STAR GAZING

Singapore being one of the most "light-polluted" countries, I never thought there would be an astronomical observatory here. But as it happens, there is one...and in fact, one of the few telescopes on the equator! And what more...they offer 'free star gazing' every friday between 7.45 and 10 pm! The planet on focus today was Jupiter - as that was the most observable celestial body today - perhaps the whole of December. There was a big hood like thing..as we see in the movies... in which the telescope was mounted. I guess the whole of the hood was rotatable to view different parts of the sky. The telescopic image showed 4 moons along with the planet. It just made me wonder how much our 'vision' has improved :P (The proposed site for the Indian Neutrino Observatory has been dismissed by the government). There a lot of things that we don't know and are beyond our imagination too. It is so interesting how people live in so much vanity when there are a lot of stuffs that we don't understand and do not even perceive! That apart, I also saw a small satellite that crossed Singapore while I was there...apparently it reflected the sun's light for a fraction of a minute on its way...and was observable at Singapore. One can get a list of observable satellites in their location for the next 7 days from this website: http://www.heavens-above.com/.

Astronomy is fun and humbling!