Friday, May 25, 2007

Jestha sky: excerpts from article

Well, I have sent my second article to the magazine Science and Future. Here's an excerpt

...Saturn, Venus and Mercury are getting closer........These three planets will stay close for the rest of the month. On 22nd Jestha, Mercury (0.9) is a bit higher and is still lining up with the other two (...there's a map in the article)... Jupiter is also climbing higher everyday, and is very bright (mag -2.6) for the month....On 23rd, it will be at opposition...
14 JESTHA: Waxing Gibbous Moon close to Spica (0.98, Virgo)
17 JESTHA: Moon near Antares (0.96, Scorpius)
18 JESTHA: Full Moon (rises at 7:28pm)
Morning (before twilight): Antares-Moon within 3 degrees
Evening: Jupiter-Full Moon-Antares triangle
25 JESTHA: Last Quarter
28 JESTHA: Crescent Moon and Mars rise together before 2 am, both in Pisces constellation
1 ASHAD: New Moon

Monday, May 21, 2007

Interests

We are calling student teams from wide range of fields including Physics, Engineering, Electronics, Robotics and Geology to participate in workshops and bring their ideas about any possible student-based research projects on Astronomy and Geophysics. We have not yet fixed dates for all this however.

These include the topics of interest:

1. Radio Astronomy Projects: Cosmic Ray detection (Muni Shakya, Lok Narayan Jha)
2. LASER based Communication (Kathmandu Engineering College)
3. Solar: Development of Magnetometers, etc
4. Exoplanet Search
5. Aerospace/Aviation/Rocketry: Remote Control UAV and scientific payload
Launch rockets/RC aeroplanes with experimental/scientific payloads, payload recovery for data processing/analysis
Experimentation on propellants/rocketry
6. Archaeoastronomy: Trekkings to remote villages to excavate and learn from ruins of ancient chhatedhunga, etc.
7. Atmospheric sciences, environmental sciences, meteorology
8. Preparation for the 2009 Total Solar Eclipse, Path of totality crosses eastern region of our country