It was a warm humid morning...! with Twilight skies, mobile alarm beeps beeps & continues to beep its 4:45 am that drove me quickly to pack up my baggage for my 2nd CAC event for Asia's largest optical telescope, am supposed to be at Madhya kailash by 7:00am and i did made it by 7:03am,..a view around presents newbies filled up random, in a 17 seater Van as it moves over its wheels, A Halt next was at Ashok pillar,... met well known enthusiasts with a wait a long - Gravity ! gravity to play in 2 frames demonstrating the theme of 2 Earths a first bloom of laughter.... it was about 8:00am collecting all those inspiring minds to leave out of chennai,. as minutes passed by a self introductory talk initiative kicked off overturning the term newbies, exchange of energies started to interleave and bindings begun.
Mighty Sun ruling our world, it never lets us forget :( wet in sweat ... 10:30am at Vellore, A break in journey to breakfast...
we have 2 joinees to mark us full, we are geared to the peaks with minimal halts and wobbling ghats we are almost in there at 2:45pm each of us humbly grabbing a pack of parcelled lunch in the van to fill the bellies our walk begins through the gates of IIAP, kavalur left our baggages at the security point a heavy disappointment to leave heavy tripod and camera in that post. now we are a team of pocket cameras, capturing pics guarding one another.
Enticing moments to see those huge domes not one or two we kept counting to six, with aperture tagged at the entry of each dome tower. finally we are paved to a huge auspicious one the VBO, its more like entering a temple of devotion we left our footwear and climbed to 3rd floor huge equipment painted like huge naval submarines, so peaceful, we are welcomed warmly with dome sliding and opening windows of star light......uhmm, yes its our Sun for it being day and a representative explained with great enthusiasm for all our doubts and questions, we were asked to alight on a platform which was elevated by hydraulics to reach out for the famed 2.3 primary mirror a cover metal leaves opened up to reveal the underlying mirror its is looking beautiful with visible stains and structural damage but its imagery captured remains exceptional hanging around the walls.
There was a demonstration of the spectrograph of a star floating on a windows 98 machine, along with a discrete spectrograph of a known light source for calibration purpose. Now its high time the telescope was oriented and swiveled through the control room in RA and declination axes, with dome rotating and slide opening its huge curved frames, wows keeps filling the air of semi silence. A photographic plate was brought to show the methods of recording before CCDs were employed, this telescope has a capability of resolving +22 magnitude light. it takes pride in celebrating the discovery of rings for planet Uranus.
| A quick surprize celebration with CAC reaching 500 member milestone - cake with cream representing a rosette Nebula with Advaidh creating black holes into it...... Van made it way back to chennai with a dinner break, to reached my room at 2:00am. |