CHAPTER TWO

2.1 Watching the Night Sky:

When you are on a rooftop or in an open space to watch the night sky, avoid looking at any bright light for at least 15 minutes.
Avoid staring at your phone screen, except for certain apps that I am here to recommend; these apps use a dark background. This makes
your eyes more comfortable with faint light, allowing them to perceive faint objects more easily. Two apps I find very useful, and handy-one
is ‘Sky View Lite’ and the other is ‘Celestron SkyPortal’. Even without upgrading, you can use Sky View Lite to identify celestial objects. Simply
point your phone or phone's camera towards the object, and the app will display its name. It doesn't take pictures of the object for
identification; instead, the app uses your coordinates to identify celestial objects. You can even point it towards your legs, and it will still
identify some objects. These are the objects that are currently on the other side of the Earth. Celestron Sky Portal displays the sky map with
east on the left, as I have mentioned earlier. You can check the rise and setting times of celestial objects for a specific day and for years to
come. The app provides constellation views with their drawings, allows you to centre an object, search, and offers many useful options even
in the free version. Celestron is a company that manufactures telescopes and binoculars on a large scale. You can even use 'Stellarium' on
desktop. It provides a nice idea of how the ecliptic moves throughout the day and the year. With Stellarium, you can observe how the zodiac
signs rise and set over the course of the year.

2.2 Choosing a Telescope: There are different types of telescopes available, namely refractor, reflector, and catadioptric. While the first two
use large tubes, the latter can have a smaller tube. Without delving into the details of their working principles, let's explore another term
that is frequently discussed: 'go-to.' This refers to telescopes equipped with a 'go-to' mount. A ‘go to’ mount is computer based. The primary
challenge when using a telescope is aligning the desired object with your eyepiece. Even if you succeed, Earth's motion causes it to quickly
slip away. With minor adjustments, a 'go-to' mount can interpret your coordinates and smoothly adjust to focus on the desired object in a
very short time, automatically keeping it within the eyepiece. Such a mount is naturally costly. However, you will be observing the object
through the optics, not the mount. Quality optics are essential for optimal viewing, and instruments offering excellent optics are typically
heavy and expensive. A 'go-to' mount capable of carrying such heavier payloads will be even more costly. Consequently, the overall cost of
the instrument increases. To keep it reasonable, manufacturers often compromise on optics in a 'go-to' mount telescope unless you are
willing to pay a higher price. I want to point out that a low-priced go-to mount telescope often has poor optics. On the other hand, for a
similar price, you can acquire a regular reflector or refractor telescope with good-quality optics. However, it's important to note that locating
objects in the night sky can be highly challenging with these options. My 10-inch Bresser Dobsonian, including the stand, weighs about 36
kg, making it too difficult to handle and store, of course. However, the optics are so good that I find the moon too bright to look at with this
telescope. Sometimes, I must use sunglasses to observe the moon through my scope. But since it’s not a 'go-to' telescope, at times, even
though I am observing a too big and bright moon in the open sky, it takes a tiring effort to bring it to my eyepiece. When you are trying to
observe the sky with the aid of an instrument, it’s like looking at the vast space through a straw—naturally, focusing becomes difficult.

What is the most important parameter when choosing a telescope? Definitely not magnification. It’s the aperture—the size of the mirror
that receives the light. The wider it is, the more light it gathers, and the brighter the object becomes visible. Aperture is usually reported in
millimetres or inches. To compare millimetres with inches, multiply the millimetres by 2 and inch with 5 and compare the values to understand
the comparative aperture size. For example, 130 mm is 260 and 6 inch is 300; so, the second one has a better aperture. Or you can simply
consider 130 mm and 5.11 inch.

2.3: What to See? With the naked eye and minimal light pollution, you can clearly see a few celestial objects. One of them is the star Sirius,
the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon. Sirius, Betelgeuse and Procyon form a triangle like shape, called the winter
triangle (as you have seen in Fig:-18, Betelgeuse is one of the shoulders of the warrior in the constellation Orion). The winter triangle is visible
in the night sky for nearly the entire winter season in the northern hemisphere and during the summer months in the southern hemisphere.
However, in the southern hemisphere, it appears upside down, as is a common characteristic of all constellations. You must not forget; the
stars rise about 4 minutes earlier each day due to the motion of earth. We will be watching this in detail with figures in section 2.9.

The Milky Way galaxy is mostly visible from March to September. Among the planets, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars are easily visible
even to the naked eye. Venus is referred to as the morning star, despite being a planet, because it is visible just after sunset and before sunrise
(we will learn more about planets later in this book).

With good binoculars, you can see the Orion Nebula just below the belt of Orion. It appears as a white cloud through the
binoculars.

If you are trying to observe the moon with binoculars, a simple and easy-to-carry gear to start with, the best time is not during
the full moon. During the waxing and waning phases, if you can point to the area where the shadow and the lit area merge, you will see
some sharp contrast images. Note that one particular crater called Tycho always remains facing downward as the Moon is tidally locked
with Earth. This phenomenon is known as the tidal locking of the Moon, which we will explore in later pages. But yes, using a binocular
without a tripod is not a good idea. As I have told earlier, watching the sky with an instrument is like trying to watch something using a straw.
Slight vibrations on your end can cause remarkable displacements of objects in the sky. Using the binoculars, I have even seen the moons of
Jupiter. A good binocular can even weigh up to 2 Kg.

The more you use the app I recommended above and more the time you spend watching the night sky, the better you will
understand about their visibility and movement.

2.4 James Webb Space Telescope: This is possibly the best artifact of science ever made by humans. Let me explain the logic behind the
instrument. Imagine, I have a digital clock displaying time 10:42:56 – 10 hours, 42 minutes and 56 seconds by emitting light. You know the
velocity of light is 3 X 108 m/s. Now, if you are at a distance of 3 X 108 m or slightly more and can still see the digital watch, you would only
be observing 10:42:55 as the light displaying 56 seconds has not yet reached you. Now, continuing with our thought experiment, imagine
you are at a distance of 3 X 108 meters, multiplied by 3600 (one hour), then again multiplied by 24 (one day), and once more multiplied by
365 (one year) from a location, and you can still observe that place from that distance. This means you are witnessing events from that place
as they occurred one year ago.
 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been designed with this idea in mind: if we can collect light emitted by the universe
or from universal events billions of years ago, we could observe our past. The most important question is where to place such an instrument
so that it can view long distances without any obstruction. There are some points in space called Lagrange points where the gravitational
force of the earth and the sun are balanced in typical style. See Fig: 24. L1, L2 and L3 points are unstable whereas L4 and L5 are stable. A
satellite positioned at the L1, L2, and L3 Lagrange points is analogous to a ball balanced at the peak of a steep hill: any slight perturbation
will displace the satellite from the Lagrange point, much like the ball rolling down the hill. However, these are not exactly points; in the vast
space, they are non-planar orbits around those L1, L2, and L3 points. Satellites located at the orbits around these points require constant
adjustments (called as ‘station keeping’) to maintain balance and stay in their designated positions. These positions, however, offer the
advantage of allowing satellites to remain in place for an extended period with minimal fuel consumption. In contrast, satellites at the last
two Lagrange points, L4 and L5 behave more like a ball in a bowl: even when perturbed, they naturally return to the Lagrange point. The
orbits around these two points are bean shaped. There are some natural celestial bodies at L4 and L5. All these points revolve along with the
earth about the sun maintaining their positions as shown in Fig:-24. For the James Webb Space Telescope, the L2 point has been selected
because it allows the telescope to observe the vast universe in all directions.

L4 After you have searched for a place to position the dream telescope, the next
challenge is to decide the size and sensitivity of the primary mirror that will
receive light. To capture light from vast distances—something like 12 to 13 billion
light years away—your instrument needs to be big-a real big. Moreover, since
L3 L1 L2 light from such a considerable distance will be faint (in far IR region, which we
Earth will not discuss here), the instrument must not glow brighter than the faint star
Sun it is looking at. To keep it cold and in shadow, light coming from the moon, the
sun and the earth must be blocked, and hence there is a sun shield. The sun shield
L5
of James Webb is nearly the size of a tennis court size with five layers, which
permanently keeps the telescope in shadow. As a result, maintained at a
Fig:-24: Lagrange Points temperature of around 40 Kelvin or -2330C. With such a big sun shield and a large
primary mirror, how can it be sent into space using a rocket? Finally, the team that had lived the dream for about 24 years could fold it, place
it in a rocket, and send it to the L2 point, 1.5 million kilometres away from earth where the team could rebuild the telescope robotically in
space. During this mission, there were technically 344 ‘single points of failure’, out of which 225 were associated with the deployment of the
sun shield alone. A single-point failure means one let-down in the projected 'act' of your instrument that can jeopardize the entire project.
Yet, it could be done, and the grand telescope is working majestically and is expected to work for another 9 to 10 years. In that way, this is
one of the most complex things to be designed and realized in the history of human life.

The first deep space photograph it sent could capture light from stars and galaxies 13 billion light-years away. Did you know that
the age of the universe is about 13.77 billion years? In the initial 400 million years, there was no light in the universe, which means that with
the James Webb Space Telescope, we could see our past or events dating back to almost right from the origin of light, 13 billion years ago.
Indeed, what is remarkable is that we are composed of the same iron and calcium found in these distant galaxies, which means we are part
of those distant objects, and they are part of us.

I must not forget to mention that the original images sent by JWST are black and white. However, they are scientifically colorized,
with the selection of colours based on the wavelength of far IR light received.