Gazing into the heavenly skies

I remember stargazing as a child on the terrace of our apartment block. We took bedding and made ourselves comfortable for a meteor shower which turned up for a short time, but I still have fond memories of the stars and constellations. It seemed natural to me all those years ago, that you looked up into the sky and saw stars, some that made patterns like the Saptarishi Mandal (the big dipper) and occasionally the Milky Way was visible. Only decades later did I realise that we lost that ability to pollution (light and air) and that it's almost like losing a superpower. People didn't believe me that I had done it or the one could even do it - look up in the sky and see the Milky Way. Made me wonder how many other superpowers were lost to civilisation. May be it's true that once upon a time people could bend spoons with their mind and survive years without food.

I digress. 

Stargazing came back to me when I looked up at the sky above the Grand Canyon and saw the Milky Way as bright as I had ever seen, like the milky stardust it is meant to be and you could see why it was called as such. It was spectacular! K had never seen it before (and neither did he believe that I had). Then I found out that there were some smart people who had realised that we were losing this superpower as a civilization and had decided to designate certain areas as 'dark-sky preserve' or 'dark sky reserve', free from human light polluting activities and are trying to preserve the ancient art of stargazing. The Grand Canyon is among the darkest such areas in the world!

Years later, on a drive back, we stopped at Buster Hill in the UK, which is an urban dark sky reserve, to watch the stars. The sky was so different from anything I had seen before and the Big Dipper was not where it was supposed to be. That is when I realised that this is a NEW sky. I grew up watching the sky at 17.7° N and Buster Hill was 50.9° N.

Nevertheless it was a beautiful night sky. We saw the Milky Way, Jupiter and Saturn, Hercules, Cassiopeia and Big Dipper, and even a couple of shooting stars. 

A few months later, I took K to see the stars in my hometown, to see more familiar stars. But I barely saw the Big Dipper (in its rightful place), mainly due to air pollution!

A few months later, the world shutdown due to a new Coronavirus, COVID-19. The world stopped flying aeroplanes and industry reduced capacity. Air pollution levels dropped remarkably and stayed low even after the lockdowns lifted and slowly activity began to resume. Around that time, I bought a very basic telescope. 

I took the telescope to Meerbrook, at the edge of Peak District in the UK, at 53.1° N in mid July. Blessed with a clear night sky on a new moon night (probably clearer than usual, thanks to reduced human activity), we had a spectacular show with thousands of stars in the night sky.

We saw the unexpected visitor, Neowise comet, (although very faint) between the Ursa Major and the Lynx. Within the Ursa Major, we saw the binary star system, Mizar and Alcor, or Arundhati and Vashista of the Saptarishi Mandal. We also saw Ursa Minor which is usually fainter than its larger sized neighbor.

Only a week past its opposition, we saw the gas giant, Jupiter and it's four Galilean moons, Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto through the telescope.

With the Saturn in opposition, we were able to see the rings of Saturn clearly and one of its moons, Titan next to it. I remember when I managed to focus on Saturn and distinguish the icy disk, it took my breath away.

As time passed, we also saw Mars, bright and red. Later into the night and closer to dawn, Venus rose becoming the brightest in the night sky. There wasn't much to see through my telescope though, without moons and rings.

We also saw Uranus but couldn't stay up till Mercury rose.

There were so many stars yet it was hard to see or focus on any nebula. For example, we could see Hercules but it was difficult to pin point M13 cluster and then couldn't really focus. We could see Cassiopeia and Andromeda constellations but hard to point out Andromeda galaxy (M31) or the bubble nebula. And of course, we saw the Milky Way.

I feel like I've managed to rediscover my superpower ! 

Telescope and the tech: I bought a Celestron Astromaster 70AZ (which is 70mm refractor). It comes with two eyepieces (a 20mm focal length which gives me 45x magnification and a 10mm or 90x). In addition, I bought a Svbony 2x Barlow lens, a Celestron moon filter and a Svbony 5x Barlow lens. I was able to see Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings very clearly with the 2x Barlow screwed into the 10mm. The 5x Barlow wouldn't focus with my telescope.

K gifted me some stargazer accessories: a Celestron red and white flashlight that doubles as a handwarmer for the cold night skies and a little book called '50 things to see in the night sky'.

Stellarium app is highly recommended and is beautiful too. You can change the location and time to see a different sky.

Astrophotography is totally different to stargazing unfortunately. So I don't have photographs of anything from that night. But here is a screenshot of Stellarium of the alignment of Jupiter's moons when we saw them. We didn't see the stripes on Jupiter but otherwise the view was very similar.

Next up: For the rest of July, Neowise remains visible, as do Jupiter and Saturn after sunset. As you stay up, Mars rises. Venus follows Mars and when it is up in the sky, Uranus and Neptune would also be visible towards the end of July. Mercury peaked on 22 July but will remain visible through the month just before dawn. So if you are lucky. You can see all the seven planets, and a comet thrown in, one of these nights.