We were actually supposed to have a big event for public
this time. We were total beginners in conducting anything for the
public. And as a result, due to postponing until the last moment, we
just couldn't do anything. As a result we decided to have a big session
for ourselves. We had for the first time invited 2 guests, from the
M.P.Birla Institute of Fundamental Research. One was a distinguished
scientist in the city, Dr. G.S.D Babu. He was the former director of
Kavalur Observatory for 4 years. Another invitee was his student who's
doing research on " Open star clusters". There's a lot that can be said
about the renowned personality, about his achievements in the field. We in all
totaled around 20 people. But at night we got 9
new visitors (from an internet yahoo-group).
We had Sridhar's 4.5" Sathya's 6" and another 3" refractor.
Everyone came in different cars, together. First most of them arrived.
Among those who reached the spot late were me with my friend, Neetesh
and a car driven by Balachandra with 4-5 others. When we reached the
spot everyone had already reached. We assembled the telescopes and then
Dr. Babu was kind enough to give a talk introducing himself to everyone.
In the talk he also mentioned what amateurs like us can do to make a
mark in the field, comet hunting. He himself was experienced in the
field of comets and his research had got something to do with observing
the tails of the Great comets of this century. Taking advantage of this
fact, I decided that after some time I'm going to keep him occupied for
as much time as possible discussing with him ALL that I had in mind
about comets.
Also present there were the local villagers. Some
of us explained some concepts to them who had gathered there. The
entire night was spent with general discussions with each other.
There were observing sessions of the same common objects.
Afterwards just before dinner, I approached Dr. Babu with a paper in my
hand containing around 30 questions (I can call it rather advanced type
of questions) whatever I had come across upto that day. He tried
recollecting his past knowledge of the topic of comets and tried to
answer my questions. He also mentioned that he had done observed and
some research on the tails of the century's brightest comets like Ikeya-Seki,
West, Halley, Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake, which really impressed me. Then
came up the topic of how do we start photographic comet hunting (I
always had in mind doing visual searches with my telescope). With some
basic intro on how we can give it a start, I thought of getting up from
there as I had already taken a lot of his time asking questions to him.
The next thing I did was went near Sridhar's 4.5" telescope and with a
detailed finder-chart in my hand, decided to hunt for the comet 73/P. It
was quite faint then and was just estimated to reach naked-eye level
brightness the next month after that. After some time of searching I
came to the right spot and stared at the field for some time. This
object was nowhere there and it was testing my limit of observing.
Finally I just "felt" that I'm seeing something. It had to be it, the
position was right. I had to keep the positive hope that I've seen it
still being very doubtful about it.
So for the first time ever
after 2 full years of waiting, badly since October 2003, I got to see my first faint
comet (slightly doubtful of seeing it). It was nothing but a
meaningless, meaningless, very diffuse hazy invisible small spot. It was
nearly comparable in magnitude to the combined glow of two very close
stars beside it (11.41 and 11.93 magnitude respectively). So I have to
estimate the magnitude to be around 11 at least. But the sources gave
it to be magnitude 9.5 - 10 and quite big in size. So this was
what was slightly confusing me, but never depend upon reports, just use
them as reference, they can vary from observer to observer. I also
verified another fact observationally, the limiting stellar magnitude of the
4.5" was 12 which is also the theoretical limiting magnitude and 11
mag. for faint obejcts.
Dr. Babu and his student Ms. Sujatha left the place after midnight with
Sachin, a lawyer by profession. We stayed on and observed very little
and spent time whiling away the time more than that. But during dawn, I
became quite serious and after realizing that enough time was wasted and
there was little time till it starts getting bright due to daylight, I
observed little with the 2 telescopes there. A young boy in our group,
Sriram, had got his 2" refractor with him and he along with me was the
only person to be awake all night without sleeping even one hour. And he
could finish observing 129 objects in one night, as per his count. I was
quite bored observing but saw some morning objects. This was a memorable
day.
