Sunday, December 02, 2012
Unk's Messier Album III
It’s been a
funny autumn, muchachos. Uncle Rod’s astro activities have alternated between 0
mph and 60 mph with nothing in between. One week I’d be down Chiefland way or
at a star party like the just finished Deep South Regional Star Gaze. Next, I’d
spend night after night gazing up at cloudy or at least hazy skies. This is not
a prescription for starting big observing projects. Instead, Unk is focusing on
a small one.
Some time
back, summer before last to be exact, I started just such a little project,
which I began documenting here and here. You can read all about it in those places,
but the bottom-line-a-roony-oh is that I decided to follow in the footsteps of
one of my favorite astronomy authors, John Mallas,
who observed and sketched the whole Messier catalog in a series of articles in Sky and Telescope, “A Messier Album,” that
ran in the late 1960s and which was later collected into a book, The Messier Album.
The idea for
Unk’s Messier Album was a simple one:
I would observe and sketch the objects just as John had done. I would compare
what I saw with what Mr. Mallas saw. I would use a comparable telescope, but
would employ modern eyepieces. There would
be one major difference between our albums; John Mallas apparently did not like
sketching open star clusters. There are really no drawings of galactic clusters
in his album. I would have a go at them.
The photos
in the book by astrophotography legend Evered Kreimer? Imaging has come a long
way since the 1960s, but I had no interest in trying to duplicate Kreimer’s
beautiful black and white photos, which I consider in some ways to be the
definitive portraits of the Ms.
Howzabout the
telescope? Mr. Mallas used the legendary Unitron 4-inch equatorial refractor. I
dang sure didn’t and don’t have one of those beautiful star machines (though I
still want one). What was in my stable that might be similar? A 5-inch Maksutov
Cassegrain, my beloved Charity Hope Valentine, a Meade ETX 125PE. Charity is a
5-inch, not a 4-inch, and has modern hi-tech UHTC coatings, but given her
rather large central obstruction (do NOT tell her I mentioned that, you-all),
and the only fair-good skies at the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society’s dark
observing site, I figgered the matchup would be fairly equal. Charity’s focal
ratio is f/15, about the same as the old Unitron’s f/16.
Yes, I would
use modern eyepieces. This little
black duck ain’t gonna go back to keyhole-peering with Orthoscopics, much less
the simple Unitron oculars Mallas likely used. John never mentions the eyepiece
brands/designs he employed, but I assume they were the Huygenians, Ramsdens,
Kellners, and Orthos that came with his telescope or were commonly bought by
folks wielding f/16 achromats.
And so I hit
the observing field the summer of 2011 with Charity to start running the
Messiers. I had a freaking ball observing the spring/summer Ms, seeing what I
saw that Mallas didn’t and vice versa, and gaining an ever greater respect for
his ground breaking book. I especially learned to love his drawings. I found
that even those that look a little weird and funky in daylight seem amazingly
accurate by the light of a red flashlight.
And then?
And then? Nothing. After the first two installments of “Unk’s Messier Album,” I
stopped. Why? My excuse was that Charity needed a little work. Maybe that was an
exaggeration. I had repaired her often reluctant Autostar hand controller before starting the Album Project, and all she
really needed was a new battery in her LNT finder. The real reason I stopped was
that The Herschel Project was slowly, ever so slowly, reaching its finale, and
I was spending every moment of observing time I could squeeze out of my too
busy schedule working on it.
And then The
Herschel Project was suddenly done, culminating (for now) in my article about
it in the August 2012 issue of Sky and Telescope. For a while it was fun being FREE. Trotting down
to Chiefland with a C8 to do some simple visual playing around in the sky.
Getting my Dob, Old Betsy, out to the DSRSG for some bright and easy and
spectacular deep sky sights. But I’ve now begun to get the itch for some kind
of big project again.
I actually
have one in mind, one that I will start this spring, maybe, and which I will
tell you about after Christmas. For now? It occurred to me that I had let my
Messier Album slide to the point where I’d almost forgot I’d even started it.
It seemed like just the thing for winter nights on the PSAS field, when your
old Uncle gets chilly in a hurry and is liable to head for Chaos Manor South well
before the stroke of midnight. Continuing The Album seemed especially
attractive the week after Deep South. I was not in the mood to pack the 4Runner
full of gear again right away. Easy - simple was the thing—but with a purpose.
There is
only one real drawback to the LNT widget: that little battery, a CR2032 cell.
Meade, hilariously, said (the ETX 125 is, alas, now out of production) the
battery would last “years.” Months is more like it. Six usually. You can still
use the scope with a dead bat-try, but you will have to enter time and date
manually, and what fun is there in that?
If you have
one of the last of the ETX 125PEs, changing that battery is fairly simple. If
you have an early one like Unk, one with the big eye-glass-spectacle lens LNT?
Not so much. I was prepared for trouble and I got it. To replace the cotton-picking
battery you have to disassemble the LNT, removing the two long screws that
adjust its aim. That wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that there are two
small springs involved, and you have to be ever so careful not to break the
wires that connect the LNT’s top to its bottom.
I put
Charity on her tripod in Chaos Manor South’s front parlor and got to work.
Taking the finder apart was fairly easy. At least I remembered which screws to
remove. Even got the two springs out without incident. But then, in the process
of finding a safe place to put ‘em, I dropped one. I did not panic, just ran
and got a big Eveready flashlight, what my kid buddies and I used to call a
“rabbit light” back in the 60s. No joy. I was just about to give up and go
hunting in the junk box for a replacement when Chaos Manor South’s resident
black cat, Thomas Aquinas, saved the day, putting his paw right next to the
spring under the coffee table and looking up as if to say, “Here it is, Daddy.”
My praise
for Tommy was effusive till a paw reached out for the spring after I’d placed
it safely on the coffee table so he could repeat the process. Anyhoo, I got the
finder back together only dropping the springs twice, with Thomas finding them
both times. Got the LNT back together and returned Charity to her case after
shooing The Old Manse’s other cat, Growltiger, out of the wonderful soft new
bed he’d found. The foam in the case is tattered from where Tiger sharpened his
claws on it shortly after it arrived nearly seven years ago, and I was not
about to let him have another go. I spoke sharply to the feline, which did not
impress him at all.
Then dark
was coming on and it was time to load up for the Messier run. The sky was clear
and there was absolutely no chance of clouds shutting Unk down—for once—but
conditions were hardly perfect. Cooler than I like, if not cold, damper than me
or Charity like, and there would be a crescent Moon hanging in the
south-southwest till relatively late.
Motored out
to the dark site and got set-up, which was just so wonderfully easy. Plunk down
Charity’s tripod, bolt her to it (in alt-az fashion, naturally), open the
4Runner’s, Miss Van Pelt’s, tailgate and set the eyepiece box there along with
the sketchpad and the big Plano tackle box I use for my accessories. That was
the work of but a few minutes and I spent the balance of the time before
Polaris peeped out shooting the breeze with my four fellow observers who’d
joined Unk on this so-so evening. Oh, I did remember to mechanically realign
the red-dot finder part of the LNT on a distant runway light (we observe from
the edge of a private airstrip) before it got totally dark.
Once I could
see Polaris, I got going, not with Charity’s alignment, but with her calibration. One of the most annoying
things about Meade’s (now gone, I guess, since it’s been removed from the LX90)
LNT finder is that after every battery change you not only have to mechanically
re-aim the finder, you have to “calibrate sensors” so it knows where true north
is, and, if you are smart, redo drive
training, which informs the computer about the (copious) backlash of the
ETX gears.
This is all
more annoying than difficult. Powered up the girl after putting her in home
position (tube level and cranked counter-clockwise to the drive base’s hard
stop). I was pleased to see that the Autostar immediately picked up the time
from the LNT, and I proceeded to sensor calibration, which involves nothing
more difficult than centering Polaris in an eyepiece after the scope finishes
pointing north. That done, I trained the drives. I find drive training more
effective if I do it on a terrestrial object rather than Polaris. Why that
should be, I don’t know, but I trained the ETX’s alt and az motors by centering
a runway light and re-centering it after the scope slewed off it a couple of
times in both axes.
Next up was go-to
alignment. Charity picked Vega and Deneb, which I thought were a little close
together, but…whatever… After I’d centered both the stars, which were only off
a little bit after the scope stopped slewing, the Autostar said “Align
Success.” But with Charity you really never know. Her neurotic nature—the
reason for her name—means she can surprise, and not always in a good way.
“Align success, huh? We’ll see about that.”
Punched in M13, which was getting fairly low in the west, Charity made her good
old weasels with tuberculosis noise and eventually stopped.
I inserted the
Orion 20mm Expanse eyepiece (66-degree AFOV) and had a look. There was The
Great One staring back at me and looking good nearly in the center of the
field. Once again, I was impressed at how well relatively inexpensive oculars
do in slow focal ratio Charity. And how good her contrast is despite a too big
secondary baffle. Go-to? Miss had a good night. Anything I asked for from
horizon to horizon, all night long, was somewhere in the field of the 20mm at
94x. Not always centered or even
close to it, mind you, but somewhere in the field every time. In other words,
my mercurial little girlfriend behaved herself.
Then it was
time for what we’d come for, Unk’s Messier Album, starting with a long-time fave
of mine. The matter in italics is transcribed directly from the audio log on my
MP3 recorder, and the drawings are done in my usual fashion: rough
sketches/notes at the scope, finished sketch as soon as possible after, and a
little fine tuning in Adobe Photoshop.
Oh, if you don’t have a copy of The Messier Album, I urge you to get one; having it at hand will make Unk’s Album articles a lot more interesting for
you. The dates are the dates of the original publication of the columns in which the objects appeared should you wish to hit the Sky and Telescope DVDs. Finally, click on the pix for
larger versions of my drawings...
M27 (September 1968)
M27 (NGC 6853), The Dumbbell Nebula, is looking good in the 20mm Expanse at
94x, even with a bright young Moon fairly close by. The basic hourglass/apple
core shape is starkly visible, and, surprisingly, so is the football shaped
nebulosity surrounding it. No hint of the central star. Improved even further
with a UHC filter.
Hokay, what
did John Mallas see nearly fifty years ago? I have gained a greater appreciation for his drawings, but not every
one of them. His M27 is hard to figure. While he at least implies in the text
that he saw the dumbbell shape, what he has sketched is a glowing, streaked rectangle. Frankly, I am not sure what Mallas saw on this long ago night.
While I mostly beat the pants off him here, he did better my observation in one
regard, mentioning that M27 was “quite greenish.” I’ve occasionally detected a
little color in this nebula but it’s never been that prominent.
M71 (September 1968)
Sagitta's little globular star
cluster, M71, NGC 6838, is lovely in
the 20mm eyepiece. At first glance it looked like nothing more than a nebulous
ball, but a little staring and it begins to resolve into tiny stars, first with
averted vision and then with direct vision. At least five wink in and out of
view as the (poor) seeing changes. The cluster's core at times seems to take on
a triangular shape.
How did what
I saw of the cluster compare to what Mallas observed? Looking at his drawing,
it’s hard to say. He has drawn a large gray oval with a white chevron on one
side. Three lonely stars are shown embedded within the oval, but that is it. His
drawing is also harmed mostly by his reluctance to draw field stars. This is a
very rich field, and without a few sparklers indicated, it just ain’t a very
good depiction of what you will see in any telescope.
John’s text
is a little more illuminating, allowing that the cluster was “beautiful,” but
that he only saw a few stars resolved. Apparently what I interpret as a
triangle-shaped center, Mallas saw as a brighter V superimposed on the
core. Overall, I’d say I saw more, including
more resolved stars, than he did.
M57 (August 1969)
Certainly ain't gonna see The Ring
Nebula’s, M57's (NGC 6720), central star with a 5-inch, but I don't see the
brighter star near the edge of the ring, either. Nice looking, though, and
obviously elongated, with the hole easy. The donut hole is clearly filled with
nebulosity, and, as I continue to observe, including with an OIII filter on the
15mm Expanse (125x), I begin to see a brighter streak in that nebulosity.
I didn’t
think much of Mr. John’s M27 and M71 drawings, but his M57 brings it all back
home. Not only does this excellent sketch indicate very marked brightness
variations along the ring, he shows one of the embedded stars (not the central
one, of course). While his drawing is hurt by his usual reluctance to show
field stars, it’s clear he got a better look at M57 than I did. Maybe because,
as he tells us, he pumped the Unitron’s power up to 250x. Low power is NOT
always best for the deep sky, campers.
One puzzling
thing? Mallas says the Ring is a “challenge to the observer.” I’ve never found
that to be the case. Sure, you see more with larger aperture and higher
magnification, but this planetary ain’t a challenge for even my Short Tube 80,
Woodstock, who shows the dark hole, at least, with aplomb.
M56 (August 1969)
M56 (NGC 6779) is bold--for M56,
anyway. This subdued glob is grainy and even shows a few resolved stars across
its core. Triangular center. Large, elongated haze haze around that. Well I
remember how I used to struggle with this globular with my 4-inch Palomar
Junior back in the 1960s.
I’d say John
M. and I pretty much tied regarding what we were able to pick out of M56. He notes
its subdued nature, but goes on to tell us about and to show in his drawing a
goodly number of resolved stars. One oddity is that his sketch shows a dark,
thin oval void at the center of the cluster. I’ve never seen anything like that
visually, and it is not visible in images as far as I know. Perhaps it was a
result of too little aperture, too much magnification, straining for detail in
the dim and loose cluster center, and maybe seeing that wasn’t all it could
have been.
M29 (September 1969)
Open cluster M29 (NGC 6913) in Cygnus
is near the zenith, but Charity, who sometimes has trouble with objects at high
elevations, put this one in the field without trouble. It is one of the poorest
Messier galactic clusters. In the 20mm eyepiece it is a small dipper or
"Pleiades" shape formed by a few medium bright stars. Certainly
nothing to write home about.
I can’t
compare my drawing of M29 to John’s since he, as above, resolutely refused to
sketch the Messier galactic clusters. It is clear from the text that he and his
big Unitron saw just what I saw with Charity, though. He refers to M29 as
forming a “stubby” dipper, which is as good a description as any, I reckon.
M39 (August 1969)
Most folks would say Cygnus' other
Messier object, M39 (NGC 7092), is as poor as M29. It's kinda nice, tonight,
though. A triangle of bright stars filled with a scattering of dimmer but still
prominent suns. If it were just a little smaller it would be quite a sight. As
is, its 32' size is too big to make it look outstanding in an f/15 scope. The
20mm Expanse takes in the whole cluster, but without much dark space to frame
it well.
John Mallas
and I had exactly the same opinion of M39:
it’s a nice triangle of bright stars that is underappreciated by many
deep sky observers. He mentions seeing 25 stars brighter than magnitude 10.5,
which is about how deep I went, though I didn’t draw every single cluster star.
And that was
that. I could have gone on to spectacular M15, or maybe to M30, but I thought
it best to put on the brakes. Mallas usually limited himself to just a few
objects per column, and that seems about right to me. The joy of doing the whole
Messier this time will be in the leisurely contemplation of its wonders.
It was still
early and despite the steadily falling temperature Unk wasn’t quite ready to
throw in the towel. Especially on a night when Charity was cooperating. Not
only were her go-tos decent and her tracking at least acceptable—I had to
re-center objects once in a while, but only once in a while—her images were very
nice even in the poor seeing. All things considered, I’d say she wasn’t giving
up too much to a C8 on this evening. What to look at next, though, was the
question. Jupiter was out. A quick glance at him revealed the King to be a writhing
mess. The big guy was too low in the sky yet, and the seeing way too bad even
for a 5-inch.
Where then?
How about
the storied Seventh Planet? I take at least
a quick look at Georgium Sidus every
time he is in the sky. Yeah, the seeing was punk, but that wouldn’t matter. It
wasn’t like I was going to see detail on this distant giant with Charity,
anyhow. What I did see at 125x was a nicely resolved if tiny sea-green dot and
that was enough.
After spending some time contemplating Sir Willie’s world, it
was “onward.” One of my buddies was exclaiming about how surprisingly good the
Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, was despite its location fairly near on to the Possum
Swamp light dome. How would this giant planetary nebula look in Charity? Would
it be visible at all in a 5-inch? Indeed it was. It was clearly there in the 20
Expanse, though I had to hold my mouth just right to be sure. The addition of
my good, old Lumicon 1.25-inch OIII filter made averted imagination no longer
necessary. The Nebula and its donut hole were easy. I recalled I used this very
filter to get my first really good look at the Helix with a C8 back in 1995 at
the Deep South Regional Star Gaze that year.
And so it went for a while, me mashing Autostar buttons and sending
Charity to everything I imagined would look good in a five-inch. One of the
standouts, I reckon, was Sculptor’s titanic galaxy, NGC 253. No, it did not
look as good as it had the week previous in my 12-incher, Old Betsy, at the
DSRSG, but good nevertheless, stretching its long body across the field and
showing off quite a few of its dark, mottled patches.
When I couldn’t think of anything else, I took a “Tonight’s
Best” tour with the Autostar. Saw a few more cool things, but, as always, I was
bemused by some of the Autostar’s choices. I mean, Quasars in an ETX? Tour
done, I had to admit I was weary and I was cold. Maybe the late (for Unk)
nights at DSRSG the previous week were catching up with me. One quick peep at
M42, which was now high enough to bother with, if not even close to being out
of the pea-picking light dome, and I pulled that cursed Big Switch. Charity went
into her case, tripod and case went into the truck, and I was ready to roll in
ten minutes.
Back within the comforting walls of Chaos Manor South, in our
cozy den, cable TV cranking and a portion of Yell close at hand, I contemplated
the ETX. I love Charity and am a little sad there will not be any more 125s.
Yes, there is still an ETX 90, but it has been dramatically changed and
cheapened. It is not even clear to your old Unk whether, given Meade’s current
and continuing spate of problems, there will be any Meade scopes of any
kind much longer. I do know many of us will miss the legendary ETX 125. Celestron’s
NexStar 5 is less quirky and more solid, yeah, I’ll admit that, but there is
never, ever going to be a scope with as much personality—even if it’s a slightly
warped one—as Charity Hope Valentine.
Next Time:
Rocket City Thanksgiving…
