about the astronomy and the hardships of photographing astronomical objects.
The first activity I have participated in was the naked sky observation study.
During the course of this activity, I was able to experience how the stars are always moving slowly
and this was only made obvious after the course of two weeks. One problem I face during this activity was the sketching of the sky. I was unclear of what the sketching the activity requires me to do. At first, I thought that I was required to sketch the scenery, however, it was until closer to the submission of the activity that I realised that I was supposed to sketch the stars and that by sketching the stars, I would be able to clearly see the movement of the stars throughout the weeks.
Another challenge during this activity was the problem of light.
I choose the school field which is the wrong location as the lights from the field affected my
ability to observe the stars effectively. If I could, I would have thought about my location
carefully and understand the objective of the activity better before attempting it.
Other than naked sky observation activity, I have also participated in the sky gazing
session that occurs once every two weeks. During the course of the sky gazing sessions,
my team and I attempted to do several things including star party, astrophotography and deep sky observation. I also learn how to locate objects using boresighting. During our first session, we faced many problems due to our lack of experience in operating a telescope. We took almost an hour just to look for Sirius to align with which result in the lesser time left to observe other objects.
We also face the problems of location fo the objects as the GOTO function of the telescope is
not very accurate and we have to result to using Stellarium during the stargazing session in order to boresight. I learnt that even thou seem unnecessary, a star map of the objects we are observing is essential and useful.
The star map would have saved us more time in locating the objects when the goto fail to locate the object accurately. However, when we do manage to observe an object, the experience was exhilarating. I was amazed by the objects I was able to observe from the telescope as experiencing it in real life is much more amazing compared to when seeing it in an image online. For example, we were able to find M42 while searching for Sirius to align to. Even though it was not the
proper way to locate an object, it was still amazing and breathtaking. I was extremely disappointed however, over the fact that the visible galaxy such as Andromeda and Triangulum could not be observed during this time period due to its closeness to the horizon. Nevertheless, observation of a star cluster is still just as phenomenal. Throughout the observation session, excluding
star party, we were able to observe objects such as the moon and star clusters such as little beehive.
However, for astrophotography, we were not lucky enough to capture the objects during our first session. One of the problems we face was changing the lens quickly before the object could move out of the frame. Even after sighting the object, we have to quickly switch the scope into the camera in order to take a photograph of the object. Unfortunately, there were several misses due to our inefficiency in quickly swapping the scope before the object moves out of frame. This also results in the loss of precious time. For example, during our attempt to photograph Mars. While attempting to photograph Mars, we face problems with the focus of the camera, Mars moving out of the frame and the camera not being able to pick up any images. We attempted to locate and photograph Mars four times throughout the course of the module, even going as far as borrowing the telescope outside the tutorial session just to photograph mars. It is only during the star party that we manage to photograph Mars as a bright red dot. However, other than taking a photo of the objects, processing the photos
was also a huge problem for our group. One thing I learnt from my experience is that to date and label each photograph and long exposure video we have taken in a log. Due to my team overlooking that instruction, we end up taking a long time to locate certain images as we did not take a log of the shots taken. We also failed to keep within the gain limits resulting in many of our photos having noise during processing. Thus we have to resort to photoshop to remove the noises for the images which could have been easily avoided if we had used a lesser gain during exposure.
We attempted the activity star party twice due to our ineffectiveness in attracting people to our station. For star party, I invited several friends over to participate in the star party. We manage to observe more objects than we had during our previous observations.
We were able to observe objects such as Orion nebula, Mars and the binary star Castor. We attempted to observe rosette nebula during our first-star party but was told by another group that it is too dim to observe. We also locate some unknown star cluster during our attempt in locating rosette. One problem we face during the star party was that the telescope lens fogged up when we were setting
it up due to the humidity of the environment as it had rained that day. As a result, observation started later and we resort to using heat packs to desperately attempt to clear the fog without touching the lens. Using the experience I had gained during the previous observations, I was able to use bore sighting to locate the binary star, Castor. It was an accomplishment for me to be able to locate an object using the telescope without the help of my teammates. The star party is by far, the most fulfilling in all of our observations as we were able to see more objects compared to the previous observations session. To add on, there were other groups that manage to observe unbelievable objects. Such as the binary star, Albireo,which I was told that certain people see the colours of both binary stars differently. I also manage to see the star cluster jewel box which astonishingly
is in the shape of the letter “A”. The star party has taught me how to explain technical terms in layman terms for people to understand easily.
Other than physical activities, I also gained new insight through the course of this module. I learnt new knowledge such as the birth of stars and the fact that different nebula have different purposes even thou they are classified as nebulas. For instance, I learnt that supernova remnants are the result of the death of stars and that star-forming regions are in fact emission nebulas. I also learnt that the reason we are able to determine the colour and the state of the star is due to the wavelength of the light from the star. Using wavelength, we are able to determine the speed of the particles movements in nebulas and estimate the age of the stars. I learnt how to locate deep sky objects that can barely be seen with the naked eye such as the Pleiades. Using other stars such as the eye of Taurus and Betelgeuse, I was able to draw a line and locate the Pleiades. Using this method to locate an object is extremely useful in guiding other people in locating objects.
This module enables me to understand and reflect on how small we are in this universe. With the vastness of the universe, there are so many things unknown to us. I am also amazed by humanity’s achievements in achieving the ability to produce equipment to gaze at objects millions of light years
away from the earth. I feel that the participation of all the activities have given me new insights on new knowledge about how the universe and stars came to be formed.
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