KaAS team had an honor of visitingKarachi University’s Department of Planetary Astrophysics (ISPA) on Friday, November 12, 2010 in result of Abbas’ devotedefforts. This effort was specially put in to bring KaAS tothe recognization at Government level by introducing it to Karachi University.

Let me tell you that ISPA has a Carl Ziess 6” reflector – a German gem of a telescope that was donated to Karachi University in early days. Unfortunately, as everything else, this was alsobadly neglected by the authorities. If it were not some energatic and devoted students – who are keeping it alive – it would have died along ago. Abbas will be writing more about it soon.

The plan was to put the giant scope to use for the visitor to observe the waxing crescent Moon and Jupiter.The time of the event was from 5 in the evening till 9 at night. Abbas has sent the invitation to quite a few people. When I got there at 4:30, Abbas was already ther e with a bunch of college students, Mr. Zahoor and a few other fellows. The observatory itself is located on a beautiful , elevated area of KU. The picture tries to capture the view from the top:

The scope’s pictures are not very impressive because the dom it’s in is very small and you don’t get good photo angles. I have tried to capture the OTA and the Mount.

The following pictures show another great asset being put to waste by the authorities. This a pair of giant 100mm binoculars on fully functional ALTAZmount. I really regretted these binoculars to be in KU instead of a private property of any KaASian. Atleast they wouldn’t have been in such bad condition.

Soon we were joined by Mr. Khalid Marwat – President of KaAS and Dr. Shahid Qureshi – Chairman ISPA. Khalid Sahab had brought his Meade 2080 SCT. The most difficult question for me by the students was: Why is this small telesope more powerful that BIG one in the dome.

More coming soon….