SECOND SECRET CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD
03/10/19
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space, everything else is just an opinion" ~ Democritus of Abdera
When you take a look out into the void of intergalactic space, beyond the stars, dust, and nebulae within our own galaxy, what is it that you see? Presently, out of the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, only 8700 of those are seen to us. These contain hundreds of billions of stars, just like our own Milky Way, AND this is just counting the part of the Universe that's observable to us, which is by no means is the entire thing! However, even being able to observe an infinitesimal part of this endless ocean lying in front is a great feat.
Our second trial session was a roaring success. We set out a few ambitious goals and with the help of a team of determined people, were able to accomplish it in a short period of time.
Our Goals:
Practice on terrestrial objects
Improve focus and aligning skills- align to the north and calibrate the scope using screws
Look at the moon
Try to observe Jupiter
At the beginning of the session, we learned most of the minute but important workings of the telescope- when and how to calibrate the scope, when to use the fine focusing knobs, which direction to move the telescope in, dependent on the object's position and so on.
After getting our telescope set up, all of us took turns to focus on several terrestrial objects, kilometers away from the terrace we were standing on. For instance, we zeroed in on a traditional Chinese lantern hanging on the ceiling of an apartment complex- which was about 7 floors upward. This lantern wasn't clearly visible to the naked eye, even after several minutes of squinting, all we could see was its reddish silhouette. Curious to see how it looked like, we did so with the help of the telescope- using the adjustment scales, we faced the main tube in an upward direction and paid close attention to the minuscule red figure and focused on it- and finally being able to spot the lantern.
As the sky became darker, we were able to spot the moon and hence, excitedly rushed to focus on it. After taking some time to figure out the right position of the telescope, our team members took no less than 5 minutes to focus on the very object, which is 2.4 thousand miles away from our planet.
Thinking that we had already observed quite a bit we began thinking about wrapping up, almost leaving a lofty goal of ours unachieved- to try and observe Jupiter. As though being able to listen to our wishes, Jupiter came into our vision, after a few complete scans of the night sky. We spotted Jupiter, which, with its reddish glow around it, brought along with it a small but significant surprise. We were also able to observe one of its four known moons- Europa, Ganymede, Io or Callisto.
Beating the odds of forecast-ed cloudy weather, we managed to successfully complete all the aims of this session and hence, headed out extremely satisfied.
Will resume our expedition to space soon...
~Kuhu,
IB Year 1