Viewing the supermoon!

On the night of 14th, I finally used the telescope I made. It was both exhausting and fruitful. I am glad that worked perfectly fine.

The telescope set-up and moon

My mom and I went up to the top floor of our building (12th floor) from where the open sky is visible. The city sky is too polluted (due to light and smoke) for viewing most stars and planets, but the moon can obviously be seen. I was lucky that it wasn't cloudy. While my mom held a flashlight, I jigsawed all parts of the telescope together and balanced it on the tripod. Next, I attached the 12mm (thinking it is 12x magnification) eyepiece to the telescope and started searching for the moon. Every movement - of even a fraction of a millimeter - could make a huge difference. After my mom and I took turns to scan the sky around the moon for over half an hour, I finally spotted the moon - exactly taking up the entire space in the eyepiece. I immediately tried to focus it better, but of course the telescope had other intentions of bothering me. It moved slightly and the whole moon completely vanished from the frame...

My dad and I, enjoying the view

I struggled once again and somehow got it back in frame, in significantly less time than before. An important thing that I had forgotten was that the image seen in the eyepiece is actually an inverted image. I was moving the telescope in the opposite direction of what I was supposed to, every time, until I realized so! Once, I realized this, it become a much easier task to align. Finally, we could see the moon - very well focused. I moved on, taking up a challenge of changing the eyepiece to 25mm, (thinking it is 25x magnification) only to wonder why was the image smaller in the 25mm eyepiece. I realized that the value on the eyepiece was the focal length and not the magnification. My task of searching the moon would have been much easier with the 25mm eyepiece... If we looked through the telescope for long enough, we could even notice the moon moving!

Now that I had all my physics together, I could maneuver the telescope with greater ease. By now, my dad arrived back home from office. We had a good time together seeing the moon, chatting and clicking pictures.  

-Suhas

15/11/16

Originally posted on 25th Nov 2016 but then pre-dated to 15th Nov 2016.