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.

The Jewel Box

In the previous post we talked about an Android night sky application. If you do not possess either an iPhone or Android, an online version is available too.

If the night sky is clear later, we at the Science Centre OBservatory might look at The Jewel Box tonight.

The Jewel Box (N4755) is present in the Southern Cross (The constellation also known as Crux that acts like a compass in the Southern part of the sky). Hardly visible to the naked eye, the Jewel Box is a dazzling cluster of stars through the telescope.

A closer look:

Looking at the Jewel Box is a once a year event, because in Singapore on the Equator, we only get to see it for a short few weeks a year.

To catch the amazing beauty of this star cluster, allow your eyes to adjust to the dark first before you look through the telescope. You should be able to catch a few stars forming an outline of the letter "A".

Good luck finding the Jewel Box tonight! Hope to see you here at the Science Centre OBservatory!

Google Sky Map for Android Phones

There are plenty of Sky Map apps on the iPhone, but how about the droids? I recently came across a really cool one by Google.

Google Sky Map allows you to explore the night sky just by pointing your phone to space. The screen serves as a window onto the sky, whereby you can explore the relative positions of planets, stars, constellations, and more, in realtime.




In the auto mode, Google Sky Map works just like a compass. As you move the phone, the view on the screen moves. Pointing the phone to a particular star allows one to find out its name. To find out what our fellow stargazers can see from the other side of the earth right now, point the phone to the ground. To find out what is in the sky in the afternoon, point the phone to the ceiling if you are indoors.

If you prefer, the traditional manual mode is also available. Just open up a zoomed in sky map (the whole celestial sphere) and explore by sliding your fingers across the screen.

An extensive database is also available for you to search for a particular object in the sky.

Everytime I play with this app, I am mesmerized by the dazzling array of stars that surrounds the Earth from every angle, and at any time of the day.

If you are holding on to an Android phone, go try it out now!

SCOB Color Wall

Good Tuesday dear SCOB bleaders!! Thanks for standing by us and coming by to check our blog :) Here are some photos we can't wait to share with you...

The Science Centre OBservatory Colour Wall!!!!

Almost at its completion, the Color Wall is made up by you visitors. Each and every tile (color card) painstakingly created and coloured by visitors of all ages from as young as 3 years old to as young as 100 years old!!) These color cards contain beautiful memories and declarations of love between couples and earthlings for planets/the moon/stars.

Here are some examples.

"I am King"

"I Love Life"

"Love the Earth and Jupiter"

"I would chart the milky way (and) the universe and map it on your heart."

Hope you had a great long weekend last week :) This Friday we will be open again for all visitors.

See you there ok?



Bye for now!

Astronaut Photography of Earth

Dear all, long time no see... It's been a busy start of the year for all of us at Science Centre, and we finally made it to March! The Science Centre Observatory will be open as usual tonight, and because it is the start of the 1 week school holidays, we are expecting a surge in visitors. Feel free to come and join us! Our Colour-Wall is reaching completion soon, and since a few weeks ago, visitors have been making their own sundials and bringing them home as souvenirs.

If you have always been a fan of our Omnitheatre movies, Forces of Nature is an upcoming movie all about natural hazards such as earthquakes, tornadoes and volcano eruptions. While doing a research on natural disasters, I came across a really cool website by NASA.

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

Packed with 481,761 rare photographs from the International Space Station, you can search for any feature on Earth, and get a vast list of stunning photographs from their database.

A search for "volcanoes" gave me a list of beautiful volcano pictures, much like looking down on Earth from an aeroplane. A colleague searched for "Tokyo at night", and got this:

For those who love beautiful pictures, or anyone who needs a photo resource of the earth, this is definitely a webbie worth bookmarking.