On Astronomy

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I think it's about time I record down my first proper viewing session with a telescope. It happened on the night of 21st of August (if my memory serves me correctly). The event was Mars Watch II, organised by a local amatuer astronomy club in conjunction with the closest approach of Mars in recorded history. The venue was Bedok reservoir.

I had borrowed a telescope earlier from a lecturer. I was very excited. It was a celestron 114mm Newtonian on an wooden equatorial mount. For those who didn't understand that, it was a very long tube made by a company called Celestron in the States that has a mirror inside and is of the same basic design as the one Newton invented. Basically, it's big, heavy and bulky, which is good because the bigger the better in terms of aperture - which is the diameter of the primary lense. The bigger the 'eye', the more light can enter, the fainter the object visible. But, it wasn't so good being so big and bulky. The better instruments are lighter and smaller but cost so much more..

Back to the scene, it was the first time checking out all the scopes that people own and it was great hoping from scope to scope, comparing the images of Mars, asking questions and making friends.