School holiday activities

From now until the end of December we've added a few more activities to our regular Friday night stargazing sessions. Normally, we'd focus our attention on the sky outdoors, however, with an increase in the amount of cloud and rain at this time of the year as well as being close to Christmas, it seemed like a good excuse for some indoor activity as well.

1) Planetarium Shows
Our inflatable planetarium has been very popular at the Singapore Science Festival and other events over the past year or so. Now its time to bring it to the observatory.
Inside the dome you'll be taken an out of this world journey through the constellations of the night sky and the planets of the solar system. During the 25 minute show, a presenter will explain the details of the celestial wonders displayed above you.
Price:$5 per participant
Duration: 25 mins
Maximum capacity: 25 visitors per show
Floor seating with cushion
The is a dark enclosed environment not recommended for children below 3 years old.

2) Light Painting
Another favourite at science festival events. Inside a darkroom, you can choose a light and use it to draw/paint an invisible picture in front of a camera. Using a long exposure your light painting will be captured on a photograph, which is then printed for you to take home.

Price: $2 per go/photo
Light painting can be done individually or in groups of twos or threes. Only one photo is issued per two dollars.

3) Light Catcher 
This hands-on, model making activity involves using a variety of reflective and translucent material to capture light and create many colourful effects.
Price $2 per set


In addition to these we also have our free colouring cards and a small collection of reference books available, should the clouds refuse to move away.
Of course, our telescopes will still be open for free stargazing, once the sky is dark and clear enough.

Happy stargazing and Merry Christmas!

I love the mooooon!

Scobbers are just back from STAR+MOON gazing tonight! The widely publicised event for the partial lunar eclipse saw more than 3000 visitors tonight. Thank you for visiting the Observatory!

Enthusiastic visitors under a beautiful evening sky

Yong and our wonderful volunteers

Setting up and making some final checks before visitors use the telescopes...

Attentive visitors enjoying an interesting talk by a NASA professional

Crowds going crazy over the delicious snacks!

After a long wait, we were finally awarded with a glimpse of the beautiful eclipsed moon, peeping from behind the JTC building. When the moon finally rose from behind the JTC building, we used telescopes and binoculars to look at the interesting shadow cast by the earth on the full moon. The shadowed part of the moon looks a bit greyish, and using binoculars, we could make out some details.

Did not get a chance to capture a photo through the telescopes. It looked something like this.

So what did we look at tonight? We were so lucky to get a clear night sky, very very rare given the recent rainy weather. We saw Scorpius, Southern Cross (Crux), Alpha Centauri, Jewel Box, the Big Dipper, Saturn, Venus, Virgo, Libra, Saggitarius and so on. It was an awesome evening.

Some visitors enquired about the Google Sky application on the Android phone. As mentioned in a previous post, it is an excellent tool for stargazing. It is also available for free on the Android Market. So at the moment as far as I know, you have to own an Android phone to use the app. Some examples of an Android phone will be several HTC models, as well as Motorola Milestone, and Samsung Galaxy S.

It was a spectacular night, and I believe many visitors couldn't get enough. Fret not, the Science Centre OBservatory is open every Friday night 8pm to 10pm, and the main telescope in the dome will be opened up for public viewing.

Entrance is free and all members of the public are welcome. Stay tuned, and see you at the Science Centre OBservatory soon!

Note: Title of post is copied from Sponge Monkeys - We Like the Moon. It is so funny. Check out the embedded video below.

An Amazing Visual Treat

Thanks for the recommendation, Terence! This video achieved 8766 five-star ratings on Youtube, and when watching it, I found myself holding my breath, 'cause it was simply awesome.

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010. For more information visit http://www.amnh.org/.

Coming Soon in August

A guide to July's sky

Travel back to the days of old, when television was new, where things were all black and white. Here, you'll meet "darth" our friendly scobber from " A long time ago..." Who, by means of a mysterious interdimensional hypersubspace rift thingy through the fabric of spacetime, can communicate with us and inform us of what we can expect to see in the sky each month.

Eclipse Event 22 July 2009

RAIN STOPPED PLAY!!!!
If there was ever a day to remember that in the world of Earth-based astronomy the weather is king, it was today.
Heavy cloud and persistant rain made sure that this morning's Solar Eclipse was well and truly eclipsed, meaning to say that we and many others didn't see a thing.

Despite the rain an estimated 300 or so optimistic visitors came to the observatory at 8:30am.

As our motto says: The show must gone!
Actually, we don't have a motto, but in cases such as this it seemed appropriate.
With no eclipse and no live webcasts we did the only thing we could.......FAKE IT!

Now, when I say fake it, I don't mean use somebody's head and film it moving slowly in front of a bright light, no no no!
I mean we used our trusty software Starry Night Pro Plus to show people an animation of what the eclipse would look like if there were clear skies.

About 100 or so people stuck around for this "simulated eclipse" and a brief tour of the observatory. However, some were a little surprised when they saw just how small a 10% eclipse actually is and also that Singapore will not see a total solar eclipse until the year 2168.

There is a brief video report on the event currently available on Straits Times Razor TV:


Below are some photos of the event:

Above: Alfred setting up live webcast outside classroom.

Below: The webcast showing that even in China there was rain

Above: Yong got his picture in the paper (Lianhe Zaobao) treating visitors to a tour and Q&A session at the main telescope.

Scobbers go to Coffee Club

Well, this wasn't so recent but I was just cleaning up my desktop (that is my computer desktop, not my actual/real desk, which could do with a clean also but it can wait). I appear to be in the habit of saving files in new folders and not bothering to name the folder. As such my desktop is littered with various "New Folder" numbered 1 to 9 and I have no idea what I have in them. Does anyone else do this too?
I would ask you to raise your hand but I can't see you so there's no point, unless you happen to be one of my colleagues here in the office, in which case I shall keep an eye out for randomly raised hands in the workplace, in the hope that someone is reading this blog.

Anyway , where was I. Oh yes! So having opened "New Folder (4)" I stumbled across some photos of previous Science Educator outings, including Yong's birthday and our dear colleague Ms Tian's farewell dinner at Coffee Club IMM.

"So why not put some on the blog" I thought to myself and let everyone know that although we scobbers work hard we sometimes take a break to go eat some cake.
(I was half tempted to write "eat snake" but that would be bad because we never do that no no no :0) Be assured that all this occurred after work hours.
Here's the Coffee Club photos:

SK taking photo of her food. What was that? Fish?

I have to say that I found the food quite ok but my Chicken Zucchini thing was not very filling, which was good as it left room for CAKE!!!

Below are some of our other colleagues (Charissa, Ying Leng, Adam, Dr Her Mann and of course "The Ting" Hui Ting). How come Hui Ting got her food first?

Not sure what our friend Kelvin is doing here.

Perhaps he's talking about a subspace vortex opening up at the bottom of the bowl acting as a gateway to another dimension made entirely of pasta and thus always refilling his plate so he can never finish. That's my guess anyways. Its a common lunchtime topic.


Its Cake Time! 4 people, 3 muddy mudpies, 1 fruity tiramisu and 1 unknown cake. We finished the lot.

Yong vs the Mudpie: Yong wins. He ate one and a half of these lovely Cappuccino and Oreo flavoured monsters.

Yong likes to eat and he always says he eats fast. I like stop motion animation so here's a very short video showcasing how to eat at Yong speed: