After that thrilling India vs. Pakistan cricket match, my friend Amjad Nizamani came to my home. I immediately decided to have a little observing session because the sky was clear. Amjad agreed with my idea and I pulled out the binoculars.
For testing the focus of the binocular, I pointed it towards the moon.
It was almost half disk. The sky was very clear after days of haze.
After the moon, I decided that Constellation Scorpius was the best target for the session.
Constellation Scorpius is the same as my zodiac. My birthday falls in the month of November. Its a summer constellation which is rich in deep sky objects and has a prominent shape.
It has 15 main stars. 12 stars of Scorpius are known to have planets.
First I observed the globular cluster Messier 4. Its a very beautiful sight even with the least powerful magnification and one can easily resolve individual stars in it.
It was 10:47 when I observed μ Scorpii (Meu Scorpii). Its a very lovely double star. I enjoyed observing it.
Mr. Ali Khan was continuously in contact with me. I was updating him in real-time with my observations and he was very excited to listen all that.
Since I didn’t have the laser pointer, it was a troubling experience to direct Amjad bhai to locate the stars. To direct Amjad bhai to locate the Meu Scorpii I asked him to first look at my neighbour’s water tank, then move the binoculars straight up from there and he too found Meu Scorpii. We were on terrace and my pc had Stellarium turned on, so I was locating all the stars with the help of that.
Now it was the turn of Messier 7, an open cluster which is the 7th in Messier catalogue and also known as Ptolemy Cluster since it was first discovered by Greek Astronomer Ptolemy in the 1st Century.
The time was 11:00 PM. I had some more objects to be observed. Now I decided to find NGC 6231 which is an open cluster.
Amjad bhai also observed all these objects with me. He was looking so happy, his face was sparking with happiness.
Then I tried very hard to find the CoatHanger. Its a beautiful collection of stars which appears like a Coat Hanger.
Ali Khan told me that you can find CoatHanger between Altair (Alpha Aquila) and Vega (Alpha Lyrae). I easily located its location in the Stellarium, but I couldn’t find it in the sky, because by that time it was so high, I was having neck pain while trying to observe it. So I left it until next time.
My sister had prepared two cups of Kadak Doodh Patti for me and Amjad. Amjad bhai said “nooooo I want to sleep, I can’t have it at this time of night”, but upon my insisting, he agreed to have it. There were some discussion between us regarding the Milky Way’s Arm, Double Stars and other Astronomical things.
It was a great observing session, Ali Khan said that it was bag full of observations
Good Night Folks, Wish You Clear and Dark Skies.
