Giant leap for Durban novice astronomer
He’s photographed 100 celestial objects in 10 months.
‘ ONE small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said astronaut Neil Armstrong as he became the first person to set foot on the moon.
Back in 1969, 11-year-old John Gill studied his every step from where he lived in Queensburgh, near Durban. Gill developed a latent interest in astronomy – only to make his giant leap 44 years later when he joined the Durban chapter of The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (Assa).
After an introductory course, Gill made his next giant leap by photographing 100 celestial objects in just 10 months.
“That’s something most astronomers would take a number of years to achieve,” said his teacher, Logan Govender, who has designed a beginner’s course in astronomy.
Gill’s achievement recently won him the chapter’s astronomer of the year award.
The 100 objects were on Assa’s top 100 deep sky objects.
“These are those beyond our solar system,” said Govender.
These include the Pleides, known as the “Seven Sisters” that are visible through binoculars, the Orion nebula, our neighbouring galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds.
“I got the list and set up a telescope and camera at home in Glen Hills,” said Gill.
Learning photography and processing was his next step.
The trick is to take a number of photos, keeping the shutter open for 30 seconds and run them through a programme that picks up what each image has in common and eliminates the fuzz, which astronomers call “noise”.
“Then you can see what the telescope would be seeing.
“It’s a huge learning curve trying to understand nighttime photography and astronomy and putting the whole lot together to enable you to view and photograph subjects.”
Gill said his stargazing involved looking for stars at the correct time of year as well as the right time of night.
“They are all visible at some or other time. You must just catch them in time. Sometimes you have to wait up to six months to find the exact spot and the exact conditions.”
Gill said his 44-year gap in finding out more about space was largely due to his thinking that the topic of astronomy was “beyond us mortals”.
“Astronomy is now more accessible to the common man,” said the network engineer.
Technological advances have also also helped make the topic more accessible.
Telescopes linked to computers can guide a viewer to a star as well as tell one what star might be in view.
“I think a lot of technology has gone into making it easier for the average person to do.”
Durban’s chapter of Assa operates from a field and hall at St Henry’s School, Glenwood, which is considered the ideal spot in Durban.
“Our members have been responsible for some remarkable achievements,” said Govender.
“One of them, Jose de Campos, who now lives in Portugal, found a comet that had not been recorded by anyone else except a Japanese astronomer who had spotted it four or five hours earlier because the sun sets earlier in Japan.
“It’s now named after both of them and called the Habaneda de Campos comet.”
For more details e-mail logan@astronomydurban. co.za.