Today is the first day of the new year according to the traditions in Sri Lanka (or rather the traditions of Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka). I personally find the traditional new year in SL interesting as unlike many traditions around the world where the new year begins with a new day, it begins at a particular time of ...
Probably about an year or so back, I tried to capture Saturn. It didn't work out well because there was a collimation error in the telescope; Saturn turned out like two saucers placed face to face.Last week, when I visited a national park, I decided to try it once more, this time with the Samyang 500mm Mirror Lens. This also ...
A giant sunspot group, AR2192, has formed on the sun again, and the group is now larger than the largest sunspot group we saw last year, making this the biggest sunspot group in the decade.AR2192 - 500mm Samyang Mirror Lens, Baader Solar Filter If you would like to know how big this really is, have a look at this image ...
In the recent times, the term "blue moon" has come to mean having two full moons in a month. The term "once in a blue moon" implies some kind of a rarity. The year 2018 is in that sense even more rare in the sense that there are two blue moons in the same year. But is it that much ...
I'm pretty sure quite a lot of us have seen moving stars. No these are not shooting stars, these are much slower and are reasonably bright. These are man-made satellites.Thanks to a tip-off from my dad (he's an avid reader of a local science magazine), I knew for a while that the International Space Station (ISS) is visible to naked ...
This year is what probably you should call the Year of Astronomy. We are going to have three lunar eclipses, two solar eclipses (and one of them being a hybrid solar eclipse; an eclipse that appears as a total eclipse to some areas and an annular eclipse to other areas), three comets and Saturn at the closest to Earth. If ...
After getting necessary film to cover the whole aperture of the lens, I decided to try out a few shots in the morning. Starting off with the highest shutter speed of 1/4000, I realised that even that gives a VERY bright picture (as opposed to the 1/80-1/40 shutter speed which gave a "reasonably ok" view yesterday).Now here's a bit of ...
About two weeks ago I finally got my hands on the motor drive for my Astromaster 114EQ. I was debating whether I really need it or not and finally decided to just go for it. And over the weekend I had it installed and tested.To start off with, the motor drive arrived with minimal instructions. But that wasn't really a ...
Jupiter and Galilean Moons - From top to bottom: Europa, Io, Callisto and GanymedeI am not some one who is very sentimental, but I can't stop going back to the times that I was about 13-14 years old when I look at this picture.Back in around 1994-95 I constructed a telescope using nothing more than a lens of dad's old ...
Today (03rd November 2013) marks the last eclipse for the year of 2013 and it is a total solar eclipse for some areas in the world. Although Sri Lanka is not in that list, if you want to see how it looks like, there is someone webcasting it as it happens:SLOOH - Total Solar Eclipse or embedded via the SLOOH website The webcast of the eclipse will begin at around 17:15 Sri Lankan time.
Like my last post says, I went through an unfortunate incident of breaking the mount of my Celestron 114EQ. Thankfully I had the Samyang Mirror Lens to play with. Here is a photo of Jupiter made with the mirror lens:Jupiter - Stack of 10 images 1/80 shutter at 800ISO.Taken by Samyang 500mm f8.0 with a 2x converter.The photo is not ...
With all the preparation yesterday and day before, I was quite hopeful that I could get a few decent shots of the transit. I was specifically planning for one good shot through the telescope and a time-lapse shot of the transit across the solar disc. So imagine my delight when I work up today morning and found this greeting me:So ...
Since any celestial photography is out due to the rains, I thought I might as well capture that.All photos were taken with a Canon 18-55mm (at 18mm) and a Canon 550D. The first photo has an exposure time of 15s and all others are with an exposure time of 30s. The photos have been post-processed for contrast and exposure.
Magellanic clouds are two irregular galaxies that were once thought to be the closest galaxies to the Milkyway. The two galaxies are situated in the southern hemisphere and may have been first observed by the Khosians. However, the first written evidence of the two clouds appears in 964AD in a book by Abd al Rahman al Sufi. The Large Magellanic ...
Well usually, you'd say it the other way around: Good news and bad news. But I have a lot more to say about the good news than the bad news.The bad news is that I toppled over the telescope and broke its mount. I still can't believe it, but yeah so that's how it went. I am thankful that the ...
About a week back, the NexStar 4SE that I ordered arrived. I've been quite eager to test it out in the field but however so far been unsuccessful due to bad weather. But the first impressions so far have been good. Here's a short review on the 4SE compared to the 114EQ.Out of the box:Everything was neatly packed in ...
I've been using a Celestron NexStar4SE for about five years now and have tried photographing various types of sky objects. The best photos I have so far have been of planets.My rig for these have been the following:Celestron NexStar 4SECanon 550D unmoddedCelestron 93635-A T-Adapter for NexStar 4GTCelestron T-ring for Canon EOS cameraSamyang 2x teleconverterAlong with these and shooting on 640x480 ...
You can see a very bright star in the evening skies these days. Have a look at the western skies, just after the sunset, you will see a very bright star. It is so bright, that you can see it just after the sun sets and the skies are still blue.This is not actually a star. It's the planet Venus. ...
