My interest in astronomy started a few years ago, when I was in SanDiego. SanDiego has a pleasant weather and clear skies for most part of the year. However the light pollution in SanDiego makes it inconvenient for stargazing. A lot of regional astronomy associations are fighting to reduce the effect of light pollution from city lights. If you are installing new patio lighting or are responsible for installing street lights in your neighbourhood please install lights which cause less or no light pollution. You can read about the effects of light pollution and how to prevent it from DarkSky. Try to observe the night sky on a clear night from your backyard or neighbourhood park and then do the same when you go camping some time to a nearby national forest. You will then realize how much of the night sky we are missing because of the city lights.

   I did get myself a table top scope in SanDiego. Just to see how serious i get into Astronomy before i spend a large sum of money on a big scope. Definitely felt how bad the scope was in a few days. However we were astonished to see Jupiter and the jovian moons from the small scope. I even took a small video of the moon using a modified webcam. Now finally after a long wait, I went and bought myself a used scope from Astromart. I got this scope from a person in Kansas. I waited impatiently for a week to get the scope. The telescope brought with it Seattle's gloomy weather. Didn't get a chance for too many observing sessions since. Hopefully i get to take some nice pictures and post them in this blog..

Deception Pass Camping trip was certainly a fun experience. All of us had so much fun. Especially with all the fish that we saw but caught none :). The sun and moon setting over the horizon was just amazing. All of us just sat there watching the moon set over the horizon. That's when Ramraj finally decided to give me the camera and tripod after taking pictures of moon's reflections over the water. The first picture is one good example of the pictures he took. Sorry Ramraj I am posting only one of your nice pictures and all of my not so good Star Trail pictures. 

The sky was so clear that night. There were so many stars visible that i could not identify any known constellations. I wanted to take long exposure pictures of the circumpolar star trails. But I could not find Polaris. So i started randomly shooting portions of the sky trying to find out where Polaris was. My friends were starting to get tired of me searching in the dark :D.  My last shot was somewhere near Polaris. My luck i guess a shooting star came right in the field of view of my long exposure shot. Unfortunately a tree hid most of the shooting star. However, the picture was certainly worth the wait although it was certainly not my intention to catch a shooting star :). Watch the last picture closely to see the shooting star across the tree.