Winter is here

Winter has stepped in and it's time to pull out those old sweaters and coats and whatever warmth you could lay your hands on. Anyway this is Hyderabad, India and the cold here is atleast not as hard as the northern regions. Yet, it has been a dry winter so far and it's been pretty much irritating to write exams in such cold. The real deal is yet to come, but I've got something far more chilling and interesting with me now. Well, the timing of my recent craze of gazing at stars was a bit bad and I missed the better half of the night sky during the Aug-Sept-Oct months. Now the famous and good-looking constellations come into view and the interesting period starts now. I wonder how I had the patience to wait for so many months to wait for these 2-3 months of good night sky.
  Today, we were on the terrace for finishing up with our remaining fireworks stuff as it was the full moon and we followed the tradition. The winter chill suddenly cleared my mind and I remembered the Winter Hexagon and all those winter constellations. I ran home, checked out the latest arrangement of the stars in the sky (at the moment over Hyderabad) and ran back upstairs only to find the full moon dominating almost every other object in the sky. But I could see some spots in the eastern side (where the moon was) which were bright enough to override the moon. And I knew these should be the very bright ones and famous as well. Just as an experiment, I took a 15sec exposure photograph of an area in the eastern sky. To my surprise, though the moon light made the photo too bright, i found many many stars that I couldn't see normally. I started taking more pics in the east and finally found what I was looking for. Easily one of my favourites and named after a hunter, The Orion was out there hanging just over the horizon. I could make out all the important stars and because I was seeing it for the first time in the sky, my blood was rushing. I could see 2 stars with the naked eye just under the bright moonlight, but my camera could see 20-30 stars under the same moonlight. I got the photo and after a bit of tweaking, the stars can be seen with some more clarity than the original. The pic goes down here, and I'll put other pics in the coming days, as the moon loses its shine and the sky goes dark slowly. I must catch a glimpse before I leave for my tour. I can still do it there, but the view from Kerala might change slightly. My previous post explains a lot of things: Here. A paragraph of particular interest to me is this:

I managed to find some interesting things over the internet and i get excited to see them out there in the blackness of the universe. Some of the things i would love to be able to see are, Leo, Orion, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Canis Major and Minor, and a few more like Taurus. But before that, we need to find this so called Winter Triangle and the Winter Hexagon which has among the brightest stars like Sirius, Betelgeuse, Pollux and stuff.. I have been having a faint idea about the location of Sirius coz, it is the brighest star and also forms a vertex of the Winter Hexagon, and, it forms the constellation, Canis Major, but the problem is, i can't confirm it. There's a bright thing in the east the surely is Jupiter, and there are 2 brights above my head of which, one is Mars and the other might be Sirius. Just can't confirm...

  The funny thing is, though I mentioned the Winter Hexagon and Triangle and so many stars, I couldn't see any of them. The 2 brights above my head were not at all Mars or Sirius. Infact, at that time, when I was looking above my head, Mars and Sirius were just setting down the Western Horizon and I missed them. Now, they travel the whole other side of the earth and will peek out from the eastern horizon. I finally get to see my favourite stars in the sky and this pic below shows one of the best looking constellations during winter. To see the details, click on the image, it gives a 1600X1200 pix view of the photo (only then can you see the faint dots on it!!)



(You will need some patience for the 1600 X 1200 image to load and the red lines show the constellations. The sky you see here is the North-Eastern sky over Hyd at around 2100hrs. The photo has been modified and the contrast ratios might be a bit abnormal. So, don't mind ..)