Events in Tanzania

A report by: Dr. Noorali Jiwaji (January 2010)



During the last month, I had a few opportunities to use the Dark Sky Astro-tourism kit:

= for the astronomy group in Dar es Salaam
= for kids at an orphanage and a nearby town, Morogoro, 200 km from Dar es Salaam
= during the partial lunar eclipse yesterday.


The most impressive of the items was the pointer which allowed me to show exactly the star that I wanted and everybody could follow. Even when searching for the region in the sky with the binoculars, I was able to point at the area and ask the person looking through the binocular to look for the line of the laser beam in the the field of view and follow it up to sky and they were able to locate the object perfectly. This is especially useful for an object that is not very easily observable such as the nebulae. I was able to show the Orion Nebula clearly in the binocular and the oval patch of the Andromeda glaxy nebula. In even for myself this was the first time that i was able to catch it clearly since we watched it in the nearby town of Morogoro which is 200 km from Dar es Salaam and does not have too many lights of its own. I have realised that a lot of objects cannot be seen with the naked eyes from our City though it is far better that in many other other bigger cities.

The binoculars are of the right power to give breathtaking views of the sky especially the Moon, the regions in the sky with star clusters such as the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy and of course all of the Milky Way. The moons of Jupiter could be just made out. It is important to keep the binocular steady in this case. It would be good to use a tripod but then it would defeat the purpose of the binocular's ability to allow you to scan the sky at will.. In order to make out Jupiter's moon I had to stabilize my hand holding the binoculars by leaning it against a pole.

The most disappointing was the Project Star telescope. It has good instructions to assemble and learning exercises to understand about telescopes. However, when looking at the sky it is not able to show much detail. The best I could watch was the moon and I was able to make out the features and the ray system, which was quite good. I could also show details of a distant light, which was quite impressive. The starscope telescope is most useful to show the types of lenses and how a telescope is made and to show the power of telescope during the daytime when it is impressive to see details of distant objects such as leaves on distant trees.

I have not yet got to using the star atlas and hence the red flash since I use a Stellarium on my laptop and Astronomica on the iPhone. For remote observers these two items will be very useful.

Wishing you a Happy New Year.

And all the best wishes for progress and prosperity and happiness during the coming year and in our astronomy activities.

Noorali Jiwaji
The Open University of Tanzania
Faculty of Science Technology and Environmental Studies
Lecturer in Physics
SPoC for IYA2009 in Tanzania
P. O. Box 23409
Kawawa Road, Kinondoni
DAR ES SALAAM
TANZANIA
Tel: +255 713 517 009

a kid observing the lunar eclipse

at the orphanage

at the orphanage

at the orphanage