Friday 15th Jan - Partial Solar Eclipse

Watch this eclipse at Science Centre OBservatory!
Observatory opens at 3pm
Free eclipse glasses for every visitor

How to view an eclipse
Bring a mat (to sit on)
Bring a hat or an umbrella (for shade)
Wear eclipse glasses (for protection)
or use a Pinhole (we'll show you how)

Festive cheer at SCOB!

Christmas decorations are replaced with Chinese New Year ones for SCOB spring cleaning today. It was cheerful and merry putting up decorations with my fellow Scobbers. The starting of the year fills one with hope, its such a great feeling :)

Scobbers Andrew and Eng Wen taking down the weather-beaten mistletoe along the stairs.

Christmas decorations to be put away until December!

Scobber Yong figuring out how to use 3M plastic hooks...

Scobbers Eng Wen and Alvin working on a tangled mess of plastic hearts and string...

Scobbers Andrew and Alfred putting up the plastic hearts. Randomness rules!

Scobber Andrew with our new year decorations! The redder and the golder the better.

Scobber Yong putting up more plastic hearts. Scobbers Eng Wen and Alvin working on even even more plastic hearts. Its Valentine's Day on Chinese New Year too, you see.

Scobber Andrew with the untangled plastic hearts

Scobber Yong!

This year's Chinese New Year coincides with Valentine's Day as well. Come to the Observatory with your loved ones and spend a romantic night under the stars!

Reporting behind the camera, Scobber SK.

January Star Map

If the sky is clear, Janaury is an excellent month for stagazing. Quite a number of the brightest stars in the sky are visible. Most notable, are Sirius (the brightest of all nighttime stars) and Canopus (2nd brightest).
Sirus is the "king of the twinklers". Its bright white light becomes highly refracted as is passes through our atmosphere, causing it to the twinkle more than most stars. You may even see it flash with some colours of the rainbow.

One the highlights is of course Orion. Located almost right overhead, its 7 brightest stars should be clearly visible, including the three stars of Orion's belt. On Fridays we'll be focusing our scopes on a tiny speck in Orion, The Great Orion Nebula, great to look at especially in the big 16" scope, where we can see the tight cluster of stars known as the trapizium and hopefully the glow of the gas cloud that surrounds them.

Of course, I have to mention the return of the red planet Mars to our evening sky.
Probably, visible around 9:30pm, low towards the east, Mars will reach opposition (in direct line with Earth and Sun) on 29th Jan, where it will be at its brightest for the year.

January's Star Map: