Date: 2nd April 2004
Location: Partapur Air Field, Near Meerut

A wholly different experience to see a mammoth hot air balloon suspended in the air with it's envelop glowing beautifully from outside. The prinicipal: Hot air rises up, the air inside the envelop is heated till the balloon becomes lighter than the air.

Sanath and me were there as astronomy instructors at the aviation camp organised for GE Capital people.

As we arrived at the air field in the evening, we saw a powered hang glider doing a home landing with the setting Sun.

Later in the night we got the oppertunity to fly that Indian tricolor hot air balloon. We attaned an altitude of about a hundread feet, experienced no G forces and no adrenalin rush, things happened very slowly, I could see the tether line going down to a geep parked off the taxy way.

What I saw from up there: runway 11-29, Parag Dairy, Sanath a little distance away in a stargazing session.

Had a great time at the Brian Adams concert held at Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in New Delh today. We were fortunate to be standing very close to the stage.

Also saw a -0.7 mag ISS pass just minutes before Brian Adams came on the stage. I tried to show it to the crowd by pointing towards the sky at the back and shouting 'International Space Station', NO ONE turned their head at first, thinking that I must be crazy and they would appear as fools if they did so, they just looked at me and gave me that weird and alienated look. Slowly they gave up apprehension as they saw me and my friends continuosly staring towards the sky at the back. But they only believed that I was saying the truth when they the station disappeared behind the earths shadow exactly as I told them. They were hapy to know that there were three astronauts on board (actually only two).

Completed 100 WU's (2935 hr 19 min) for SETI@home today! A big deal for me as I have been using SETI@home for 4.693 years now and had only done about 12 WU's till about 4 months back, since then I have been running my home AMD K6-2 350 MHz system 24X7, only downtimes are due to power outages. Even then my home system accounts for only about 40% WU's, credit for the rest goes to the P-3's at my place of work.

"Increase the Entropy of the Universe, Use SETI@home!"
        -- Sanath Kumar, Member AAA Delhi

Here is a slashdot story about a fireball hitting villages in eastern India.

It is a great coincidence that this meteorite fall happened just about day after a group of villagers near Maham, Haryana in Northern India narrated to Sanath, Ajay and me (while we were there to observe an occultation by Ceres on the night of 25-26 September 2003), an incident of meteorite fall which they witnessed in 1989 and luckily escaped getting hurt. They told us that they heard a very loud sound coming from the sky while they were working in their fields, then some rocks fell from above and got buried as much as 1 foot into the ground, some rocks even fell close to them. These rocks had burnt appearance and were not very heavy. They did collect some of the rocks but they never informed anyone as they thought they might have come from some high altitude plane disintegration and would be unimportant. They said that since it happened long time back (about 14 years), now it would not be possible to trace the pieces they had collected.

We thought about scanning the nearby area in the morning, when we finish observing, to see if we can still find some meteorites. We hoped that they would be readily distinguishable. Unfortunately the sky got clouded at 02:00 AM, just about 25 minutes before the occultation and we lost all motivation to stay back, so we decided to abort and return to New Delhi, which we did! :)

But who knows? Maybe asteroid and comet impacts are one of Nature's ways of 'flushing' us off of the planet in order to give it time to heal itself from the damage we've inflicted through our habitation.

it feels good to know that nature is ultimately more powerful and it knows how to regenerate. though it surely would be a triumph for our species if we are able to sustain ourselves without needing an asteroid impact.

I hope some previsously undiscovered NEO doesn't hit the earth before I finish this sentence and hit "save" ;)

just feeling glad to witness the space age!

Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
                -- Johnny Hart

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
                -- Isaac Asimov

p.s today mars is the closest it has ever got to earth in some sixty thousand years.

we don't know what lies OUTSIDE(if this word can still be used) the universe, where it is expanding into. my brain return a big blank when i try to imagine anything beyond the universe, nothing beyond the universe i imagine makes any sense, the presence of the universe in the first place only seems highly unlikely. oooh...it getting so complicated, my neural net is overloading ... anthropic principle to the rescue!!! - i wouldn't be questioning, if things had not turned out the way they did.

$ /usr/games/fortune
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there is nothing to compare it with.

$ /usr/games/fortune
Describe the Universe, give three examples.

Last night, Ajay, Sagnik, Neelam and me had our first view of Mars this month through Ajay's 8" Meade LX200 (with magnification reaching over 300). It was amazing, for the first time in my life have I seen mars so clearly and with albedo features on it visible so sharply. Syrtis Major, Mare Sirenum, Mare Serpentis (see this map) were very prominent. South polar ice cap was very bright and literally seemed shining, it has shrunk to about half the size we observed on 28th May this year.

Could actually make out the rotation of Mars as Syrtis Minor went out of the view toward west and Mare Sirenum came into the view from east during the 2-3 hours observation session.

We all tried sketching Mars, which lead to a very fulfilling experience. Will post the sketches soon.

yipeee...
I have 5 moderator point (first time)
"Use 'em or lose 'em!"
be nice to me today /. ers

here is a little fortune cookie:

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus was the Empire forged.
        -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

off to sleep. zzz...

Not a very productive day, felt lazy for the most part. Cant go on like this.

Watched Star Trek TNG after about 2-3 months.

Will start afresh early tomorrow morning. Plan to read the Linux Network Administrators Guide tomorrow to prepare for an interview with Saitech Systems on 5th for the requirement of Linux sys admin at Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI).