Saint Peters School

One of my astro buddy, Ahsan Khursheed requested a solar outreach at Saint Peters School a few days ago. Maroof Ahsan and I went to the school on 7 May 2014.

It was an amazing experience indeed.. we showed the sun through halpha telescope and solar glasses to more than 400 students and the teaching staff.. these pictures show all the enthusiasm they showed for the sun.. It was more than 100 F and they still wanted to see more of it!

By far the best part was when we showed 12 mentally challenged students (pictured in red shirts in the last pictures) from the adjacent school. They were not speaking clear words but the expressions of joy on their faces made me so happy. I have so much respect for the teachers who are teaching these students!

GAM2014 Public Session

'Lahore Astronomical Society' arranged a public observing session for 'Global Astronomy Month 2014' in Bagh e Jinnah/Lawrence Garden, Lahore on 12 April, 2014.

Members of 'Lahore Astronomical Society' brought up their handy telescopes. People in the park came to us after seeing some nerdy folks with strange equipment. We were honored to have with us Khalid Marwat, who is a veteran amateur astronomer in Pakistan, known by almost everyone under the stars. He explained in detail some very basic and important concepts of observing the night sky to the beginners there. LAST is thankful for his presence with us that day.

But by far the most important moment for me was to see this young fellow. This 10 years old is  selling coconut in the park and trying to make his living. There he sees us with our telescopes and comes to us, probably to sell his coconuts. We encourage him to see through our telescope and he sees Jupiter with his moons!

This is what we do here folks! This is what defines us. We love to take our telescopes to the people who will always be neglected here. Seeing this image makes me so happy :) We are doing something right here!

Thank you to all the members of LAST for taking some time out and making this day a memorable event for all of us.

(These images are taken by members of 'Lahore Astronomical Society')

Big Prominence - 06 April 2014

It was cloudy and very windy today but sky gave me some time to get a few videos.. This is the best i could image today.. a huge prominence on the edge of the Sun and look how small our planet Earth is!

Sunspot - 05 April 2014

It is mostly cloudy today but i kept trying taking videos of the sun through hydrogen alpha telescope and DMK21 camera. Could get only one decent video to finally get this image.

Sun captured.. day well spent!

'LAST' April monthly meeting

Last night meeting of 'Lahore Astronomical Society' was great.. We had two presentations: Syed Roshaan was to talk about basic astronomical imaging skills with simple equipment that anybody can have.. next Maroof Mian was talking about Life cycles of stars.

Maroof did a great job in explaining details of each steps involved in stellar life, from birth to death. He also talked about why a star behaves the way it behaves, using HR diagram. We and those who are new to astronomy loved every bit of it.

The content in Syed Roshaan's talk was arranged in such a way that he managed to teach many different ways of his own learning curve in a very simple way. I was very impressed with his skills and the deep passion he has for imaging with such simple tools. I should be doing much more than what i currently am Roshaan :)

Oh and last but not the least, my son was there and he just loves this stuff.. We have much more in common other than our genes :)