14 December 2014

Gravity - Beautiful Visual Explanation

I found this video online that visually explains gravity. There are several such videos which explains why two objects with mass has gravity between them. What's fascinating in this video is that it not only explains the gravitational pull, but also the orbit of smaller objects around the larger objects, the elliptical orbit that planets take, the anti-clock-wise revolution of all planets around the sun (except of course Venus), and many more. The best part of this video is that it is not explained in computer graphics but explained practically. Watch and enjoy.




11 May 2014

The Lord of the Rings

Hi all. It's been a while since I updated this blog. So here it is. Some of the pics of Saturn I took over a year ago.

Used a 6-inch Newtonian Reflector Telescope and Nikon D5100. Took these pics in a-focal method. Removed the camera lens and placed it facing the telescope eye-piece so that the telescope would act as a camera lens.

These are unadulterated pics taken at 20 sec exposure and I don't actually remember the ISO settings. These pics were taken from my terrace (in the middle of the city) so you would find some light pollution in them.







I was unable to stack these images and so I ended up photoshopping it. Removed the light pollution, increased the brightness and sharpened the image. Here is the result.



And here's a blown-up version of the same. If you look closely, you can make out the shadow of the planet on it's rings. Cassini's Division, not very clear. Hopefully when I get a better eye-piece.