Marine National Park - Narara Jamnagar

Today I am going to share about the Narara Island. It is approx 60kms West from Jamnagar city. The island is the part of Marine National Park. 

The Gulf of Kutch was notified as a Marine National Park in 1980. It is having a rich environment for marine lives. Marine sanctuary is spanning from Okha to Jodiya. While the MNP is the core area. It is having total 42 islands. Narara is one of them.

Before few years, the Narara has been connected through motor-way. So we can reach there through vehicle. Reaching there, you need to take the legal entry permission from MNP office. The coral reef of island is good. You don't need to dive into the water to see the marine life. The reef has approx 1-3 feet sea water in 2 km area during low tide. So the visitors go through walking for marine life. The area is strictly protected under wildlife protection act 1970, So anybody must not harm or disturb any natural material there.

Marine Species

The most common marine spieces found here are Star fish, Brital star, Sea anemons, Sea cucumbar, Sea slugs, Sea turtles, Sea worms etc. Coral species found at Narara are Moon coral, Plate coral, Brain coral, Finger coral etc. 

Mangove Forest

Narara has also a dense region of Mangroves. The mangroves are the very important chain for environment. There are so many benefits of mangroves for coastal areas. Mangroves retains expansion of salty regions. The mangroves filter the salt water by their roots. There are 6 types of mangroves found here at Narara. They are

1) Avicennia Marina
2) Avicennia Officinalis
3) Avicennia Alba
4) Ceriops Tagal
5) Rhizophora Mucronata
6) Aegiceros  Corniculatum

Birds at Narara

The large variety if birds likes the shore of Narara. Thousands of birds can be found on the sand area. They are Storks (Blake Necked Stork, Painted Storks), Pelicans (Rozy Pelican, Dalmatian Pelican), Sandpipers, Euratian Curlew, Marsh harier, Plovers, Gulls etc.

The forest department organize camping activities for children at Narara. During that camp, children learn and understand about marine life, marine vegetations, eco-system and also wildlife, forests, bird watching, night sky gazing etc. The period of this camping is from December to January approx. The MNP Jamnagar office can be contact for more information and for camp registration during registration period.

Astronomy at Narara camps

I am amateur astronomer. I am doing astronomical activities since 2003. I do the programs for school, colleges, NGOs and also for public. Here at Narara sometimes I come for camp participants to show them the night sky. As these camps are Nature Education Camps, showing the night sky and give them knowledge about stars, constellations, planets etc is very important. I use a 3" Newtonian reflector telescope and show the Moon, Jupiter Moons, Saturn with rings etc to camp participants.

When to visit?

Marine national park of GoK has a huge number of marine species. The reef is having a good marine ecosystem. But during the hot season, the marine creatures generally go deeper. So best season to visit Narara island is the Winter i.e. Dec to Feb.

We can see marine lives just by walking in 1-2ft sea water during LOW tide at Narara. So the low tide timing is only timing to visit Narara. Check the low tide time of Narara before visiting.

Here are some links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_National_Park,_Gulf_of_Kutch
http://mnpcs.gov.in/narara-reef.php
www.lakhotanatureclub.com

Note: The details given in this article about Narara and MNP is just for reference and also as per author's opinion.

Starting android app development

The information technology time says it is the time of android. Most of you have used android phone. There are thousands of apps available for different purposes. If you are a computer guy and thinking to put hands on android programming, here is the basic steps for you. 

For starting in this blog, you need to have the basic knowledge of programming. Otherwise you won't understand some terms of this blog. 

The android is mainly the combination of two programming languages i.e. XML and Java. Both of them are platform independent. So that, android app becomes powerful. The designs(layouts), predefined values and structures are created and XML files. While the logic part is written in java files. Now, for development you need,

1. Android SDK

Android SDK is provided by google. It is the huge collection of classes and libraries - APIs. We have to use them to create application. Without android SDK our program is just java class. 

You can get it from here

2. JDK

As the logic part in android app is java, the Java Development Kit is must. Simply download and install it.


You can get it from here

3. Development Environment

The development environment provides the tools and functionality to create apps easily. There are some tools available. Common are Eclipse SDK and Android Studio. 

4. The programming knowledge

The layout designing can be performed with some basic practice. But logic part needs a good knowledge. All the code is written in java. So if you are not experienced with java, start learning it. Java is very powerful programming language and so many books and ebooks are available. Similarly, the one step ahead designing of layouts needs to work on xml files. Though xml formats learning and working is so easy.

When you have above three things, practice with some examples. Learning of xml and java is very easy and interesting. 


tags: Android, step-in android, starting android

Nightsky beauty - Sagittarius

The night sky is the stunning scene of darkness. There are many stars. Grouping these stars makes some shape. This shape is called constellation. There are 88 constellations in the sky. We can see many of them a particular day's night.

Sagittarius is the one of the most dense constellation. First I was seen it in year 2003 with a planisphere. It is the winter constellation as is seen on optimum time during winter nights. The stars makes the shape of an archer, whose half body is horse and half of man. It is little difficult to identify completely the shape. But it is better seen as Teapot.

The image shows how the main stars of this constellation making the shape of teapot. This image was taken during April 2015 when a guest star named Nova Sagitarii was visible in this constellation. Image is stack of multiple long exposure shots. This topic of astrophotography I am going to post soon.

If you are in a very dark place, the stunning view of milkyway will be visible. Milkyway is our home galaxy. Sagittarius has its center part apparently. The following image shows the Milkyway in Sagittarius area.

Sagittarius is the constellation of southern hemisphere. It is the part of Zodiac belt. It is next to the Scoprius Constellation - A Scorpio. There are so many deep sky objects in Sagittarius. The telescopic observations of these DSOs is very interesting.