moon moon seen

Alright, if I could get past that initial glob of cheese, I could safely declare that I fulfilled a childhood dream of mine last week courtesy a conference away from home. Apart from the wonderful opportunities it threw, and what I gained, it also let me meet up with Lakshman, one of my close buddies here in the US.

He had a 1996 Celestron on him gifted by his professor! We enthusiastically brought it out in the front yard and voila, he was up there in all his complete, full glory. After some initial hiccups in the form of poor focus, and excess light, what we saw was truly mesmerising.

He was literally trapped and reduced to a heavenly sphere of bright white. Ah, his craters were meant to be seen, something I had only heard of while in school. It felt almost as if we were mocking and making fun of his celestial status. Thank god, I didn't behave behave like one gawk in a topless bar. We wanted to capture this glimpse for posterity but the set up we had couldn't support camera connectivity, too bad. But what is heartwarming is that the current Meades and Celestrons can be rigged to a camera, or better, a dSLR :)

My fascination dates back to those days in the 90s when I would walk/cycle past the India Hobby Centre, Hyderabad. Those guys stocked apart from everything else, some cool telescopes for amateurs. It was tempting but it was expensive too. But S.P.Road never seemed more relevant to me, with I.H.C at one end and Sangeet at the other. The amount of reading I did on astronomy, and the follow up I practised made my one of my uncles wonder if I would earn my bread from this. But that is a story for another day.

I don't know how many times I have dragged total acquaintances to B.M. Birla Science Centre, Adarsh Nagar, and I swear I haven't kept a count. That was truly some place.

I know I am one big lazy goose but if I can combine two of the biggest fascinations of my life, photography and sky gazing, into a single entity and derive immense pleasure from it what more could I ask for! Pleasure that simply cannot be put in words. Suits lazy bums like me.

maaki kirkiri