Distance to Sun ???

Now that I recall there is certainly a need to educate people on Astronomy, atleast the basics since this Friday on 27th March during Astro Quiz one of the participants asked me how many light years away is the sun from earth?

I was speechless....

-Bhaskar

Celebrating International Year of Astronomy !!!

Certainly declaration of 2009 as International Year of Astronomy has sparked a new interest in Astronomy and those wary of the sciences will definitely be attracted once again to this mighty realm. With this in mind, we @ Astronomy Club are organizing a number of events mainly discussions , presentations and dome shows @ the TMA Pai planetarium. Beginning this Friday, 27th March we conducted a dome show followed by an Astro Quiz. Dome show seemed to be the perfect start for such an occasion. The winner of Astro Quiz, Vikrant , 4th year MIT received the book "The Elegant Universe" as prize.

In the upcoming weeks, we plan to concentrate more on the presentations with an aim to impart knowledge and even hold more group discussions.
All that remains is your participation...

-Bhaskar

Variable stars

With a Motive for expanding our knowledge of Astronomy, the club decided to get together every Thursday for discussions on the recent events in the area. The first one of such Thursdays saw a discussion on variable stars. Basically, Variables are those objects in the night sky whose apparent brightness (i.e. as seen from earth) changes over time. The changes may be due to a variation in the star’s actual luminosity, intrinsic variables or due to variations in the amount of the star's light that is blocked from reaching Earth, Extrinsic variables.

Our very own pole star or Polaris belongs to the class of Variable Stars, accurately, it is part of the Cepheid variables, a class of pulsating stars that swell and shrink extremely regularly. Generally in each subgroup of the class, a fixed relation holds between period and absolute magnitude, as well as a relation between period and mean density of the star hence enabling astronomers to gauge the distances of such stars from the earth.

-Ankit Bhatia

on to SP1 -> here's to the Improved WWT!

its been a month... and i hav seen from the sidelines the slow & steady progress of wwt.

it's amazing how far these people (the devs working on it) r willin to take it...

here's a glimpse of something really interesting that is taking shape as we speak...
in the olden days, we would hav a multitude of s/w for communicating with astronomical devices n none catered specifically so 4 these devices alone...

all that's already begun to change...


For the love of God, YOU MUST CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE if u own a motor driven telescope....or one that is in anyway electronically interfaceable in any which way...
http://www.ascom-standards.org/

Here's the broad architecture:




jus found this article from one of the most reputed magazine in Astronomical circles' website stating how the astronomical community itself (in particular High Profile Astro Pppl at S&T themselves) gave inputs leading to what is currently the WWT product... thus it is one of the rare products of this kind made FOR ASTRONOMERS BY ASTRONOMERS' requirements.
(refer: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/18859539.html )

also, it is due to this only that all the well known astronomy publications hav started forming their own WWT communities... S&T has gone as far as making it's entire photo archive available on WWT...(WHICH IS A VERY VERY BIG THING!) (for details... read the article link i posted jus before this.)



(src= http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/help/SupportHelp.aspx?SuppS=Communities)

Also, the s/w itself is amazing and one can play with it for decades before even exhausting the readymade footage...
N after that one can browse the imagery for millenia probably if one wishes to wander aimlessly in space... or even on earth 4 that matter....


(src: again, on my screen...this time the WWT is seen running here)


here's to the dawn of a new astronomical millenia where we might now be able to hav (theoretically at least) telescopic vision [of unthinkable magnitudes] bionically fed into our eyes...

n for the even more visionary...here's to realtime stars in ur dreams!
wishing u starry nights... (in ur dreams that is...)
n great imagery!

Surjodeb Basu
(7/22/2008)

hey... a followup...

hi. whoever had posted about the worldwide telscope proj... i followed it up upon my arrival here, internally at office.it turns out that this project will be far far better n bigger than the existing google sky. the people at microsoft hav tied up with the hubble's ground based observatory which owns all the original hubble imagery to provide the same (note:google sky had done that too...) but the actual place where the difference with existing s/w like sky (google sky) is made in the amazing visualizations... the fundamentally different nature of the code (it is based on a space-based env, rather than an earth based env such as google sky which was developed from google earth n not built from scratch)... leads to an altogether different approach in rendering... thus allowing 4 smooth flawless rendering of all the celestial bodies...(includin the earth!)

also, the fact that a company like ms (which actually has proper exposure to graphics at a lower level) than google (which generally operates on graphics ata much higher level of abstraction) is workin on it adds a totally new dimension to this solution to the s/w encoding n rendering of the sky...

this is most visible in the use of ms's Visual Experience Engine to drive the rendering.... this most amazing piece of code is what makes all the cool graphics possible...it is a direct derivative of the segments of code that allow 4 all those gr8 new graphics in ur new Vista os.

considerin how gr8 this software is already in it's current stage, i was left amazed n wonderin why ms continues to provide the same 4 free...

the reasons became quite clear moments later when i realized the idea is to allow ppl to experience the feel of wwt... as once they hav experienced wwt they'll never be able to go back. sooner or later this is bound to become copyrighted sold s/w...
(the proj vision is too expensive to sustain otherwise... i'm sure of that..)

...so much 4 astronomical evangelism!!!
but then again, it's an amazing product.... the only downside bein it requires a lot of memory n quite some hdd space... but thik hai, i guess they decided to make the best product 4 the most dedicated astronomer when they set out... high expectations na?...i guess they jus wanted to design the best, n not set ny limitations on themselves...
nyways, if u still hav nydoubt abt the s/w read this article : http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/27/what-made-me-cry-microsofts-world-wide-telescope/

here's wishing u dirty skies... lol... n obviously, a clear computer screen . ;)

dev . (/ Surjodeb Basu )

here's a pic (/screenshot) :

have a look at this website--www.worldwidetele

scope.org
explore the universe!AMAZING TOOL by microsoft..

those BALLS OF FIRE are back

it's that time of the year again.And it's time for yet another display of those spectacular Leonid showers.These meteor showers(seen basically as streaks of light), and if large enough sometimes individually described as shooting stars, are basically a display of atmospheric fireworks.They are basically caused by rocky remnants left on the orbital path of earth by some other astronomical objects such as comets burning up upon encountering the earthly atmosphere.Leonids are so called as they originate ( that is enter the Earth's atmosphere) in the area of the sky demarcated by the constellation of Leo.Due to the regularity of Earth's orbital period and path, these showers (in particular, in the month of November) are caused almost always by the comet described by the name Comet 55P, Tempel-Tuttle.Thus as one would conjecture they are most prominent when the comet has just visited it's perihelion(that is it's closest approach to the Sun.),- as this would be the time that most of the cometary debris would be floating closely packed in interplanetary circumsolar space.

As the comet has not been in close proximity to the Sun for quite some time, the 2007 Leonids are expected to be a somewhat modest spectacle in comparison to the previous season's fiery display.but they are still expected to be quite a sight nonetheless.the showers peaked this last week and are still visible to the keen observer.all one requires is a comfortable place to lie down somewhere below the open sky.keeping an uninterrupted view of the whole sky while lying down is essential to the act of catching a meteor(/shooting star) doing the burning ('Great Balls of Fire') act.Binoculars are a strict no-no, as are telescopes, as this would narrow the field of observation and greatly reduce the observer's capability to spot a shooting star and also make it difficult for the observer to track it once he spots it(if he succeeds at all in spotting it using binoculars in the first place!).

as described before, focus on the constellation of Leo from where these shooting stars shall appear to streak out.do note that the shooting stars shall only appear to be streaking out from Leo and might make their brightness more apparent once they are further away from the constellation.Hence it is essential to keep a look at that entire region of sky(and not limit oneself to Leo alone) to have a proper perspective of the showers.If you have trouble locating Leo, but are comfortable identifying the planets, Leo is the (abnormally big bladed) sickle shaped constellation appearing above Saturn.
so i guess things are looking up this week, and maybe we should too.....
Surjodeb Basu (/Dev).





Some amazing images of actual Leonids in action in different parts of the world taken with different camera exposures:
(Click on them to enlarge)