A weekend in Mersing.

We packed a tent, soup and maggi mee, and were comfortably prepared compared to last time. I brought a new 8” newtonian telescope along. But, it was cloudy…

This is a record of my weekend in Mersing. There were about 20 of us, avid astronomers eager to catch the sight of the Milky Way and all the sky’s wonders from our dark site north of Mersing town. Alas, the weather didn’t look good, and the first night was spent in a fortuitous little chat with a certain Mr Au.

Mr Au Mun Chew is a man of 69 years old that has for years been involved in the astronomy scene in Singapore. He is a very qualified architect and studied in the UK. Our conversation went through his fishing adventures (when the natural wonders of our seas were not yet plundered), his studies in the UK, his experiences working for different businessmen and politicians in our region, basically the whole gamut of things about this thing called LIFE.

Just as a record for myself, we talked about – the crazy fisherman, 100s of kilos of fish, TASOS, Ng Eng Guan, LKY, Indonesian tiger prawns and plywood, Hong Leong, Hilton, passing his thesis, Hovercrafts and microphones, teaching, learning everything there is to know, Professor Omar Chin - archeologist.

There’s nothing like learning about life than hearing from a man who has been through it. I am not fortunate enough to be able to learn much about life from my grandparents or even from my father, because of language, distance, or otherwise. Yet, there was something about this night that struck at my inner most being.

“To know what you want to do in life, you have to really have to stare at the question like this”, he said, putting palm almost to palm in front of his face.

Not to say that the trip was a total washout astronomy-wise. For a few precious moments, the sight of the greatest globular cluster in the sky Omega Centuari and the clusters around Eta Carinae totally floored me. The new (very big) telescope really showed what lies out there.

I managed to catch my first few galaxies as well - the Sombrero galaxy, the whirlpool galaxy, and M64 and 65 I think. Although detail was lacking, their shapes were quite distinct and clearly visible. All the M objects in Sagittarius and Scorpius proved breathtaking (special mention: Swan Nebula), and the Ring nebula and the Hercules cluster were also logged.

Really wonderful.

Not enough.