Starry Starry Night 29 May 2009

Things I've learned during the Starry Starry Night

1. How many constellations are there?
(a) countless

(b) 12

(c) 88

Ans: There are 88 constellations!

2. How do we recognise a star from the satellite or planets?

Ans: Well, a star twinkles!

3. Recently I got into the mood of doing Night Photography of the moon. Then I realise taking a photo of the moon is not easy.... You'll have to adjust the EV and shutterspeed to see the details of the moon.

Anyway, here's two photos of my "pride", full moon taken on 10th May 2009 and cresent taken on 29th May 2009

4. After looking at the photos, someone posted me a question "Do you know that if you take a photo of the full moon, and then wait for a month to take the full moon again, the photo will turn out to be the same?" It got me interested, because I thought that moon rotates and revolves... so we will see different parts of the moon.... It got me thinking for days. Then someone posted me another question.... "If you take a photo of the moon in Singapore, would it be the same as the photo taken in, say, Northpole or Europe?

Still researching on the 2 questions posted, but so far, I've found out that the photos of moon taken in Singapore are all similiar, because earth always face 1 certain surface of the moon only. My friend said that even if we travel to other parts of the world to take the photos.... we end up with similiar photos. Distance of the moon from earth is too large for us human eyes to see a difference. (hmm, I'm still researching into this topic.... by comparing the photos taken all over the world through the net!)

5. An interesting recommended freeware to download if you want to do "star-grazing" from the computer. http://www.stellarium.org/

6. Actually, all answers were provided by a friend who did astronomy during our JC times. Personally, I think the best part of that Starry Starry Night was to be able to meet up with this friend after many years!