A night full of memories; the first Sufi competition

Source: Nojum Magazine No. 162

It’s nearly night fall in the 24^th of August 2006. The high altitude deserts, northeast of the Semnan province in the southern mountain sides of the Alborz Mountains; the Abbas Abad district was host to some of the most practiced Iranian observers who had gathered to remember the great works of Abdol-Rahman Al-Sufi the great Iranian astronomer who lived nearly 800 years ago. This great observer of the middle ages was the first person in history to list some of the most visible non-stellar objects in the sky and registered them in his famus book; Sovar-al-Kavakeb.

Its dusk and more then 80 observers are eagerly waiting for the full darkening of the sky so the contest can begin. The observers have come from all around the country, from Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Rasht, Semnan, Shahrood, Ghom, Varamin, Kerman, Sirjan, gchsaran. Ahvaz, SaadatShahr, Saveh, Arak, Ardakan, Tabas, Soufian, Ardebil, Shahmirzad, Lashtnesha and Shahr-e-Kord. Fully one third were female and more then half were high school students. Since the level of this competition was more advanced compared to the Messier Marathon, a considerable increase in the ability and the instruments of the participants was also noticeable; 21 telescope of 8, 10 and 12 inch had been brought, the biggest of which was a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope of the Ardebil observers and two Newtonian telescopes of the same size belonging to the Tehrani observers. The participants are divided into 12 groups under the supervision of 12 referees: Babak Amin Tafreshi (organizer of competitions in the Iranian Astronomy Society-Amateur Committee: ASIAC), Mohammad Mehdi Moteiee (director of the Aseman e toos astronomical society of Mashhad and the organizer of astronomy clubs[1] of ASIAC), Ahmad Karimi (Director of the amateur-educational observatory of the Sadra city), Pouria Nazemi (Organizer of the first Soufi competition and director of the Media relations committee of ASIAC), Kazem Kookaram (Organizer of the first Soufi competition), Hamid-reza Pirayesh (cooperator of the Messeir Marathon organizing committee and the Soufi competition), Ali-reza Vafa (Member of the directors committee of ASIAC), Mohammad Nilforooshan (experienced observer), Sarah Feiz-bakhsh (Astronomy educator), Arian Shivayee (experienced observer and cooperator of the Nojum website), Homam Hosseini (Member of the editing group of the Nojum Magazine) and Seiyed Mostafa Emam (Astronomy educator & experienced observer).

The Soufi competition is actually based on observing 120 deep sky objects in 2 goups of telescope and binocular observers, half of the objects are chosen from catalogues other then that of Messier’s. Since the objects had been chosen such that they would be evenly distributed around the sky, some were located in faint and southern constellations such as Sculptor and Fornax, which made this part of the competition the really exciting part. The competition began and continued full of excitement and close to the morning when the sky was slowly brightening, choosing the winners out of some who had all seen 119 out of 120 objects was a difficult job! It seems the critical object was M67 which most groups had failed to view due to it’s proximity with the shining Sun.

The best records belonged to the following participants, listed here with out any order since they all found the same number of objects;

Telescope:

·          Sepideh Salmanian & Neda Ghasemi (Observers from Shahrood with a 5inch Newtonian telescope)

·          Bahar Nouri-zadeh of Tehran with a 12 inch Dubson telescope

·          Ali Matinfar & Parastoo Yaghoobi of Tehran with an 8inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.

·          Hadi Tabatabaei and Mojtaba Dayani of the Aseman e Toos astronomy society of Mashhad with an 8 inch Newtonian dubson telescope

·          Ali Poor-Rasool and Nima Farzaneh of Gilan with a 10inch dubson Newtonian telescope.

Binoculars:

·            Ali Ebrahimi Seraji of Tehran with a 20x80 binoculars

·            Niloofar Shah-Mohammadi of Tehran with a 20x80 binoculars

·            Sajad Mehdi-Zadeh of Ghom, with a 7cm monocular (a 300mm Zenit lenz with a telescope eyepiece)

Due to the really close results of the participants, a special certificate was also awarded to those participants who were able find more then 100 objects but their names weren’t mentioned here. A certificate was handed to Aryan Visheh, the youngest participant taking part in this program in the age of 14.

The camping and backing of the program was organized by the “Tabiaat” (Nature) institute and some of their well trained guides with the leadership of Ms. Ghani. The Iranian Astronomy Society is very grateful to the “Tabiaat” institute, the organizers of the program, the referees, the photographer (Oshin Zakarian), and also the sponsors of the program for all their effort in helping this program accomplish its goals.

ASIAC is hopeful that the Soufi competition will be announced internationally so in the next years there will be participants from different countries. The next Soufi competition is programmed for August (2007) in the southern half of the country and most probably in the Fars Province, the place where Soufi-Razi spent some of his life, looking at the stars and writing books.

The pictorial report of the Soufi-Competition can be seen in the website of ASIAC in the address: http://www.asiac.ir in the article of the Soufi competition in Nojum No. 161.

Source : Nojum Magazine No. 162
Author  : Nojum Magazine