Tinkerer
Comet McNaught named after its discoverer R. H. McNaught, is now visible to the naked eye. It is currently reported to be at magnitude 3 but only 15 degrees over the Eastern horizon around 3 AM in the morning – in the Perseus constellation.
Here is the path of the comet (in PDF too)
Comet McNaught - path
Below is a picture from the Cometography site-
Comet McNaught - From http://cometography.com/lcomets/2009r1.html
Some photos and video from my trip to Varanasi to witness the Total Solar Eclipse on 22 July 2009.
Varanasi turned out to be the best site to watch the eclipse in India as most other places got rained out. There was intermittent cloud cover until before totality but that provided a chance to view the partial sun with naked eyes since the clouds acted as a filter too. Just before totality and later, there was simply no cloud cover.
I was watching from the first floor balcony of a temple, with the Assi Ghat and Ganga right in front of us. Thousands of people had begun crowding the ghat from morning (some fearing the eclipse, some waiting for it), and that panorama added to the overall experience.
I was all prepared with filters and two cameras.. but I got the exposure and zoom wrong.. I should have focused more on getting a ‘regular’ picture of the totality with the Ganga and the Ghat in view, but the couple of mins of totality had me so engrossed that I forgot to take the filters off, resulting in dark totality pictures and missing the first diamond ring.
Nevertheless, nothing compares to a total solar eclipse. For a brief moment, imagine a huge black button with a golden aura in the sky.. the moments of anticipation towards first contact, totality and the diamond rings.. and the (nearly) 2 minutes of eerie darkness during totality. Now I know why there are people that chase eclipses around the world!
While this was pretty much the last total solar eclipse to pass through the main belt of India for the next 100 years or so, there is an Annular solar eclipse coming up on the Jan 15th 2010 which will be viewable from the southern tip of India. The annular eclipse will not see a diamond ring etc but will witness a somewhat brighter totality, since the disc of the moon won’t cover the sun entirely.
Some pictures, including those from Sarnath where I travelled later in the day, are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thearbitcouncil/tags/varanasi/
Here is a video.. the second diamond ring is visible around the 8:20 mark.
Right Ascension or RA, and Declination or Dec, refer to the coordinate systems for stars and other heavenly bodies. They are similar to the concept of latitude/longitude on earth and provide a “constant” reference for locating objects in the night sky. However, for an observer on earth, as the sky moves through the night, a given RA and Dec doesn’t always fall in the same spot, but instead, depends on the local latitude/longitude and date/time.
In order to make practical use of the RA/Dec tables for objects, you also need to be able to convert them to a simple “degrees” format that shows how high from your horizon (technically not horizon but the celestial equator) and how far west or east you need to point your telescope. The former is the Altitude, and the latter the Azimuth coordinate.
After looking at a dozen explanations of the conversion method, I created this excel sheet where you input certain parameters and get the Altitude and Azimuth outputs. The whole thing is based on the great explanation at http://www.stargazing.net/kepler/altaz.html.
Note that there are progams such as “Stellarium” which automatically do this for you. The excel sheet is probably a handy tool in certain cases if you don’t want a full fledged application running, and is likely to be heplful to understand the conversion method.
Bug reports are welcome. Next version should contain things like automatic time input (using your PC’s system clock) and possibly a version for mobile phones!
2009 is being celebrated as the International Year of Astronomy by the International Astronomical Union. The cornerstone project of this initiative is 100 Hours of Astronomy – a concerted effort by astronomers and organisations at all levels across the globe, to carry out astronomy related workshops from 2nd to 5th April. More details and other programs are listed here.
To get involved in Delhi events, you can participate at Nehru Planetarium where they have many activities planned.
You can also join SPACE’s activities at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi from 2nd to 5th daily, from sun rise to 11 PM. The schedule of the activities is on a Google calendar, that include -
* Measuring Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun (in day time), Moon and Stars (in evening and night) using Ram Yantra
* Marking Sun™s Path on Jai Prakash Yanra and studying the changing declination of the Sun
* Calibration of Samrat Yantra
* Sidewalk Astronomy Gibbous Moon and Saturn will be the highlight for this telescopic observatiieeseson.
* Star counting activities to measure the light pollution level in Delhi (SPACE™s Project Dark Skies)
Live webcast of Delhi’s events at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/space-100-hours-of-astronomy
The schedule for the live webcast is
1145-1215(IST) [0615-0715 GMT] introduction to Ram Yantra
1600-1700(IST) [1130-1230GMT] Tour of Jantar Mantar
1845-1930(IST)[1315-1400GMT] SPACE IYA programmes
1930-2030(IST)[1400-1500GMT] Sidewalk Astronomy
For Bangalore, visit the Bangalore Astronomical Society’s blog.
For a complete list of events in India registered with the IYA, click here.
Join this yahoogroup to stay connected to activities in India – http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/Astronomy_Activities_2009/
Several years back I had once observed what looked like a star moving quickly in a straight line across the zenith, on a clear night in Dehradun. That was an artificial satellite, which are frequently visible (with the naked eye too in clear environs) during dusk or dawn.
Satellite spotting is a regular hobby with many skygazers. And there are websites (surprise!) that generate satellite paths on sky charts for tracking. The first google link turned out to be at hobbyspace.com – a great list of such websites. And particularly useful is a German site called Heavens-above (this link takes you directly to the satellite predictions for New Delhi – may not work in Firefox 3.0).
Using their excellent charts, I was easily able to spot Cosmos 1674 and Cosmos 2263 (that passed just below Saturn today), using an ordinary 10x binocular. The satellites appear as a small dot racing past your field of view.
If you plan to spot any of these, I suggest being prepared at least 5 minutes before – make sure you locate the estimated position and the neighbouring (well, not literally) stars/planets, and scan the area around the path at the given time.
What would be ultracool? A webcam setup with a small scope that tracks these satellites automatically and uploads the video feed on the internet.
This comet is now in Leo, near Saturn, and visible for most of the night. It’s supposed to be fairly easy to spot, given the 180 degree angular distance from the sun, and its long tails. I couldn’t find it with a 10x binocular, and a 20x refractor scope. I did look around where its supposed to be, but probably a magnification of 50x or so is required at least, to make out the hazy tail and ascertain it’s not a star. Also Delhi’s ambient city light spreads out to about 50 degrees up from the horizon, making it impossible to spot stars below 4 or 5 magnitude.
Here is a pdf showing the comet’s trajectory over the next few days: click
(Its easy to spot Leo and Saturn after about 9 PM – look east where the sun rises, then crane your neck up about 40 degrees. There should be 3 bright stars – the lowest red one is Saturn (well planet not star), and the top two which appear in a line parallel to the horizon are from the Leo constellation, the right one being Regulus. That’s where the comet is around (see pdf).
Here are regular followups by various astronomers : click
There’s news about a new photograph of the Helix Nebula, that looks like an eye, and is being nicknamed the Eye of God.
The visual magnitude is about 7.6, and the angular diameter is 32.7′ – that’s a little more than the full moon’s diameter in the sky. Hence this should be fairly easy to spot with a low power telescope or binoculars – the latter are better because you need a wide field of view to capture the haziness. The low south location might make it difficult from Delhi etc due to the pollution and ambient lights in the city. Also its already beginning to set around 9PM these days so its close to the west horizon again. (By the way I don’t think you should expect to see the bright colors you see in the news pic above.)
Here’s how you could locate it in the sky.
The Helix nebula is the pink square on the bottom right. It falls in the Aquarius constellation. If you can’t find that, you could start with Orion (middle left in the pic). There’s also Jupiter in the bottom right (the last symbol, 
) which is very easily spotted these days (brightest star-like above the western horizon, easily visible just as the sun starts to set). This is a link to wikisky where you could do better to try pinpoint the location.
There are two other objects you could try – marked in squares on the top of the pic – the left one is Pleides (or seven sister, a collection of 200+ stars that appears to form a nice pattern. Easy to spot with naked eye), and the right one is the Andromeda galaxy (Need small scope).
