Stargazing at the Observatory

Noey’s got a new obsession and it’s with outer space.

(Though honestly, I’ve taken so long to write about this that it’s not really that new anymore)

It started out with a little cube that my FIL got for him that had information on the planets and the Sun on its surfaces. Being the content hoarder that he is, Noey happily absorbed all the information on it and wanted to know more.

I used to love reading about space as a child too, so this was an interest I was happy to cultivate. I got him a couple of simple books on the solar system from Kino, which he readily devoured. I quickly realised that I could not be buying books to support his appetite for such books and have since turned to the libraries, which have a really excellent selection of books to keep Noey happy. You can read about my recommendation on good books about space for preschoolers here.

What I thought would be really interesting would be for him to see the planets himself. Who wouldn’t be inspired by that, right? I knew that the Science Centre had an Observatory, and after some quick checks realised that they conducted free stargazing sessions every Friday, between 7.50pm to 10pm. The website also indicated that for the month of May, the planets Venus, Mars and Saturn would be visible. Perfect.

So we waited for a clear evening and the three of us headed down to the observatory, after putting Naomi to bed.

We were not sure what to expect when we walked through the doors, and well, it turned out to be rather informal. What we came upon were small groups of people standing around in the dark on a grass patch. We approached a staff member and were helpfully handed a star map. She also helped us identify the Southern Cross (constellation Crux), as well as some of the brightest stars in the sky like Alpha Centuari and Regulus. She also pointed out the planets of Mars and Saturn – bright, unblinking lights in the sky. I’ve never been able to identify any constellation aside from Orion or any stars at all so I was really pleased to add finally to my knowledge in this area. Noey was also fascinated to learn that only stars twinkle in the sky and planets do not.

We joined the queue to take a peek in the big telescope to see Saturn, and it fortunately wasn’t overly long. We got our turn after about 15mins. I took a look in and was surprised to see a small black & white image of Saturn. Honestly, it looked like an image you’d see on a grainy television. Haha. But exciting nonetheless. On either side of the planet, we could make out three of its moons too. I had to lift Noey up and cover his other eye in order for him to have a squint, but he did manage to see the planet too, and gamely identified Saturn’s moons for the staff member manning the telescope.

We then headed down and joined another queue to have a look through the other big telescope at a star cluster called the Jewel Box. That was really quite pretty. It looked something like this, though of course it was far less bright:

I’ve since learnt that this star cluster is only visible for a few weeks in a year from where we are so I’m glad we managed to catch it.

We spent some time peering through other less powerful telescopes that had also been set up on the grass and which were being manned by students on duty before we called it a night and went home. These allowed you to get a better look at some of the stars and planets, but weren’t really powerful enough to show you anything new.

The one thing I regretted was not checking the phase of the moon before we went, and it turned out that the week we were at the Observatory coincided with a new moon, so there was no moon to see! That was a pity as it would have been fun to get a closer look at its craters and the lunar landscape through the telescopes.

We made this visit to the Observatory in May. While we were in Batam, we also took the opportunity to do some stargazing, taking advantage of the less-bright skies. (From the balcony of our hotel room. We are not that adventurous!) It was such a beautiful sight to see all the stars! I was also pleased that Noey was able to identify the Southern Cross all on his own without prompting. At least it showed that he did learn something from our Observatory trip. I think we’ll make a trip down to the Observatory again after the school holidays are over. Hopefully there’ll be more of a moon to see!

It really is hard to see stars in Singapore because it is just too bright, but I came across this list of top stargazing spots in Singapore which seems really useful:

1. Tampines Eco Green (Tampines Ave 9 and Tampines Ave 12) — this 36.5 ha eco-friendly park is deliberately left unlit at night to minimise dsturbance to the sensitive resident wildlife.
2. Changi Beach Park — especially along Nicoll Drive and Change Coast Road
3. East Coast Park — head for Dalbergia Green in Area D1
4. Pulau Ubin

I hope we’ll have the opportunity to check these out soon.