Successfully Ends Observational Night Camp by MAS , UoC

The very first Observation Camp that I took part at the University of Colombo, ended successfully on the 10th Morning of October 2009. In fact it was more than Successful I presume. My experience is unfolded as follows. Also I should add that the whole scenario was broadcast live with ustream.

The camp began with an introductory lecture to Observation Astronomy, delivered by Pulasthi Kanattage, who happens to be a colleague of mine as well. It was featured with basic facts of celestial sphere and the ancient accounts for having the heavens observed.

Afterward, we moved to observing the skies with binoculars and our own naked eyes. The skies were apparently not clear as the venue, Colombo was not a place where you could not find unlighted during the night. Of course, although there was some sort of light pollution being, we captured the constellations like Scorpius.

Meantime we took the dinner from Raheema, a hotel beside the University and got back to observation.

Soon we had an amazing session of activity, which was highlighted with making a lander, which housed an egg. The aim was to make the lander with raw materials, provided so that it will land the egg undamaged when dropped from 20 meters above. We (I & my colleagues) designed a parachute-like lander which housed the egg, covered with bent papers. Other teams also made their own designs taking various facts like center of gravity, center of pressure, inertia etc into consideration. To our joy, our lander landed safely and we won the game together with other 4 teams, despite only a single team failed in successful landing.

Then we moved to more observation sessions and observed more constellations. Even we observed Moon and Jupiter as planetary objects. There were coffee sessions as well to drive away the possible sleepiness.

In the end we had a guessing game and everybody with their teams tried to bring out an idea with performing in front without sounds. Other teams were supposed to guess what they were focused on. It aslo turned out to be an exciting item. You may watch us here perfroming our team work..

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2322546

I hope it was more than ordinary and I got a good experience through the camp @ UoC.

Thanks MAS for organizing such a great feat !!

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