By: Amjad Nizamani
It was 10:00 pm, I was chatting with my friends on MSN and the electricity went off. I started to think, “What do I do? What do I do?”
Got one word answer, Astronomy! It had been two months and I dint take out my binoculars, now was the time.
Though it is 17th of Shawwal and naturally the moon is out (and hence a lot of light pollution), I decided to observe few objects anyway. After all, moon too is a great object to observe.
I grabbed my binoculars, laser pointer and laptop, and to the roof I went. It was nice to see the black-out in the area after a lot of time. I could see lot more stars than the average summer night.
First target was Jupiter. It was putting up a good show. It was very bright. As you might know, Jupiter is very near to Earth these days.
Next target was constellation Aquila. Observed its main star “Altair”, then I went for Triple Star System in Aquila, Epsilon Aquila.
Epsilon Aquilae is also known as “Danab al Okab” in Arabic. Which means the “Tail of the Eagle”. Epsilon Aquilae is approximately 154 light years from Earth.
Then I turned to the brightest object in the sky, Moon. It was simply great. I had never observed moon in such detail. Kept observing it for about 10 minutes.
Ambient lighting increased as electricity showed up. So I marked the end of the session and moved down stairs. It was short but good observation session after a long time.
after two months, bilal back in action…:P
Nice observing session Bilal Bhai. Did u observed closely to the Jupiter? Tried to c its tiny moons with 10X 50?
Asad dear, as you might have noticed that this post is not by me but our fellow astronomer Amjad bhai and not by me. But I guess he maybe didn’t notice it or moons of Jupiter might not be visible because of Moon light.