My Trip to Langkawi National Observatory (LNO)
As mentioned in the previous post, I spent the days before Chinese New Year at the Langkawi National Observatory (LNO). LNO is located at Langkawi Island, the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The observatory houses a 20” RC telescope at its Stellar Observatory and 2 units of 6” refractor as its main telescope in the Solar Observatory.
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I spent 3 nights awake at the observatory and the rest of the days sleeping. Although occasionally there were some clouds, overall the weather can be considered good. With only a camera and a tripod, I don’t have much choice of the type of images to shoot, so I stick to taking star trails of the constellations.
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I was fortunate, however, to have the chance to play around with the 20” telescope, and it was fun! Everything is computerised so I mainly click around the PC and set the telescope in motion. I even tried to take a few images through its CCD camera and fiddled around with its filters. Easily, within seconds, I got my object. I’m no expect in image processing, thus have no idea at all how to process the images. I post two of the images straight from the camera here (M42 & M79), just for fun.
The best part of this trip was I saw Mercury in one of the mornings while shooting the crescent Moon. OK, it didn’t sound like a big deal, but to me, it was the first time I saw Mercury! Can you believe it?? After 10 years of observation, this was my first time seeing the innermost planet!
All in all, it was a nice trip to the observatory, although biologically I messed up my system by not having proper meals, waking at night and sleeping in the day.
My Dark Sky 
Hi, I will be visiting Langkawi soon and would also love to visit the Observatory. How were you able to do this?
Hi, the observatory is not open to public, you need to apply to visit the observatory. You can get the contact details from their website at http://observatory.angkasa.gov.my/