祝贺“神七”

September 27th, 2008 at 23:03 · Filed Under Astronomy, Blogging, China, Chinese · Comment 

昨日在报章上看到“神七”成功升天，心里很高兴。原本要写这篇文章的，不过由于很忙也太累了，所以没写。刚才回到家，原本也很累的，但是在电视上看到中国宇航员首度出舱外进行太空漫步，高兴得连疲累也忘了，心里真的感到一种莫名的兴奋。我孩子也看到了中国宇航员太空漫步的画面。向他们解释了一些太空科学。不知道他们是否了解，不过他们也非常的高兴。

在此，我们一起祝贺中国，“神七”为中国人带来了骄傲！

最新：神七返回舱于28日17时37分在内蒙古四子花旗着陆。

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First astronomy lesson

July 16th, 2008 at 23:52 · Filed Under Astronomy, At Home, Blogging, Days in My Life, Education, Family · 1 Comment 

After the TV, I went to lock the outer gate. The sky was clear and I could see the full moon and many stars. I saw the brightest star twinkling on the lower left corner not far away from the moon. I guessed it was Jupiter. Jupiter is the largest planet and one of the four outer gas giants or Jovians in our solar system. To be sure, I checked with Stellarium on my Mac and confirmed it was Jupiter.

Then I called the boys and mom to gaze at the sky and told them it was Jupiter the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in our solar system. I told them that Jupiter would take about 11 years to orbit the Sun compare to one year for our planet earth. The two older boys responded with a big “Wow!” Nik was rather excited and very vocal.

We could also see some other stars and Ara, Triangulum Australe, Libra and Virgo constellation. They were magnificent.

The kids had their first astronomy lesson and so did I. I learned that Pluto is no longer the ninth planet in our solar system. Instead, the International Astronomical Union or IAU has reclassified Pluto as one of the four dwarf planets together with Ceres, Makemake and Eris.

I will reconsider to acquire a telescope soon. I almost invested in a Meade’s ETX-90PE in 1998 but for some reason I did not. I will consider a larger model, ETX-125PE.

I became interested in astronomy when I was first introduced by two persons. One was Dr. Ghaffar and Khoo. Dr. Ghaffar is a nuclear physicist and Khoo is my ex-classmate and a mechanical engineer. Both of them were very involved in star gazing. Khoo had even built his own 12″ diameter Newtonian Reflective Telescope.

I almost invested into one as mentioned earlier but I didn’t. At some point, I became very interested in astrophysics. Writing software to model celestial body can be interestingly challenging. Perhaps I should go get a Ph.D. and become an astrophysicist. Or, perhaps, one of the boys will become a renown astrophysicist.

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