Ah, just came back from our observing session at Toa Payoh. Wow, so much online activity this evening ! Hm...that means not many people were out observing tonight ? Mm, you guys should have. It was great ! (the Encke division and all ... esp when Saturn was nearly overhead 8) )
What was intended as a short, casual after dinner session for Richard (Airconvent) and myself developed into a 5 hour long observing session at Toa Payoh Central. We were all set up by 8pm and were joined later by Richard (II
) and Zong Yao. When they all left around 11pm, I was joined by Chang Chern and 2 of us stayed all the way till 1am.Other than the usual main course served at my Toa Payoh Central observing site (Saturn), we managed to catch brief views of Venus, Mars and M42. And despite the horrible light pollution here, we tried hunting (really...HUNTING !
) for the nice triple star system in Monoceros : Beta Monocerotis ... rightfully a naked eye object but was invisible and lost in the sky glow caused by all the bright lights in the area. In the end ? Well, despite straining our necks and backs, we just couldn't find it with all these bright lights around :roll: Chang Chern and myself also managed to observe a rising Jupiter and the rising Moon from 12am onwards. Some dark patches were observed on one of the main equatorial belts of Jupiter, but the GRS was not observed this evening
While 2 of us were there, the occasional passer-by joined us out of curiosity and they were all treated with first-time-in-their-lives view of the magnificent Saturn ! For us, it just feels very good to be able to share that moment of excitement and awe (which all of us had when we first "discovered" Saturn with our own scopes, I'm sure) with the members of the public. A nice, elderly gentleman in his fifties who introduced himself as Mr Wu also stopped by (and stayed with us for almost a full hour) , and he had quite an interesting conversation with Chang Chern about his own brief experiences with practical astronomy, the Chinese astro books he read, astro related documentary and sci-fi VCD's ("Contact"- starring Jodie Foster was one of his faves), a Refractor he bought for his son many years ago, the universe, "is there life out there" etc...
Wow, what a great way to end a Monday !
To Richard (Airconvent), Richard (II), Zong Yao and Chang Chern, thanks for joining in !
