My favourite nocturnal activity
After 2 weeks of cloudy nights, I finally got a break. Last Friday night was superbly clear and I hauled my telescope and started my favorite nocturnal activity ... wait a minute ... I mean : my second favorite nocturnal activity.
The setup took about 20 minutes and once I powered up the telescope, I headed straight for the biggest planet of our solar system, at 300x, this is what I saw :
Note : The 4 white little dots are Jupiter's 4 brightest moons.
And then I went for this :
It is called the Butterfly Cluster or M6, also known as NGC 6405, it can be found in the constellation Scorpius, it spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years from earth. It is almost directly overhead at 11pm every night for this month.
What’s a light year ? One light year is the distance traveled by light over a period of 1 year i.e.
186,000 miles x 60 sec x 60 min x 24 hours x 365 days = 1,091,019,456,000,000 miles.
So M6 is 2,000 x 1,091,019,456,000,000 miles from here or 2,182,038,912,000,000,000 miles.
These numbers are ASTRONOMICAL.
Now you know how small we all are …
FYI, our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across.
There are billions of galaxies out there.
The setup took about 20 minutes and once I powered up the telescope, I headed straight for the biggest planet of our solar system, at 300x, this is what I saw :
Note : The 4 white little dots are Jupiter's 4 brightest moons.
And then I went for this :
It is called the Butterfly Cluster or M6, also known as NGC 6405, it can be found in the constellation Scorpius, it spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years from earth. It is almost directly overhead at 11pm every night for this month.
What’s a light year ? One light year is the distance traveled by light over a period of 1 year i.e.
186,000 miles x 60 sec x 60 min x 24 hours x 365 days = 1,091,019,456,000,000 miles.
So M6 is 2,000 x 1,091,019,456,000,000 miles from here or 2,182,038,912,000,000,000 miles.
These numbers are ASTRONOMICAL.
Now you know how small we all are …
FYI, our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across.
There are billions of galaxies out there.
posted by Orion | 9:26 PM
6 Comments:
man that's way cool. I remember when i worked in US a colleage used to have a 40" reflector telescope or something ridiculously big like that. you can't see the whole moon with that scope, only a small part of it.
Now you know how small we all are …
Remind me that my life is just a dot on a line.
Nice hobby you have there.
ky : wow! 40 inches. That is BIGGG. Mine is 8 inch - I mean the apature/mirror size of the telescope.
thquah : This hobby helps me put things in perspective - in relation to the cosmos.
Last I heard, there are 69 suns for each person alive. Multiply that by the world population and you will realise just how pathetically insignicant WE really are. Hopefully.
precolator : The numbers will keep increasing as astronomners discover new things out there. FYI, when u r looking at something 2,000 light years away, you are seeing it as it was 2,000 years ago, becuase it took the light 2,000 years to get to you eyes.
since jumping to light speed is impossible due to the psysics and gravitational forces involved, we will just have to learn to swim. or soemthing towards that extent :)
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