Yelagiri Trip

I had gone to Yelagiri this weekend with some of my friends at IIT Madras along with Dr. Suresh Mohan. We were joined by the guys from Bangalore Astronomical Society at Yelagiri. What skies! People living in Chennai MUST visit a place like that to get a feel of what we are missing! Simply stunning.

I initially started off into a Messier Marathon. I managed to get a glimpse of at least 30 Messier Objects, 20 out of which I found myself. :) But a few hours into the night, I gave up the marathon and shifted to photography. I don’t own any high-end Astrophotography hardware. Nevertheless, it’s great fun to capture the night sky in my Canon Powershot A540. Below is Orion, the Hunter though my camera. Easily the best photo that I’ve taken till now. :P

Orion
Details: Canon Powershot A540, f2.6, ISO 800, 10 exposures of 15 seconds each. Aligned and stacked using Registax4 running on Wine
 
Besides, I got to meet many amateuro-professional astronomers and astrophotographers. The highlight of the night was Mr. Hemant’s photos of Eta Carinae and the never disappointing Omega Centauri.
Eta Carinae

Omega Centauri

Night was great fun, but we ended doing college assignment work in our resort in Yelagiri during the daytime :) A weekend that I’ll never forget.

Some shots of the equipment:

Yelagiri Observing Equipment
Hemant’s Meade 80ED APO, Arun’s Maede 10 inch

Yelagiri Observing Equipment

Hemant’s 12 inch telescope, Dr Suresh’s Orion 80ED, 80 mm Guidescope