July 28, 2003
July 24, 2003
My first DSO picture
M13: The great globular cluster in Hercules.
Posted by Parag at 02:51 PM
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July 21, 2003
Strange coincidence
Watched 'Red Dragon' (2002 version) on Saturday night. When I switched off the PVR, the TV went back to the previous channel which was NBC. 'Saturday Night Live' was on and it showed one of the spoof ads. 'Hannibal Lecter goes to MSU'-- coming this fall.
How strange is that???
Posted by Parag at 09:33 AM
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July 18, 2003
Sushi... hmmm.
Hmmmmm..... Feel like eating sushi. Seems like it's been a long time since I did. No, wait... It was just last friday...one week ago...that's long enough.
A nice sparkling-new restaurant in East Lansing, called Sansu. Very good fresh sushi. Don't have to worry about finding good place to eat on my next trip out
there.
Posted by Parag at 10:02 AM
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July 10, 2003
Jupiter
.......
Overexposed to see moons.......Shorter exposure to see surface details.
Posted by Parag at 03:24 PM
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July 08, 2003
Wish I was here just
Posted by Parag at 03:30 PM
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July 01, 2003
M13 was at the
M13 was at the
zenith last night around 11pm. It was just beautiful even through the
old Newtonian. Tonight, I should take out Meade LXD55 and observe this
gem in the night sky. Here is a little description about it:
Discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714. M13, also called the 'Great globular cluster in Hercules', is one of the most prominent and best known globulars of the Northern celestial hemisphere. It was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, who noted that 'it shows itself to the naked eye when the sky is serene and the Moon absent.' According to Charles Messier, who cataloged it on June 1, 1764, it is also reported in John Bevis' "English" Celestial Atlas.
At its distance of 25,100 light years, its angular diameter of 23' corresponds to a linear 165 light years. It contains several 100,000 stars; Timothy Ferris in his book Galaxies even says "more than a million". Towards its center, stars are about 500 times more concentrated than in the solar neighborhood. The age of M13 has been determined by Sandage as 24 billion years and by Arp as 17 billion years around 1960; Arp later (in 1962) revised his value to 14 billion years (taken from Kenneth Glyn Jones)
Also observed M57. It was very small and fuzzy. Should be better through the new telescope. Here is a little description about M57:
Discovered by Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779. The famous ring nebula M57 is often regarded as the prototype of a planetary nebula, and a showpiece in the northern hemisphere summer sky. Recent research has confirmed that it is, most probably, actually a ring (torus) of bright light-emitting material surrounding its central star, and not a spherical (or ellipsoidal) shell, thus coinciding with an early assumption by John Herschel. Viewed from this equatorial plane, it would thus more resemble the Dumbbell Nebula M27 or the Little Dumbbell Nebula M76 than its appearance we know from here: We happen to view it from near one pole.
The mass of the nebular matter has been estimated at about 0.2 solar masses, the density at about 10,000 ions per ccm (cm^3). Its chemical composition has been determined as follows: On each Fluor (Fl) atom, the Ring Nebula contains 4.25 million atoms of Hydrogene (H), 337,500 Helium (He), 2,500 Oxygene (O), 1,250 Nitrogene (N), 375 Neon (Ne), 225 Sulfur (S), 30 Argon (Ar) and 9 Chlorine (Cl) atoms. It is expanding at 20 to 30 km/s, and approaching us at 21 km/s.
Posted by Parag at 09:26 AM
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