Exploration of Universe with NASA

On Wednesday 5th December I attended the lecture on “Exploring the Universe With NASA” delivered by Dr. Jaydeep Mukharjee who is working at Kennedy Space Centre in NASA. The lecture was of 1hour duration power point presentation followed by a question answer session. The auditorium was almost full though the lecture was kept on odd working day.

Dr.Jaydeep Mukharjee started his speech saying that the NASA’s exploration program of the universe is classified into three main arenas viz. Sun-Earth exploration, Exploration of Solar system and Exploration of universe. He then started directly to speak on each of the programs and gave a brief idea of how the NASA and its instruments are working for them.

The exploration of Sun-Earth is monitored by the satellites, telescopes and space shuttles. NASA has sent 2 satellite telescopes named as STEREO to observe the Sun constantly. The 2 telescopes’ images when merged together give rise to a 3-D image of Sun. The Sun shows some phenomena like solar flares and solar prominences which are the flares of ionic particles emerging out of the Sun. The satellite systems and electronic instruments got damaged due to highly energetic flares and even some parts on the Earth had experienced a total blackout due to the flares affecting the power stations. The same object when seen in different wavelength like visible, infrared, X-ray, ultraviolet, radio, etc. reveals more details. Hence many objects including Sun are observed in different wavelengths using Chandra telescope for X-ray, Spitzer for infrared, and many ground based visible and radio telescopes.

The exploration of Solar system bodies includes exploration of planets and their moons. Various spacecrafts are sent to different planets to study the planets and moons. The main focus of NASA’s Solar System Exploration program is on the study of Mars. The Mars is very much similar to Earth in many aspects. The length of day and the axial tilt of Mars are matching with the Earth’s. Moreover the photographs of Mars have shown the existence of water on it in the past and many areas of Martian surface resemble the river patterns and glacier patterns on Earth. The next main focus is on our moon and NASA is going to start its moon missions soon but for the time being the NASA is going to send its instruments on Moon through the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Moon spacecraft named “Chandrayaan-1”.

The exploration of universe is mainly focused on the discovery of exoplanets i.e. the planetary systems of other stars along the globe. There are certain criteria which have to be fulfilled to hold the life and nurture it on any planet. NASA is examining the exoplanets on these criteria but due to the technological limitations till now very few planets are found which fulfill some of these criteria. Over 200 exoplanets are discovered till date. The telescopes sent to the space like Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer are used to explore the whole universe in multiwavelength. Observing the same object in multiwavelength helps to know more about it.



The Centaurus A is the best example of this. In the universe the galaxies are classified according to their shape viz. elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, irregular, etc. But Centaurus A was seen as an elliptical in infrared wavelength but showing some spiral arm like structure which appears exactly on the central region of core in the visible observations. This led to the conclusion that it is formed by the merging of two types of galaxies one is of elliptical and other is of spiral. Radio observations reveal that highly energetic jets are emerging out of it which means a super massive Black Hole is present in the core.


Then he moved on the NASA’s Kennedy centre and its launch pads. He showed some beautiful launches of the space shuttles. He told that the space shuttle is enormously cared by the NASA in all its phases. To take the shuttle from the vertical assembly building to the launch pad which is 5 miles apart from it, NASA’s vehicle takes approximately 5 hours which ensures the shuttle to remain in exact vertical position.


Dr. Mukharjee brought some gifts for the persons who ask the questions and the most beautiful gift was a Can written as ‘Antimatter’ but containing water which has traveled all the way through the space inside the space shuttle. Also he gave a radio receiver to the Nehru Planetarium which has a capacity to capture the radio waves of Sun and Jupiter.

From the Khagol Mandal I, Nilesh, Vineeta, Jui and Varada attended the lecture. The lecture and the presentation were very much informative and moreover it was really fascinating to see the unveiling of many mysteries of universe.

Sunita Williams at IIT

The department of Aerospace Engineering of IIT Bombay had arranged a beautiful afternoon with a talk of United States Naval officer and a NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams. The department is celebrating its annual event “Zephyr” for the Golden Jubilee year of the institute. The lecture was open for all and was arranged in the convocation hall which has a capacity of 1700 people. Though having such a large capacity the hall became houseful in a while.

The Head of the Department formally introduced the speaker. He told that from the day of announcement of the lecture his inbox got crowded with emails. One kid emailed him that “Oh, she is with us for just 2 hours; it is just a 0.04% of the time she spent in the space!” The people especially the students all over Mumbai and outside rushed to IIT to see their IDOL. It was really astonishing moment for all present there.

Sunita Williams started her talk saying that everyone goes to freak out in summer. I went to space for my summer vacations. I stayed there for long time, I did some work but I really enjoyed the vacation. She showed a video presentation and explained how they feel in the gravityless world. Everyone in space station has their sleeping room where they sleep, clean the teeth, bath with wet towel, and everything that they do on Earth. There is no shower or a sink. They have to use the water carefully as it is limited. Water is recycled whenever possible and it is also used to create the oxygen. All the food is already packed for them. They do have to exercise for 2 hours daily to keep the bones and heart muscle least affected. To maintain the sensation of up and down the space station is designed in such a way that the lighting of the station is done in so called ceiling and the floor is also designed in such manner. Otherwise there is no up or down there.

Astronauts have to know each and every thing of the space station and they periodically check the systems. They do scientific experiments and check the results for zero gravity environment. They also experiment on themselves. These experiments are carried to know how things behave in such situations and what are the effects of long stay in such environment. These experiments will help to understand the requirements of the manned mission to mars. The spaceship with the today’s technology will take 8-9 months to reach the mars and the personnel will have to live there for at least one and half year before they start coming back.

After the speech people asked her lots of questions and she gave the fair answers without being tired. In the question answer session one small girl bravely asked her that “I want to congratulate you. Can I come on stage?” Sunita Williams for a while stunned due to the unexpected question but she allowed her and also came 2-3 steps ahead to meet her. This was a wonderful moment of the lecture and the cameras got flashed off continuously over the two.

Life in the Universe

Khagol Mandal is arranging free lecture series which is free to all and on last Wednesday Prof. M.N. Vahia came to deliver the third lecture in the series. Prof. Vahia is working in TIFR in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lecture was on the topic “Life in the Universe”.

He started the lecture by saying the basic requirements to sustain the life formation. The basic molecule in any organism is DNA and RNA which store all the basic information about the organism and which is capable to replicate that is it has the capacity to produce the exact copy of itself. The DNA or RNA is the complicated molecule which is formed by the long chains of carbon atoms and other elements combined to them. Such long chins of atoms can be made by only tetravalent elements like carbon, silicon, germanium, etc. But in these all elements only carbon is the abundant element in the universe. So life forms must be carbon based. Hence we have to see the conditions where these molecules can sustain without braking and hence only certain small zone known as habitable zone around any star can give rise to the life formation.

After we fix our problem to a little zone around the star we will have to see other requirements like the gravity, temperature, water (this is the most necessary thing other than carbon), oxygen, ozone (UV rays can break the long carbon chain), etc. This is formulated by Drake and he gave the famous ‘Drakes Equation’ which gives the probability of occurrence of the life form in the universe. But unfortunately we cannot solve the equation as some values are unknown till date. But it seems from the equation that it is easy to prove that we (i.e. life) do not exist in the universe than to prove the existence of life outside Earth.

Prof. Vahia gave very useful and simple examples like spilling of milk, etc to explain the complicated things. The lecture was very exiting and everyone enjoyed the lecture and some of the comic sentences made by the Prof. to keep the lecture interesting throughout. Around 45-50 people attended the lecture. The next lecture in the series is on 17 Oct and is on the topic “Astronomy for Beginners”. It will be delivered by Pradeep Nayak, Director, Khagol Academy. For more details visit www.khagolmandal.com

Lecture on "Excitement of Modern Solar Astronomy"

On Saturday, 1st September we went to Nehru Centre for the lecture “Excitement of Modern Solar Astronomy”. This was the 2nd lecture of the lecture series ‘Vistas of Astronomy’. The lecture was addressed by Prof. S.S. Hasan.

Mr. Pande introduced the Speaker. Prof. Hasan is the Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bamglore. He and his institute, along with the international collaborations, are doing the research in the field of Solar Astronomy. He has published lots of research papers.

Prof. Hasan started his talk with the ancient evidences of the Solar Observations done by the rock observatories. Sun was the main worshiping God and was the unknown mystery for many centuries. To know our mysterious Sun we have sent many spacecrafts that keep watch continuously on the Sun. These spacecrafts are looking at the Sun in different spectral regions such as visible, X-ray, Infra red, H-alpha, etc. In present scenario though we have collected lots of information about the Sun many things regarding the Sun are unknown till date.

In his talk Prof. Hasan gave a brief account of the statistics of the Sun, its internal structure, Sunspots and their 11 year periodicity, Solar wind, Prominences, Flares, etc. He showed many animations and videos showing the violent changes occurring on the visible surface of the Sun. He told how the Sun’s interior is studied using the audio waves generated inside the Sun which are very similar to the seismic waves of the Earth. This field is known as Helioseismology.

While explaining these modern concepts and theories about the Sun he was telling us the open questions and unsolved mysteries regarding the Sun like how the temperature of the corona - the outermost part of the Sun, is about 1 million degree Kelvin, what is the depth of the Sunspot?, does they extend upto the core?, how the prominences or flares occurs?, etc.

He concluded his lecture with the Indian contribution to the modern solar research. India is developing a 2 meter large solar telescope known as NLST (National Large Solar Telescope). This will help the researchers in India as well as outside India to accelerate their work. After the lecture audience bombarded him with lots of questions. The lecture was a good conceptual lecture and the response of the Audience was also very good. From Khagol Mandal, I, Sameer, Pritesh, Vikrant, Prathamesh, Anup, Sarang, Nilesh, Abhishek, Akshaya, Vineeta attended the lecture.

The lecture series on Astronomy started off on August 22 with a wonderful inaugural lecture on “Demoting Pluto: After one year” by Dr. Aniket Sule, one of the eminent astronomers of today’s time and a member of Khagol Mandal. This lecture was attended by about 40 people, seeking answers to numerous questions about this celestial body which is no more a part of our Solar System.

Dr. Sule began the lecture with a basic idea of ‘size’ when we talk about huge celestial bodies. The initial introduction itself made everyone realize how ordinary our Sun is and how even smaller Pluto is. The size being one of the major factors in the objections raised against Pluto, this explanation laid a foundation of the lecture. Then came a brief visit to our Solar System since the ancient times and how it gained each of its members that we know today.

With a base of fundamental knowledge about our Solar System, Dr. Sule moved on to the actual topic for the day: Pluto and its subsequent demotion. He talked about the initial predictions made about it and how those predictions proved to be a result of sheer coincidence later. The credit of accurate prediction of Pluto’s position goes to American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh who discovered it in 1930.

Then coming down to the fundamental question: “What’s wrong with Pluto?” Dr. Sule went on to explain the oddity in various features of Pluto like the inclination of its orbit, the size ratio of Pluto with other satellites in Solar System and also its own satellite. Later, some new bodies in the kuiper belt were discovered. It was found that some of the bodies called as Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) also have larger diameter than Pluto. Discovery of Sedna and Xena (2003 UB313) and consequent study of their orbits chiefly compelled the scientific community to seriously consider this issue.

Further Dr. Sule explained how the need of defining what a planet was realized and how International Astronomy Union kicked off with an organized debate over this matter. Dr. Sule was himself present at this assembly and he gave a lively account of everything that happened there! The hot topic was taken on an anvil in 26^th General Assembly where a primary poll was conducted and looking at the result, the first draft of the definition was prepared. This draft faced many objections and was rejected unanimously. Naturally, IAU came up with second resolution for the definition of ‘planet’. Even this second resolution was rejected and ultimately, IAU decided to hand over the charges into third party’s hands in order to have an unbiased debate. Third resolution was drafted and it was presented by Prof. Jocelyn Bell to the assembly.

In the end, the various terms like planet, dwarf planet, satellites etc. were delineated precisely and the issue was resolved. On a last node, Dr. Sule shed light on consequences of demotion of Pluto. He concluded the lecture with some funny cartoon sketches which depicted the reactions of people on this matter, all over the world. The lecture was followed by a brief interaction session which gave voice to questions on other topics in astronomy.

Discussion on "Phoenix mission" and "Magnitude of binary system"

On Wednesday, 8th August we discussed about the recent launch of the mars mission “Phoenix”. Sukhada gave the statistics and the information about the mission. Nasa launched it on 4th August. Previous rovers Opportunity and Spirit were lost in the Martian storm. Due to this NASA named the mission as Phoenix. Phoenix will take 10 months to reach the planet. The lander will land on the polar region and will search the soil for water content, minerals and organic compounds which will unveil the history of the planet Mars. The lander has 8 special ovens which will heat the collected sample upto 1000 degree Celsius and will analyze it with the spectrometers. The discussion ended with one unanswered question; “What is the mode of Energy used to create such high temperatures in the Oven? Can the Solar panels be sufficient enough to generate the high temperature?”

Then Jayshree raised one question; “If we have a binary star system and we know the apparent magnitude of both the stars then how can we calculate the total magnitude of the system?” Sukhada said that the magnitude cannot be add up or the total magnitude cannot be the average of the two. Noone was having the idea or the formula to calculate the total magnitude of the system. Bhide kaka told that, “The magnitude will differ if the stars are revolving in such a way that one star comes in between us and the other star i.e. the pair is the eclipting binary system. Also the distance between the two stars will matter in the calculation.” He gave the example of galaxies. Though galaxies contain billions of stars we are seeing galaxies very faint as the individual stars brightness will not just add up to give the total brightness of the galaxy but their inter stellar distances will affect the summation of their brightness and what we see is the very faint galaxy than a bright patch.

Lecture on New Advances In Optical Astronomy

On Saturday, 4th August there was a lecture arranged by the Nehru science centre, Mumbai. Nehru Science centre is going to conduct a lecture series “Vistas In Astronomy” and Saturday’s lecture was the inaugural lecture. The topic was “New Advances in Optical Astronomy”. Prof. Ram Sagar, Director of Aryabhatta Research Institute
of observational SciencES (ARIES) was the honorable speaker for the lecture. The ARIES is situated in the high altitude Manora peak of Nainital. ARIES has 4 giant telescopes and it is building a 3.6 m huge telescope in the Devasthal near Nainital.

In his speech Prof. Ram Sagar briefly discussed different kinds of telescopes (detectors) used for the different wavelengths of light. Then he gave the statistics differentiating the abilities of human eye and telescopes and discussed the need of having bigger aperture for light gathering. He also discussed the difference in ground based telescope and a satellite telescope and mensioned the new techniques implemented to overcome the difficulties like air turbulence. He described the new technique of auto correcting the curvature of large diameter telescopes used with comparatively less thickness. This technique has decreased the cost of building the large diameter telescopes. Then he described the advantages of using photographic plate over human eye and the charge coupled devices (CCD’s) over the photographic plates.

After he finished his lecture I asked him the first question: “Why the interferometry is not yet been used effectively with optical telescopes?” On this question he gave the answer as, “The incoherence in the coming beam of light is the main problem implementing the interferometry in the optical region. In radio interferometry we are working on the specific wavelength and hence the problem does not occur. But in case of optical observations we are dealing with a band of spectrum and hence we have to take into consideration the incoherence.”

The overall lecture was very good and informative. The response to the lecture was also very good. From Khagol Mandal, I, Anup, Nilesh, Sameer, Jay, Vikrant, Anshulee, Akshaya, Vineeta and Juie attended the lecture.

Hello! This Wednesday, we discussed a very simple looking question...Why the sky is blue? The answer to this question comes in one word as "Scattering of light"! But what exactly this scattering is and what is a thing scattering the light? Well, when we talk about sky color we are essentially talking about Rayleigh scattering!

Rayleigh scattering is scattering of light due to particles much smaller than wavelength of light. It occurs when light travels in transparent solids and liquids, but is most prominently seen in gases. The intensity of scattered light varies as inverse fourth power of wavelength of light. So for shorter wavelengths , scattering is more! In the visible spectrum, red light has a wavelength of 720 nm whereas blue has 380 nm. So the if we calculate, the blue light is scattered almost 10 times more than red light and this is a reason why our sky is blue.

Well, our eye structure also plays an important role in the sky looking blue. There are 3 types of receptors in our eyes - Red(R),Green(G) and Blue(B). Out of these 3, B receptors respond more strongly as compared to R and G.

Now, one common misconception is this scattering is due to dust particles! But that's not the case...had it been due to dust particles or droplets of water, the sky color would have changed every now and then as the humidity or haze conditions changed! It was later proved by Einstein that the oxygen and nitrogen molecules produce this Rayleigh scattering.

And then, if smaller the wavelength of light, more the scattering then sky should look violet but this isn't the case! The reason is the violet light scattered in a high amount, is absorbed in high atmosphere only so what reaches earth is the blue light only!

Now the obvious question comes...why the sky is red at sunrise and sunset? The reason again lies in scattering of light! At Sunrise or Sunset, the Sun is at horizon and hence, the light rays travel greater distance. In between blue color is lost and what we see is a red light and similar shades!

In the end, we come down to a very basic question -
What is exactly happening in "scattering" or why molecules "scatter" the light? Well, the molecules scatter light because the electromagnetic field of light waves induces electric dipole moments in the molecules.

Going along the same line, we can find out why clouds are white and why fire looks red? Any guesses?

Stellar Population

Last Wednesday (4th July) at Sion we discussed about the Population of stars. There were around 10-15 people present for the discussion. Sukhada started the topic and gave some information and then we discussed about few things.

Stars are divided into three populations according to metallicity. Metallicity is the proportion of the elements present in the star other than hydrogen and helium to the mass of the star. The population 3 (or generation 1) stars were formed just after the big bang and were very massive i.e. about 100 Solar masses. They lived for very short period of few million years and died off. They did not have any metal content (here metal means elements other than hydrogen and helium) and there is no star found to be population 3 in today’s universe. They formed little amount of elements upto iron in their core which increased the metallicity of further stars.

Population 2 (and generation 2) stars were formed after the death of the population 3 stars and hence they contain very little amount of metallicity (about 0.1%). Population 2 stars are mainly seen near the centre of Galaxies and hence most of the globular clusters are formed by these stars. Population 1 (or generation 3) stars are metal rich stars which show metallicity of about 2-3 %. The metallicity is also responsible to form the planetary systems to form around these stars. Our Sun is population 1 star and it’s metallicity is around 2 %.

Unsolved questions:
1. Metallicity of stars is calculated with respect to Sun’s metallicity, then how Sun’s metallicity is calculated?
2. How to calculate the mass of particular element in a star or say Sun by analyzing the spectrum?

Topics for next week:
1. Initial Mass Function.
2. Scattering of light.
3. How the number of electrons for the particular element is determined or basically in History how they determined the number of electrons present in the atom of a particular element.

Discussion about precession motion on 27th June,2007

Last Wednesday,we discussed two different topics put forward by Aniket. At the end of discussion, Aniket suggested 3 topics for upcoming Wednesdays. The topics are :
1. Comparison of different Stellar populations
2. Initial Mass Function
3. Stellar occultation due to small KBOs.

So this time, i.e. on 27th June, I had got information on 1st topic while Salil had got information on 2nd topic. But unfortunately, there were hardly 7-8 people due to heavy rains. As we didn't want all to miss this discussion, we postponed it to next Wednesday. Instead of that, I gave some pointers for the 1st topic to all so that we can discuss with more and more information next time when everyone comes filled in with some information regarding this topic. Salil said Initial Mass Function can be discussed only after 1st topic is done.

Without wasting time, we started discussing few other fundamental doubts we all had...some related to spectroscopy of the stars and some related to basic physics! Meanwhile, Dilip Joshi came up with a nice topic regarding Earth's precession motion. The question was when a top spins, its rotation and its precession are in same direction where as in Earth's case the direction for either of them is opposite to another. Why? Any guesses? Try it... I shall put answer in my next blog! :-)

Discussion at Sion on 20th June 2007

Last Wednesday at Sion, we discussed about two recent discoveries. One is about the newly found oldest star which is 13.2 billion years old. Todays accepted age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. And another discussion was on the heaviest star found which is about 114 solar masses.



The oldest star named as HE 1523 is dated by the method of Radioactive decay. The star contains very rare radioactive elements like Uranium and Thorium which have very high half life period for the decay. Scientists photographed high resolution spectrum of the star through which they found out the ratio of these two elements and calculated the age. The radioactive substances are thought to be introduced in it by the nearby nebula at its birth.

The second topic of discussion was on the 114 solar masses star. This star named as A1 is found in ngc 3603 and has a companion star of 84 solar masses. There is an upper limit on the mass of a stable star called as Eddington limit and is of 120 Solar masses. Though A1 is below the limit it is an exceptional star as no other star was found to exceed 90+ solar mass.

Aniket Sule and Sukhada Palav gave the information of these two discoveries. There were 15-20 people present.
Aniket Sule has given following 3 topics for the coming Wednesdays:
1 Comparison of Different Stellar Populations (for next wed.)
2 Initial Mass Function
3 Stellar Occultations By Small Kuiper Belt Objects

Discussion on Blue Moon on 13th June, 2007 at Sion Unit

Well, this wed we continued with same discussion on Blue Moon. I actually sought for correct definition for Blue Moon.

And the correct definition is like this :
"Usually there are 3 full moons in every season. Sometimes, though it might happen that there come 4 full moons in one season. In that case, the third full moon out of those four full moons will be regarded as a Blue Moon"

So we see that, the definition stated by an amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett as Blue Moon is 2nd Full moon occurring in the same calendar month(Sky & Telescope article, 1946) is Wrong!

Well,it was in 1999, when Phillips Hiscock corrected the mistake made by Pruett, in his article published in May 1999, Pg. No. 36-38.

But the actual credit goes to a group of 3 journalists...Roger W. Sinnott,Donald W. Olson & Richard Tresch Fienberg who were the first ones to take an objection to the old definition! Also they were the ones who found out how exactly the blue moon dates can be calculated, something which Pruett failed at!

After we were done with this discussion, Aniket took over and gave few questions to be solved by next wed.

Choose your topic of interest under Astronomy and Built database for the same

We can make good compilation for any topic under astronomy. History of Astronomy is one of the topics we cover under our " Basic Course in Astronomy" It's further divided in two groups one is Western Astronomy and second is Indian Astronomy.

I feel we should start using multimedia for our courses. effective use of multimedia is only possible if we have good database on the specific subject. Its my appeal for everyone to create such database with co-ordination. so there will be less duplication of topics and we can share the links about subject/Subjects. It will definitely help us to simplified the astronomy for everyone.

Today the study of astronomy requires a deep understanding of mathematics and physics. It is important to realize that Greek astronomy did not involve physics. read further article on following link

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_astronomy.html

This link consist full list of Greeks Mathematicians/Astronomers/philosophers and their contribution.

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Greeks.html

Link for Indian Astronomy

http://www.crystalinks.com/indiastronomy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_astronomy

Evolution of Science with respect to Astronomy-General lecture-Sunday 17, June 2007

Today at Talent Foundation-Mr. Pravin Herlekar delivered a lecture on "Evolution of Science with respect to astronomy" This was first lecture in this series. Mr. Herlekar will be taking additional lectures in upcoming Sunday's.

Around 20 people were present during the lecture. Namely Mr. & Mrs. Chonakar, Pritesh, Prathamesh, Abhishek,Mayur, Shreyas, Mr. Devodhar, Yogita, Prachi, Hrishikesh, Pratik.

Are we alone in the Universe-Discussion at Dombivali Unit

Last two Sunday's at Dombivali Unit Shri. Dinkar Shinde initiated the discussion on " Are we alone in this Universe" This discussion will continued on upcoming Sunday.

some interesting links for the topic

http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/rees2.asp

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/88

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/are_we_alone.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2716_133/ai_n8688117

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

10-15 people were present for the discussion

Sunday 10, June 2007 Badalapur Unit- Talent Foundation

Pramod Ocharmal had taken lecture on "Probability" it lasted for 60 minutes. he is last year engineering student. second lecture was on Observational Astronomy by Hrishikesh Herleker. he is 12th std. student. he had explained the constellation of " Hercules" it lasted for 10-15 min. Third lecture was by Shreyas Pande. (Std. 9th) He talk about "Space Travel" which covers the Rockets, Space suites, and other components of space travel.

There were Ten people present to attend these lectures. Most of them non-members.

lectures scheduled on 17th Jun 2007 at Badalapur Unit
"Space Science" by Karmel Studies Students
"Cosmology" by Pritesh Randive
"Observational Astronomy" by Hrishikesh Herleker

Wednesday 6 June 2007 Sion Unit- Disccussion

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Sukhada had initiated the discussion about the concept of blue moon. This topic will be discuss in next Wednesday so please get some info about the concept of Blue moon how it started. The basic information on this topic could be found on Sky and Telescope website. Link for the website - http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/moon/3304131.html
Please collect some more information on the concept of the blue moon. you can use following guidelines to collect the data. Please don't forget to write source of the information

How to define the Blue moon
How the concept evolve.
Miss-conception about the concept
Importance of the Blue moon with respect to astronomy

Salil has raised the question regarding How we can define the "Mass" concept. The discussion was lasted about 40-45 min.

following members were present during the discussion.
Anup Surlaker, Rohan lahane,Gourang Vador,Anurag Shevade,Anand Ghaisas,Piyush Garud,
Shri. Bhide,Shailesh Sansare,Ninad Vartak, Smita Bhise.+ 6 non-members.

Intro

Hi guys. I am Sandesh Kulkarni. I am doing TY B.Sc. with Physics as a major subject from Ruparel College. I joined KM in Dec. 2005, i.e. I am with KM for about one and half year. In this short period I gained lot of knowledge and got good exposure. I have attended almost all the public sky observation program since I joined KM. I am now familiar with some main constellations and deep sky objects. I got telescope handling experience even with the giant 8 inch in public programs as well as in special observation sessions conducted for volunteers. I did one incomplete messier marathon in Vangni and spotted more than 35 messier objects through 5 inch tele. Also because of KM and Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) I got an opportunity to work as a student guide in the last years International Astronomy Olympiad which was held in India. I also presented one slide show on the topic “Our Sun” in Vangni and in TCS program. I also went for the outside programs of KM.

My email id:
sandy_kul2005@yahoo.co.in

Let's make Astronomy simple and desirable subject for everyone

This Blog is an attempt to bridge the gap between regular members and non regular members. It will create platform for all of us who miss out lots of activities due to our other commitments and priorities. Our current set up limit us to meet only once a week. that is fifty two days in whole year. Two hours a week. so total 104 hours per year. My attempt is to use of existing technology and we can in touch with Khagol Mandal activities through this Blog.

Khagol mandal evolve from vary small group of people. I still remember my early days in Mandal. especially Vangani Programe. This unique overnight sky observation session is still attraction for every one of us. earlier even group of 50-60 people means large group for us. but due to last decade astronomical events and our awareness program bring almost average 200 people to Vangani field.

We have to be more professional in attempt to make astronomy simple much more desirable subject.
we can improvise in lots of fronts. I am suggesting the improvement on the following points

* making PPT or recorded slide shows various topics on Astronomy
* writing the articles for website,khagol warta,vaishawik.
* creating new educational models
* creating database of good website making index for it
* creating educational Videos on practical astronomy.
* creating database for exhibition charts and image database for the same
* improvise our library collection and extend our library to many others.
* database to keep the track of articles published in web or printed media
* forming a study group for various topics in astronomy
* astro-photography workshop tools , technique.
* use multimedia during our question answer session or basic/advance courses


We expect more participation and time form every one of us. you can declare your field of interest and willingness to work for. Those who can contribute for administration work please let me know. The administration is back bone for any organization or company or country.

It's always easy to point out the management fault. People do miss-identify management with people. but management is process. It's the process to make our goals and achievements in time. Most of the time we forget that we are part of process. so please do contribute your time and efforts to create good resources for our selfs