stargazers

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On June 30, planets Jupiter and Venus will be less than six degrees apart. And members of Bengaluru’s astronomy clubs, will be celebrating the occassion with a ‘star party’. Meet theof the cityAmateurin the city are training their gaze at the night sky for another ‘event’. This time, many are just relying on their naked eye, or at the most, an ordinary. On June 30, past 8 pm, two planets Jupiter and Venus will be visually closest to each other in the western sky, separated by less than 6 degrees of separation. Venus is the brightest and Jupiter is the largest planet. “They can easily be seen by the naked eye, provided the weather gods are kind to us,” astronomy buff Leela Kalyanaraman says. “But people should look up, is it not?” And if they do, it will be two bright stars twinkling away merrily.Something or the other happens in the night sky all the time, Kalyanaraman says and excuses like “light pollution” won’t cut for events such as these. A late entrant into a “whole new world”, she has been stargazing since 2009 and has seen meteor showers and star trails from the terrace of her home in Jayamahal Extension. At 58, she is one of the older entrants into a group that sees mostly school and college students as well as young working professionals.As is the case of any hobby, these members, too, have groups which meet weekly and go out together. The city’s amateur astronomers are not exactly spoiled for choice. There are just two clubs – the Association of Bangalore Amateur Astronomers aka ABAA (set up in1976) and the Bangalore Astronomical Society (BAS, set up in 2006) – which conducts different kind of experiences for a fraternity that’s not very large but good enough, as Prakash Subbanna (50), VP ABAA, says. “We prefer one dedicated amateur to a 100 momentarily interested floating population.” He estimates that about 35-50 amateurs (out of a total of about 1,500 members) have shown sustained interest in the activities of ABAA. BAS, a registered group with no office per se, has almost 1,000 members, of which about 80, at the most, are regulars. Often, the members of the two groups overlap.Once upon a time, amateur astronomy was a lonely affair. Just you and your telescope. Those who couldn’t afford themade do with a pair of binoculars. “Whatever information we needed was satiated by few books in the library or word-of-mouth,” Subbanna recollects. He was 17 years old when he joined ABAA in 1979. But there would be plenty of amateurs gazing at the night sky. Back then they would usually gather at Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum’s hobby centre and make telescopes.Now, every Sunday evening at 6 pm, at the entrance of the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, the room given to ABAA, sees enough and more activities. There are talks given by experienced amateurs on upcoming heavenly events and pertinent topics on astronomy. On clear nights, the telescope is brought out for some serious stargazing. Software engineer Keerthi Kiran (30) talks of attending the ABAA workshops as a school kid. College education gave him little time for extra-curricular activities, but when he started to work in a MNC in the city, he found time to go back to ABAA to take lessons on telescope making. “I built an 8” telescope in 2009,” he says and with that he was ready to explore more. That led him to BAS. It organises, what Subbanna laughingly calls, “glamourous” star parties. “People my people are more interested in taking pictures or astro-photography, and visual observation of stars,” Kiran says. And instantly share it with the world through Instagram or Flickr. BAS taps into this and organises trips to places like Koratagere and Coorg. “We sleep during the day and are up through the night.”Often experienced amateur astronomers will organise talks for newcomers about the stars or astronomical activities that take place on location (places they have visited to witness such events). Kalyanaraman is proud to have given many such talks and extra telescopes (many left behind by BAS members who are out of the country) which are passed around so that everyone present can stargaze. “It is like one big party…” Kiran says. The season for star parties is from November to March, the winter skies being clear and perfect for stargazers. “Working professionals, students and families – all huddle together in pursuit of a common love.” Girls come too, he laughs, but they are not so regular.The regulars now have a camaraderie which is seen in close friends. Kalyanaraman, who had to slow down after a major surgery in 2009, says her life is filled with activities thanks to the pursuit of astronomy. She invites her new friends to family functions and so do they. Not only the club members, she is friends with the online fraternity. “One of my friends is working on the New Horizons Probe to Pluto and he regularly sends me interesting reads,” she says. Thanks to her passion for astronomy, she took online courses on basic physics and chemistry and made more friends in the process. “I have a lot on my plate these days,” she says.And sometimes, Subbanna adds, the passion for astronomy translates into serious study on the subject. “I have seen young boys at ABAA who are now studying astronomy in colleges,” he says. Kiran speaks of “one of the best apps for stargazing” that has been developed by a BAS member, Harshad, who now lives in Belgaum. The SkEye Planetarium App (on android) calibrates the section of sky you are pointing at (almost) instantly. Plus, it has a huge database of deep sky objects. As he puts it, “These are heady times to be a stargazer, thanks to the technology available.”And that brings us back to the basic question: So, why are we not looking up at the night sky more?