I was really keen but honestly a little doubtful about what could be seen from Singapore's bright lit skies. So I went on Friday and I learnt that night- DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A POWERFUL TELESCOPE.
Their main telescope looked like this:
Like literally, this is the exact model. I went to google search it and all. and it came with the dome thingie too. ok let me be more scientific about it, it was a 40-cm Cassegrain reflector of combined focal length 520-cm (I copied that from the science centre website).
The only thing that wasn't too great was that you have to queue up to view whatever they're showing, since there's only one main telescope and shifting it takes awhile (since it's so huge). That friday night we got to see the moon and saturn. IT WAS DAMN COOL.
because, the moon and saturn look exactly the same as the images we see in movies and on tv and on images. like this:
I know it looks fake, like a lousy CGI or 3D image a beginner generated in his first lesson. but... it really looks like that. and for a moment if they hadn't told me that that little shiny thing in the sky I thought was a star was the exact planet Saturn I was looking at in the telescope, I would've thought I was looking at a digital image and not a live.... view of Saturn. (ok la, I'm just making a point. but really it was damn cool, and I'm not that dense I would have believed it) I think for half a moment I would have expected the planet to move... but I suppose planets don't move so fast do they. no they don't...
anyway, I got to see titan too! which is saturn's largest moon. it was so bright~~~
but it wasn't really the best time to go stargazing that night (and I kinda suspected it but because it was free and jw&I were free we just went down anyway) because it was really cloudy- it had rained in the day time and the skies weren't the clearest. so as a result saturn looked really much tinier in the telescope because zooming in too closely would distort the image.
the moon was as crater filled as it looks in images hahaha but we've seen the moon too often so I won't put pictures up here. I don't really have images of my own because it never really struck me to take photos... yeah. hahaha. and it was dark.
and they had a beautiful map of the constellations hanging on the wall of the queuing area, it was circular and divided all the constellations into the different times of the year/when they're in view :) which gives us our star signs!
I also found out from the star map they gave out that a lot of characters' names in fiction are named after constellations or stars hahaha.
Sirius and Regulus are names of stars~ and those are of course names of the Harry Potter characters Sirius and Regulus Black. Castor and Pollux are also names of 'twin' stars that form Gemini... (I did a quick google), but the names are so familiar because they're also characters in the hunger games hehehe.
but most of the star names are super fanciful and I'd sound stupid shouting at my kid so I don't think I'll name my kid after a star.
but I wouldn't say it was impossible for me to dress my kid up as a star- literally.
Ultimately, the most interesting I learnt was from one of the volunteers from TASOS (the astronomical society of singapore), who was manning the telescopes. He's a middle aged sorta guy with an interest in star/astronomy photography and he showed us these AMAZING photographs of nebulas, star clusters, galaxies and constellations which he took himself. They were like this quality, no joke:
this is the Orion Nebula, apparently it's super easy to get an image of this beauty from Singapore :O
Anyway, the super funny/inspiring thing I realised was that, while this guy could take all these crazy images and explain the constellations and astronomical jargon to us, he wasn't all that tech-savvy and even had problems (like normal aunties and uncles) navigating their phones hahaha. Which led me to realise how amazingly passionate he was, I think if our stomachs weren't growling and we needed to go, he could have gone on allll night about how to start in an interest in Astronomy. Apparently, he was always interested in the stars and he began his journey in seeking the stars and learning about them around the 1980s. and even now TASOS (and him and his group of friends) take trips around the world to view different astronomical events like 20s solar eclipses (which aren't always successes) and meteor showers and the aurora and all that.
It's so amazingggg.
but I think actual astronomy-enthusiasts would laugh and my childish attempts to describe what I learnt that night. and I guess they're right to do so because in my brain a lot of what I'm thinking is.... IT'S ALL SO PRETTY.
In other news, I also watched the France vs Germany match that night. and it's getting so little mention in my blog because it sucked. the game was totally rigged.
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