But I cannot forget my first Telescope, gifted to me by my mother to nourish the passion. I also remember the first licensed software - 'The Starry Night Basics', which I purchased from the planetarium library. It had an enormous database of celestial objects with real time & historic tracking and 3D views, live sky maps and many more. These two things changed my vision to look at the huge universe. I got another eye to look (using telescope) and another angle to poke (using software). My uncle added a magnification factor to this vision, by gifting me the best of the Astronomy books. When I look back at the notes and the calculations I made, I wonder about my passion - How it could fade out, over the scale of time?
Well, today when I go for overnight camping, my eyes look for the open grounds where I can lay under the starry dome and view entire universe without any obstruction. I like recollecting my old memories, finding various constellation and stars. It simply overwhelms all the thoughts.... bringing sheer peace of mind. The best part of such a wilderness camping is - you get a chance to propel deeper through the woods to the rivers, to the gorges, to the peaks, into the skies and up to the universe. As a result of that, an inferiority complex shatters the egoism of the human existence. How much is the expanse of the universe? Well, the answer won't come out so easily, but let me try out by giving some practical figures and examples:
•Our nearest celestial object - The Moon is 238857 miles away from us. This distance is almost 30 times Earth's diameter.
•Our Sun is the nearest star. At 93 million miles, the Sun provides the warmth that has allowed life to evolve on Earth. (Has life evolved elsewhere?)
•The furthest human object is the space probe Voyager 1. Launched in 1977, it is now more than twice as far from the Earth as Pluto.
•The 'Pleiades' star cluster is 400 light years away. One light year is 6 trillion miles.
•Deneb, in the constellation Cygnus, is one of the most distant stars you can see by eye. It takes light from Deneb 1600 years to reach us.
•This view toward the center of our galaxy shows the Milky Way as an immense city of stars. Our Sun and all the stars in the night sky are its residents.
•The furthest thing you can see by unaided eye is the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to our Milky Way. Light from Andromeda takes 2 million years to reach us!
•The deeper we see into space, the more galaxies we discover. Only a few points of light in this image come from stars in our own Milky Way; everything else is a distant galaxy. (This image below, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is among the deepest images of the universe ever taken. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are galaxies that formed early in the universe’s history, 600 million years after the Big Bang.)
•Light from the furthest galaxies we can see has taken more than ten billion years to reach us!
There is a limit to what we can see, but is there a limit to what we can understand? And if we try to understand, the imagination numbs the human intelligence. What we see as a marvel of human engineering in TV Shows is simply incomparable with the mega structures that universe delivers.
About a year ago, Sameer suddenly came up with his new gadget...... 8" telescope with accessories. It gave us another reason to plan overnight camping every weekend. We have been to several places for sky gazing, but one of my best camping was with Sameer, Akshay and Durgesh at Warasgaon Table top. The area is extraordinarily beautiful. Akshay had come all the way from Chennai and Durgesh from Banglore. We loaded the bulky telescope bag, camping & cooking kit and set off to Warasgaon early evening.
The food we cooked could have been unacceptable by civilized community, but the campers accepted it cheerfully just as a part of backyard cooking. We truly missed 'barbeques' which are considered as an integrated part of camping. With the fall of dusk, we all enjoyed the hot food and along with live 'Russell Peters' performed by Durgesh......two hours of sheer laugh. In between, we kept a close eye on the sky, waiting for fascinating celestial objects to rise. Especially Saturn, M31 (Andromeda) and Eta Carina. Moon was under continuous observation. By the time these cosmological celebrities arrive at the late night show, we decided to use the available time frame in an innovative and creative manner. We had an idea of 'long exposure' night photography. Durgesh and I went inside the tent; Sameer exposed the camera shutter, and we literally painted interiors of the tent using white head torch LED; while Akshay did the same from outside with yellow conventional light. Parking lights of the vehicle, and white, calm moon light added another magnitude to this experiment. To me, it was a good ab initio lesson in photography.
After the mid night coffee session, we focused on the sky map. 8" Telescope provided astounding views of the selected celestial objects. M31 and Orion Cluster were truly magnificent. We spent almost whole night watching the celestial gizmos. My all old memories of the subject overflew my mind. But, I did not want to explain the scientific concepts to my friends as they were enjoying the view of the universe through 8" dimetered eye.
Of the happenings that go on around a camp, I believe that it is the Starry Night that plays the most significant role. Just starring into the twinkling star can send one’s imagination to another world and even into the deepest parts of one’s soul. The expanse of the massive universe brings the ones who look into it back to a time and a place where they once felt the same. However, these are my feelings. For each who looks into the universe, it is different. The universe has more than just the mysteries that people think of; it is truly magical place and creates a psychological impact on the observer.
Early dawn I went to the deep sleep - in the middle of the tar road, and I was positively sure about the non existence of a single vehicle in the region.
I was awakened by the dew damp covering my entire sleeping bag when the eastern skies opened up with red paint. Sluggish & Yawned, I went on the edge of table top to view the sun rise. By the time, Sameer woke up, and his photographic eyes captured one million sun risers through the dew drops covering entire vehicle body. That was an 'award winning' photograph.
So going back to Astronomy,
Well, recently Google released its Sky, Moon and Mars database with unbelievable 3D imagery with minute details. Now we can have a direct access to the photographs shared by Hubble Space scope, Chandra and other equipments in a single package as a part of Google database. I would like to share few of my favorite Celestial objects which I've been seeing for years. They still look mysterious to my eyes. Google Sky API has made it easy to share with others. Have a look at the guided tour below showing Eta Carina, Andromeda, Orion Nebula and the brightest star in the sky 'The Sirrius B' (after our Sun). But when you look at them practically, especially from the place like Warasgaon Tabletop, the scenario is entirely different, and joy is purely unexplainable.
The second guided tour is 'Apollo 11' mission to the Moon. The tour is created by Sean Aksay. Unfortunetly I could not extract the voice. But it is Worth Watching.
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