This time it was five of us who had gone for an observing session
around 70 km from the city to our northern location. Among us, Godfrey Lawrence, Vinod and me went first at around 8pm in our new friend, Vinod's car. Then
other friends Nithin and Vinay arrived
later for the first time at around 10 pm with great difficulty. We had carried Sathya's 6" telescope
mounted on an equatorial mount.
The sky throughout the night was something I had never ever
seen in my life !! except for around 2-3 times in the past only. The
Milky-way near Canis Major was especially thick. Except for local
lights from far away villages in all the directions, the sky was
wonderfully dark upto around 10 degrees above the horizons in the south. I couldn't
make use of the 6" much but we had 3 binoculars so that was used to
see objects everywhere. Simultaneously, Vinay and me were seeing many globulars with
Olympus 10x50
binoculars - the 2 Messier globulars in Ophiuchus, Omega Centauri, M3
M5, M13, M4 and a few others. I was not confident of seeing the Virgo
cluster of galaxies with a 6" (as I was then more used to a 8") so I gave it
a try and didn't see anything there.
In the morning we saw a very bright light in the east, all
of a sudden. First I thought it was a very low moving airplane in our
direction. When others confirmed it to not be moving, we were shocked
at the brightness of the object, what could it be? Then we realized
that it was nothing other than Venus. It appeared to us also like a
supernova or some new very bright star.
We saw lots of meteors everywhere in the sky right from
evening to morning. But the most important attraction of our lives
which I'm sure very few people will have ever witnessed was a special
meteor. This meteor was a fireball (very bright meteor) and as it
burnt silently, it exploded without causing any sound leaving a bright
trail for around 2 minutes or so. But it's specialty was this that
when it exploded, it suddenly brightened the entire
surroundings !! For a second, there was as much light
around us as there's at 6pm in the evening after sunset !!! It created daylight
while exploding !! We had no idea how to estimate it's magnitude but
felt like giving a number anywhere between -10 and -15 !!! Must have
been very low in the atmosphere and it's broken pieces might have also
fallen somewhere far if it wouldn't have been destroyed completely
after exploding.We returned the next day remembering the mystic
beauty of the Milky-Way and the exploding meteor, both of which we had
witnessed the previous night.
