I am not a humble person. I know what I am - my merits and my drawbacks - and I don't consider humility to be a virtue. It is as bad to put oneself in an inferior position relative to others as it is to feel superior. But there is one thing that fills me with awe and instills in me humbleness, that is the night sky.
I don't know if there is anything more fascinating than the night sky. Possibly because it is "out of the Earth" that is why it fills us with wonder. From time immemorial, the stars and the moon have been there as a companion to humankind. The cave dwellers would sit outside at night and look up to the skies. They'd imagine patterns in the stars and think they can see animals - lion, dogs, bears. "The legends of Greece and Rome" was one of my favorite books as a kid and I read stories about a mama bear and her cub who are Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, about the heroes Hercules and Perseus, stories of Andromeda, her parents the queen Cassiopeia and king Cepheus....they are all in the sky and there are the stories that say why they are there. Our own Indian mythology also has the exact same constellations, but of course with different names. It must be that there was a central hub where the stories got told first and then they branched with the nomadic tribes, one who crossed the Himalayas and came to India and the other going towards Europe.
On one hand the stars fire up our imagination and on the other it challenges us to the problems of physics. All the ancient scientists and mathematicians had found the night sky to be a wealth of knowledge. Why do some "stars" wander while others stay still? Why are some constellations visible all throughout the year while some others rise and set? Why do the Sun and the Moon rise and set at different times? These questions have been intriguing and the answers to them can be found in astronomy.
My journey in astronomy started very early, when I was six. I think that was one thing I started liking quite naturally...without anyone telling me about it much. I read picture books, looked at pictures of the solar system and of the moon...I liked the planets but the stars were much more interesting. When I was around twelve, our daily newspaper started a column about astronomy every week. They would feature a star and write about its specialty. I started collecting those and pasting them to my scrapbook. Later I expanded those to not just include stars, but anything from the space. I covered the Leonid Meteor showers of 1998 in great details, actually writing an article for my scrapbook. Slowly friends and family got interested and they gave me interesting newspaper clippings to file too.
By the time I was in college, I knew a lot about the constellations that I could see from the smoggy skies of Calcutta, added to which was light pollution and high rise buildings. For the entire part of my life at home, I never for once had seen the North Star because our dear old neighborhood hospital hid it completely from my view. My mom tried to show me Orion's belt and the big dipper, but as I didn't wear glasses at that time, I couldn't see any of those stars. My mentor Devakalpa-da was practically my first teacher of astronomy. He showed me the constellations, explained what the pointer stars are and gave me a wealth of information about the stars, their names, the colors, if there are binary stars, what is the significance behind the summer and winter triangles...even now when I look up to the stars I remember those all. My uncle Kakabhai was another person with whom I'd stargaze. With my tiny binocular, we would go up to the terrace on summer evenings and try to find comets (I remember Hale-Bopp visible right beside the nursing home walls) and UFOs and figure out many mysteries of the outer space. I wonder at Kakabhai's patience at times. To hear me talk at length can really be an ordeal at times, but he never complained and actually listened to my crazy stories (I remember making up a story at run time while building a sand castle and telling him that while he was gardening and he was truly following the story, asking questions and all) and later my science lectures with the same interest. Probably it is my most favorite subject but I never had any chance to have a formal lesson. So is the structure of our coursework! Without the formal lessons I had no idea about the differences between right ascension and declination and didn't know why a synodial day differs from a sidereal day!
Thanks to free knowledge, I did enroll in a college level introductory astronomy course last year. When full fledged mathematics gets in stargazing, the subject becomes super difficult but most fascinating. I have never much seen more difficult mathematical problems, but I have never seen anything that makes more sense either. Once you blend the authenticity of mathematics with the heavenly bodies, you'll see how simple it becomes to explain the Sun's behavior, rising and setting of stars and even behavior of comets. After all it's always been humans who deduced everything!
I have again started to brush up on my astronomy skills. I borrowed a book from our local library and have been calculating the Sun's motion yesterday. My new astronomy buddy is Arnab and armed with a stargazing app on his phone, I am still continuing my after dinner night sky watch.
I don't know if there is anything more fascinating than the night sky. Possibly because it is "out of the Earth" that is why it fills us with wonder. From time immemorial, the stars and the moon have been there as a companion to humankind. The cave dwellers would sit outside at night and look up to the skies. They'd imagine patterns in the stars and think they can see animals - lion, dogs, bears. "The legends of Greece and Rome" was one of my favorite books as a kid and I read stories about a mama bear and her cub who are Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, about the heroes Hercules and Perseus, stories of Andromeda, her parents the queen Cassiopeia and king Cepheus....they are all in the sky and there are the stories that say why they are there. Our own Indian mythology also has the exact same constellations, but of course with different names. It must be that there was a central hub where the stories got told first and then they branched with the nomadic tribes, one who crossed the Himalayas and came to India and the other going towards Europe.
On one hand the stars fire up our imagination and on the other it challenges us to the problems of physics. All the ancient scientists and mathematicians had found the night sky to be a wealth of knowledge. Why do some "stars" wander while others stay still? Why are some constellations visible all throughout the year while some others rise and set? Why do the Sun and the Moon rise and set at different times? These questions have been intriguing and the answers to them can be found in astronomy.
My journey in astronomy started very early, when I was six. I think that was one thing I started liking quite naturally...without anyone telling me about it much. I read picture books, looked at pictures of the solar system and of the moon...I liked the planets but the stars were much more interesting. When I was around twelve, our daily newspaper started a column about astronomy every week. They would feature a star and write about its specialty. I started collecting those and pasting them to my scrapbook. Later I expanded those to not just include stars, but anything from the space. I covered the Leonid Meteor showers of 1998 in great details, actually writing an article for my scrapbook. Slowly friends and family got interested and they gave me interesting newspaper clippings to file too.
By the time I was in college, I knew a lot about the constellations that I could see from the smoggy skies of Calcutta, added to which was light pollution and high rise buildings. For the entire part of my life at home, I never for once had seen the North Star because our dear old neighborhood hospital hid it completely from my view. My mom tried to show me Orion's belt and the big dipper, but as I didn't wear glasses at that time, I couldn't see any of those stars. My mentor Devakalpa-da was practically my first teacher of astronomy. He showed me the constellations, explained what the pointer stars are and gave me a wealth of information about the stars, their names, the colors, if there are binary stars, what is the significance behind the summer and winter triangles...even now when I look up to the stars I remember those all. My uncle Kakabhai was another person with whom I'd stargaze. With my tiny binocular, we would go up to the terrace on summer evenings and try to find comets (I remember Hale-Bopp visible right beside the nursing home walls) and UFOs and figure out many mysteries of the outer space. I wonder at Kakabhai's patience at times. To hear me talk at length can really be an ordeal at times, but he never complained and actually listened to my crazy stories (I remember making up a story at run time while building a sand castle and telling him that while he was gardening and he was truly following the story, asking questions and all) and later my science lectures with the same interest. Probably it is my most favorite subject but I never had any chance to have a formal lesson. So is the structure of our coursework! Without the formal lessons I had no idea about the differences between right ascension and declination and didn't know why a synodial day differs from a sidereal day!
Thanks to free knowledge, I did enroll in a college level introductory astronomy course last year. When full fledged mathematics gets in stargazing, the subject becomes super difficult but most fascinating. I have never much seen more difficult mathematical problems, but I have never seen anything that makes more sense either. Once you blend the authenticity of mathematics with the heavenly bodies, you'll see how simple it becomes to explain the Sun's behavior, rising and setting of stars and even behavior of comets. After all it's always been humans who deduced everything!
I have again started to brush up on my astronomy skills. I borrowed a book from our local library and have been calculating the Sun's motion yesterday. My new astronomy buddy is Arnab and armed with a stargazing app on his phone, I am still continuing my after dinner night sky watch.
2 comments:
It is a long journey from "twinkle twinkle little star" to the astronomy lessons - you never deviated from the track! If you love a subject, you can pick up the threads even after a long gap. Keep it up!
Beautifully written... It is wonderful to keep studying a subject one is passionate about even during adulthood- that is when one has more resources as well as maturity...I have had similar experiences with my love for history- I am surprised when people are surprised at the fact that I "still" read history, or research historical places to visit, "even after starting to work"...
Also it is great to have supportive mentors and family and friends who share your interests
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