All Gujarat Amateur Astronomers Meet -2011

Dear All,

AAAS is going to attend Gujarat Astronomers Meet 2011 at Jamnagar. Which is the annual meet of Amateur Astronomers of Gujarat. For past some years it is not organized quite regularly but this time we aim to get the regular track back and unify all the people working in Astronomy.

Please consult the link for registration and information.

http://lakhotanatureclub.webs.com/


Hope to see you in Jamnagar

AAAS team 

Total Lunar Eclipse 10th December,2011

Dear All,

AAAS had great time watching total lunar eclipse yesterday night. With very good binocular, we had a beautiful view of Moon. Together with it we watched Seven Sisters(Taurus),Jupiter,Orion and Cassiopeia.

Also, we tried to break the myth that one should not eat while Eclipse. We had cookies and snacks.
Some of the pictures we took. Its not good since we don't have professional camera.

Enjoy...

Contact us if you would like to join the group at charitarthvyas@gmail.com

Orionids

Dear All,

Hope you are ready to observe tonight Orionids shower. Today it is expected to peak.So, keep your eyes open during Mid night-Dawn.

AAAS is all set to watch this event. Will try to be live tonight and let you know if we can see something from Surat or not.

So enjoy your Meteor SHOWER Party !


------------------------------- Meteor Party is Stop due to unexpected earthquake, we had to return home..... SAD :( ------------------------------------

We hope some of you who are in field will report something. We hope Kutch and other part of Gujarat are safe and secure 



----

AAAS

Orionids

Dear All,

Hope you are ready to observe tonight Orionids shower. Today it is expected to peak.So, keep your eyes open during Mid night-Dawn.

AAAS is all set to watch this event. Will try to be live tonight and let you know if we can see something from Surat or not.

So enjoy your Meteor SHOWER Party !


----

AAAS

Orionid Meteor Shower this week

Dear All, 

Earth is going to pass through the debris of comet Halley during its orbit around the Sun. This debris will be seen as meteor when they enter into our atmosphere. The peak of the shower will be between 21-22 nd October,2011. There will be moon in the sky but it is expected that one may see 20 meteors per hour from place free of light and other pollution. It will be seen after Midnight and before dawn.

For more information about Halley's Comet see: Halley's Comet 

 

The name Orionid is given because meteors can be seen coming from the constellation orion. 

There are many good articles about this shower: Please have a look at it

Orionid-Wiki 

Earthsky 

If you do  observation please report us at our website

Have a good observation 

-----

aaas team 

ALL GUJARAT AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS MEET - 2011

UPDATES:

Amateur Astronomers of Gujarat is going to organise Astronomer Meet.

Duration: 29th-30th January,2011

Venue: Sardar Krushinagar Dantiwada Agriculture University, Palanpur, Gujarat.

You may find further details on the said meet at  Introduction of Meet

OR  Kutch Astronomy Club

 

You can also find the registration form for the said meet at Registration form_DOC ( if you encounter any problem with Internet Explorer then try  Google Chrome or Opera or Mozila). You may download the Registration Form, fill it, sign it and send us by regular post/ courrier. OR you may fill in the form electronically and send us the copy in "word" format OR you may send us the scanned copy of dully filled Registration form.

Please, note that the last date of submission for filled registration forms is 20th January, 2011. We will appreciate your immediate actions on this issue, in order to provide exact nos. of participants to our host organization.

This year we have kept different collection centers for submission of registration forms for your convenience. You may submit the filled registration forms at either of the location mentioned in the form, it will reach to the organizing committee. You can also submit your registration form by mail gujastro@gmail.com (in this case, you have to deposit registration fee in the bank account given on the form and to provide us details of the deposit by mail); as well as you may also deposit registration fees in your city / town to the  ICICI bank A/c No given in registration form. It will reach within time to the organizing committee.

This year, we also seek maximum participation not only as a visitor, but, also as a performer in the event. Therefore, you are invited to participate in any popular activities - Poster Competition & Exhibition, Paper presentation or Gadget Exhibition. You can also volunteer yourself for any suitable activity as well as you may present your skills (related to science or mathematics) during this event.

Though the title indicates this is the Meet for Amateur Astronomers from Gujarat; we also invite any interested participants from outside the Gujarat.

How will you reach to Dantiwada

Palanpur is the nearest biggest town to Dantiwada. It is a district capital of the Banaskantha district in North Gujarat and it is well connected by State transport buses (of Gujarat and Rajasthan) through NH14. It is also a junction on the Railway line from A'Bad/ Mumbai to Abu Road/ New Delhi. So, you may reach to Palanpur either by Road or by Rail and our Hospitality committee members will take care to bring you to the SDAU campus from Palanpur (or will suggest you the most suitable way to reach up to Dantiwada)

We are now looking forward to your "participation registration forms" to be reached to us within time limit.

Contact me for more details

Charitarth Vyas

charitarthvyas@gmail.com

09725519620

Leonid Meteor Shower

The Earth is going to pass through debris left over by Comet Tempel-Tuttle and the meteor shower can be seen maximum on 17th due to this.Prepare yourself to watch for Leonid before sunrise on Wednesday.  Expected Number of Meteors per hour is 20.

Clear Skies.

Closest encounter with Jupiter

For whole week,Jupiter can be seen at its best but tonight it will be closest to the earth.It has never came this much close in past one decade

Hope you have better viewing. Clear skies

AAAS team

A report on World Wide Telescope India Workshop

The World Wide Telescope is a virtual telescope. It is basically a software which shows 3 dimensional virtual sky which can be used to introduce the subject or can either be used for serious astronomical research.Not just that, it allows you to see the real pictures of an astronomical objects taken by world class ground and spaced based observatories in different wavelength; but for all this amazing stuff you must have an internet access. WWT stores data at remote server and when you click or zoon in/out the things each time, it goes to that  server and brings the required data for you and display it on your screen.

It was one day workshop arranged by Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) collaboration with Microsoft on 4^th September,2010.  I reached IUCAA on 3^rd night. Our accommodation was in Nalanda hostel inside the campus. My room had TV, and Air condition, Heater and telephone; it was more than expected.

First session started sharply at 10:00 am at Bhaskara III lecture hall

Ajit Kembhavi ,a director of IUCAA started with the “Welcome and Local Universe”.  It was an overall idea of whole worksohop.  Then after Sridhar Vedantham introduce the wing of Microsoft called Microsoft Research India. The research in this wing is fully academic and not a product oriented. They give training to the people and works in many areas of Computer science and Mathematics.  Third speaker was Yan Xu. She is a senior research program manager of Microsoft. She talked on “Worlwide Telescope Academic Programme”,in which she gave brief introduction on how one can use WWT for academic purpose.  Next spearker, Prof.  T.R.Seshadri of Delhi University gave wonderful lecture. It was on “Science and Outreach at Universities” focusing more on the work which was done by undergraduate students in his own department. I got to know many things from this lecture. He showed that undergraduates can do many serious stuff like professional does.

  

Session 2 was in Chandrashekhar Auditorium

First speaker Gulab Dewangan spoke on IUCAA’s public outreach programme and WWT. Arvind Paranjape, coordinator of this workshop, then showed how to make WWT tours.  Tour means a short movie which is to be used for outreach activities. 

The WWT is beta version and that means it is not the final  one. There is a scope for it to be modified or to add something more in it. So, one can translate WWT in its own language. Next lecture focused on this only titled “ WWT and Language Localization” given by Samir Dhrude.  If anybody of you are serious in doing this, you can contact Yan Xu on yanxu@microsoft.com. We are going to do it in Guajrati.  Then there was an open discussion on WWT led by Ashish Mahabal of Caltech.

There was a public lecture at last by S.George Djorgovski, Caltech on WWT and Astronomy on the Man-Machine Interface. Machine can’t think right? But George is trying to teach machine to learn from the mistakes !!  Wonderful, isn’t it?  

All and all the workshop was very successful. I got to meet many old and new people/friends. One can download WWT from www.worldwidetelescope .org and its free!                


---Charitarth Vyas


Only two representative from Gujarat; another was Narendra Gor of Kutch Amateur Astronomy Club(KAAC).

Gravitational Wave

With space and time not as rigid background structures, but as dynamical objects (changing as the world changes in and around them), general relativity predicts fundamentally new phenomena. One of the most fascinating is the existence of gravitational waves: small distortions of space-time geometry which propagate through space as waves!

Most readers will have encountered several wave phenomena in everyday life. Sound waves, for instance: a small region of air is compressed, and the fact that its inner pressure is a bit higher than that of neighbouring regions leads to its expansion. This expansion leads to compression nearby, and in this way, the slight surplus in pressure propagates further and further. Such pressure waves are produced when we talk: our vocal cords compress the air around them, sound travels as waves, and these waves are absorbed by our ears when we hear them. In Einstein's case, the situation is somewhat different, but the basic principle is the same: a slight distortion in one region of space distorts nearby regions, and in the end, there is a moving distortion which speeds along at the highest possible speed (the speed of light). Such travelling distortions of space geometry are called gravitational waves.

Link:

Visit for more information:

http://www.einstein-online.info/elementary/gravWav/?set_language=en

Welcome mother's day with Astronomy

Sunday early morning around 5:30 am you will have opportunity to see beautiful Moon-Jupiter conjunction. There will be only 5 degrees separation between them. You will able to see four moons of Jupiter if you have telescope. See Map


At the time of Sunset on the same day you have another great opportunity. Sirius, the brightest star and Venus,the brightest Planet, of our sky can be seen on the western sky.  See Map


Hope you and your mother will have  unforgettable  Astronomy mixed mother's day


For more information see.

NASA science

Sky Gazing with energetic students

AAAS team just visited Atmiya Vidya Mandir School near Surat for sky gazing programme with 8th Std. The students has a complete chapter on Astronomy. It contains very basic and most general topics. So school  decided to have sky gazing programme as their regular curriculum apart from their class room study.

AAAS team was invited for the programme. We had wonderful night with the students. We observe and gave information on  Sirius, Orion, Mars, Pleiades,Moon, Pole star,Ursa Major,Cassiopiea and discussed plenty of question coming continuously from Extra energetic and interesting students.

We all had wonderful experience and leaned many new things from whole event.

Thanks!  

Lecture by Dr.Rajmal Jain

Dr.Rajmal Jain, a senior professor in Physical Research Laboratory(PRL) recently  visited Applied Sciences Deptt.(Now separated into Physics,Chemistry and Mathematics) to deliver lecture under the title " Global Warming; What is the truth? "  This was joint effort by AAAS and Society for Cultivation of Sciences and Humanities (SCOSH).

The brief summery of the lecture: 

Americas,Europe including many countries which is part of  UN frequently says that there is only  India and China behind the global temperature rise. Dr. Jain,very beautifully,oppose the saying by giving factual,logical and statistical scientific reasoning. 

We all enjoyed a lot.

Thanks Dr. Jain,we hope to see you again.

From 11:26am to 2:29pm

An ASEclipse report from Surat.

At 10:29 am on 15^th Jan, we were at the college for the final planning and discussion of our educational trip. We had finalised the dates of the tour to be 17^th-18^th Jan much before. I already missed one chance to see full (100%) ASE and now, I was totally confirmed that this (Partial) is also, certainly, going to be missed. But we got unexpected relief and we were told to come again at 3 pm. Hurreyyy!

I rushed towards home and started finding whatever I could, to capture the phenomenon. Finally, I, with my Camera, Tripod and Solar goggles, went to terrace. The time was ~ 11:15 am. Everybody was enjoying the kites. I placed my camera and immediately decided to put one half of the solar goggles in front of the lens and another in front of my eye. The first contact appeared around 11:26 am and maximum eclipse occurred at 1:20 pm. I was not there up till last contact. My last shot was at 2:29 pm. Then the battery exhausted. There was still half n hr left for the last contact.

It was my first try to capture the Sun. Initially, I was worried for my camera but everything went good. All the people in my building showed great interest. They also attracted the people who initially refused, due to “non-scientific” fear. I also showed them the pinhole projection using very basic thing which we use in kitchen-A GRATER.

All in all it was a fabulous experience. I am quite satisfied with my first solar eclipse and first solar photography.

Partial Solar Eclipse: 15/01/2010

Observation Camp of Partial Solar Eclipse from Gandhinagar on 15th January 2010:

Photograph taken by AAAS Team:

 

Lets end/start year with Lunar Eclipse

PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE on 31st Dec.


Fast facts: For Ahmedabad

Date: 31th Dec,2009
Eclipse type: Partial
Penumbral Mag. : 1.056
Umbral Mag. : 0.076
Pen. eclipse begines: 22:47
Par. eclipse begines: 00:23
Mid. eclipse: 00:53
Partial eclipse ends: 1:23
Pen. eclipse ends: 2:58

For complete info. consult this site:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/JLEX-AS.html

Do You Know ? NEUTRINO

Word  "Neutrino" comes from Italian word; It means 
"Little Neutral One".It is one the fundamental particles
used in the construction of the universe.It consists the mass which is 10,000 times less than the mass of the electron. They are electrically neutral, and do not interact with the ordinary matter and hence very difficult to detect. There are many sources of neutrino but major part of it which falls on the earth comes from the Sun. There are nearly 50 trillion solar neutrino passes through human body per second.

Concern for more interesting details :


1) http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/neutrino.html 
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

Leonids Meteor Shower 2009

Credit and Copyright: Chris L. Peterson.Taken from www.cloudbait.com/science/leonid2008

This meteor shower has been named as "Leonids Meteor Shower" because it appears to stream from the constellation LEO (Shiha) in the sky. The shower starts from that point where the Siha Rashi/Constellation LEO is situated and streaching of tail can be seen in large part of eastern sky.The earth, right now, is passing through the stream of debris of the comet  which is known  scientifically as comet 55P/ Tempel Tuttle.This comet was passed through this site nearly 500 years ago in 1466. So the world is waiting to see the truely historical event in every aspect. The peak (numbers of meteors per hour) is espected on 17th November,2009. The day (night!) is the next day of full moon hence we will not have any problem due to the moon light to see the shower.

The peak is expected during 00:00 am to 02:00 am approximatelty.The constellation will rise in India nearly 2:00 am. You can see upto 500 meteors per hour. Find the darkest place.Take chair  or lay down on carpet and enjoy the shower from the heaven!!

Accept scientific approch during your observation.

1) Note down the numbers of meteor you see in hour of at a regular duration of time.

2) Note down the characteristics like the brightness( average,normal,highest), the length of the tail you see(small,big,average)

3) Find the Latitude-Longitute of the place from where you are observing or the approximate location. ( at the terrace, near your house,in nearby garden; don't forget to write the address)

4) Or anything you see..

5) Make Sketch, Take pictures , record on movie camera...

For the scientific use the record of Time, Add. of place and date is necessary.

Submite your data to AAAS via mail (aaasteam@gmail.com) or IMO(Intenrational Meteor Organization)(http://www.imo.net/)

For other information mail us. or checkout the following sites

- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonids

- science.nasa.gov

Credit:  leonid.arc.nasa.gov (taken from this site) 

You can see that Asia,and India as well, is very favourable during its peak time.

World Science Day- 10th November 2009 Celebration:

To spread the knowledge of Astronomy, AAAS had delivered a seminar on General Astronomy Guide on 10th November as an occasion of World Science Day at Udhyog Bharti School, Pandesara, Surat.

The strength of students  were around 250 from 7th to 12th standards. The principal of the school Mrs. Pannaben Desai gave warm welcome to us. One of the member of AAAS, Nikunj Rawal delivered this speech.

The secretary of Satyashodhak Sabha, Surat, Mr.Sidhharth Degami was also with us to explain wrong superstitions running in society and to remove it by knowing Science by performing many experiments himself.

Udhyog Bharti School, Pandesara, Surat

 

More than 200 students participated 

Mrs.Pannaben Desai, Principal of School

Nikunj Rawal explaining about Astronomy

Mr.Sidhharth Degami, Satya Shodhak Sabha, Surat

Nikunj Rawal with Dr.A P J Abdul Kalaam at IIM, Ahmedabad on 12th October 2009 on "Science On Wheel Conference"

One of the AAAS Member Mr. Nikunj Rawal met our honourable former presedent, Dr.A P J Abdul Kalaam at IIM, Ahmedabad on 12th October 2009 on "Science On Wheel Conference".

See above photo- Talking about AAAS Association and his Activities