Observing

Last night (Nov 15, 2013) I was at KaAstrodome with Mehdi Hussain’s Skywatcher 7″ MCT. Objective was to hunt comets. Started with the testing of GoTo which was expected to be not functioning well. With the help of my Bino (15×70) I pointed laser on the Lovejoy and then Mehdi Hussain centred it in the MCT. We went to sleep before ISON. Oh I forgot. There was also an Io Transit, which was in plans.   Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter and, with a diameter of 3,642 kilometres (2,263 mi), the fourth-largest moon [...]

It is a dream of every Astro-Photographer to capture the GRS once. The great red spot of planet Jupiter. During a night observation on November 2, 2013 my dream came true. The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter’s equator; Earth observations establish a minimum storm lifetime of, variously, 183 years to possibly 348 years. The GRS rotates anticlockwise, with a period of about six Earth days or 14 Jovian days. Great Red Spot captured by me on Saturday Nov 2, 2013.   The GRS rotates anticlockwise, with a period of about six Earth days [...]

It was March 1989 when my younger brother Zaki was born. Fifteen days later we had Ramazan in Pakistan. 20.4 hours old crescent (Ramazan 1409AH / April 6th 1989) by Howard Cowen from Gainesville, FL. The dark streak just beneath the Moon is an airplane contrail. Nostalgic, eh? Perhaps this shot makes you think: "Boy, those were the days; the lunar crescents of Ramazan and the Eids used to be so thin in Pakistan and the hunt for them so exciting ..." Fast forward twenty years to 2009. The Eid crescent looked like this: Shawwal 1430AH crescent from Khuzdar, Balochistan, on [...]

Meteor observation, for KaAS, had a long time coming. This interesting astronomy pursuit doesn't require equipment and is an ideal activity for the learning amateur astronomer. In KaAS, our set up is ideally suited for a serious shower observation. The sequence includes preparation, observation of the shower, collection of shower count and lastly reduction of the meteor observation data. International Meteor Organization, IMO has it all explained in their website. Its a satisfying activity; knowing that your observation has positively contributed to astronomy on international level. So was it planned, the 9th Rutjuga, at Kalri Lake which had been the site of two [...]

(This is an updated version of an article of mine that was published in a youth magazine in June 2011. You can read the original article here.)   [85:1] I swear by the mansions of the stars. The unpolluted night sky is one of the most wondrous things that the mortal eye can conceive. No fancy equipment is needed. Just the urge to gaze skywards on a clear, cloudless night is your ticket to enjoying the captivating show of earthly and celestial lights. In the following we sample some of the open secrets of the night sky. 1.            The Milky Way As [...]

I almost forget about Astronomy in summer. Summer constellations are totally strangers for me. But as fall gets closer to winter, I start feeling at home when I look at the sky. Even though this is absolutely a matter of personal liking, I do feel that Winter Skies are much more attractive than Summer Skies. There are more well-defined constellations in winter than summer. Orion, Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Leo, Cassiopeia etc. A very good, informative link about winter skies is here. Moreover, this winter (2010), we have some regular visitors from the Solar System. Among these, Jupiter is the most attractive with [...]

Maybe it's an area of reduced stellar population within the globular, or perhaps thin dust lanes slightly masking our view. Whatever it is, the dark propeller or Y-shaped feature in the Hercules Globular Cluster is real. When I saw it the first time with Khalid sahab's 18" at Lake Kalri in February 2010, it was hit-me-on-the-head obvious. Although it is said that the feature is easier to observe with smaller apertures than with larger ones, I've yet to see it with the 10" LX200. Give it a try and see for yourself. Here's a shot of M13 by Hunter Wilson. Another [...]

On June 30, 1973, the Concorde prototype (dubbed Concorde 001) made a journey over northern Africa which set records yet to be broken. On that day, it raced the Moon's umbral shadow during the second longest total solar eclipse of the last century. Each of the flight's participants accumulated an amazing 74 minutes of shadow time. Don Connolly made this painting of Concorde 001 emerging from umbral darkness.  It depicts the eclipse as if photographed by a 35mm camera with a 1000mm lens from about 3000m below the aircraft. The painting — Racing the Moon — won first prize in the commercial category of the Aviation Week & Space Technology/American Society [...]