I had just recently few months back, come to know about the
local planetarium in our city, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium. I was in
11th std. then. Here classes in science used to be conducted, which used
to cover extra syllabus other than the regular college studies, to
improve your science skills. A noted astrophysicist there, Dr. B. S.
Shylaja, used to take astronomy classes. She has also written
innumerable articles on the subject for newspapers, I don't well remember
but I've myself seen some of them since 2001, the time I entered the
beautiful and enigmatic Astronomy. (My ONLY hobby then was to collect AS
many newspaper cuttings then from various English newspapers, and I
still have it up to today, it really goes in hundreds !!) So as a part
of BASE, the formal name of those classes, a trip was planned to the
world-famous Kavalur observatory. This observatory has some distinctions
in the field of astronomy; it's Asia's largest telescope, some
discoveries
have been made possible from here.
Uranus' rings were discovered from here by a resident scientist here,
Mr. Kuppuswamy and another distinguished scientist Prof. J. C.
Bhattacharya. If you go to Kavalur Observatory even today, you might
have chances to meet the former personality, Dr. Kuppuswamy. (Whereas I could meet the
latter scientist on a separate, another memorable occasion at a
different location)
The day we were supposed to leave for the
Kavalur Observatory on the New Year's eve of January 2002, we few
students gathered at Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bangalore in the morning. A shuttle (private
mini-bus) service goes regularly there to Kavalur. We left in the
morning maybe after 10 am and reached Kavalur by evening (I don't
remember the timings and most other facts clearly, as it's after 4 years, that is now, that I'm trying to
recollect the event !!)On the way to the Observatory I wanted to
impress Dr. Shylaja, so I showed her my few albums of paper cuttings and
one or two of her own articles in it. I remember just nothing what we did
after reaching there. Then at night, we were taken into the Observatory
housing the 40" telescope. That is the maximum you can dream of using in
the entire Observatory campus !! If you count your blessings, your
stars, then all you can get to see from is the 40" and DON'T dream of
the 2.3-metre !! She showed us the control buttons of the telescope.
Outside the Observatory were some railings where you can take a walk
around and get a panoramic glimpse 360-degrees around, the breath-taking
openness and nothing seen until the horizons except hills and trees. But
at night when we went out, it was pitch dark, so dark that you may not
even see your own self if every single light is switched off. But at
some distance we could see the 2.3-metre dome with lights inside the
Observatory. And all around, until the horizons there just no single
source of light, except only one dim source very far away.
We could
have been blessed that night by maybe glimpsing an object of your choice
because we were in that Observatory for quite some time. I don't know
the rules of the place, whether you are permitted to see anything you
want to inspite of being in the Observatory for a long time. But whatever
is the case,
it could have worked, except for one interfering factor, which is in the
hit-list of deep-sky amateurs to get rid of, the Moon. This particular
object is present when you don't want it to and isn't when it should be
!! That very day was Full Moon !! So as a result we had to return empty
handed, or else if permitted I would've tried to see my favorite objects then,
galaxies. But we did get a glimpse of Jupiter and Moon through some
instrument, probably the finder on it or even the 40" itself, I don't
know about it. They were very good views.
There's nothing else I remember much about this trip.
Probably, we might have had good memories of this trip after returning
from there.
