My Little Life with Astronomy

A Simple Introduction

You can simply call me Charles. I am a Singaporean Chinese coming to my 30s, living in a housing estate in an area some of you might call it the "suburbs". In Singapore, we call it "new town" although the estate is already more than 10 plus years. Singapore as some of you might know, is a very small country of about 40km by 20km in area. It's current population is around 3 to 4 million and still increasing rapidly.


My Early Childhood in the "Kampong"

My interest in astronomy started way back when I was still living in the "kampong" (Malay word for country side or rural area), before our government decided to move us into our current housing estates. My family was engaged in vegetable farming then. The distances between houses were quite far, a few hundred metres apart. As you can imagine, there weren't many roads and streetlights. The surrounding areas were bushes, hills and forests. So, at night, the sky was naturally dark. Perfect for astronomy!

Sometimes in the night, I would roam around the roads and farmlands with my brother and cousins just for fun. We weren't very scared of funny things then. One night as we were out, my elder cousin pointed to me 2 constellations - Crux (Southern Cross) and Ursa Major (Big Dipper or Big Bear). In Chinese, we call Ursa Major the "Northern Dipper". Their beauties caught my attention. I guess that was about the time when my interest in astronomy was triggered.

Slowly, I began reading through old books about astronomy (must have belonged to my cousin), our solar systems, etc. Every now and then, I would look up into the night sky to see the countless stars up there. Too bad I think I had never seen the Milky Way even in that kind of lighting conditions, or maybe I had missed it as I wasn't too familiar with the things up there then.

Another striking "star group" caught my attention. It was 3 bright and close stars aligned in almost a straight line. We called it something like "3-star chain of pearls" in Chinese. Have you successfully guessed what this "star group" is?

Yes. It's Orion - the Hunter. The 3 stars form the belt of the hunter. Other stars around them form the body, legs, head and arms. It has become my favourite constellation due to its bright and beautiful formation.

There was also a time where I saw a meteor zoom by very quickly. Before I could tell my family members to see it, it was long gone. There were other phenomena like a bright "ring" around the moon. Can't remember the exact name of that. Aura or halo? Also the scary looking stratus cloud formation that looked like ripples or snakes in the night sky.

After 10+ years of living in the kampong, our government decided to reserve the entire area for future developments and to solve future problems of overcrowdedness. Thus they moved us into high-rise housing estates. That ended the early stage of my childhood and bye bye to clear dark skies.


My New Town - Bukit Panjang

The new town that I am currently living in is called Bukit Panjang. It's a Malay word for "Long Hill" where "Bukit" means "hill" and "Panjang" means "long". The problem is up till now, I have yet seen where this long hill is. Maybe it has already been levelled to make way for the apartments.

Here is a shot of a small shopping plaza in my estate taken some years back. Not very impressive anyway since my photographic skills were still average then.



Here is a shot of my estate's community centre taken using slide film during Christmas period many years back. Since Singapore is almost at the Equator, there is no snow during Christmas.



In the first 10 years or so here, I lived in an apartment block besides the main road and near the expressway (some of you might call it highway). As you can imagine, the light pollution was (and still is) pretty bad there. Each new town in Singapore is made up of plenty of high-rise apartment blocks packed quite near each other. The view of the night sky from my room was blocked by neighbouring blocks.

Later on, I shifted again to another block in the same new town (my current block) but this time away from the main road. Although we are still near to the expressway, the other side of the expressway was a large natural rainforest. So these factors made the area much darker. The view of the sky from my room was slightly better. It was facing north and I was able to see Ursa Major, Lyra, Draco and some other northern constellations.


My School Days

During one of my early school days, when I was in my early teens, there was actually a solar eclipse occurring during class time. I think it was a partial eclipse. We tried to see it but it was still too bright and the sun was directly above us, which made direct viewing very difficult. So, we experimented with different ways to see it. Finally, we used a cup partially filled with water to reflect the image and then used tracing paper (a type of translucent paper) to mask out the glare. It was exciting to see a solar eclipse in action.

Later on, when I went to Ngee Ann Polytechnic (a kind of tietiary institute much like college, for teens of ages 16 to 19), I joined the astronomy club there. During one of the overnight events, I had the chance to really touch and use a real telescope. I remember it was also the first time I actually see Saturn through the telescope. The image was very small and faint, probably 2 to 4 mm wide, but we could distinctively see the ring. It was an exciting night and throughout the night, I would go back and look at the planet again and again.

During my university time, I took astronomy as an enrichment module or subject for one of the semesters. That was when I get to learn more about astrophysics and cosmology from the lecturer. We also had a chance to use his telescope during an observation session.

During another night, many of my university friends gathered on top of one of the blocks for an exciting astronomical event - Leonite meteor showers. Again, my first time. We lied down there for the whole night but was quite disappointed as we only saw a few pathetic streaking meteors compared to tens to hundreds reportedly seen in other countries.


Jupiter for the First Time

I used to be a member of the Singapore Science Centre for a certain period and as a member I was entitled to use the observatory for free. There was an observation event when the observatory was opened to the public and I asked my friend along to see. There were many people there too.

The telescope was much more powerful than the ones I used in previous cases in schools, but compared to those gigantic ones we find in observatories in other countries, it was still considered very small. Probably less than 10 inches for the main lens? Can't remember.

Anyway, there were many things we saw and the most exciting one was Jupiter. It was a small ball about a few mm in size. Much bigger than the Saturn I have last seen. I could make out some atmospheric bands/zones. I could also see 4 tiny dots of lights beside it. They were 4 of Jupiter's brightest moons. They were all lined up along the same plane along the Jupiter's Equator.


My Astrophotography Equipment

Here are shots of some of my astro-equipment.

My Yashica manual SLR camera with Makinon 500mm 1:8 mirror lens and flash unit (not used in astronomy). Also with my Yashica 50mm 1:1.9 prime lens.





The camera, with the standard 50mm lens, was bought at around S$200 to S$300 (USD$150 to USD$200). I bought from a 2nd-hand camera shop. The flash unit was bought at around S$50 to S$60 (USD$30 to USD$40)? The mirror lens was a bonus. I attended a basic photography course and the instructor happened to be showing off his mirror lens. Then he offered me around S$70 (USD$50?) and I quickly agreed. Later, I believe he regretted his decision but it was too late then! I also had a tripod which supposedly cost S$30. It was spoilt and the current one I had was ~S$60+. The camera and lens had some defects (the usual case for 2nd-hand items) and turned mouldy a couple times and I spent a couple of hundreds to service them.

But overall, as you can see, the cost for the items are quite cheap (in Singapore that is). Compared to a brand new autofocus or digital SLR which are in the range of S$1000 to S$2000+. They are even comparable to point-n-shoot compact digital cameras which are priced at S$300 and above with less features.