KARACHI, Aug 1: The heavens above Karachi on the afternoon of August 1 did not turn ominously dark; nor did any cataclysmic cosmic event take place as a fair number of people consisting mainly of media-persons, students and astronomy enthusiasts trudged up the hillock which hosts the cold war era observatory run by the University of Karachi’s Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics (ISPA), to catch a safe glimpse of the partial solar eclipse.
The sky-gazers were not completely disappointed by the spectacle in the afternoon sky as with a strong wind blowing from the west and wispy cloud cover, looking through the viewfinder of the six-inch telescope housed in the blue domed observatory, one could see the sun partially obscured, as if someone had actually taken a bite out of the blazing orange fireball, as was believed by the ancients.
“It’s just another solar eclipse. We were lucky as clouds were coming and going. It was a good opportunity for our fresh MPhil students to see how an eclipse is observed and photographed,” M. Shahid Qureshi, the ISPA in-charge, told Dawn. While the eclipse started at 4.40pm in the metropolis, Mr Qureshi added that the “maximum sun disc coverage in Karachi was 45 per cent between 5.30pm and 5.32pm.”
Though sky-gazers in Pakistan could only get to see a partial view of the celestial event, people in parts of Canada, Russia, China and Mongolia were luckier as they got to see the whole show.
“There is hardly any difference in the intensity of light during a partial eclipse,” Mr Qureshi observed. He said it is just a natural phenomenon, brushing aside myths and legends associated with eclipses as old wives’ tales.
“For amateur astronomers, it is a beautiful sight. It has aesthetic appeal. For professionals it helps in certain scientific calculations, especially problems related to time. Eclipses, occultations and transits all help in performing calculations,” he added.
Interestingly, seen through the telescope, the image of the moon partially obscuring the sun seemed to be an inversion, as the moon approaches the sun from right to left, in an anti-clockwise fashion, whereas through the viewfinder it was the other way round. Also, when the telescope zoomed in, one saw the jagged edges of the lunar surface.
The telescope at the ISPA observatory is of German origin, said to be a Russian gift to Pakistan and dates back to around 1957. It was installed at KU in 1967. It is fitted with proper solar filters for safe viewing of eclipses. “Solar rays are just as dangerous during an eclipse,” the institute’s head told Dawn before the event.
There are two other major telescopes in Karachi: the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) has the most powerful – 14 inches – while the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (Fuaast) has an eight-inch device. However, neither of the telescopes is fitted with solar filters. The telescope at the Planetarium, a four inch machine, is nothing to write home about, say experts.
Obscured by pollution
“We are trying to get a mobile observatory operational as light and industrial pollution as well as vehicle exhaust have made viewing celestial objects in Karachi increasingly difficult,” Mr Qureshi told this reporter. He said with a mobile telescope, if one were to go to a remote area, there would be chances of observing celestial bodies beyond our galaxy. “The only extra-galactic object we have observed here is the Andromeda Galaxy.”
He said when he started scanning the heavens in the early eighties, the sky was much clearer and apart from the city centre, where there was quite a bit of light, one could examine the skies with relative ease and clarity.
The ISPA head added that because of the erratic power supply, the telescope’s motor has been affected, as it is essential for the device to move in consonance with the earth’s rotation in order for it to capture accurate images. However, ISPA has just procured a generator to try and tackle this problem.
He said the institute also faces a security problem, as its location atop the hillock isolates it from the rest of the university. “The majority of our work is done at night. The security guards who are deputed here stick around for a night or two and then run off. There have been several break-ins as well. Then there is the problem of pests; the place is infested with chameleons, while there have also been snake spottings,” Mr Qureshi told Dawn.
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