Kampung Bekok Astronomy Trip Report

[fizzy123]

This is a trip report of the recent astronomy trip to Kampung Bekok with Avarielle, Dave and Gary from 14/6 to 16/6 via train from Woodlands CIQ to the Bekok train station.

Before this trip, I have heard a lot of stories from gary about how great is that place for star gazing. What can a small town just below Segamat offer for astronomy? Wouldn’t the light pollution from the town itself and Segamat destroy the night skies? Is that place safe and is it mozzie infested? Well, I went there as a skeptic, but came back home two days later as an enlightened convert. My conclusion was that Bekok is a great convenient place for stargazing. It is a cumulating point for ease of access by non-drivers, good food, nice accomodations, non-light polluted skies and good safety.

The trip there was about 2.5h, the train ride was relatively smooth and comfortable. The town itself is self sufficient with different types of amenities for visitors like the tse char shop, barber shop, LAN shop, ramly burger stand and an orange town hall building. We had our dinner there at the only tse char shop. The meal there was really cheap and delicious as compared to Singapore and the serving is large. We had Fur Rong eggs, cereal prawn, bean sprout and lemon crispy chicken, all for 17RM per pax.
After the brisk yet filling meal, we proceeded back to set up our scope and prepare for observation. The scopes in use are the C8 and the 127mm Burgess achromat, both riding on the vixen porta mount. The skies were very clear throughout the night with practically zero cloud cover, except for the usual slight haziness in the early evening, which improves as the night dwell on and the thin high altitude clouds for both nights. A quick bino view for the NGC 4755 (jewel box cluster) and the omega centauri cluster show something interesting. The omega centauri cluster was at least 50% larger than when seen in SG as the surrounding faintness can be easily seen. A quick sweep to the right and the IC2621 (southern pleaides) and NGC3532 can be seen too. NGC3372 (Eta carina) nebula can be seen easily in the bino as a long pale smudge and I immediately notice something interesting next to it. It was very faint and pale white in bino and a quick check with the atlas, shows that it is the IC2944 (running chicken nebula). Eta carinaa was a great visual spectacle in the C8, the nebulosity can be clearly seen as it stretches across the entire eyepiece. More stars could also be seen for jewel box, NGC 6231, M6 and M7 and stars are easily resolved in the omega centauri cluster. Then saggitarius came into view, M8 and M20 was easily seen in the bino as two bright parallel nebulous region one above the other. However, as the night was rather hazy, the patches are rather short. M22 and M28 are also easily seen. Special mention for M22, It was so large that it appear almost like a star in the finder. In the eyepiece, it is very grand and in no way, stand less appealing as compared to omega centauri, very star rich and very bright. The M17 ( swan nebula) is also great under the C8 and it looks like a L shaped object. M24 star cloud is a large object in bino and it looks like a large oval nebulous objects with a generous sprinkle of resolvable stars in it. As such, M8 and M20 is affectionately coined as bird shit nebulas and M24 as egg omelette. Fianter globular clusters are also seen in the C8, such as M54, M69 and M70. The other stuffs that are seen are M11, coathanger, M27, M57, M29, M39, M13, M15.

On the second night, we decided to try something different. We decided to see things that are usually glanced over or less popular in nature. So we also saw, NGC6242, NGC6642, M21 and M25. We also decided to challenge ourselves to see galaxies which are considered faint and difficult to find, such as M65, M66, M95 and M96 in Leo and the whirlpool galaxy M51, which appeared as a faint circular blob stacked upon another smaller blob.

[cknjj]

Great report! Gary, how abt urs? Dun forget
abt the Andromeda Galaxy on the 2nd nite..

[Gary]

Great report! Gary, how abt urs? Dun forget
abt the Andromeda Galaxy on the 2nd nite..

Maybe another day another time, too busy planning for Durians under the Stars round 2.

@Fizzy: Nice report btw. It has been a while since we read your ob reports.

[cataclysm]

Nice report! Glad to hear that you guys were having a nice time under the stars!

[Clifford60]

YH, Thank you for the report, will go there soon, next new moon???

[fizzy123]

[weixing]

Hi,
Nice report... So you guys bring the scope on train?

Have a nice day.

[Bergkamp_]

nice nice~! wah.. starry nites!

[fizzy123]

Hi all,

Thanks for the compliments. The skies were very clear for both days. The scopes belong to Gary, we just went there with binos to sweep the milky way

[Airconvent]

Interesting...another new site? Anyone can give a rating with reference to Mersing? eg 0.9 Mers or 1.2 Mers..(new singastro unit of measurement..haha)
Thanks for sharing !