Sunday, December 08, 2013
My Favorite Fuzzies: M5
The frigid
winds of approaching winter—as frigid as they get deep in the southland, anyway—are buffeting
good old Chaos Manor South. It’s time to think about good little Christmas
trees and ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls, muchachos. But this
Sunday, let’s cling to blessed summer just a while longer with a visit to my
favorite globular star cluster.
Y’all have
probably already glommed onto the idea that that ain’t M13, given the title of
this Sunday’s installment. Despite Unk’s life-long love affair with Herc and
the countless hours he spent chasing the glob’s stars as a sprout, it’s the neighboring cluster, M5, that won his heart.
Actually, it’s maybe partially because
I spent so much time trying (fruitlessly) to resolve stars in M13 with my
Palomar Junior 4-inch as a little person that M5 displaced it in my affections.
Hokay, let’s
get started as we usually do in this series with the just-the-facts-m’am
concerning Messier 5. M5, a.k.a. NGC 5904, is a magnitude 5.7 globular star
cluster in Serpens Caput that is 23’ in diameter. That makes it a little
brighter and a little larger than M13. It is, surprisingly, also easier to
resolve in a small telescope than Hercules despite the fact that they both have a Shapley-Sawyer (concentration) Class of V.
M5 is one of
those (numerous) Messiers not discovered by old Chuck himself. Its first
recorded observation was in 1702 by a German astronomer and calendar maker,
Gottfried Kirch. Charles didn't get the star cluster in the field of his small refractor
till 1764, and didn't know it was a star cluster when he did, recording it as a
“nebula without stars.” It took our old buddies Will and Lina Herschel to
resolve M5, which they did with their famous “20-foot” scope, counting over 200
suns there in 1791.
That’s just
scratching the surface, of course. M5 is home to at least 150,000 stars. It
is not only incredibly rich; it’s one of the larger of the Milky Way’s globs,
being about 165 light-years in diameter. It is also very old, 12 to 13-billion
years, and must have been witness to the titanic events that shaped the Milky
Way. Like all globs, it is in an elliptical orbit around the galaxy’s center,
and at this time is an estimated 24,500 light years from our cozy little rock.
So, what’s my
history with M5? I know good and well I observed it and no doubt recorded it in
my log back in the 1960s. Probably even made a drawing of it. Unfortunately,
most of my early logs have been gone a long, long time; the only drawing I’ve
got left from the early days is one of Copernicus I discovered in a box of papers I found in Mama's house after she passed.
You’d think
I’d have some memory of my first sight of such a glorious cluster, and I do, but
just barely. I vaguely remember checking it off the Messier list along with M10
and M12 one long ago summer’s night. Dadgummed if I can remember what it looked
like or what I thought of it, though. It obviously didn't make much of an
impression, and I wonder why. Not because it wasn’t well placed for
observing; down here, it is good and high all spring and summer long. There is
the weather, though. Maybe the haze took it down a couple of notches. Or maybe
I didn't think it was that good in my Pal Junior because I didn't know it was supposed to be that good. If I wasn’t
convinced what was in my eyepiece should be spectacular, I had a tendency to
just glance at an object and move on.
The few
astronomy books in my minuscule library—Stars, Norton’s
Star Atlas, The Amateur Astronomer—probably
said M5, was outstanding, but they had a tendency to say that about all the Ms, even those I couldn’t see,
like M101. They didn't take into account what a little feller with a little
scope trapped in suburbia had to face. Even at the tail end of the 1960s, there
were plenty of streetlights, and the new shopping center, Bel-Air Mall, had purty
much put the kibosh on my eastern sky by the end of the decade.
I no doubt looked at M5 plenty of times in the years between the 1960s and the 1990s when I owned plenty of respectable telescopes, but I didn't really make friends with the top kick glob till one night in the early 90s when I set out to look at Ophiuchus’ M10 and M12, just like I had on that night in the 60s.
It’s been a
wonderful two decades (almost) with my lovely wife Dorothy, and 1993, the year
before I met her, seems a long time ago. I do have one clear and good memory
from what was a slightly lonely time for me. I was house-sitting for my
vacationing brother and sister-in-law in July of that year. I don’t know that
they really needed a house sitter for
their suburban digs; maybe they just thought a change of scene might perk me
up.
As I’ve
written before, at this time I was between SCTs. All I had other than the good
old Pal Junior was a 6-inch Dobsonian with a Parks primary I’d cobbled together
in an afternoon or three. It wasn’t much, but it was way better than nothing. When
I have a telescope and a clear sky, there is no way I feel lonely, and I’d
brought the sixer along (never did get around to giving her a name) for my
sojourn at Danny and Pam’s.
Dark came
and clear sky with it, and I was out into the backyard with the scope in a
right quick hurry. Once the neighbors’ dog, who wondered what the hell I was
doing, got over his suspicions and shut up, it became a calm and quiet if
somewhat warm and humid evening as is the rule down in the Swamp when summer is
in full swing.
What the
heck would I look at? I hadn’t visited Ophiuchus yet this season, and I
figgered M10, M12, and some of the other globulars in the cluster-rich serpent-bearer would make good fodder for the column, “From City Lights to Deep Space,” I was
doing for the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society’s little newsletter. The City
Lights articles would eventually form the basis of a book, The Urban Astronomer’s Guide, after the turn of the century, but in
1993 that would have been unimaginable to Unk. I was just havin’ fun writing
for my fellow local amateurs and had no greater ambitions for my little
articles than that.
I spent
quite a while going back and forth between M10 and M12, since one of the things
I wanted to emphasize in my column was how wrong people are when they call the
two clusters “the twin globulars.” They are close together, sure, barely three
and-a quarter degrees apart, but they couldn’t look more different. M12, a
Class IX glob, is much looser than M10, a VII, which looks more like a “normal”
cluster along M13’s lines.
When I was
done with the pair, I almost headed for M107, but it’s such a pitiful little thing
in suburban light pollution that I demurred for the moment. M5 would be good and high and it was
always easy to find, making a triangle with prominent Delta and Epsilon
Serpentis.
Once I had
M5 in the field of my prized Vixen 12mm Orthoscopic? On this hazy night, with
this small telescope, in the suburban light pollution, I was near blown off my
feet. Despite the conditions, it was clear this was a big ball of stars,
especially when I bumped the power up to 200x. The core was grainy and slightly
elongated, and the periphery was a mass
of the tiniest stars you can possibly imagine.
Hell, this
thing looked almost as good as M13. Maybe even as good. I zipped over to M13 to check. Nice…but…M5 seemed brighter despite its slightly larger size. And
it was better resolved in the 6-inch. I wasn’t quite ready to say my old love had
been replaced, but almost.
I continued
looking at M5 periodically after that night, always marveling at it, but my
definitive view didn't come till almost five years later in the spring of 1998.
A lot had changed in those five years.
Not only did I have a lovely new wife, I had a pair of new telescopes, a
Celestron Ultima C8 (Celeste) SCT and a 12-inch Meade StarFinder Dobsonian (Old
Betsy). Of the two, Celeste was getting much more starlight despite Betsy’s
downright exquisite optics. The reason was that I couldn’t use the 12-inch at a
dark site.
 |
| Miss Dorothy |
The reason
was Unk’s automobile, a Toyota Camry. When I’d first bought Betsy, I had a
little Hyundai Excel hatchback. Almost unbelievably,
due to the Excel’s hatchback nature, I was able to stuff Bets in that roller-skate of a car. So, all was well until the Excel’s engine gave up the ghost
in rather dramatic fashion one afternoon when I was on the way home from the
shipyard. Though I tried and tried, there was simply no way the near water
heater sized Sonotube was going in the Toyota.
At first I
was OK just using Betsy in Chaos Manor South’s backyard; she allowed me to do my
first good videos of Jupiter (with a handheld camcorder), and it was pretty amazing
what she could pull out of the Garden District light pollution. I wouldn’t have
have thought it possible, but the StarFinder was able to resolve M35’s little
companion cluster, NGC 2158, in the sodium-orange skyglow. I was happy with
the C8’s visual performance under dark skies. Usually. But sometimes it would have been nice to
bring a little more horsepower to bear on the tougher faint-fuzzies.
I eventually
talked the situation over with my friend and ATM, Pat Rochford. I sure wasn’t
hinting he should take on the sizable task of rebuilding Betsy into a
more portable form. I just wanted his thoughts on how I should proceed. Should
I sell the scope and look at an upscale truss tube 12-inch, maybe? I couldn’t
convert Old Bets to a truss scope myself, that was dadburned sure. Unk + hammer
+ nails = disaster. Despite my protests, however, Pat insisted on taking on the
job of converting Betsy to a more portable truss tube configuration. I felt
guilty, yeah, but Pat insisted he was in the mood for a big ATM project.
My part in
the rebirth of Betsy was mostly just acquiring telescope parts: a mirror cell,
pivot bolt, and a few other things from Randy Cunningham’s AstroSystems; and a focuser from Jim’s Mobile. The
only part that took a while to arrive was that NGF-3 Crayford from JMI. It was
well worth the wait, however. While the focuser ain’t fancy by today’s
standards, it is smooth and precise and has just kept on working year after
year. I needed Ebony Star Formica for the bearing surfaces and a Telrad base,
too, and I got those from Crazy Ed
Optical, my (now sadly gone) go-to telescope parts guy back in the 1990s.
 |
| Pat and New Old Betsy... |
Pat did most
of the work at his house, but I did get to participate in the project’s christening,
the initial cutting of the plywood out on the back deck of Chaos Manor South.
In other words: “And I helped.”
Once in a
while Pat would consult with me about design choices; the major one of which
was how we would attach the aluminum truss tubes to the upper cage and mirror
box. By 1998, most truss tube Dobsonians were using clamp-blocks to secure the
truss tubes. I told Pat I would be fine if we did things the old-fashioned way,
fastening the aluminum tubes with bolts and wing nuts. That would simplify Pat’s
job considerably, I thought. The scope, a 12-inch f/4.8, was short enough that
I didn't think that would make the scope difficult to assemble, either.
Amazingly, by the time I had the last of the scope parts in hand, Pat was
dang near finished with the major work and all that remained was cutting the
truss poles to their proper lengths. We would not be able cut them long and
slide them in and out in clamp blocks for testing, so cutting them to exactly
the correct length was critical. That’s where the fabled Picnic Table Telescope came in.
We secured
the mirror box to one end of Pat’s wooden picnic table in his backyard, fastened
the upper cage at the other, tilted the table up at the stars (!), and began
checking eyepiece focus. Pat’s wife, Stephanie, clearly thought we’d finally flipped
out, but the Picnic Table Telescope worked crazy good. We were able to position the upper cage exactly the correct distance from the mirror box so all my eyepieces
from the Nagler 12mm on the “out” side to older Vixen eyepiece on the “in” side
came to perfect focus. Pat was able to measure the distance for the tubes easily,
and I have never had a problem bringing any ocular to focus in Bets.
What was
Betsy like when she was finished? She was a completely different girl. The only
things we reused from her original Sonotube configuration were the primary
mirror, secondary mirror, secondary holder, and spider. I thought the new scope
was beautiful and elegant in a simple, functional way.
 |
| Chart done with Coelix... |
When we made it to the EAAA dark site, a farm up in the Florida panhandle that belonged to
one of their members, I found getting New Betsy set up was a little harder than
before. Not bad, but admittedly more work than getting her Sonotube body ready to go. The
flip side of that was that I would not have been able to set the scope up at a dark site in her old form.
After Bets
was assembled, I took her for a quick spin in the gloaming, just pushing her
from one horizon to the other. Pat had done a beautiful job, and the Ebony Star
Formica and Teflon bearings were so much smoother than the Nylon on smooth Formica
of the old Meade mount. I did notice motion in altitude was actually a little too easy. With lighter eyepieces, the
tube tended to drift upward at some altitudes. I fixed that later with a small
weight on the upper cage and I’ve never had another problem of that sort. I
guess that’s the hallmark of Old Bets: “Never
a problem; just works.”
Time to get going.
In went the 12mm Nagler and to the Telrad went my eye. What would be my first
light object? I’d thought that might be M83, the lustrous Hydra spiral galaxy.
But on this early spring evening it was still way low even as astronomical twilight
came in. What then? “Oh, yeah, M5.”
I didn’t
preserve that observation of M5 with a log entry or a drawing. Wish I had, but
I was too excited about taking first light with a “new” telescope. Didn’t need
to, anyway. The way that great globular star cluster looked is locked into my
mind even to this day. M5, riding nice and high, was an incredible forest of suns
filling the 12mm Nagler’s 82-degree field. The core was burning bright, but was
clearly made of countless tiny stars, and the hordes of them outside that core stretched
all the way to the big field’s edge. The overall color of the cluster was a faint sapphire blue, but orange-yellow suns sprinkled here and there across the lustrous globe of stars winked in and out.
I wasn’t shy
about proclaiming my preference for M5 over M13 after that night, either. I
thought I might get some guff from my article in a long-ago Amateur Astronomy Magazine article where
I proclaimed M5 the King of the Northern Globulars, but I didn't. Unlike the
time (then) Amateur Astronomy publisher Tom Clark and I pointed out that large aperture Dobsonians really don’t need mirrors even as good as ¼-wave, most
folks, those who knew M5, tended to agree. How could they not? It’s a close
race between the two globs. Close, but no cigar for M13.
What’s
happened with Betsy over the years? I’ve continued to use her, if not as much
as my CATs, including for a pair of weeks of incredible deep sky voyaging at the 1999
and 2001 Texas Star Parties. She did get further refits, too. First time around, Pat
and I upgraded her to a smaller secondary mirror, a secondary heater, a better
secondary mount and spider, and a set of Sky Commander Digital Setting Circles.
It was also at that time that I also had her primary recoated with Spectrum’s top of the line high-reflectivity
coatings.
Alas, Betsy
still didn't get used as much as she should. One reason for that was the
substantial weight of her old-school mirror box. A little over a year ago, Pat shaved some pounds off the scope’s big
rear end (sorry Bets) and that helped. Bets still doesn't get used at
home—those trees—but she does get to the club site once in a while. I hope
that once Dorothy and I move out to the suburbs she’ll get the full ration of
starlight she deserves.
One
cautionary note I have for those of y’all considering a first 12-inch Dobbie: In this aperture, a
Sonotube is much easier to deal with at home than a truss of any kind. Manhandle
the rocker box into the backyard, plunk the Sonotube tube in it and you are ready
to observe. A truss? Depending on your doors and other obstacles, you may find a
truss scope may need to be disassembled for transport to the backyard. You
will not want to do that on a regular basis, believe me.
M5? That big star cluster shines on like that crazy diamond it is, and I
admire it every spring and summer. One thing I realized in the course of
writing this? Despite my love for the glob, I’ve never taken a decent picture
of it. There’s one quick and slightly out-of-focus shot done with my old Meade
DSI, but that is it. I promise to rectify that in the spring, and the
anticipation of that will help carry me through the clouds and cold of another
dadgum winter, muchachos.
Next Time: NexRemote Again…
Sunday, December 01, 2013
New Kid Coelix
Hard as it
may be to believe, muchachos, we are on the cusp of the 2013 holiday season; as I write, it's just a few days before Turkey Day. Me and
Miss D. will be doing our usual non-traditional Thanksgiving at the Hotel
Monteleone in New Orleans (we’ll be back at Chaos Manor South by the time you
read this), but what’s happening at The Old Manse right now?
Ain't been
too much going on in the wake of DSRSG. We did walk down to the annual Greekfest the other day, but other than that, yeah, "quiet." Astronomically speaking? I’ve got an expedition Down Chiefland Way planned for January, but right now
all I’ve got on the agenda is a few trips to the Possum Swamp Astronomical
Society dark site—if the weather cooperates (ha). I had hoped to get a look at Comet
ISON, but the clouds and the trees have prevented that
thus far. So, with us kinda in the astronomical doldrums, I was happy to get
turned on to a new piece of astronomy software, Coelix.
“The whosits of the whatsits, Unk?” Hokay,
gang, let’s start at the beginning. I was twiddling my thumbs for want anything
better to do one afternoon, when I idly clicked open Hotmail on the kitchen
workstation. In addition to the numerous phishing messages, there was a missive from a
fellow amateur astronomer, Peter Gladstein, wondering if I might consider
reviewing an astro-soft he had found right useful, Coelix.
When I get
an unsolicited email from somebody about software they like, I sit up and take
notice, since that usually means there’s something good going on with it. Had a look at the program’s website thanks to the URL Pete
included in his mail, and was impressed. Coelix
looked kinda like a fancy RTGUI (one of
Unk’s favorite freeware astro-softs), but with more emphasis on Solar System stuff and
with a built-in charting engine. It looked good enough that I replied
back to Pete saying that if he was in contact with the author, Jean Vallieres
up in Canada, he might mention Unk was interested in a review copy of the program.
Afore long,
I had an email from Jean and had arranged for a CD copy of the program to come
my way. It is also—and probably mostly—sold in downloadable form, but for
review purposes I always prefer a full-up non-virtual copy. The version I’d be
reviewing would be Coelix Apex, the
top of the line edition. There is also a basic (freeware) version available,
but the price of Coelix, $29.95, is
so reasonable I figured most folks will spring for “Apex.”
Coelix is the
New Kid on the astronomy-software block to me,
but it is already in version 2.099, and has been around for dang near ten
years. Why in tarnation haven’t I heard about it, then? Maybe because its nominal
language is French. There is a whole world of astronomy software out there besides
what’s produced in the U.S. and the U.K., y’all. Including some serious
programs like Redshift. We just never
hear about it, even though most foreign
language programs, like Coelix, have
an English language mode.
Anyhoo,
while waiting for the CD, I took another look at the website to scope out the
program’s features:
“More than 2
million stars up to limiting magnitude 12 from Tycho-2 Catalogue and other
catalogues. About 15 million stars to the limiting magnitude 15.6 with the
Guide Star Catalogue. More than 100,000 double and multiple stars from the Washington Double Star Catalogue.”
“About
28,350 objects including open star clusters, globular clusters, diffuse
nebulae, planetary nebulae, galaxies, quasars and clusters and groups of
galaxies.”
“Risings,
transits, and settings of the Moon and planets.”
Display about
3000 comets and more than 300,000 asteroids’ orbital elements, and ephemerides
in 3D and on a sky map. Download the most recent orbital elements of comets and
asteroids from inside the software. Add comets by entering their orbital
elements.”
Get accurate ephemerides for selected comets and asteroids already calculated by
the JPL and taking into account the gravitational perturbations.
ASCOM
telescope control.
“List in
chronological order of all the phenomena seen during one night or several
consecutive nights: sunrises, sunsets and transits of celestial bodies,
eclipses, occultations, maxima and minima of variable stars, phenomena of the
satellites of Jupiter, transits of the Red Spot, and so on. You can view a
phenomenon by clicking on it in the list.”
I edited
some of the above to make the website’s so-so English a wee bit more understandable,
but it was clear a lot was being claimed for Coelix. As always, the questions would be “How well are these
features implemented?” and “How well does the thing work under the stars?”
When the CD
dropped through Chaos Manor’s mail slot not long after my exchange of emails
with its author, I gotta admit I was kinda unimpressed. This is obviously a
garage-type product, a one-person enterprise. The CD, with its CD label-maker label
and its Office Depot style jewel case, looked like something old Unk would
produce.
Appearance
is not everything. Or even much of anything
in the amateur astronomy software world. Most of the outstanding programs we
enjoy today started as small one-person enterprises, and many have remained
that way—SkyTools 3, Deep Sky Planner,
PHD Guiding, Cartes du Ciel, etc., etc., etc. I don’t give a hoot-n’-holler
that a CD or DVD is not professionally reproduced, I just want to know how well
the program works.
Slammed the
CD in the drive of the kitchen workstation, a purty up to date Toshiba
all-in-one running Win 7 64-bit, and waited…and waited. There is no autorun on
the CD; you have to open it up and click on apps to install both the main
program and the Hubble Guide Star Catalog. This is not a problem, since the
instructions on the back of the CD case’s label are clear as to the
installation process. When the installs were done, Windows 7 opined that the
programs might not have installed correctly, but it was soon obvious they had.
Clicked Coelix’s
icon, and the first thing I had to do was enter my license number. That was
simple with neither hiccups nor surprises involved. After that, I
immediately got a message that there was an updated version available. A click
of “Yes” sent me (automatically) to the website, the new version was downloaded
and installed, and I was finally ready to go.
Clicked to
open Coelix again, and my first
thought when it started was “Rut-roh.” All
the text was in French despite me having specified English in the setup. I know
a little French, but not nearly enough to get by. In just a second or two,
however, the text switched to English where it has remained. Once in a while,
the program will display a message in French, but only once in a while and that
is not a problem. While the program’s English, like that on the website, is
occasionally a little creaky (“Center Time” instead of “Central Time”), it is
always understandable.
What's Coelix's control layout like? In addition to a small Windows menu ("File," "Add," "Preferences and settings," "Help,"), there's a vertical icon bar on the left. A nice, legible status bar on the bottom edge of the display shows location, time, date, and other helpful things. The status bar's elements are clickable so you can change date, time, location, etc. without having to access a program menu. At the top of the screen is a horizontal button-bar to take you other places in the program.
There were lots of interesting choices on that button bar, like "Sky Maps" and "The Moon," but it appeared I'd need to do the program set up on Coelix’s home screen, The Observer's Guide, before investigating them. The Observer's Guide's display is plain and no-nonsense and is one of the things that reminded a lot of RTGUI. The screen is made up of three groups of
buttons on a blue background: “The
Observing Station,” (site specific things), “The Search Engine,” (search for various objects), and “Phenomena not to be missed” (sky events). There’s no manual for Coelix, but it
was easy enough to figure out how to set my location,
time-zone, and other localizations with the aid of the program's help engine.
I mashed the “Add a new observing station” (observing site) button under Observing Station and was on my way. Possum Swamp was not among the
locations Coelix had on file, but it
was not difficult to enter my latitude and longitude and specify my time zone. I
then bopped over to the next button down “Modify time at the current station.”
I selected “Standard Time” vice “DST” and was done.
There are a
couple of peculiarities with the program concerning time I ought to mention.
One is that it does not take DST rules into account. You have to go in and
switch to DST when it goes into effect and turn it off when it ends. The author
really needs to fix that. The other odd thing? The program does not track
current time from your PC unless you are connected to a telescope. If you want
the time to be current in Coelix, you
have to click the “Now” icon on the left-side toolbar. This doesn't really hurt
anything, but I am still scratching my head about it.
What next?
That is it as far as set up goes. This is at heart a simple program. You don’t have
enter your scope, or your eyepieces, or your camera, or anything like that
(though you can, in the “Fields of View” screen which we’ll get to in a bit).
You just start using it. I thought a
good place to begin would be to search for a deep sky object, see what Coelix could tell me about it, and
generate some charts for it.
Brought up
the search window by mashing the “Find a celestial object with the search
engine” button (in the Search Engine group), and selected the deep sky tab. What could I search for? The
Messiers are in there. So is the whole NGC/IC. There are some additional
catalogs or parts of catalogs besides, including the Abell galaxy clusters, PK
planetary nebulae, and quite a few others. As a test, I typed in “NGC 7331.”
Only NGC (space) 7331 would work, not NGC7331. Same thing with Messiers
and other object types.
There was
what I’d describe as a “semi-bug” lurking here. Not only do you have to put a
space between the M and the object number when searching for a Messier, if you
are looking for a single digit M like M3, you must put a 0 in front of its
number. To find M3, I had to enter M 03. M 3 returned the planetary nebula M3-43.
Anyhoo, once
I had the search parameter entered correctly, Coelix returned the info window shown above in a right quick hurry.
The information the program had about NGC 7331 wasn’t what I'd call all-encompassing, but it
did have the vitals, including the galaxy’s type, something that is always
important to me. It also had the current altitude and azimuth of the Deerlick
Galaxy, but not its rise and set times. Hokay... How about a nice
star map?
The first of
the program’s three charting modules is “Celestial Hemisphere,” accessed by a button on the horizontal button-bar. It provides
a wide field planisphere-like view of the sky for the time displayed at
the bottom of the screen. The Hemisphere is attractive and can be animated (in
forward or reverse) so you can see the layout for the coming evening. The
animation controls are always onscreen (unless you purposefully close the
window) and the motions are smooth and responsive. If I have a criticism of
Celestial Hemisphere, it’s that there is no live zoom. To change the size of
the chart, you push a button on its icon bar and select a pre-set
zoom level given in pixels.
Coelix’s main charting engine, Sky Maps, does
a purty good job albeit with some limitations.
There are two main ways to access a chart: from the button-bar's “Sky Maps” or from
the object information window you get after a search. When the chart appears—and it
will appear quickly—I think you will be happy with it, especially if, like this old boy, you grew up on printed star atlases.
The charts remind me a lot of the print
atlases of my youth. They are clear, and at the lower zoom level have
about the same amount of detail as good, old Sky Atlas 2000. You can see more stars and DSOs—including a selection of objects from the PGC and UGC
galaxy catalogs—by going to a larger chart scale (more on that in a minute). The more prominent nebulae are displayed as isophotes (outlines), and fairly standard symbols are used for other deep sky objects. Everything is clear and easy to read on a white sky background.
Don’t like a white sky? You can switch to a red sky by selecting the “color
mode” button on the left vertical toolbar and enabling night vision. There is
no way to switch to a black sky background.
One other
thing that makes Sky Maps a lot like a print atlas is that interactivity is
limited. You can move around by clicking an object and mashing “center on this
object” in the information window that comes up. Or you can use the arrow buttons on the vertical icon bar to move to any location in the sky. Or you can use the scroll bars to move
around the limited area of your current chart (or move a rectangle in the Panoramic Tool to do the same thing). But you will not be dragging the
sky around with the mouse like with Stellarium. You won't even be dragging rectangles with the mouse to zoom.
Like
Celestial Hemisphere, the one major down check I gave to Sky Maps was no live zoom. If you want to change your
zoom level, you will have to hit the “New Sky Map” icon on the left side of a top horizontal icon bar (displayed when you go to Sky Maps). A window will then appear where you can select zoom levels of 1x
– 16x (and do other things, too). The new map will still show your current
object selection, just on a different size chart. Once I got used to this way of
working, it was OK, but it was NOT as convenient as, say, rolling the mouse’s
scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
There’s a
third type of chart available in the program, “Virtual Telescope,” which, like
Sky Maps, can be accessed from the button bar or from an object information
window. When you bring up Virtual Telescope, you get an eyepiece field display
similar to the one in Stellarium.
Larger objects look good, almost like photos, and the whole thing is attractive
and useful. You can zoom (via a pull-down), flip and rotate the view, and change
magnifications and apparent field sizes with tools on the module's horizontal icon bar. A minor quibble
I had? You cannot go to 100-degree apparent fields…90 is the limit, sorry
ES-100 eyepiece owners.
Coelix’s three charting modes were all a
little different from what I’m used to, if not dramatically so. Nevertheless,
after a few days of playing around, I found I could do just about
anything with them I could do with any other program. And the more I used ‘em, the better
I liked ‘em. The sole exception was that lack of live zoom, or at least a more
readily accessible means of selecting zoom level, with the Sky Maps charts.
There is no
doubt one of the biggest draws of Coelix
is its planetary functions, which are accessed through, yep, “Solar System” on
the button bar. You can do just about anything you could possibly imagine here
from displaying a chart that shows the Martian hemisphere that is currently visible to
showing the positions of Uranus and Neptune’s Moons. You can also produce
detailed ephemerides of Solar System objects, search for comets, and draw comet
paths. It is all rather well done and useful.
The Moon has
her own set of functions on a separate screen that you get to with a “The Moon,” button on the button-bar, natch. These include
an ephemeris generator, a lunar phase calendar, and other cool stuff. The only
thing I didn't like? The Moon Map, which doesn't have enough detail to be even
minimally useful. I also thought some of the functions could have been
combined. It would be nice if you could, for example, click on a date in the
phase calendar and get rise and set times and other info instead of needing to
go to a separate screen.
The next two buttons on the button-bar, “Celestial bodies tonight” and “Graphic Almanac,” display charts for sky events not unlike those in the centerfolds of the
astronomy magazines each month. There isn't anything new or original here, but the graphics are nice and clear and easy to access.
What else is on the button bar? “Field of View” lets you customize and view fields for
particular camera/eyepiece/telescope combos centered on the object
selected in Virtual Telescope. Finally, there's a strange thing, y’all, “Games.” Mash that and you are presented with a word jumble game that
has you rearrange letters to form the names of constellations. I am still trying to figure out why Jean felt moved to include this.
It’s cute, I reckon, but I don’t need foolishness like that at 3 a.m. on the dadgummed observing field.
Which leaves
one last biggie, telescope control.
Since Coelix uses ASCOM, getting your
scope set up is a nobrainer; it is much the same as doing that with Cartes du Ciel or SkyTools or any other ASCOM compliant program. The rubber-meets-the-road
part of it is how easy the program makes it to issue go-to commands. I set out
to see about that one recent Saturday evening.That's what I set out to do, anyhow. I had big plans, and for once this autumn, the weather was cooperating. Clouds were forecast to move in, but I was pretty sure I'd have till at least midnight. In addition to checking Coelix's goto functions, I'd fire up RSpec and take some stellar spectra. That done, I thought I might see how my little planetary cam, the ZWO ASI120MC might do on the deep sky. I've been seeing some amazing ZWO DSO pictures on Facebook.
As I neared the end of my 25-mile journey to the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society dark site, I was practically whistling a little tune. Everything was just going so right for once. Then it hit me. My laptop was sitting in Chaos Manor South's den. Without that, there wouldn't be no imaging.
Well, I'd do visual, then. Of what, I didn't know, but it looked to be shaping up to be a pretty night. Then the second whammy hit me: I did not pack the eyepiece case. Didn't seem to be any reason to. I'd be CCDing all night long. I do always keep an "emergency" eyepiece in the cases with my scopes, but the one in the C8, Mrs. Peel's, case was the execrable 40mm Plössl Celestron shipped with her. But I figgered I'd be able to borrow an ocular or two from my PSAS buddies. On such a lovely night, surely I wouldn't be alone.
Guess again, Skeezix. Full dark came, and Unk was still all by his lonesome—well except for the friendly tomcat who lives in the airstrip's hangar. I reckon the fact that it was Thanksgiving weekend kept the gang away. So, all I had was that 40mm (which "features" an apparent field of view of about 40-degrees), a 2x Barlow, and a 3x Barlow.
I sat there waiting for darkness, trying to think up a plan to keep the night from being a total waste. Hmmm...I'd been wondering about the Celestron AllStar polar alignment procedure. The AllStar routine in the HC has you center a star using the mount altitude and azimuth adjusters to achieve polar alignment. It works well, but I've had a question about it. Since you physically move the mount to polar align, do you need to do a new goto alignment after AllStar? Some folks say "yes," some say "no," and Celestron waffles on it. Maybe I could find out, which would make the night something other than a complete loss.
Did a rough polar alignment through the hollow bore of the VX, offsetting Polaris a little bit to get close to the real pole with the aid of SkySafari running on my iPhone. Did the Celestron 4+2 goto alignment, and when I was done chose Deneb Algedi as my AllStar star. After I centered the star with the hand control following AllStar's initial slew off it, the mount slewed away one last time and I recentered Delta Capricorni using the altitude and azimuth adjusters. The star was still in the field of the 12mm reticle eyepiece (160x) after the VX's slew, so that was easy to do. Apparently my bore-sighting of the North Star had got me pretty close to the pole.
I then embarked on a series of gotos covering the whole sky, including objects at the zenith and in areas near the four horizons. Every DSO was somewhere in the field of the 40mm eyepiece, which I'd paired with the 2x Barlow (100x).
What did I conclude? I'm still not sure whether a second goto alignment is called for after AllStar. My gotos were good, sure, but I was close enough to the pole from the start and I didn't have to move the mount much during the AllStar procedure. I suppose I'll continue to do a second goto alignment if I have time, but it's obvious moving the mount a little bit (maybe half a degree on this night) did not hurt goto accuracy much.
After I finished my go-to testing, it was still way, way early, so what did I do next? I hadn't a clue what I ort to do, so I mashed the "tour" button on the NexStar HC and spent half an hour visiting old friends, including M76, who looked very fine even in the icky 40mm, and NGC 253, which was in some haze and low in a light dome, but which looked sweet nevertheless. I was surprised the loose globular, NGC 288 (not in the Celestron tour; I backed out of it to punch up 288), which was just a little higher than the Sculptor Galaxy, broke into a little cloud of stars with ease. I was also surprised M74 showed off a little spiral detail to averted vision despite being barely out of the light dome. It didn't look like it did at the 1994 DSRSG with Old Betsy, but it was nice anyhow. After The Phantom, I looked at a few other things, but not many.
This wasn't the first time I'd pulled this exact same bone-headed stunt. Not that that made me feel better. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was right disgusted with myself. Packed up and headed back to the Old Manse where Rebel Yell and Svengoolie awaited. Assuming we get some clear weather next weekend (How likely will that be after I wasted a good one?), I'll give Coelix a check-ride and begin testing RSpec in earnest. Otherwise, we'll visit a cool DSO as per below.
Believe it or no, there’s still more to Coelix than just its goto functions, campers, but, alas, we are about out of
space and time for this morning. Before I go, is there anything I would like to see
added to Coelix’s copious feature set? More catalogs,
like the full PGC. That wouldn’t be hard to do, and for many of us that would
move Coelix from the “good” category to
the “great” one. It would be nice to have a true observing list generator, too.
You can retrieve objects from the catalogs based on a fair selection of
filters, and you can save those lists as text files, but you can’t open them
from within the program.
The number one want for me, however, is an easier to use zoom function for Sky Maps. Once I
glommed onto the Coelix way of doing
things, I didn't miss an easily accessible zoom control too much, but I did miss it. Finally, some of the screens could stand a
little updating. Many of ‘em would be right at home on
Unk’s 80386 MS-DOS computer appearance-wise.
This is an
insanely nice program for 30 freaking bucks. A copy of Coelix, maybe a freeware logging program like Observation Manager to go with it, and you would be ready to rock—and do a lot of good work. The
“pro” software houses don’t want you to know it, but you do not need to spend two or three hundred
dollars for an astronomy program that will do everything but make the biscuits
in the morning. Coelix is proof of
that, muchachos.
Next Time: My Favorite Fuzzies: M5...
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Destination Moon Night 3: 37 down, 263 to Go
Actually, I
could have called this installment “The Little Camera that Could” in honor of
the star of my Saturday night show, the ZWO ASI120MC, one of the new astro cameras out of China that are taking the
planetary imaging world by storm. The inexpensive ZWOs with their small chips
and many small pixels are perfect for high-resolution imaging of the Sun, Moon,
and planets, but that’s not all they can do, muchachos.
I haven’t
tried the camera on the deep sky (yet), but I have been amazed at what folks have
accomplished there despite the ZWOs’ little chips and lack of cooling (I
understand a cooled ZWO is planned). No, you can’t capture huge swathes of
space, but the little cams have produced surprisingly good pictures of
planetary nebulae, galaxies, and globular clusters.
I hadn't
used the ASI for anything but the Moon until recently, when I did a few
shots of the Sol with my friend Jonathan’s Coronado solar scope at the just
finished Deep South Regional Star Gaze. I’d heard rumors that the ZWO cameras didn't
work well with a hydrogen alpha scope, but considering the images I got with my
color camera on my first attempt with Hα, I gotta rule that talk bull-spit
(this is a family friendly blog, y’all).
As they say
on the pea-picking TBS late at night, though, “THAT’S NOT ALL!” I’ve also
used the ASI120MC for spectroscopy. With the aid of the program RSpec,
which I’ve been testing, and a Star
Anlyser grating, I was able to easily—yes, easily—capture a detailed spectrum of Vega. Unfortunately, that was
my first outing with the spectroscopy set up, and I didn't have things set up quite
right. A quick consultation with RSpec’s
helpful (and talented) author, Tom Field, edumacated ol’ Unk as to where he’d
fouled up. So, I was anxious to give Vega another try, and last Saturday night
seemed like a good time to do it.
There’d be a
near First Quarter Moon in the sky, not a very good time to go after galaxies,
but Luna wouldn’t prevent me from taking Vega’s spectrum. And I could combine
that with shooting some more images for my Destination Moon project. I’d barely scratched the surface of the 300 lunar features I’ve set as my imaging goal for the DM project, and needed to get back after it.
 |
| Sol in Ha from DSRSG 2013... |
I was still
a wee bit weary from the exertions involved in packing for, attending,
observing at, and returning from a major star party the previous week, y’all.
But so what? I’m retired now, and I got to thinking I ought to be doing a lot
more observing than I am. The big old oak trees that surround and envelop Chaos
Manor South don’t allow me to do much from home, but the Possum Swamp
Astronomical Society dark site is only 45-minutes away, and I now have the one
thing I lacked for the previous three decades: time.
That’s just
what I’d do on this weekend, I thought:
spend the early evening at the dark site imaging my silv’ry girl, Diana, and when she
began to sink I’d switch over to spectroscopy and get Vega and maybe a few
more stars besides. I’d be able to use the ZWO for both purposes, wouldn’t need
too much gear, and I’d be able to make it a reasonably early evening now that
that fricking-fraking Daylight Savings Time is done.
Saturday started
out with a beautifully blue sky, but the weather-saps insisted clouds were on
their way, and I had the feeling they were correct for once. The formerly cool
(for us) temperatures were spiking back up into the 80s, and the humidity was
rising. As the day wore on, the skies remained mostly clear, but there was a
line of stuff low on the western horizon, never a good sign, and I began to
wonder whether I would be able to beat the advancing front.
At four
o’clock it wasn’t raining, at least, and I stuck to my maxim, “If it ain’t
raining, head to the dark site.” At least I didn’t have too much to pack, not
compared to a Mallincam run: Mrs. Peel
the Edge 800 SCT, the VX mount, the tackle box that holds most of my accessories,
and one large Tupperware container with the rest of the astro-junk. The imaging
gear consisted of the ZWO and accessories in an aluminum tool attaché case I
got from the cotton-picking Harbor Freight, and my Toshiba Satellite laptop. With sundown coming
at quarter after five, I hit the road at 4:30.
 |
| Pretty, but not so encouraging... |
The farther
west I went, the higher those damned old clouds climbed. By the time I was out
of the city, there was a substantial bank of thick gray suckers in the southwest.
Y’all will be proud of me that I didn't even consider turning Miss Van Pelt
around. I continued on to the PSAS field and got to work setting up—in a right
big hurry.
Looking at
the reddening western sky, which seemed to give the lie to “red sky at night,
sailor’s delight,” I estimated I might have an hour at best, so there was no
time to lose. Old Unk scurried, campers, scurried.
I originally planned to do a good rough—through the hollow polar bore of the VX—alignment
on Polaris, which would be followed by a full six star go-to alignment and an
AllStar polar align. But Polaris was not visible yet, and when it got dark
enough to see the North Star, I was purty sure it would be behind the clouds.
Since I couldn't see Polaris, I used my compass to get the mount’s azimuth as close to that of the
North Celestial Pole as I could. We are lucky down here that magnetic
declination (deviation) is small, so a compass can get you close. The mount’s
R.A. axis elevation was still set for the Feliciana Retreat Center, and I left
it alone, since FRC is just a smidge north of the PSAS dark site in latitude.
That was the
extent of my polar alignment. Now came mount go-to alignment. I’d left the NexRemote cables, game pad, and game pad
receiver at home, since I knew I wouldn’t want to devote time to setting all
that up with weather on the way. Y’all know I ain’t a fan of the Celestron Plus
hand control that came with the VX mount, but all I’d be doing with it would be
a simple Solar System Align and aiming at targets with the direction
buttons.
Lit off the
mount, entered time and date and such, and selected Solar System Align from
the menu. Chose “Moon,” and the mount and Mrs. Peel slewed that-a-way. I was
surprised they stopped as close to Luna as they did—maybe a half degree away. I
suppose the fact that I’d used exact time off’n my iPhone helped a little. If
the sky cleared or the clouds stopped in their tracks and I had the chance to
do some spectroscopy, I’d bite the bullet and do a 2 + 4 go-to alignment and an
AllStar polar alignment before I got started with that. From the way the evil dark
things were flooding the sky from the west, I didn’t reckon I’d have to worry
about that, howsomeever.
 |
| Mrs. Emma Peel and VX... |
The clouds apparently kept my fellow PSASers at home. I was alone, and while I have been
known to get spooked at this slightly lonely airstrip, I was perfectly
comfortable all by myself on this night. I was way too busy to worry about
the depredations of the dadgum Skunk Ape and his despicable pals, Mothman and
the Little Grey Dudes from Zeta Reticuli 2. I will admit I left the runway
lights on, but why not? I was imaging the Moon and wouldn’t need a bit of
dark adaptation.
With scope
more or less aligned, it was time to get the rear cell setup done. When I am
imaging the Moon and planets at high magnification, I always use a flip mirror.
My first experiments with video back in the early 90s, which involved an
ancient Sony camera with a vidicon tube, revealed that even with a precisely
aligned finder it’s near impossible to get even the Moon on a small video
camera chip without major exertions.
Flip mirror
on Mrs. Peel’s (ahem) rear, and 12mm reticle eyepiece in the flip mirror
focuser, it was time to set up the cam. We used to use eyepiece projection to
get long focal lengths for Lunar and planetary work, but that has gone the way
of the dodo. Barlow projection provides much better images, and with today’s
small chip planetary cams, you don’t need the huge focal lengths provided by
eyepiece projection.
How much
focal length would I need? I like to
shoot the Moon at about f/30, but what I’d seen through the eyepiece in the
course of getting the mount aligned showed that would be too much on a night
where the seeing started out bad and would undoubtedly get worse. A 2x Shorty
Barlow (Orion) went in the flip mirror’s 1.25-inch rear port rather than my 3x
APO Owl Astronomy Barlow, and the ASI120MC went into the Barlow via its
1.25-inch nosepiece.
One other
thing you will need in addition to a flip mirror and a Barlow for Lunar imaging
with the color ZWO is an IR block filter. Imaging
chips are very sensitive at the infrared end of the spectrum, so you’ll usually
want to block most of that. If you don’t, your pictures will have a strong
red/pink cast that it difficult to correct during processing. If you buy a color
ZWO camera, you’ll find the maker has thoughtfully included a 1.25-inch IR
filter that screws onto the camera’s nosepiece.
You need a
software program to run the camera and handle image capture, of course, just
like with any other astronomical cam. When I first got the camera, I
started out with the freeware program Sharpcap.
It works very well with the ZWO, and is simple and effective. I’d still be
using it today if I hadn’t discovered another freeware soft, Firecapture.
 |
| Maurolycus |
Firecapture has nothing to do with the old Firewire
data format; it is a program designed to control astronomical cameras,
especially for Solar System imaging, and, frankly, campers, does more than I
will ever call upon it to do. Not only will it control filter wheels and
motorized focusers as well as cameras (a large selection of cameras), it will
even calculate ephemerides of Solar System objects. Best of all, it is easy to
use. Only caveat? If you want to use Firecapture
with a ZWO camera, make sure you download and install the v2.3 beta. Earlier releases
tended to lock up with the ZWO cams.
Camera and
software ready, I went back to the eyepiece, centered a target feature on the
6-day old Moon, the complex and interesting crater Maurolycus, flipped the flip
mirror up to send light to the camera, went back to the Toshiba, and saw...absolutely nuttin’. Oh, for god’s sake. What
now? I didn't need this with weather coming in. I managed to keep my cool somehow, and it
turned out all I had to do to get the crater in view was tweak exposure and gain, which were still
set for imaging through the solar scope.
The
live image, the video (like other planetary cams, the ZWOs output a .avi video
stream), of Maurolycus looked OK, especially after I fine-tuned focus, but just OK. The seeing was even worse than it had been
when I’d aligned the scope, but it’s amazing what Registax 6 can do, so I fired off several 25-second sequences
anyhow. That yielded around 800 individual
frames even at max resolution, 1280 x 960, and that is usually more than enough
frames for a high resolution lunar image.
Maurolycus has always been one of my go-to lunar
features. It’s big, 114 km in diameter, and, while it is located smack in the
Moon’s southern highlands, it is far enough from the limb to look round. Though
it was formed purty far back, during the Nectarian period about 3.9-billion
years ago, it has a fresh, deep look. At this point in the lunation, the nearby
large crater Barocius, which can look soft when the Sun is higher, also stood
out well.
This was hardly the first time I’d imaged Maurolycus; I took quite a few shots of it with
my old SAC 7B modified webcam. This crater always looks good; surrounded by
large amounts of detail, it gives your images a “high resolution” look, even if
they are actually a little soft.
 |
| Theophilus |
Next up was
one of the most photogenic features on the Moon, the crater trio of Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina.
I chose to concentrate on Theophillus, cutting off part of Catharina. While all three
look good together, Cyrillus and Catharina look old and fuzzy. Theophilus is
sharp and just loaded with detail including an exquisite central peak complex.
This big 101 km diameter crater is likely fairly young, probably dating from the
Eratosthenian period about 1 – 3-billion years ago. When the seeing is better
than it was on this evening, it’s easy to capture lots of small detail including
rilles and countless craterlets.
Agrippa and Godin, a pair of craters not far
from the shores of Mare Vaporum, are usually fairly uninteresting. Both appear
round and deep with Agrippa being 46 km across and Godin about half that size at
21 km. While their floors are fairly detailed when visible, neither is really much to
write home about. The real scenic landmark to visit here is the wide rille just to the north
of the craters, Rima Ariadaeus, a
graben, an area where the ground has slumped, which runs east/west for some
220km. This whole area
is a welter of rilles, small craters, and ghost craters. I thought even
normally staid Agrippa and Godin looked very photogenic on this night with
their floors still covered in inky black shadow.
Delambre, a medium sized 53 km crater sitting
near the edge of Mare Tranquilitatus, is not one I remembered, though I’m sure
I must have observed it numerous times over the years. This is a nice region,
with a crowd of craters large and small, and certainly deserves a look. The
main interest at Delambre is its rough looking floor, which I suspect on a good
night would give up some craterlets, and the crater’s beautiful terraced walls.
With
conditions worsening by the minute, I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d get an
acceptable image of Plinius. I did, but just barely, and may revisit this
Eratosthenian crater on a better night. It deserves it. This fresh appearing
43 km formation stands out since it is offshore out in Mare
Tranquilitatus near a cape, Promintorium Archerusia. Of particular interest
are the crater’s detail laden floor and a complicated-looking central peak.
 |
| Agrippa and Godin |
When I had Plinius in the
can, a look up showed Luna was soon to be bathed in clouds, and was already
covered by a thin layer of haze. Actually, it seemed as if Diana might skirt
the cloud-bank for a while, but the haze and the seeing near it were so
bad, and the last exposure of Plinius so soft, that it was obviously time to
pull the Big Switch. It didn’t look like rain was imminent, but it
didn't look out of the question, either, so I didn't tarry.
From the
time I’d mashed Firecapture’s record
button on Maurolycus, I’d had little more than half an hour of imaging, so I
was back at good, old Chaos Manor South and sitting in the den with a big
libation of the pea-picking Rebel Yell at 9 in the freaking p.m. Just in
time for my fave Saturday night show, Svengoolie. Unfortunately, the film he was
showing was Ghost of Frankenstein, my
least favorite among the Universal monster movies. Frankenstein’s Monster on
the witness stand in a brightly lit courtroom? Reeeeee-diculous, y’all.
Svengoolie
purty much a bust, and it still early, I couldn’t resist sitting down to the Toshiba
Satellite and test-processing one of the sequences of Maurolycus with Registax 6. If you’ve used the previous
versions of the premier image stacking program for planetary observers, the new
one, 6, won’t hold too many surprises. Some new options have been added,
especially to the wavelets screen, but nothing that should bring you up real
short. If you are new to Registax?
This tutorial by Paul Maxson does the best
job I’ve seen of getting you started simply and quickly.
If you are new to Firecapture
and are using a color camera like the ASI120MC, there is one thing to
get used to. You need to debayer your
sequences before you process them with Registax; you have to convert the camera’s
raw video to RGB color. You can allow Firecapture
to do that on the fly as you image, but that causes a fair amount of processing
overhead and usually results in lower frame rates. Firecapture comes with a little app that will allow you to debayer
sequences in batches or singly after the fact, and that is what I do. I also often convert my final images to black and white. I just prefer monochrome for the Moon.
 |
| Delambre |
After I’ve
stacked in Registax and sharpened the resulting still image with its amazing
wavelet filters, I normally do a little fine-tuning. Registax has its own image processing tools, but I find it easier
to use Adobe Photoshop or,
increasingly, Adobe Lightroom. I
began using Lightroom to process and organize the terrestrial images I shoot
for my books and magazine articles, and find nearly as powerful as
Photoshop and much better than Photoshop’s “Browse” function at keeping my
hundreds and hundreds of pictures organized.
Lightroom is much less expensive than Photoshop, a measly 149 bucks for the downloadable
version vice 650 smackers for Photoshop. For most imagers, Adobe Lightroom is more than capable enough, and for working photographers it actually has some advantages over Big Bro.
So what did I think of my latest batch of Moon pictures when I'd Registaxed 'em all the next day? As you can see above, not
bad, not bad at all—considering the conditions. If nuttin’ else, muchachos, it
showed, once again, that you will always get more out on the observing field
than you will sitting in front of the dadburned boobtube.
Next Time: New Kid on the Software Block...
