me the "light" and I was able to explore the "heaven" again.. I saw thousands of "light sources".. "colorful diamonds" from your "treasure"..
But in this week, I am again "under the black matter".. lost my "vision" again... why are you putting me in this mode? Are you so "depressed"? Are you going to "cry" again ?
I was planning to "visit" you tonight... like last time.. but it looks like you don't want me to...
Oh GOD.. please make my "nights" cheerful again :-) !!
I went for star gazing at Tierra Del Sol (TDS) on Saturday with San Diego Astronomy Association group. They have their own observatory with 22 inch optical telescope. TDS is an hour drive from SD and the site is excellent. You can catch Mag 7 stars easily with naked eye.
My main objective this time was to do some binocular astronomy, like observing Messier objects. I had list of 16 objects to locate within 3 hrs (thats pretty lame objective for pros.. but for beginners like me its okay :)). Bob & Ravi were also with me and they didn't know much abt stars. So we had good beginner's session with fundas and then with constellations.
Best part of the star party was...
- Saturn from 22 inch. Bob said that it was like a textbook image of Saturn. Rings were just fabulous. 4 of its satellites were clearly visible !!
- Watching M41 open cluster in Canis Major and M36-37-38 open clusters in Auriga through binoculars was fun. I tried to locate these objects from SD multiple times and it was frustrating. But at TDS, I got them within a minute.. I was damn happy :) !! Infact for M36-37-38, I first observed them through binocs and then checked their relative-locations in sky-chart.. and it was perfect. It was indeed (a small scale) achievement for me. I am sure that now I can find them from SD also.
After 3 hrs, whole thing got ruined because of cloud cover and winds. We were planning to wait till moon rise @ 12:34 and then observing moon through 22inch would have been fun.. but gusty winds were just unbearable !!
Overall, I located 10 messier objects out of 16. Others were lost because of the cloud cover... bad luck.. bad day for star gazing !!
Any way, my Nikon 10x50 binoc, which I ordered last week, is on the way.. I should get it tomorrow.. Feeling excited !!
Ever thought about moving faster than light? ..Or.. do you know "anything" that can travel faster than light?
The speed of light "c" is 300,000 Km/s in vacuum. In any other medium, light's speed is always less than "c". Anything with "mass" can not travel at speed of light. These are universal truth or basic assumptions in physics.. on which whole "physics" is based..
But NEC researchers have made a breakthrough where they got "something" moving faster than light.. Any guess on what that "something" is ?... :)... the light itself.. These guys made the light break its own record :) They have developed new type of "medium".. a special "vapor".. that can make light travel 310 times faster..
Unbelievable.. and they did it in year 2000 only.. Hmm.. wasn't aware abt it before.. here is the press release.
Actually.. While reading abt "Faster Than Light", I also came across some interesting experiments. There are "things" that can really travel faster than light.. both in "absolute" terms and "relative" terms.. From this article,
Think about how fast a shadow can move. If you project a shadow of your finger using a nearby lamp onto a far away wall and then wag your finger, the shadow will move much faster than your finger. If your finger moves parallel to the wall, the speed will be multiplied by a factor D/d where d is the distance from the lamp to your finger and D is the distance from the lamp to the wall. It can actually be much faster than this if the wall is at some oblique angle. If the wall is very far away the movement of the shadow will be delayed because of the time it takes light to get there but its speed is still amplified by the same ratio. The speed of a shadow is therefore not restricted to be less than the speed of light.
Others things which can go faster than the speed of light include the spot of a laser which is pointed at the surface of the moon. Given that the distance to the moon is 385,000 km try working out the speed of the spot if you wave the laser at a gentle speed.
Stand up in a clear space and spin round. It is not too difficult to turn at one revolution each two seconds. Suppose the moon is on the horizon. How fast is it spinning round your head? It is about 385,000 km away so the answer is 1.21 million km/s, which is more than four times the speed of light! It sounds ridiculous to say that the moon is going round your head when really it is you who is turning, but according to general relativity all co-ordinate systems are equally valid including revolving ones. So isn't the moon going faster than the speed of light? This is quite difficult to account for.
These are all examples of things which can go faster than light, but these are not physical entities.. They don't have "mass". It is not possible to send "information" faster than light on a shadow or light spot.. so "FTL communication" is not possible in this way...
Finally... I ordered binoculars for star gazing. Nikon Action Extreme 10x50.
Till this point, I was surviving on cheap binocs from walmart or target.. Also, it was a headache justifying the price for astro binocs and thats why till now I didn't buy anything and survived on bushnell 10x50. But now I am really tired with the quality of these cheap binocs and decided to go to next level..
Obviously there are hundreds of good astro binocs avalable.. but more you explore, more you will get confused. OpticsPlanet website is surely a good resource and their discussion forums are awesome. After a long research, I made up my mind with Nikon 10x50 Action Ex. I hope it will serve me well.
Planning for a Messier Marathon soon.. Want to join in :) ?
What if... "You go to bed.. wake up next morning.. find yourself on moon" ... Duhhhh !!! What are you gonna do? .. something similar to spider-man movie !!
For me.. No more work.. hurray... No more internet connection... No more cell phone.. Yehhh... Just don't have to worry about anything..
..Walking on moon will give a feeling of our ancestors.. "hooping" here and there..
Watch beautiful sunrise and sunset.. Infact watching earth-rise and earth-set will be a heavenly sight... blue planet rising from east.. With earth's rotation and cloud cover, it will always be a different sight..
Really good clear sky view at night time... just get your binocs or telescope out.. point it to orion nebula and no more atmospheric abrasions... every night will be a "star-party" !! ..really?... every night?? how often will have a night on moon :)?
What else... Hmmm.. ..too much heat.. barren land.. no more "blockbuster" ..no more "south park".. no more "slashdot".. Duhhh.. no food.. no water ..no oxygen ..Fight for survival.. new tensions.. new problems.. ohh man !!!
and NASA says that there are 181 good ideas to implement on Moon :D
If you are planning for a star-party or star gazing session, then having clear sky is absolute necessity. Infact if you are planning to drive to some remote place, then you should know weather details for next 4 to 5 hrs or so...
..Clear Sky Clock is exactly what we need.. It gives you hr-by-hr details about cloud cover, transparency, darkness as well as humidity, temperature and wind conditions..
SD weather is really bad these days.. heavy cloud cover, raining, windy and too cold.. Looks like no more star-gazing sessions till next thursday.. Duhhhh !!
Following up with my previous blog entry. About Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE) module, which was launched by ISRO 11 days back.
Today SRE-1 is returned home.. in excellent condition.. Hurray !!
When SRE-1 was directed for re-entry, it was traveling with lightening speed. According to ISRO press release, "The capsule made its re-entry at 09:37 am at an altitude of 100 km with a velocity of 8 km/sec (29,000 km per hour)". "By the time SRE-1 descended to an altitude of 5 km, aerodynamic breaking had considerably reduced its velocity to 101 m/sec (363 km per hour). Pilot and drogue parachute deployments helped in further reducing its velocity to 47 m/sec (about 170 km per hour). The main parachute was deployed at about 2 km altitude and finally, SRE-1 splashed down in the Bay of Bengal with a velocity of 12 m/sec (about 43 km per hour) at 09:46 am."
I believe it takes hell lot of design efforts to build a re-entry capsule that can sustain against the warp speed and intense heat being generated because of earth's atmosphere... In fact just out of curiosity, I looked into the numbers for Apollo 11 mission space capsule, called "Columbia" which carried 3 astronauts. According to NASA, "Columbia entered the atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kilometers per hour (25,000 miles per hour), its exterior reached a temperature of 2,760° C (5,000° F)."
.. Hshhh... Unbelievable.. Those astronauts survived at these extreme conditions..
.. Hats off to Apollo mission !!
Lets see how ISRO plans for their first manned lunar mission in 2018 !!
Comet McNaught is in the sky these days.. brightest one to naked eyes since last 30 years. Its becoming more and more brighter.. Its traveling so close to sun that most of its material is evaporating.. increasing its luminosity..
In northern hemisphere, (USA/India) it was visible till Jan 14th.. I watched it couple of times.. It was awesome site.. I have watched Shoemaker-Levy, Hyakutake and Hale-Bop before.. but McNaught is the best one for me... My father used to tell me stories from his childhood about some comet and about its tail.. He doesn't remember the name.. I believe it must be Ikeya-Seki .. any way.. now I also have stories about comet McNaught to tell him about and I have already bored him a lot on the phone :)
Now, McNaught has finished orbiting behind the sun and again visible from southern hemisphere.. and it is at its best... its just fabulous.. Its tail is going in a curvature.. leaving dust streaks behind.. kind of showing its circular orbit around the sun.. infact now its extravagant..
I have seen pictures of various comets.. but none was like this one.. Pictures from southern hemisphere are pouring on spaceweather. Also take a look at the pictures taken by original discoverer Rob McNaught. .. Just beautiful !!
Checkout this video taken by sun watching spacecrafts SOHO and STEREO
Goshh.. I should have been on southern side... I am really missing this !!
Photo credit: R. H. McNaught, Siding Spring Observatory
