The Geminids Meteor Shower 2025 is shaping up to be one of the brightest and most unforgettable celestial events of the year. Known for producing vivid, slow-moving meteors, the Geminids peak every December and reward skywatchers with a reliably spectacular show. In 2025, the peak night falls on the weekend of 13–14 December, offering near-ideal viewing conditions—perfect for traveling to dark-sky locations far from city lights.

Point: YOU don’t need Binoculars or Telescope or any optical aid to witness Meteor Shower but your naked eye!

Let’s learn some basics of Meteor shower first

“A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.”

Radiant:

“The point in sky from where the meteors seem to appear.” Usually we always look on sides of the radiant and not at the radiant. The radiant lies in some area of the sky.

Picture courtesy: Sky & Telescope

How are the showers named?

As we know each area in sky is divided into constellations (such as Orion, Gemini, Leo), the constellation in which the radiant lies is how meteors are named. The radiant of the meteor shower that peaks in December lies in the constellation of Gemini so it is named “Geminids Meteor Shower” because these meteors seems to be radiating from Gemini.

Where to Observe?

This year, Abubaker Siddiq Shekhani, Astronomy educator and co-founder of Karachi Astronomers Society, is leading a group trip of from Karachi to the dark skies of Balochistan, specifically the stunning and historic Caves City. Abubaker has been leading these trips as Director Astronomy trips at Karachi Astronomers Society and so far he has arranged over 60 such trips since 2012. These remote landscapes offer some of the clearest, least light-polluted skies in Pakistan, making them an exceptional destination for witnessing the Geminids at their brightest.

Why travel for the Geminids? Because under a true dark sky, everything changes. The Milky Way becomes visible from horizon to horizon, constellations appear sharper, and meteors streak across the sky with greater contrast and color. During the 2025 peak, observers can expect 80–120 meteors per hour, turning the night into a cosmic fireworks display.

A Geminid Meteor caught in the camera of Abubaker Shekhani on 14th Dec 2020

The Geminids originate from 3200 Phaethon, a rare asteroid-like body that creates unusually bright and dense meteors. This unique origin makes the shower one of the most dynamic and reliable of the year.

Whether you join the Karachi-to-Balochistan expedition or observe from your own dark-sky location, Geminids 2025 promises a night filled with wonder a chance to disconnect from the world and reconnect with the universe.

How to watch/observe?

You don’t need a telescope or a binocular to watch the meteor shower. All you need is a dark sky and your naked eyes. Meteor shower comes under Naked-eye Astronomy and this is how we did it. Visit the below post to see how to observe.

How to observe Geminids Meteor Shower or any meteor shower in Pakistan

The great conjunction of 2020 of Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest since 1623 and the closest observable since 1226. This year’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction won’t be happening again until the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of March 15, 2080.4

Jupiter and Saturn to form ‘Elongated Star’ on 21st December 2020

Where and when to watch the great conjunction?

The great conjunction will be visible throughout the planet Earth. It will be visible just after the Sun has set towards West (Where the sunsets). The below is from the 17th of Dec 2020 and can be taken as reference because this is exactly where you will see these two planets but even closer. These two planets will be visible around 6:15 PM towards West.

The best time to watch it is from 6:00PM to 7:15PM after which Jupiter and Saturn will be very low on horizon, therefore, difficult to watch.

How to watch the conjunction?

1. Start watching from 6:00PM (Pakistan Time)
2. Use star charts app like Star Walk, Google Maps (View apps here) to locate West
3. Use a camera or binoculars or telescope to observe and shoot
4. The two planets appear so close to each other that they are visible easily in single field of view (FoV) of a telescope eye-piece

This is how these two planets are close to each other as on 20th Dec 2020 as seen from finder scope (6×30)

A Bird’s Eye view. What is exactly happening and Why are they appearing close to each other?

Below simulation shows a bird’s eye view of what is actually happening. Enjoy!

What is happening in the solar system? Click below photo to run animation

Photos of the conjunction 2020

All the below photos are shot by Abubaker Shekhani (author).

Equipment Details:

Telescope: Sky-Watcher Evostar 90mm f/10 & Sky-Watcher 6inch Dobsonian

Canon 650D @50mm, 18mm, 200mm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Abubakershekhani.artist/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abubakershekhani/

Jupiter and Saturn with the crescent Moon as on 17th Dec 2020

Jupiter (its moons) and Saturn with the crescent Moon – 17th Dec 2020

Moon, Jupiter and Saturn – 18th Dec

A zoom-in shot of Jupiter and Saturn hanging low on horizone with buildings, Karachi 18th Dec

A close-up of Jupiter and Saturn – 18th Dec 2020

Videos and photos coverage from the Great Conjunction 2020

Storyful @ Yahoo News! Jupiter and Saturn Align in Pakistan’s Sky During the ‘Great Conjunction’

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jupiter-saturn-align-pakistans-sky-180716259.html

City stargazers also witness Jupiter-Saturn conjunction with excitement

https://www.dawn.com/news/1597092/city-stargazers-also-witness-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-with-excitement

Shots from The Great Conjunction 2020

https://www.facebook.com/Abubakershekhani.artist/posts/1854001574757220

More news will come here!

This Geminids will peak on 13/14 Dec during Moonless night which makes it promising. Geminids Meteor shower is the year’s best meteor shower which peaks on the night of 12-14 with the best views on the night of 14th December. This meteor shower can show you up to 100 meteors per hour. If you stay up the whole night from midnight to 5 am in the morning, you will see around 100 meteors easily.

Point: YOU don’t need Binoculars or Telescope or any optical aid to witness Meteor Shower but your naked eye!

Let’s learn some basics of Meteor shower first

“A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.”

Radiant:

“The point in sky from where the meteors seem to appear.” Usually we always look on sides of the radiant and not at the radiant. The radiant lies in some area of the sky.

How are the showers named?

As we know each area in sky is divided into constellations (such as Orion, Gemini, Leo), the constellation in which the radiant lies is how meteors are named. The radiant of the meteor shower that peaks in December lies in the constellation of Gemini so it is named “Geminids Meteor Shower” because these meteors seems to be radiating from Gemini.

How to watch/observe?

You don’t need a telescope or a binocular to watch the meteor shower. All you need is a dark sky and your naked eyes. Meteor shower comes under Naked-eye Astronomy and this is how we did it.

How often Meteor Shower occurs?

Meteor Shower peaks every month. The meteor shower chart is shown below:

Why Geminids meteor shower 2020 is so famous?

Reason 1: Moonless night

There is no moonlight throughout the night to become a hindrance in the visibility and this is just one of the biggest and important reason.

That’s the only reason

Coming to the point…

How to Observe Meteor Shower

During December, the Earth passes through its orbit where there is rocks and space dust left by Comet. The concentration of that space rocks and dust is much more at this particular area where the Earth passes on night of 13/14 Dec and therefore more chances of meteor observation. The constellation of Geminids is the area in Night sky from where all the meteors will appear to radiate and this is the reason that constellation is called the radiant of meteor shower.

1. Date and Time

On the night of 14th Dec 00:00:01, you can start preparing for the shower. The constellation of Gemini will be at a reasonable altitude by midnight, therefore, this is the perfect time to start your observation. You can keep observing till morning twilight. Don’t fall asleep. You won’t get this perfect opportunity next year! Remember, you don’t need binoculars or a telescope to witness the meteor. In fact, this celestial event is naked eye event and should be watched with naked eye.

2. Choose a dark site anywhere on the planet

Find a place where the skies are clear. This or any meteor shower can be seen from anywhere, therefore, you can see it from Karachi or Islamabad or Lahore or Hyderabad.

3. Choose a site with less or no light pollution

Light pollution in the sky will kill the purpose of going anywhere, so find a dark site with little or no light pollution because this will give you a darker sky and the ability to view even the faintest meteors 

4. Choose a comfortable location, keep yourself warm and covered throughout the night

Find a place where you can comfortably sit or lie for a period of 4 to 6 hours. Dress warmly and keep some coffee or tea with you.

5. Where to look for meteors

Just after Midnight, lie down and start looking on all sides of the constellation of Geminids. You will definitely see meteors on the night of 13/14 Dec which is the peak. You can find Geminids location from Sky Maps or any mobile app such as Star Walk, Google Sky maps, etc

What are the factors for observing Meteor shower

• Clear Skies (No clouds)
• Dark site (little or no light pollution)
• Sky Transparency (Not a major factor but it matters)
• Astro Seeing (Not a major factor but it matters)

My experience with meteor shower?

My first-ever experience was back in Dec 2010 on 13/14 (Sunday/Monday) when I went with the Karachi Astronomers Society to Karli Lake. We witnessed 150+ meteors throughout the night. What that count? Because we counted and logged our observations Read about it here

Watching the Geminids Meteor Shower (Kalri Lake, Sind, Pakistan)

Then we had other trips with a larger group of people (50+) in Mirpur Sakro in 2014 and once we tried Perseids in August 2016 which turned out to be an amazing experience. Here you can read about that trip.

In search of clear skies for Perseids Shower in Pakistan 2016

Have a look at this Meteor Shower time-lapse by Mr. Hanif Bhatti

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=846754152127556

Total Solar Eclipse is a very rare event and is only visible due to the placement and distance. The moon’s diameter and its distance from Earth make its apparent size just big enough to cover the Sun’s disk (the apparent size of the sun’s disk is exactly the same as of Moon apparent size).

Types of Solar Eclipse:

1. Total Solar Eclipse
2. Partial Solar Eclipse
3. Annular Solar Eclipse (This one happening on 21st June 2020)

What is Annular Solar Eclipse?

“An annular solar eclipse happens when the Moon covers the Sun’s center, leaving the Sun’s visible outer edges to form a “ring of fire” or annulus around the Moon.” – timeanddate.com

Can we see the Eclipse or will we get blind?

Yes, we can watch the eclipse by following the techniques and taking precautions mentioned in this article. You can get blind only if you see the Sun with the naked eye or through binoculars or through telescope anytime when the sun is visible regardless of the Eclipse. Therefore, only watch the eclipse by following the right way.

Where is the eclipse Visibile?

When to watch the Eclipse and timings?

The eclipse starts at one location and ends at another. The times below are actual times (in UTC) when the eclipse occurs.

Source: timeanddate.com

Is it safe for women to travel or go out during the Eclipse?

Yes. Anyone can travel or go out anywhere before, during or after the solar eclipse or lunar eclipse. It is a superstition.

Precautions

• Never look at the Sun with Naked Eye before, during or after the Eclipse
• Do Not Use X-Ray films
• Do Not use welding glasses
• Do not try to see it using DSLR camera

Techniques to Watch the Eclipse

• Cardboard Pinhole
• Telescope with the White-Light filter
• Photography with DSLR or any other camera
• Certified Solar glasses

An Eclipse Never Comes Alone!

A solar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse (If you remember we had one penumbral Eclipse at the end of the first week of June).

Usually, there are two eclipses in a row, but other times, there are three during the same eclipse season.

This is the second eclipse this season.

Best Explanation about Solar Eclipse

Let me show an example. Open AX 2012 client, then navigate to Human Resources and then click on Workers. Open the desired Worker by double-clicking it. Then click on Employment, you will see that Financial dimensions tab as shown in below screen shot.

What and Where is Financial Dimensions Tab

How to Add financial dimensions tab

When you will develop new AX forms there will come a time when there will be business process need to add the Financial dimensions tab. If you will Personalize the form, you will only see a Tab group in AOT under that specific form. Now a new developer gets confused as to where to find these fields/tab. Remember, MS Dynamics AX is a very well developed solution and it provides us frameworks and patterns to perform some common tasks. Adding the financial dimension tab is also done by following a defined step-by-step process which I will explain in this article.

The financial dimension tab will bring the dimensions set by your consultant/resources in General Ledger. All the dimensions will be shown in this financial dimensions tab

1.Add Default Dimensions field from EDTs and create a creation from table DimensionAttributeValueSet

2. Drag this table as the data source of the desired form, place your desired fields in the form

3. Add a new tab with name TabFinancialDimensions. Make sure the properties are same as shown below

4. Override init() method of your form and add the mentioned code. Make sure to use the correct name of the datasource and AX table

5. Override pageActivated() method of the FinancialDimensionTab of your form

6. Override active(), write() and delete() method of the datasource (the one having DefaultDimensios fields) and add the mentioned code (see screenshots below)

dimDefaultingController.activated();

dimDefaultingController.writing();

dimDefaultingController.deleted();

7. Financial Tab is here. Mission accomplished

Once all the above is done you should be able to see the form with a tab named Financial dimensions and all the default dimensions should appear here that are set in GL. Look at the above example to that we have selected the CostCenter and Department as well and the form was saved and values have also been saved. The values are being saved in our table in the DefaultDimensions field. This field holds the RecId of the DimensionsAttributeValuesSet record. You can check it yourself in AOT.

I will post soon how do we get these dimensions using inline AX queries in X++ when we want to use these default dimensions in our functionality. Stay tuned!

Abstract

DevCoin is a decentralized currency on the Ethereum blockchain. DevCoin will integrate into all the platforms that deals with developer and customer interaction such as freelancing platforms. DevCoin will be used to buy hours of developers and can be used to pay them. It can be bought from anywhere in the world and is not dependent on any currency or a payment gateway like PayPal. A buyer can pay developer using DevCoin on any platform that supports DevCoin.

Introduction

With the rise of technology solutions and the continuous increasing need of freelance developers around the world, payment is still a problem and one has to pay transaction charges for all the payment gateways such as PayPal, credit cards etc. There are over 57 million freelancers in US alone [1].

DevCoin

In the freelancing world, transactions worth hundreds of dollars are happening on a daily basis. There are few payment systems integrated with that platforms such as Payoneer, PayPal etc. All depends on third-party owned by some sort of organization. DevCoin is a decentralized solution that will enable fast and secure transactions with the help of smart contracts.

The Smart Contracts built using Turing Complete will help us create safe and secure contracts.

Smart contracts

1 DevCoin = $15 (1 hour of developer’s effort)

Technology

The underlying block chain technology for DevCoin is Ethereum Block Chain (ERC-20 Token Standard) with smart contracts.

Roadmap

Funds raising

Our goal is to raise $5 million which we will use to develop the apps and the entire infrastructure for the DevCoin. We have a team of experienced block chain developers. We will use this fund to pay for the development of the technology and for creating the infrastructure.

Product Prototyping

We will develop the Minimum Viable Product  (MVP) as our first prototype which will also serve as a proof-of-concept.

Launch

We will launch our ICO first in the local market and then in the international market.

Applications (use cases) of our solution

Freelancing platforms

Our DevCoin will be used all over the world to pay a developer for the services performed over any of the freelancing platforms.

Buy software products on the internet

To buy software products from developer on platforms such as Themeforest

References

1. https://www.upwork.com/press/2017/10/17/freelancing-in-america-2017/

Validated learning is a scientific approach to conduct a series of experiments backed by empirical data collected from real customers. This is done so that the entrepreneur doesn’t make a product that nobody wants. Anything that is done that does not contribute to learning is a form of waste. By continually validating what matters to customers, the startup is more likely to make positive improvements in the core metrics.

How do we know in advance whether our efforts for making a product are of any value or a complete waste

The question is how do we know in advance whether our efforts for making a product are of any value or a complete waste? The answer lies in the process of the lean startup build-measure-learn loop. You make a minimum viable product (MVP) having the basic features, let the customers use it, get feedback and implement that feedback in the subsequent versions. You don’t necessarily have to make all features together to their perfection and waste time on it, instead you just build the basic version and market it so that if you want to get feedback, you get it faster before making any efforts on making possibly something which is going to be a waste.

I would say that is a similar strategy as fail fast which says that if you are uncertain about something, just let it out, see the results and if you want to fail, just fail fast instead of waiting for a long time. This way you will get feedback faster and you are more likely to find the correct direction and path which will lead you to another iteration.

Experiment Immediately

As Ries explains in his book The Lean Startup, an experiment is the first product. The experiment can be conducted in weeks instead of months like it happens in traditional management planning process. The experiments will give positive or negative results. Based on the results, you decide to pivot or to persevere.

If you cannot fail, you cannot learn

We should not be afraid to fail, because you won’t know what works and what doesn’t work if you don’t fail. As Thomas Edison says

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work!” (Brainy Quotes, n.p)¹

The benefit here is that the effort that is not necessary for learning about the customers’ wants can be prevented. This is called validated learning which is backed up by empirical data collected from real customers.

I started off with one my product with an MVP and launched it on Android first to get feedback and see the performance of my mobile app. I wanted to fail fast. I wanted to know whether there is a need for such app and I got a huge amount of feedback on various platforms because I provided a way in my mobile app to listen to the needs and wants of my customers. I got feedback on various aspects such as usability, features, data, and aesthetics. In fact, I got to hear from the domain experts which is a valuable feedback and was only possible after releasing an MVP because those were my real customers.

References:

1. https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/thomas_a_edison

The most wonderful thing about this night is that greatest Mars opposition and longest Total Lunar Eclipse, both Astronomical events are happening at the same night.

Event Photos

Total Lunar Eclipse July 2018

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1098685870288798.1073741852.742450732578982&type=1&l=8615d06ff8

When to observe in Karachi, Pakistan?

This total lunar eclipse is visible in most part of the world. We are lucky that in Pakistan we will witness from the very beginning until the end of this wonderful event.

Above table source: timeanddate.com

* The Moon is above the horizon during this eclipse, in fact, it will be almost overhead. If the skies are clear, it will be visible from Karachi.

The times displayed are accurate within 2-3 seconds.

The magnitude of the eclipse is 1.609.

Total duration of the eclipse: 6 hours, 14 minutes.

Total duration of the partial phases: 2 hours, 12 minutes.

Duration of the full eclipse: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

The Sky on the 27th July 2018 – Lunar Eclipse and Mars at opposition

The Moon just before the Total Lunar Eclipse on 27th July with Mars at opposition (Stellarium).

Bird’s Eye View of what is happening

Follow my page for more updates about Total Lunar Eclipse.

How to observe Lunar Eclipse

Get a pair of binoculars or a telescope and go outside and find the Moon around 11:00pm. You can easily observe this lunar eclipse phenomenon from Karachi or anywhere in Pakistan. The only condition is that the sky should be clear and without clouds. No need to avoid light pollution although light pollution itself is not good

You do not need a binoculars or a telescope. Just clear skies!

If you don’t own a Telescope, you can still observe it with your naked eye or maybe get a pair of Binoculars. You won’t regret it buying.

Enjoy the Lunar Eclipse and do share your photos on my Facebook page.

You can follow my page for notifications. Here is the link to my page: https://www.facebook.com/Abubakershekhani.artist/

I have been practising Astronomy since 2007 and have been founder of multiple Astronomy related societies and clubs. You can read my contribution in Karachi Astronomers Society here.

About Total Lunar Eclipse

Video Credits: NASA Goddard

Concepts of Total Lunar Eclipse

Image source: Timeanddate.com

Mars Opposition Explained

Mars opposition, when the Red Planet lies opposite the Sun in our sky, occurs about every two years. Mars opposition on 27 July 2018 will be near its closest approach to the Sun, making it the most favorable opposition for skywatchers since 2003. This video from NASA gives an excellent explanation of Mars opposition.

Video Credits: Science@NASA science.nasa.gov

Who is an Entrepreneur?

According to business dictionary,

“Someone who exercises initiative by organizing a venture to take benefit of an opportunity and, as the decision maker, decides what, how, and how much of a good or service will be produced.”

Entrepreneur is also a person who builds a business or businesses to make profits while assuming all the risks and rewards of the venture.

Baby steps…

I graduated as a Computer Scientist with too little knowledge about business administration. But during my first year at University in 2006, I started providing a paid service named UMS to my class fellows. Many of my class fellows used to travel outside Karachi to their home in rural areas and they couldn’t check their emails regularly from there. I took the risk and started the service and majority of the students bought it.

This is a very small example of identifying a need or a problem and providing solution and in return get money and make profits. I would call it as a small step towards entrepreneurship as I created a product/service for the benefit of community while getting profit from it.

The question – Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Recently, I found that this is a question and lot of research has been carried out to answer this question and the answer is not simple.

The research was done at two extremes end. The view that entrepreneurs are born was carried out by James V. Koch a board of visitors professor of economics at Old Dominion University who concluded that there are genes that control some entrepreneurship traits in a person or some particular genes are triggered by some external influence. Julian Lange, a senior professor at Babson College conducted a research that indicated that entrepreneurship can be taught through a process and by exposing a person to the right training and courses.

In my opinion, there are two main types of business man. One who runs an already built family business and the other one who builds a business from scratch. In both of these cases, there is a risk-factor with more risk factor when you’re creating something new and you have no idea whether it is going to be successful or a complete failure. In both cases, you’re taking risk but innovation is less in the first case.

As a scientist, engineer and artist, I believe that every child is a born scientist. Every child is a born artist. One of the most famous and inspiring Scientist and Astrophysicist of his time, Carl Sagan said that:

“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them”. 

Here he brings an important point that the kids are born scientist. They have the curiosity to know about the world around them. They ponder over things and observe their environment. Then during schooling all the children there are judged on the same self-made criteria. Highly intelligent minds are brought down to match the average minds and average minds are dragged to come to average minds forcefully.

Similarly, I believe that every child is a natural-born entrepreneur. However, the schooling, environment and exposure has a great influence on a child’s interests, actions and ultimately future path. I believe that every normal child has the ability to become a leader, to become an entrepreneur and to bring innovation.

Of course, some people do have the natural born tendency of taking risks and this risk taking is one of the most important personality trait for an entrepreneur. People who have this trait are more likely to start a venture, because they have the ability to take risks and deal with the uncertainty. But the risk taking trait doesn’t guarantee that the entrepreneur is going to be successful.

Entrepreneurship is management, self-confidence, leadership, ability to manage uncertainty, learning from failures, improvise, the will to take risk and to believing in own self.  Therefore, entrepreneurs can be made by teaching management, by giving exposure and by improving the personality. Personality has a significant role in becoming an Entrepreneur. Starting a business is not the ultimate goal but to make a sustainable business while providing value to the customer is what makes an Entrepreneur successful and that will come only by continuously improvising own self, learn from failures, improving the business and of course never giving up because you only fail when you give up.

https://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/entrepreneur.html

The Event

Date: 9^th of April, 2011

Day: Saturday

Timings: 05:30 – 08:00

Event Location: PECHS School behind PECHS College

The preparations for the event were started one day before. The event consisted of two parts; a presentation on Solar System and “The Moon” followed by second part “Moon observation with Telescope”.

Welcome to PECHS Girls School by the hosts

We carried the Meade 5.1” telescope into the school at around 5:15PM. We were welcomed by the host Misbah Arif (my colleague) and her brother and friends (Marjan and Asad). They led the way to the ground where we put the scope, rested for a bit and then were introduced. We stopped just to see how the sky will look from the spot and then just overhead, just at Zenith I found and showed them the crescent. The sky had thin clouds at this time. Suddenly, we saw students coming out from their class rooms and standing on the class room doors with smiles on their face, excitement and anticipation on each and every face.

Arrival to the venue

After that they took us to the Computer Lab where the presentation session had to take place. The computer lab was dark and the projector was ready. We placed our telescope in computer lab and put our presentation into the computer and started getting ready. After some time, the students started to gather in a queue coming inside section by section. It was only 5^th grade as my colleague teaches 5^th grade. Although the school management had asked her to arrange this event for the whole school, however she thought it would be too difficult to manage. Therefore, this chance was missed.

Part 1: Presentation Session – The Solar System and the Moon

The session started, I was introduced and given the charge. Initially, I gave my introduction and then I introduced Karachi Astronomers Society; the foundation of the society, the number of members and about the activities of the society. The session kicked off with a question about Solar System that how many planets are there in Solar System. It came as a pleasant surprise that the students gave the correct answer: 8 planets. Eventually the presentation turned into an extremely interactive session so as to judge the level of the students. Again, it was amazing how these students did know the basic. Hooray for Primary Geography!

The students were asked to call out names of the planets one by one and to memorize we gave them this sentence. “My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Neptune”, but since their teacher was one to show them the planets I rephrased this to “My Very Educated Miss Just Showed Us Neptune”. J

The students took interest in each and every sentence I was talking about. They were raising questions and I tried my level best to answer all of them. Apart from the planets, I told them about Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites and shooting stars. Interestingly, students started questioning: “Can we see the sun”. I answered with an affirmative but also emphasizing that it could be seen with special equipment. However, I also cautioned them never to look at the sun directly with naked eye or optical aid.

After this, the students were shown this famous picture so that they could compare the size of the planets with the sun. Cleverly, the students found the very small earth in the picture J.

After Solar System, difference between Stars and Planets (which was also clear to the students before) was explained then finally came The Moon. It was highly emphasized that Moon is the only Natural Satellite and there are other satellites as well which are artificial. Students were asked about the number of Moons of Jupiter and Saturn too. They were quite close that Jupiter has 60+ moons and Saturn has 48 moons. I was happy to know that students are updated. J

Just after that, we planned to show students the parts of Telescope because I have experienced the amazing sensation of looking at the world beyond. The excitement of the students could be also felt while I was explaining them the parts of the telescope. I felt proud to give these children an opportunity that I had never gotten before of looking into a telescope until I established SZABIST Astronomy club in 2008 and Karachi Astronomers Society in 2010.

The major and important parts of the telescope were shown to the students and we told them about the 2 basic types of telescopes that is “reflector” and “refractor” telescope. Further, we told them the mechanism and parts of the Reflector tube that is the Primary Mirror, secondary mirror and the eye-piece. And then it was THE time. The time when the sun was about to be set, and the sky was waiting to be discovered by these eager group of children. We made our way to the ground where the equipment was to be set up.

Part 2: Moon viewing session

Arrival to the Venue

When we arrived there around 07:00PM, we saw that there were still some thin clouds which blurred the Moon.

Assembling equipment

We started taking out the equipment. Misbah’s brother and Nasir helped taking the scope out of the box and Asad helped in assembling the equipment.

Moon Observation (finally)

Finally the equipment was assembled and our target The Moon was in focus and then the students were lined up in queues and were asked to come one-by-one and have a look at the Moon and concentrate on its features and craters. The magnification was kept at 40x. The magnification was sufficient to see the craters and at the same time have a good field of view and eye-relief since it was the first students were seeing something through a Telescope.

One by one student came and observed the Moon; each student had a smile and a happy look on their face after looking at the Moon. Then came the principal of the School and watched the Moon. When the students were done observing the Moon, then their parents came and discovered the Moon with their content children.

Entry of the 3 brothers

While the session was ON, Mehdi bhai came with his 2 brothers Muhammad Ayaz Hussain and Muhammad Ashraf with their Sky Watcher and in about 10minutes, the scope was assembled and was ready. The students gathered in queues once again, but now with their parents and then started to look at the Moon one-by-one and enjoyed.Some of the students came back to Meade repeatedly. There wasn’t even half a minute when Meade was void. One of the students was saying “Dono telescopes say aik hi cheez dikh rahi hai”, to which I laughingly replied, “Because obviously, we are looking at the same thing!”

Packing and The end

All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable event for all the school staff, management, students and the new members. More than that, it was a learning experience for all the students and members alike. Icing on the cake was the refreshments served around 8:00 pm by the management. After packing up, we went to the refreshment area; there we talked over with the management about the students’ interest in Astronomy, about the awareness of this branch of science among youth. A very promising end to this event was that we talked about having sessions in future. Some very helpful suggestions came from the ‘Bhais’; Mehdi Bhai suggested a sun viewing session, Ashraf Bhai proposed that in order to prepare the students better in advance for the viewing, there should be presentation arranged before the session. All in all, an extremely fruitful day. In the words of Roger B Chaffee, we achieved what we set to out to achieve, trying to look into the mysteries of the sky above us:

“The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way—the way God intended it to be—by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.”