Happy Ending To A GREat anxiety...

Last week on this very day - Tuesday - I gave the GRE, and scored right on target; well, my personal target! Managed to get 800/800 in the quantitative analysis section, and 530/800 in the verbal section, thus scoring 1330/1600.. The analytical writing score will come a little later, but I'm pretty satisfied with what I have written there too..

Agreed my score in verbal is not a brilliant score as such, but considering I'm looking towards a PG in engineering, quant is what matters most. Also, considering last few years' median scores of top universities for my area of specialisation (Civil Engineering), I'm safe to apply. But GRE is just the first step - now I have to really keep good acads and keep doing good project work etc to boost my admission chances along with a good scholarship/financial aid..

To be very honest, now looking back a little, I sometimes feel I had aimed low.. From day one of my GRE preparation (which was really just a matter of last fortnight before the exam!!) I have had this subconcious comfort, that I do not need a very high score as such to get admit in a top univ. This further made me more lethargic to put in my hundred percent.. (I'm already a lot lethargic when it comes to study!!) To worsen things, I cannot mug up things for a fact; and its not a mystery that those who score high in verbal section are really great at by-hearting (ok I don't like to use the phrase "mugging up" here 'coz it has a little negative taste to it..) those thousands of words - words which many people rightly describe as "those which we have never seen, and will never use in future!" Agreed half of those are regularly used by people having decent command over the language, but there are still the dreaded "other half".

PS: all of the above is just a matter-of-fact record of my thoughts rather than some justification of my score; I look with sheer admiration to all those who have scored higher, and do not claim to be able to score as high as them. I "could have" and "would have" is all meaningless if I "did not"!!

Then again, who doesn't try to justify his deeds? Within us lies a great conflict - a conflict between the real us and a third person us. The third person is an inner voice, the good voice, inculcated within us through years of upbringing.. It is this voice to whom we try to justify every action of our perceived "us". We are only answerable to our inner voice; but more often than not we keep it locked in some corner of our heart and strive to answer all the voices outside its cage..

My father once told me something; that which I consider perhaps to be his best teaching to me - "Whenever you're in a state of chaos as to how to operate in a situation, ask yourself "Am I being fair to everyone involved? Am I being fair to myself?" and if both the answers are yes, just go ahead and He will be with you."
This perhaps was said to him by his father too.. and will definitely be passed on to my son/daughter..

My first pic in "Sky And Telescope"!!

This day, 2nd August, '08 will be cherished by me as the day my first astrophoto got picked in the gallery of "Sky And Telescope", a very well known and respected magazine in the astronomy circles; and it's photo gallery, a coveted place..

I have clicked many photos before, both general and astro; however, never submitted one anywhere. I used to, and still do, look at friends with photos in this gallery with respect; though always thought I had sometime before I could get to that level of expertise, or rather creativity more appropriately. It indeed takes a lot more than just a fancy camera to take a good photograph. I don't consider myself much more than an amateur photographer, in both earthly and heavenly matters!

Yesterday we (members of college astro club) had great fun viewing and photographing the eclipse. (previous post on this blog) I (I'm sure greysith and others who took photos too) sat up till late last night editing (minor touching up to compensate for over exposure etc) and more importantly discarding some 470 photos in all of the event, and finally keeping 48 of them in my personal archive!

Today morning, I decided I must submit a couple of those supposedly good photographs; by my personal standards of course! to "Sky And Telescope", or SnT as it is popularly known. Ten minutes later, and with a lot of enthusiasm and hope, I had finally picked my entries from my collection; two photos which I thought were up to the mark. I logged on to the site, and went to the submission area - oh my god! to my pleasant surprise, greysith's photo was already there!! The fact that he hadn't called me to tell of this could mean only one thing - he didn't know himself that his photo was chosen!! Was this possible?! I decided I shall submit my photos and call him to congratulate. I submitted my photos, and as he was online, started chatting. I congratulated him, and as expected he asked me dumbfounded "how do you know it's picked??" Dolt fellow didn't even know his pic was selected in SnT!! he asked me to link him, so I promptly clicked on the link to the gallery page in my browser - oh my god again! One of my submitted photos was also there!! This was just crazy - my photo was in SnT's gallery!! Just five minutes after I had submitted it!! I quickly copied the link and pasted it for him to see, and frantically typed in, no literally punched in my keyboard "my pic is also picked!!" By now he had seen it, and at that very moment, I could just "feel" it, we were simultaneously overjoyed!! Both of us were thrilled for our photo was in this gallery, and both of us were equally jumping in the air because of each other's photo being picked too!! It was somehow like a combined effort, though not technically, but more so.. emotionally.. yes; I'm sure he was surged with emotions too..

here's the link to my proud little recognition:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/gallery/skyevents/26053689.html

This has really made me and greysith both resolve with even more determination to go all the way to Surat for viewing the 22nd July '09 eclipse, which would be seen as a total one from there.
Earlier opportunities of eclipse viewing (and of course photographing) include the 26th January '09 solar eclipse; and the lunar eclipse on 16th of this month, both of which would be seen as partial ones from Pune.

Hoping to get some good pictures of these events too..

Total(ly) cool partial solar eclipse!!

Once again we get to ask ourselves a question, asked by many others, many a times - is there a superior entity beyond our current understanding, which seems to interfere in things happening around us? only this time, it is in a magnificent way - an eclipse. Think of it - each one of us learns in high school that solar eclipses are caused due to the moon coming in between the earth and the sun etc etc.. what we don't learn is that how well "manipulated" or similar as it may sound, this phenomenon really is.. Now by some sheer dum luck, the apparent size of the sun in the sky is very close to the apparent size of the moon (hardly 5% here and there, and there's some added bonus due to this as well!) and so when the moon comes in between the earth and sun, it appears to cover the entire disk, or a part of it, depending upon the place on earth from where it is seen. But this is all when the moon comes in between.. in reality, the moon can come in any plane in between the earth and sun, and so the three may not be always colinear; in fact, as it turns out, most of the time they are not! In one of the few occassions when they are in a line, we have a solar eclipse!! Remember the "added bonus" because of the non-exact apparent sizes? Well first of all the non-exact apparent sizes are due to the non-uniform earth-sun distance, and the non-uniform earth-moon distance.. What it translates into, is a rare phenomenon call an annular solar eclipse, where only the inner disk of the sun appears eclipsed, with a ring of light surrounding it!! This is simply because now the moon's apparent size is slightly smaller than that of the sun.

After all this discussion, just ponder on this - why in the blue should a planet have a moon, whose diameter is 400 times smaller than its parent star, and it's distance 400 times smaller than that of the star??!! (this is the reason for the apparent size of sun and moon to be equal in sky - about 0.5 degrees) And why in the blue should that lucky planet have life, an even rarerer possibility, which astronomers are trying to disprove day after day, with no luck as yet!

Having said this, let's come back to the question we started with.. is it realy impossible for any such external entity to exist? or can such an entity exist in the extreme possibility of our understanding of this world, and the one beyond it?

As for our "scientific" minds, lets just assume someone has set up a very long, precisely predictable, yet amazing slideshow of solar and lunar eclipses - on the curtain of the sky, with the biggest projector known - our sun! And also for these very minds, lets assume this "someone" is our friendly "luck" or rather "probability"!

Lucky for us at the astro club, we could enjoy the solar eclipse today, in spite of a very cloudy sky, which ironically, I'm sure most present would agree, added to the beauty of the event. The eclipse was seen in a partial phase from Pune, with 38.5% of the sun's disk being covered by the moon during the maximum phase of the eclipse. Humble attempts of recording this event with light, ie photographing it, can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/adb291088/SOLARECLIPSE1STAUG08

(comments and suggestions on pics are welcome)