About Me

My name is Rahul Zota. I am from Bhuj, India. I have been interested in astronomy since 1998. I started to take interest in the night sky by watching space related shows on Discovery Channel. I began observing the night sky after purchasing the 20x50 Super Zenith binoculars, and after that my interest kept growing every day!

My first telescope was a 3” Newtonian that trained me well in finding the deep-sky objects and observing planets. After falling in “aperture fever” I continued to purchase larger telescopes and used them for serious deep-sky observing and completing Messier Marathons. In 2005 I joined Comet Hunting Workshop held at Pune, India and learned visual, digital and CCD methods of discovering the new comet. After knowing the fact that nobody Indian from Indian soil has discovered the comet I decided to start a campaign of visual comet hunting. For that I purchased an 8” Newtonian telescope with Alt-azimuth mount to sweep the skies for comets. Right now I am using a 10” Sky-watcher Dobsonian telescope with a 38mm, 2” Orion Q70 eyepiece to discover comets visually.

In this age, full of competition with high-end amateur astronomers and professional surveys the chances of finding a new comet has been decreased. To go with them I have decided to enter Digital Comet Hunting using a DSLR camera on a tracking mount. Soon I will start this new project and will use a short-tube refractor on the EQ5 mount with dual axis motor drives and will use my Canon EOS 550D DSLR camera to hunt comets digitally. Although I won’t quit from visual comet hunting because there is lot of fun sweeping for comets visually than digitally! That’s my own experience and preparing a list of “Comet Masqueraders” like Charles Messier and David Levy is full of excitement that will never let you quit from visual comet hunting!  

Contact Me: zotarahul@gmail.com

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