Notes Of A Life

Jeena Yahan Marna Yahan

Ankit Bhatia — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:57:27 +0000

I finally sat down and recorded one of my arrangements for the piano. This is the piano version I did for the song “Jeena Yahan Marna yahan” from the movie Mera Naam Joker… The song was sung by Mukesk, music by Shankar Jaikishan. one of my all time favourate songs!

here’s the link…
`Jeena Yahan Marna Yahan`

Goa 2008-09

Ankit Bhatia — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:04:50 +0000

The result of an awesome landscape and some photoshop…

The Sun setting on 2008

Sunset at the resort

silhoutte

The entrance to the St. Xaviers Church

Suspended Animation

Rare Eclipse of EE Cephei Is Set to Begin

Ankit Bhatia — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:52:59 +0000

This is an AstroAlert from Sky & Telescope.

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Every 5.6 years, an unseen companion crosses in front of a 10.8-magnitude star in the constellation Cepheus, making it dim for a few weeks. The next eclipse of this star, known as EE Cephei, is expected in mid-January 2009. But because these dimmings are leisurely affairs, the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) urges experienced amateurs to start monitoring the star right now, and to continue through the end of February.

An interval of years between minima is unusually long for a star system of this type. But more intriguing is the fact that successive fadings of EE Cephei over the past half century have not been carbon copies of one another. Sometimes the star becomes just half as bright as normal, and other times it fades by a factor of five! And the light curve sometimes has kinks in it, hinting the companion may not even be round.

What could the mystery companion be? “It’s probably a small, cool star or close binary surrounded by a dust torus, kind of a cosmic doughnut,” says the AAVSO’s Mike Simonsen. In his blog athttp://simostronomy.blogspot.com/2008/12/mystery-star.html, he tells the history of this star and suggests models that could explain the light-curve changes. But there’s a chance the light curve in early 2009 will deviate in some new way, upsetting the apple cart again.

EE Cephei lies 1.5° southwest of 4.2-magnitude Epsilon (ε) Cephei, where it marks the easternmost corner of a distinctive trapezoid of 11th-magnitude stars spanning less than 4 arcminutes. The variable lies at right ascension 22^h09^m 22.8^s, declination +55° 45′ 24″ (equinox 2000.0).

Simonsen’s blog includes a link to AAVSO finder charts for EE Cephei. Once there, enter “EE CEP” (without quotes) in the box for the name of the star.

If you received this AstroAlert by e-mail, be sure to check the online versionhere for possible corrections or updates.

Roger W. Sinnott
Senior Contributing Editor
Sky & Telescope

Crazy Piano

Ankit Bhatia — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:46:11 +0000

I was just browsing YouTube and came across this…I wish I could play like this man…crazy stuff…shit

The Symphony of Life

Ankit Bhatia — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:25:12 +0000

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.”

-George Eliot

How often, on ordinary days, those dull black and white keys become extraordinarily vibrant and magnetizing. How frequently do those strings on your friend’s guitar long to produce sweet music right out of the mind of the player. The melody is always there, you just need to find it. Be it a lush green meadow in spring or a lonely tree on a mountain, everything has a certain explicit music to it. It is a pity that only some develop that ability to find that melody, that never-ending soundtrack tailor made for a movie, a movie called life, and a greater pity that only a minute fraction of them actually understand it. Agreed, it is pretty difficult to understand how music, rather trivial in most of our lives, could influence and inspire the events that take place in your life, and the lives of all the people around you.

When music becomes a part of your life, beautiful things happen. You start supplementing your vision with the pleasant notes of nature, adding that favorite symphony to the tranquility of the Kashmir valley, or maybe overlay the latest simple plan punk rock single on being scolded upon by parents. Now, that makes life a bit more interesting…eh!

Hoping for a musical life henceforth.

YOU ARE NOT HERE!

Ankit Bhatia — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:53:19 +0000

What if?

What if I told you that every human, every single one of us were adopted! Brace yourself ‘cause I am going to do just that. To put forward my idea, I ask you one commonsensical question, the answer to which you ought to know. What is the name of our parent Galaxy?

The Milky Way, you say…

You may be wrong, and here it is that I go forward and tell you that you, the earth, the moon, the planets and our own sun have been adopted by the milky way.

So, how did it all begin you may ask?

The 200 billion star Milky Way Whirlpool Disc has continually been capturing and absorbing ‘many’ smaller galactic systems termed “dwarf galaxies”. Apparently, the milky way has been practicing it’s cannibal ways again. This time with a lesser known galaxy called Sagittarius, 10,000 times smaller than the Milky Way. “It’s clear who’s the bully in the interaction,” says Steven Majewski, U.Va. professor of astronomy and lead author on the paper describing the results.

By using infrared maps, the astronomers filtered away millions of foreground stars to focus on a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way. The 2MASS infrared map of M giant stars analyzed by Majewski and collaborators is the first to give a complete view of the Milky Way galaxy’s meal of Sagittarius stars, now wrapping like a spaghetti noodle around the Milky Way.

The fact that the Milky Way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. If we originated from the Milky Way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy’s ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our Sun in much the same angle as our Sun aligns with the Milky Way. Instead, as first suggested by researcher Matthew Perkins Erwin, the odd angle suggests that our Sun is influenced by some other system. Together with data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey we now know what it is. We actually belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy.

But how does it affect us?

Well, one of the implications lie in one of the major problems we are facing…

GLOBAL WARMING: It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.

There are other repercussions…but maybe some other time.

Bye for now fellow adopted humans.

BET…is BETing me to death…

Ankit Bhatia — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:54:38 +0000

I guess when u start off with a score of 6/20, it shows…well I thought Physics was tough, but BET…with BET tough has reached a whole new high…it never stops suprising me. Just when…Just when you start getting the hang of it…u actually start getting correct answers…it’ll come up with this wierd question from hell, which no matter what happens will not get solved. BET is like this first person shooter game which in order to par you need to perish and respawn infinite number of times…

I have an aim this sessional…to Bite BET in the ass and pass…but will I succeed in my aim…will BET kneal to my actions…Only time will tell… For the time being…

FLUX YOU BET!!!

Mann Ke Manjeere

Ankit Bhatia — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:25:13 +0000

It’s funny how sometimes things work out the way you want them to. With Revels (MIT’s own cultural fest) scheduled, we were all excited about it. The area of interest was the small and rather unknown competition of Lights, Camera and Action. The entry to the competition was supposed to be a 5 min video responce to an English/Hindi song. A couple of friends from my corridor and I, started the process of making the video which including coming up with a list of songs, developing the story, writing the storyboard shooting and then finally my favorite part…Editing. As the month drew on, everyone started losing hope in our idea and slowly forgot about it, however much I tried to remind them.

Disappointed, I dismissed them and forgot about the whole thing. Coincidentally, on the night before the competition, my good friend Ravi comes up to me and asks me whether I know how to edit…He tells me about some people wanting someone who can edit videos…so I reluctantly say yes as I don’t knw those people and I finally end up editing all night sitting at the Archi foyer…I although cannot deny the fact that I had fun…

So the end product lies below, check it out…

Busy Bee!

Ankit Bhatia — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:07:10 +0000

Hey, so…I’ve been busy.
The past few weeks I have had the lowest amount of sleep ever…I have been goofing around a lot…
As I have decided to help out the astronomy club (decision accompanied by a fair amount of interest for that subject), I had to finish my share of work for the workshop. I was to help finish the play that everyone had put up at the workshop on the last the prior to the Night Sky watching session which was tragically cancelled due to unwanted cloud cover.
The astronomy club workshop gave way to the revels where we saw a lot of enthusiastic participation, although not enough to change my view on manipal culture where the aim in everyone’s life seems to tend towards getting drunk and wasted…no offence…
Anyways, the western Battle of the Bands was gut busting as a handful of the bands that participated were actually good. All hail Sandmonkey…
Also, Sanchit, a good friend of mine, was also bassing for a first-year band I had all the more reason to go see the gig…which turned out to be the best evening out of the four revels threw at us.

The following day I had to accompany Atul Pandey on the Keyboard…we were playing a popular hindi song called Toh Phir Aao…we rocked and came third…

The night of the next day I spent editing one of the entries to Lights camera action which ended up second in the competition…

what else….
I am sitting right now at home, in Delhi passing time writing a blog post after a long time….

And I think I am gonna crash cause the night is getting to me
Goodnight…

Bloody Hell!!!

Ankit Bhatia — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:51:34 +0000

Engadget…posted this…

“Rest assured, we’ve seen some wicked frickin’ lasers in our day, but apparently, even the two-kilowatt rendition that heats coffee in mere seconds can’t hold a ~~candle~~
ray of light to HERCULES. Intentionally named in all caps by University
of Michigan gurus in order to highlight its awesomeness, said laser
contains 300 terawatts of power (or 300 times the capacity of the
entire US electricity grid) and could “help scientists develop better
proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer.” Still, we
can’t help but conclude with UMich’s own description of this
masterpiece: “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and
focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand,
that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [HERCULES].” Damn.”