Sunday, February 24, 2013
How Uncle Rod Almost Became a Dob Guy
When did I
first hear about Dobsonian mounted telescopes? I just can’t remember, but it
must have been in the early 1980s, about the time small mentions of this
different sort of Newtonian reflector began to appear in Sky and Telescope and Astronomy.
Yeah, I know the old Telescope Making
magazine was running articles on Dobsonians by 1979 and even calling the
telescopes that, but Unk has always been
more of an amateur telescope buyer
than maker, and confined his reading
outside S&T and Astronomy to Deep Sky (when it went big time in ’82).
But, yeah,
by the early 80s, I knew some amateurs were doing what sounded
preposterous: making telescopes not from
aluminum and fiberglass and steel and brass, but from wood and cardboard. The
ultra thin mirrors in the scopes they were building also flew in the face of convention. A mirror, this bunch of wild-eyed revolutionaries
claimed, didn’t have to have a diameter to thickness ratio of 6:1. It could be
way thinner if it were properly supported, maybe by a fabric sling. Hell, you
could even make yourself a nice big mirror out of surplus porthole glass. Not
only were folks apparently making these things in droves out on the west coast,
a company of some repute at the time, Coulter Optical, was selling ‘em,
running ads in the magazines every cotton-picking month.
All of which
sounded like heresy to young Rod. No lathes and machining? Cardboard for a
tube—like the dadgum Criterion Dynamax SCT we were still laughing about? Wooden
alt-azimuth mount? How the hell would you TRACK THE STARS? And wouldn’t it be
super shaky? Enormous mirrors sitting in some kind of little hammock instead of
a real mirror cell? Sounded like you’d have yourself a right fine shaving
mirror, not a telescope mirror. That’s what Unk and most of his bubbas thought,
anyway.
It took me till
the early 1990s to get beyond just reading about Dobsonians and get up close and personal with them. The
impetus was the need to finance a divorce, which impelled me to sell my
Celestron Super C8 Plus (it was not a world-beater optically, anyway). What to
do? Well, I’d start saving for an SCT. Maybe one of them new fangled LX200s or
a nice Powerstar C8, but I needed something better than my single remaining
scope, the good, old Pal Junior, right away.
In the
interest of saving as much moola as possible, I’d do what I’d done back in the late
60s and early 70s, homebrew a 6-inch Newtonian. Only this time I’d buy a
primary mirror from somebody. Given the demands of my job, I didn’t feel like
spending weeks with a pitch lap. How about a tube? The more I thought about it,
the more I began to think the Dobbie gang had a pretty good idea with their
Sonotube concrete form telescope tubes. I was willing to give that a try,
anyhow. As for the mount, I’d hop on down to Home Depot, pick up some pipes and
valve grinding compound, and do yet another pipe mount. Maybe. The things
worked, as I knew from my days as a boy ATM, but they sure were heavy.
While Richard’s
book included plans for a very nice pipe/wooden equatorial, it appeared beyond
my modest wood-working capabilities. Also in his book, however, was a simple
but attractive 6-inch Dobsonian that, the more I thought about it, seemed just
the thing. Light. Easy to build with no thread lapping with that nasty valve
grinding compound. All I’d need was plywood, some Teflon pieces, and a few odds
and ends.
According to
Mr. B., I wouldn’t be giving up anything other than equatorial movements if I
went Dob. The mount’s motions would be smoother and stability better than those
of my old Pipe rigs, which I’d thought purty good. And I could enter the Dobbie
club for the price of a sheet of particle board. In the interest of saving even more money I eschewed plywood; I didn’t expect this to work to my satisfaction, and
wanted to spend as little as possible on it.
Turned out there
were only two difficult things about the project: getting the parts and (as usual for Rod)
following the instructions. The primary mirror, an f/8 from Parks, arrived
without too much delay, but the everything else, the focuser, secondary,
spider, and primary mount, which I ordered from the prime ATM parts merchant of
the day, Kenneth Novak, took forever.
When my
shipment from the dude we referred to as “Old Man Novak” finally came, it was
missing a couple of items. I finally got the vital one, the secondary holder,
but I never did receive the copy of his (highly regarded at the time) book, Newtonian Notes, I paid for. With the
addition of a few pieces of Teflon I found locally and a length of Sonotube
from a building supply house (you should have seen the expressions on those good old
boys’ faces when I told 'em I was
going to make a telescope out of it) I was ready to go.
I painted
the Sonotube a nice glossy white outside and flat black inside, and drilled the
requisite holes for focuser and primary mirror mount. I did forego the plywood
end rings Richard’s pretty six-inch featured. I tried making one, but hand
tools and a piece of cast off and somewhat water-logged ¼-inch plywood did not spell
“success.” The Sonotube was more than strong enough to support itself and the
rings would be entirely cosmetic, anyway.
The mount
was no problem. The rocker box and ground board went together in a hurry. Building
them with particle board made them heavier than they would otherwise have been,
but the result was manageable in a size appropriate for a six, and was still
lighter than my old pipe mounts had been. Made a box for the tube to slide
into, put toilet floor flanges on its sides for bearings, mounted the Teflon
squares on the rocker box and ground board and I was done.
Result?
Disappointing as hell. Why, this thing was way
shakier than my pipe mounts. So, all that talk about vibration absorbing wood
and cardboard had been nothing but malarkey? Not really. As usual, I had failed
to read the instructions carefully: I shoulda used three Teflon pads on the
ground-board, not four. Three resulted in tripod-like steadiness; four a
see-saw effect. I redid the azimuth bearings and was good to go. The mount was
now amazingly smooth and steady. No, there was no motorized tracking, but I
soon found I didn’t miss it a bit for visual use, and that the Dobbie Shuffle,
nudge-nudge-nudge, was soon second nature even at high power.
Yes, it was
just a 6-inch, and was frankly a little ugly, but I used that humble first Dob
to great effect for about a year. The mirror was fairly good, if not as
excellent as I’d hoped it would be given the hype and hyperbole about Parks’
optics on that pre-Internet online venue, Fidonet
Astronomy. It was noticeably poorer than the last homebrew 6-inch mirror I’d done (and
which I had foolishly sold), but it was Good
Enough and initiated me into the joys of Dobbies. Equatorial-Schmeckquatorial;
it was nice to point and shoot with the aid of a Telrad and not have to worry
about dadgum RA and declination locks. I guess I was a convert.
I can’t
eat just one Lays’ potato chip, and I couldn’t stop with just one Dobsonian.
One evening after work I was browsing the pages of the then-current Sky and Telescope when my eyes lit on
Coulter Optical’s latest ad. Something had changed, and what had changed was
the addition of a second 8-incher, an f/7, as an alternative to their 8-inch f/4.5
telescope. The price? Fracking unbelieveable: $239.50 for the Dob complete with
an eyepiece (but no finder). As I have said before, I simply could not resist,
and ordered one.
Given
Coulter’s reputation for slow delivery—they quoted me two YEARS for a 10-inch
f/6 primary one time—I didn’t expect to see the f/7 for a long while. I ordered
it more on a lark, because I could,
than anything else. I was gobsmacked when it showed up at the front door a mere
two weeks after I sent off my check. And, even more amazing, it was semi-clear for
first-light night.
How did she
do? “Mabel,” as I came to call her, did alright. The Moon looked good, if not
blow you away good, despite her supposedly forgiving slow focal ratio. The
mirror was not perfect, the star test revealing some turned down edge. Not a
crazy amount, though. Jupiter looked cool and the Moon was wonderful. I even shot a
prize-winning image of a Moon - Saturn occultation a few years later by holding
a video camcorder up to her eyepiece.
Nevertheless,
I didn’t start thinking about a serious
Dob till April of 1993. Everybody knows what the brightest supernova of the
last century was, of course, SN1987a in the Large Magellanic Cloud. But that
was way down south and invisible to us losers in the Northern Hemisphere. The
best we’d seen in a long time was SN
1993J, which burst into life in Bode’s Galaxy, Messier 81, and was
discovered on March 28 of ’93. The maximum brightness of what later turned out
to be a Type Ib was 10.5, not close to the brilliance of the Southern
Hemisphere’s relatively nearby 1987a, but still visible with modest optical aid
from fairly poor sites.
Like the
frontyard of Mama’s house, Unk’s boyhood home, where Miss Mabel and I set up to
get a good look at the Northern sky. One thing ol’ Unk had to admit was that a
Dob is considerably more maneuverable than an equatorial as you move farther
north (the zenith is another matter). Anyhoo, even in the light pollution with
a fracking mercury vapor light five meters away, it was the work of just a few
minutes with the Telrad to get M81 in the field of my 25mm Ortho.
Given the
condition of the skies, which seemed at least twice as bad they’d been in the
late 1960s—and they weren’t that great back then—I didn’t expect to see
much/anything. And yet…and yet…there is was, standing out like a sore thumb.
Wow! An extragalactic supernova with my 239 buck special. And it had taken all
of five minutes to set the scope up and not even that long to get M81 in her
field. Did I really want an SCT, after
all?
Those doubts were only enhanced by my second look at the supernova. Pat
Rochford, a fellow PSAS club member who I’d met after my return to The Swamp not long before, was
possessed of a big mother of a
Dobsonian. An 18-inch Sky Designs by Bob Combs.
I got my
chance to find out a few days after my initial look at the supernova, when Pat
hauled his big Dob—which would be replaced by an even bigger one in just a
couple of years—out to the public schools’ Environmental Studies Center where
the good old Possum Swamp Astronomical Society held and still holds its
meetings. Not only was the supernova even more obvious in Pat’s big gun, if I
held my mouth just right I thought I could see a hint of one of M81’s gossamer
arms in the light pollution.
I also
couldn’t help but notice the relative ease with which Pat unloaded an 18-inch
from his Isuzu Trooper. And how quickly it was ready to go. This was an 18-inch telescope, for god’s sake,
and it was obviously much easier to manage than a C14, which I’d previously
thought was the most portable big mutha. I couldn’t deny the smoothness of the
scope’s motions, either, or the fact that Pat didn’t need batteries or AC
power. Was a Big Dob in my future? Maybe. Maybe at least a medium-big one over the the short run.
The view I
had of M81 in Pat’s 18-inch wasn’t all that was pushing me ever more into the
Dobsonian camp; I had the chance to try another bigun in the few hours of clear
sky we were granted at the 1993 Deep South Regional Star Gaze. I was treated to
a view of M13 that is still locked in my memory. What was amazing was the
plebian pedigree of the scope I saw it with. It was Coulter’s 17.5-inch Odyssey
II. The name was kinda cool, but the scope itself was just as plain and simple
as can be imagined: A water heater sized
Sonotube and a roughly figured mirror.
But it was a
big mirror, almost 18-inches, and the
dude who gave me a look through his much-loved telescope was using a brace of TeleVue
Nagler 82-degree apparent field eyepieces. Admiring the Great Cluster in that
expansive field led to an epiphany of sorts. A Dobsonian didn’t have to be
expensive to show you incredible deep sky wonders. Maybe even the still
financially depressed Unk—divorce lawyers like to be paid, and I had paid a
couple of ‘em—could manage a sorta-big one.
I was
tempted to get on the horn and tell Coulter to get an Odyssey II, or at least
the Odyssey I 13.1-inch, on its way to me ASAP, and not worry about how long
that might take. That’s just what I would have done if an issue of Sky and Telescope hadn’t hit the mailbox just before Christmas
Thumbing the
magazine in my usual slow fashion, it took me a
while to get to the big Meade ad spectacular splashed across a couple of pages toward the back, but when I did I was surprised. In them days, Meade
was riding high with the LX200 and I was not surprised they were introducing
some new products around Christmas. I was
surprised at what they were
introducing: Dobsonians. Pretty Dobsonians.
Actually, they
didn’t look that different from the Coulters: big Sonotube tubes with smallish
side-bearings sitting in rocker boxes. But they did have a more professional
look. The Sonotubes were nicely finished in white with fancy Meade stickers,
the focusers were real rack and pinion jobs instead of the Odysseys’ assemblage
of plumbing parts, a genuine 25mm eyepiece was standard (the Coulters came with
a surplus binocular eyepiece), and a finder—always optional with Odysseys—was also
included in the package.
I was
impressed, and brought the magazine to our annual club holiday dinner in
January of 1994 to get Pat’s opinion. Back then, these holiday outings were
distinctly déclassé affairs. The PSAS inevitably wound up at America’s Family
Restaurant, the now (nearly) gone Shoney’s, where we mobbed their extensive salad/hot-bar.
Not much like our upscale Christmas parties at the famous Ed’s Seafood these
days. I didn’t care pea turkey. Munching Shoney’s fried chicken wings was OK,
but what I was really after was my friend’s blessing for what I was about to
do: order a big Dobsonian.
Pat was
almost as impressed as I was by the Meade ad and kinda blown away that a major
manufacturer was getting into the Dobbie business. The only question, which he
posed to me, was “How big?” I had been ruminating on that and thought I had the
answer. The StarFinders, as Meade called their Dobs, were available all the way
from 6 to 16-inches. I had a 6 and I had an 8. A 10-inch would be wonderfully
portable, but Pat concurred with my assessment that it wouldn’t be a huge
increase in horsepower over my 8-inch. The 16-inch? The very idea of carrying a
hot-water-heater Dob around in my Hyundai Excel was ludicrous. As Miss Goldilocks might
say, “The 12-inch was just right.”
The 1994
Deep South Regional Star Gaze, Miss Dorothy’s first star party, was a triumph for Betsy. When there was the occasional clearing, she showed us the deep sky in detail. I was mucho
impressed; her images were better than I dreamed—and I’d done considerable dreaming
about my 12-inch during the long wait for her arrival—and I’d been able to
stuff the pea-picking thing in my Hyundai. Today, numerous fork and GEM mount
SCTs down the line, Miss Dorothy still laughs about how Unk RAVED about
Dobsonians in them days, casting heaps of scorn on equatorials and even Schmidt Cassegrains. So,
the die was cast. After Betsy I’d be on to Sky Designs or maybe those new guys,
Obsession?
Nope. In
truth, by the time Betsy arrived, six months after I ordered her, my Dobsonian fever
had already begun to cool. That cooling actually began with the total Lunar
eclipse of November 1993. Lunar eclipses can be fun to view, especially with
binoculars, but I wanted more. I wanted to document the event in photos. Using
the same primitive “system” I’d used nearly thirty years before with my 3-inch Tasco, I put my SLR on a tripod, set that beside the scope and shot into the
eyepiece afocally. And had a ball. Way more fun than I’d a-had just running
outside with binoculars during the commercial breaks in Married with Children.
Course, to
get prints of the pictures I’d shot on Tri-X black and white film, I’d have to
set up a darkroom again. Soon, I was once more immersed in the arcana of Dektol
and D76 and big honking Bessler enlargers. I’d been doing strictly visual
observing ever since Comet Halley (who I tried to photograph a time or two) had
departed, and I was ready for a change. That change, it appeared, would be astrophotography.
This would be my third or fourth flirtation with the Difficult Art, and I was
determined to get it right this time.
Getting it
right would require the proper equipment, and that equipment was not an
undriven Dob, even a fancy one. I needed, yep, a good old C8. Before long I was
pouring over catalogs and back issues of Sky and Telescope searching for the
perfect SCT, which turned out to be the one me and my buddies considered an
astrophotography powerhouse back then, the Ultima 8. My timing was, for once,
good. By the time I’d learned the ropes of astro-imaging the modern way with
off-axis guiders and PEC and Tech Pan 2415 and the new Fuji color films, the one - two - punch comets, Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake, were on their way in.
Photography
aside, I was reeducated about what a wonderful visual scope a C8 is. No
standing, no nudging along. Sit in perfect comfort and stare at your quarry at
high power. The Ultima had excellent optics, and made planetary observing,
which I was heavy into in them days, a joy.
I’ve
continued to love and use Old Betsy, even upgrading
her a time or three. But I’ve never advanced to a bigger or fancier
Dobsonian. I’ve done far more imaging than visual looking these last eight –
ten years, especially, and there always seems to be some new camera or imaging
accessory or software that sucks up the time and money that might otherwise be
earmarked for an Obsession Ultra Compact.
And that is
OK, muchachos. I do sometimes think wistfully about my two or three years with
big, gawky telescopes, sketchbook in hand. If I hadn’t spent that time with my Dobsonians,
The Urban Astronomer’s Guide might never been written. But even
astro-dilettante Unk eventually found his particular place in this greatest and
broadest of all hobbies. It took me a while to realize it, but my fated spot is
in the field with an SCT and a computer, viewing the output of my ST2000 CCD,
my DSLR, or my Mallincam Xtreme, not at the top of a ladder next to a 25-inch
Dobbie. No matter how exciting or romantic that sometimes sounds on the
darkest of nights.
Next Time: My Favorite Star Parties: Deep South Regional Star Gaze 1993...
Sunday, February 17, 2013
The Early Return of Comet Kahoutek?
Those of you
old enough to remember Comet Kahoutek’s much heralded but poor showing back in
’73 probably know where I am going with this. I am not, repeat, NOT talking about Comet PanSTARRS (C/2011 L4), which will emerge from the Sun’s glare
next month. That is probably a done deal already, I am sorry to say. If you
ain’t heard, PanSTARRS is indeed pulling a dadgum Kahoutek at this very moment—not
living up to its billing or even coming close.
Brightness
estimates for PanSTARRS have been revised downward, with it now expected to
peak at about magnitude 3.0. For you greenhorns, Polaris, the North Star, is
brighter at 2.0, and the comet, being an extended object, not a pinpoint, will
look considerably dimmer than a one-magnitude difference would suggest. In
other words: nice binocular object from
dark site, but nothing that is gonna get my old Aunt Lulu or the public stirred
up. Don’t fret, though; there is a potential goodie on the way in, C/2012 S1 ISON, if it doesn’t go down the Kahoutek
path too.
David Levy
has often compared comets to cats. Not only do they have tails, they tend to do exactly the opposite of what
we expect or want them to do. And PanSTARRS was enough like Kahoutek to make my
alarm bells go off: a virgin comet (given
the hyperbolic shape of its orbit) that brightened early and could turn
spectacular when it hit the inner Solar System if its brightness continued to increase. Problem is, comets don’t
tend to put on spectacular shows on their initial visits. They usually tease, with a thin layer of volatiles boiling off
early and making them look “Great” when they are on their way in, but the hard
frozen stuff below barely fizzling when they get closer.
Unlike
PanSTARRS, ISON has at least the potential for being a Great Comet. It MAY not be a
virgin. It may, in fact, be a piece that broke off The Great Comet of 1860.
It’s already surprisingly bright—a little dimmer than magnitude 14—given that
it’s farther out than Jupiter’s orbit. The geometry is also right for it to put
on one hell of a show for the Northern Hemisphere in December and January.
That’s, of course, just the time back in 1973 that Kahoutek was supposed to
strut her stuff, so be cautious; especially when dealing with the public.
Kahoutek was a bigger disaster (in the public’s reckoning) for astronomy than even
the pitiful Halley.
Still, Unk
doesn’t mind saying he is hopeful about this one. Considerably more hopeful and
less cautious than he usually is about comets at this stage of the game. It may
even turn out to be Ikeya-Seki II, not
Kahoutek II. When did Unk stop being a comet curmudgeon? Saturday night a week
ago.
That Saturday
was the evening for one of Unk’s dark of the Moon runs from the Possum Swamp Astronomical
Society’s vaunted Dark Site. What I was supposed to be after was mostly
Herschels; in fact, it was to be Night
Thirty-Seven of the Herschel Project. “Night thirty-seven, Unk? We thought
you was done with The Project and on to something called ‘The Herschel Project
Phase II.’” I decided that sounded silly. While I’ve observed all the Herschel
objects and am now just going back and re-imaging/sketching a limited number of
them, they are still Herschels and I am observing them, so it is just The Herschel Project from here on out.
Anyhoo, before
loading up the 4Runner, Miss Van Pelt, I sat down to SkyTools 3 and had a look-see
about what was what—what would be up and well placed. I intended to go after
the spring crew, Ursa Major, Virgo, and Leo, who would begin to climb out of
the Possum Swamp light dome at mid-evening. What would I do till then?
When I’m
preparing for a run, I always check ST3’s “Current” lists, Current Novae and
Supernovae and Current Comets. These observing lists are one of my favorite SkyTools features because they are dynamic. “Huh?” What I mean is that you
click “Update ‘Current’ Lists from Web” on the Observing Lists pull-down menu,
and SkyTools automatically retrieves
new objects, clears old ones from the lists, and updates coordinates as
required. The lists of comets and supernovae (there’s “Current Minor Planets,”
too, but I ain’t interested in asteroids at the moment) are always, well, “current”
and I don’t have to struggle to make them so.
Looked at
supernovae first—I am continuing my informal project of imaging the good ones—but
nothing caught my eye. Oh, there was one in Leo, but it wouldn’t be up any
earlier than the Leo galaxies I was after, and at magnitude 14.7 it would be a
little dim down in The Swamp’s light dome.
OK, comets
then. While that rascal PanSTARRS was still in the Sun’s glow, our supposed
Great Comet, ISON, would be in a good spot. What did SkyTools say about it? Couldn’t get much better placed; it would be
in Gemini and nearly at the zenith not long after astronomical twilight. It is
still far-far-away, as you can see in the TheSky 6 screen at left, and I knew it would be dim, but SkyTools prediction of “magnitude 14.5” didn’t scare me like it
would have in the pre-video days. The Mallincam Xtreme gobbles small objects of
this magnitude like salted peanuts.
That took
care of the objects then—Herschels and ISON. What about the sky conditions? Did
not look good, campers. The weather goobs were divided between “partly cloudy”
and “mostly cloudy,” with most of them tending to the latter. I didn’t care. I
was going to the dark site if it wasn’t raining, and that was that. It would
not be a wasted trip, even if I couldn’t see a dadgum thing. I needed a few
terrestrial type pictures for a magazine article I am writing, and I prefer the
photogenic PSAS field to my constricted backyard as a background.
Equipment? I
was sorely tempted to haul out Big Bertha, the NexStar 11, but in addition to
me being just naturally lazy, especially about lugging overweight scopes (sorry
Bertha) back into the house in the wee hours, I still have the stitches in from
my travails of last week, and I dang sure didn’t want a setback. The C8,
Celeste, it would be. I had an agenda concerning her, too. She needed a
thorough checkout before the spring observing season.
Actually, her
nibs didn’t need a checkout. As I
mentioned not long ago, Celeste’s motofocus woes were fixed with the assistance
of JMI and she was ready to rock. What did need testing was the CG5 mount she
rides on, and, specifically, the mount’s interface with the NexRemote computer program.
Last time
I’d used NR with the mount, I’d had “No Response” messages on the hand control
all night long, communications errors out the ying-yang, that is. I believed
the problem was a bad RJ connector on the Celestron
Auxiliary Port Accessory that adds a PC port (different from the serial
port on the hand control) to the CG5 so I can run NexRemote without the real, physical HC being present. I’d crimped
a new connector onto the Aux Port Accessory’s cable, and while I was pretty
sure that fixed the problem, my schedule and the weather of the last six months
had seen to it that I had not been able to test the mount with NexRemote.
It’s Mardi
Gras, y’all…which is cool. Ol’ Unk has been known to do a little Fat Tuesday
partying himself, but the traffic is hell. Because of that, and because of the
aforementioned terrestrial pictures I needed to take, I pointed the 4Runner
west at 3:45 p.m. That would give me a good hour before sundown for set up and
picture taking. The sky? It didn’t look good at home and it didn’t look good
when I arrived at the PSAS site. Not horrible, but plenty of high clouds, high
humidity, and the blooming jet contrails that spell “bad weather a-coming.”
That was OK. If I just got the photos for my article it wouldn’t be a wasted
trip.
I had my
choice of observing positions, that was for dadgum sure, since there was nobody
else on the field and I didn’t expect there to be. There was still some blue,
but the clear patches were shrinking, and I figgered my observing buddies would
be at the parades—one of the biggies, The
Mystics of Time with their famous Vernadean (pronounced "Verna Dean," you-all) the fire-breathing dragon, would be rolling. The PSAS site is our little patch
of dark sky heaven on new Moon weekends, but the rest of the time it is an
airfield. I set up just down from the big hangar in hopes of not getting spookified as I sometimes do when I am alone and
on the far end of the observing field.
Not that I was
much worried about that. I didn’t have the slightly jittery feeling that
presages “visits” from The Skunk Ape, Mothman, and The Little Grey Dudes from Zeta
Reticuli II. I might feel entirely different later, of course, but it
looked like I’d have plenty of company this evening. The Coast Guard
Auxiliary was having a big cookout at the hangar, and the presence of even one
other person always wards off my strange friends.
First order
of bidness was getting the CG5 tripod set up, the mount head on that tripod,
and Celeste on the mount so I could take my pictures with the Canon DSLR. I had
hit what photographers call “the golden hour,” and got some photos I liked. Terrestrial
shots in the can, I proceeded to get the copious support gear hooked up and
running. I admit I did briefly consider just loading scope back in the truck
and turning Miss Van Pelt for Chaos Manor South, but, man alive, it was barely
5:30.
What all do
I gotta do to get ready to image the sky with a video camera? First thing is put
the reducer on the telescope. Deep sky video camera chips work their magic by
being small and having large pixels. That makes them quick to refresh and sensitive.
The downside is you ain’t gonna see much if you don’t have a wide-field
telescope. Luckily, an SCT can be a
wide field with the addition of a reducer. What I’ve used for years is a Meade
f/3.3, which screws onto the rear cell just like a Celestron f/6.3 reducer/corrector.
A William Optics 2-inch visual back with a 1.25-inch adapter goes on that, and
the Xtreme with its 1.25-inch nosepiece is inserted into the adapter.
That’s just
the start, friends. A Video cable runs from the camera to the switchbox that
distributes video to either my Orion mini DVR or to the portable DVD player I
use as a monitor. There’s a serial cable for camera control, and that goes into
a USB - serial adapter on the netbook. Gotta have power for the camera, natch.
I always run my Xtreme from a jumpstart battery pack; I’ve found DC from a
battery results in the cleanest video.
Then there’s
the scope/mount stuff. There’s no hand control; instead, the NexRemote cable goes from a second USB –
serial adapter on the netbook to the PC port on the Celestron Auxiliary Port Accessory,
which is connected to the hand control port on the mount. A JMI motofocus goes
on Celeste’s focuser, and a long extension cable runs from it to the motofocus
control stationed by the monitor. The mount’s power cable (a short, coiled one
from Scopestuff.com) is plugged into a multi-outlet adapter connected to a second
jumpstart battery, which also powers the DewBuster heaters.
Whew! Not
quite done yet. I need a 12-volt battery
to power the DVD player, so I use a jump starter with two cigarette lighter receptacles.
One is for the DVD player’s DC cord, and the other one, via an inverter,
electrifies the netbook’s AC power supply. The netbook would probably last all
night on its internal battery, but the 12-volt battery ensures I’ve always got
more than enough amps to keep the PC going. Same goes for the DVD player: I
could run it off its internal battery, but I don’t want no power failures just
when I’m about to capture the long-sought UGC Umptysquat. Once I was done with
all the astro-junk, the sun was well down, and it was time to see
something—maybe.
The sky
looked worse than ever, but I could nevertheless see plenty of alignment star
candidates in the gloaming, and I’d be able to give the mount a good test just
by running through its alignments. Turned on the camera, overlaid a set of Xtreme-generated
crosshairs on the screen, set the exposure to a couple of seconds, and launched
NexRemote. “Celeste” (actually the
netbook’s Microsoft Mary voice)
instructed me to “Select settings and press enter,” loaded the site’s location,
which I’d stored on this computer via NexGPS
a long time ago, got time and date from the netbook, and we were off on a
two-star alignment.
First star?
“Mirfak,” Celeste said. “Where in the H-E double L is ‘Mirfak’,” Unk replied.
Oh, yeah, in Perseus. I’ve never been much good at star names once you get off
the beaten path of Sirius and Betelgeuse. Centered Mirfak, did the same for
Celeste’s second pick, Hamal, and it was time to—yes—do four more stars.
The go-to
accuracy of the CG5 is amazing. It is as good as, or usually better than, my
NexStar 11. The main reason for that accuracy is that it uses four “calibration”
stars in addition to the two stars used for the pointing model. The calibration
stars allow NexRemote (or the
hardware HC) to take various mount misalignments into account. The next to the
last cal star was in the field when the mount stopped, and number four, Capella,
was centered without me having to do anything.
Aligning on
four stars took all of 10 minutes, but the mount’s alignments were still not
done, not even half done. If you want to expose for more than a few seconds,
you need a decent—though not perfect—polar alignment. I do that with the hand
control, but not with Celestron’s new(er) AllStar routine. I select one of the
earlier CG5 firmware builds, v4.12, in NexRemote,
one that has the older Polaris polar alignment, which I prefer. The mount
points to where Polaris should be given a good polar alignment and you tweak
the GEM’s altitude and azimuth adjusters till the star is centered. I got
Polaris smack in the middle of the Mallincam crosshairs.
Alas, to do
that, I had to move the mount a fair distance in altitude and azimuth, which
would have thrown the go-tos off. So…another alignment with six stars. Some
folks say you can stop adding calibration stars once one is in the field at the
end of a slew, but that’s usually star three, so I just go ahead and re-do all
four. Once I get into the alignment
groove, it ain’t that big a deal to do a dozen stars. Using a Logitech Wireless
Wingman gamepad as my hand control, as
NexRemote lets me to do, makes it
duck fracking soup. How else you gonna occupy yourself before it gets good and
dark, anyway?
Going to twelve
stars allowed me to thoroughly check the CG5 if nothing else. I didn’t get a
single No Response error, and there were no crazy or inaccurate slews to
alignment or calibration stars. All was as it should be. ‘Course, Unk is of the
“trust but verify” school of thought, so I did a couple of test objects,
punching “M79” and “M35” into the virtual HC. Both DSOs wound up well-centered.
Cool!
Only one
more thing to try. Last time I’d used NexRemote’s
Virtual Port with the netbook, it had made the NexStar 11 act crazy. The
virtual port feature, which allows you to use an external computer program like
SkyTools or Cartes du Ciel in conjunction with NexRemote, had been all
messed up. Bad go-tos, bad tracking. I suspected the problem was either a faulty
USB - serial adapter or an outdated version of NexRemote. I bought a new Keyspan USB - serial adapter and I updated
NexRemote both on the netbook and on my
Toshiba laptop. The virtual port worked perfectly on the laptop down Chiefland way
last month; we’d see how it would do with the cotton-picking netbook on this
night.
I launched SkyTools 3 and connected it—with
ASCOM—to the virtual port, com 6, I’d chosen during NexRemote’s setup. The netbook let out a reassuring bing-bong, and it
was time for another test object. How about M42? Hard to miss that sucker, even
in the constantly building haze. Highlighted it on SkyTools Messier list, mashed ST3’s “slew to” button, and the Great
Nebula landed dead center on the video screen. OK, how ‘bout the other side of
the sky, to NGC 457 in Cassiopeia, the E.T. cluster? Smack in the middle.
Tracking was excellent too. Unk was overjoyed, since the virtual port would
make hunting comet ISON a lot easier. No need to manually input the visitor’s
R.A. and declination, just click (in ST3) and go.
OK, comet
time I reckoned. ISON was hanging out in the western part of Gemini, which was
good and high and relatively free of clouds. Loaded Current Comets, highlighted
ISON, pushed the slew button on SkyTools,
and the CG5 made her usual weasels with tuberculosis sounds. Not quite loud
enough to make the coyotes howl, but almost. That’s just the way it is with a
CG5, but it is worth it for the mount’s outstanding performance, and to be
honest it’s not that loud. It just
seems that way on a quiet field. After the mount stopped, I waited for the
Xtreme’s 15-second exposures to catch up, for the stars to become pinpoints
again, and had a good look at the screen.
What did I
see in the frame? Plenty of stars in this medium rich area, but not a one of
them appeared fuzzy enough to be a distant comet. OK, then. More exposure,
28-seconds. Still no cigar. Looking up at the constellation, I could see Gemini
was just about due for a good sucker hole. I tweaked focus and cooled my heels.
While
waiting for the band of clouds to clear Gemini, I wandered around the site. I
was by myself, yeah, but over at the big hangar the Coastie cookout was in full
swing, so I wasn’t lonely; I just enjoyed the cool but not cold evening. It was
damp, but not crazy damp as it
sometimes is this time of year down in The Swamp. The DewBuster was set to
“5-degrees” and kept up easily.
When the comet’s
area of Gemini was finally in the clear, or what passed for clear on this
night, I cranked the camera back up to 28-seconds and had another look-see. “Weeellllll…not
really…but…wait... What’s that?” There was a fuzzy and seemingly slightly
elongated “star” visible. I brought up SkyTools’
Interactive Atlas and compared my screen to the comet’s plotted position. Once
I had the camera-vice-atlas orientation differences figured out, it became
clear I was indeed looking at tiny little ISON. In other words, victory!
I recorded
several video sequences of the comet at 15 and 28-seconds. I tried 1-minute,
but the haze-scattered light pollution made the image’s background an ugly
brownish green and 1-minute didn’t reveal any more of the comet than shorter
exposures.
What now? I
was pumped, let me tell you. Bagging the comet just whetted my appetite. I
wanted more of the deep sky, even though conditions were continuing to worsen.
A look at the Eskimo Nebula, which was bold and green even in the mess, another
visit to the Messier bunch, M79, M35, and M79, and I was done whether I was
ready to be or not. The sky closed down completely with a nearly audible thud.
Before
shutting down, I strolled over to the hangar to visit with my hosts for a
while. They were very kind, urging Unk to try some of the Conecuh sausage—one
of my faves—they were grilling. Smelled oh-so-good, but, as above, Unk is still
cautious about his poor mouth, and crispy grilled sausage might be a recipe for
disaster. I walked back over to the gear before I could give in to my sausage
desires and began shutting the rig down.
When you’ve got
this much gear on the field it is admittedly a pain to pack at the end of the
evening. The secret? Take it easy, work slowly and methodically. Don’t rush and
don’t worry about the clock and you will be much happier. I got the computer
and the video equipment stowed and stopped to shoot a few more DSLR pix for the
article before finishing packing. Driving off the field, the clock in the truck
said it was barely past 8:30. That was OK; I’d done the best I could with the
sky I’d had and had got some things accomplished.
Back at Chaos
Manor South, I had to unload all that gear—with Mardi Gras in full cry, there’s
no way I’d have left anything in a vehicle. Anyway, unpacking doesn’t seem like
a huge task when I am not faced with getting the 12-inch Dob or the C11 back up
the front steps and into the house. By ten I was sampling the Rebel Yell and
cable TV.
Sitting
there watching as Svengoolie rolled Frankenstein
vs. the Wolfman, letting the Yell warm my old bones, I gotta say I was
pretty satisfied. To be honest, I’d been worried about my nearly nine-year-old CG5. Oh, I knew it
would work OK with the hardware hand control, but I had been concerned about NexRemote. I simply don’t want to give
that up and was beginning to think I might have to consider a CG5 replacement,
Celestron’s CG5 successor, the VX.
Cheap as Unk
is, it was nice to know I wouldn’t have
to worry about that for a while, muchachos—though that may turn out to be a
short while. The VX/Edge 800 combo shore looks sweet. What was really sweet,
though, was getting a look at ISON. If it does become a Great Comet, I’ll have
the satisfaction of knowing I saw it as early as I could. Just like I did Hale
Bopp, who I captured as a wee fuzzy—if brighter and closer than ISON was on
this night—with my Rolleiflex piggybacked on Celeste (on her original non-go-to
fork). If ISON works out, this will be Celeste’s second set of Great Comet baby
pictures.
Next Time:
How Unk Almost Became a Dob Guy…
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Unk's Messier Album 5...or..."The Awful Tooth"
Last
Saturday evening wasn't supposed to be a Charity Hope Valentine night,
muchachos. No, I planned to lug out my
C8, the CG5, the Mallincam Xtreme, and all the support gear and hit copious
Herschels and Arps from the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society Dark Site. As it
sometimes does, though, cold, hard reality intervened, and if not for my
(sometimes) sweet little ETX 125 I wouldn't have seen a cotton-picking thing.
The fly in
Saturday's ointment came in the form of a toothache. Or at least the
possibility of one. As I hinted recently, there's a better than even chance
your old Uncle Rod will be retiring from his daytime engineering gig shortly.
That being the case, I want to have all my medical and dental ducks in a row.
At the head of that row were my wisdom teeth, which I still have at my advanced
age, and one in particular that was all too obviously going to be a major problem
if I didn't have it out.
I should
have got the sucker removed over thirty years ago. The Air Force dentists
thought I should, but the Strategic Air Command had other ideas. In the midst
of the post 'Nam military depression, SAC needed every single Missile Combat
Crew Member. They made it clear that the time I would be
off-alert would be unacceptable. That was OK with me; my teeth weren't hurting,
and I was a mite queasy about getting them pulled, that's for dadgum sure. Unk
went back to stemming the red tide and thought no more about wisdom teeth for a
long time.
Flash
forward to two weeks ago. I was still queasy, but I knew something had to be
done, and made an appointment with an oral surgeon. His opinion? I needed two pulled, not just one, and it should
be done right away. "Right away," alas, turned out to be last Friday,
which to my dismay was the Friday afore the new Moon weekend. Oh fracking well.
If I told
y'all Unk wasn't a bit concerned sitting in that waiting room Friday morning,
I'd be a-lying. Soon, I’d be in THE CHAIR with a mouth full or weird,
sharp, metal instruments of dental torture, just like poor Alfalfa in The Awful Tooth. When I finally was in that
chair, my fears were not alleviated. Quite the opposite. I knew there would be
an I.V., but those heart and respiration monitors, the oxygen tube, the blood pressure cuff, all that surgical-like stuff, gave your skittish old
Uncle the willies big-time. It was new and scary for an old boy who's never
been under anesthesia nor spent a single night in hospital.
What
followed was actually not scary at all, but it was extremely weird. When he came in, the surgeon (he was both a dentist and an M.D. and obviously smart and talented, which made me
feel slightly better) asked how I was doing; I replied, “Doc, I’d rather be
in Philadelphia.” He raised a syringe, said, "Well I am going to send you someplace different, Rod," injected
it into the I.V. line, and left to fetch a pair of pliers, I presumed.
Sitting
there, I began to feel slightly strange. Kinda tingly like. Not sleepy, though,
or even numb. Certainly didn’t feel on the way to being knocked out. What I actually
expected from having a molar pulled a while back was to be fully conscious but
not caring much and not in any (well, much)
pain. Since nothing seemed to be happening at the moment, I just watched the
clock on the wall in front of me, hoping my surgeon would be back soon to get it
over.
Seemed as if
maybe five or ten minutes had passed when I heard Miss Dorothy asking me if I
was OK and saying, “Honey, IT’S OVER, you’re done.” What the—? Had the doctor
been called away on another case? Decided I couldn't have my teeth yanked for
some reason? There had been no discontinuity. He’d given me that stuff and I
hadn’t seen him again; I’d just sat for a few minutes. Nothing else had happened.
All I could
do was squeak, "It’s over?" Miss Dorothy replied that I was fine, the
bad ol’ teeth were out, and that we could go home. I have never been so
relieved in my life. It was weird, but at least I didn’t have to experience the
double tooth-pulling in any shape form or fashion. So that's what the dadgum MISSING TIME of the Little Grey Dudes from
Zeta Reticuli II is all about.
The rest of
Friday afternoon was spent half dozing in front of the cable TV back at the Old
Manse. Most remarkable thing? I didn't need the pain pills I’d got, and by the
time evening came in I was drinking a little, uh, "sarsaparilla," and watching one of my beloved classic
monster movies, White Zombie with
Bela Lugosi. Saturday morning, I was breakfasting on king cake (Mardi Gras) ice
cream from Old Dutch and beginning to believe
I was feeling good enough for a trip to the dark site.
But not maybe
in full up mode. My recovery seemed swift, but—not to gross ya'll out—I bled
for quite a while Friday and was not anxious to get that started again. My C8, Celeste, and the CG5 mount are remarkably easy to tote and set up, but I feared
that for once even that would be too much. OH CHARITY!
So, I'd take
Charity out to the dark site and work on my Messier Album. Wasn't what I planned, but better than not seeing anything. And
the weather predictions, passing clouds by mid-evening, didn't sound optimum
for deep voyaging with a Mallincam Xtreme, anyway. So, I'd just throw Miss C.
in the truck and head for the PSAS field. Or would I?
While I was
on the phone with long time observing companion Pat Rochford, he
mentioned he was going to be doing a photometry run out at his StarGate
Observatory if the weather permitted. Hmmm…
While I
mostly practice astronomy as recreation, not science, these days, I’d been
wanting to see Pat's Meade 14-inch SCT and Optec photometer in action. I also
had to admit a half hour trip to Pat's home instead of an hour to the backwoods
was a safer bet given my condition. "Hey, would you mind some company
tonight?" Pat said he'd be happy to have me back at StarGate, which I hadn’t
visited in way too long.
After hanging
out with Pat and wife Stephanie for a while, I said, just like old
times, "Well, let's get to work." Which is exactly what we
did. I thought I'd set Charity up on the observatory's deck, the former home of Pat's long-gone mega Dobsonian, and do a little visual touring while he did his variable star work from the roll off roof annex that houses the big
Meade CAT.
Sweet
Charity on her tripod with everything connected, it was time to see how she
would behave. Well, almost. I took a few minutes to shoot some (terrestrial)
images for a Sky and Telescope
article I am working on, and by the time I flipped Miss C’s o-n/o-f-f to o-n,
it was good and dark. But not too clear, even though there were no clouds yet.
Pat’s next-door
neighbors to the south were having, I guess, a pre-Superbowl party. And not
just any sort of pre-Superbowl party, but one that involved loud music,
including much countrified music, and a cotton-picking bonfire. Naturally, the smoke was drifting right across the Orion area of
the sky. Oh, well, I’d get Charity up and cranking and maybe the cold (it was
in the 40s F., y’all) would eventually drive the partiers inside.
After
finishing her little North and Level ballet, Charity chose Sirius (which I
thought was a little low) and Capella as her alignment stars. She stopped a
reasonable distance from both suns, I centered them up, and after she decided
“Alignment Successful,” I mashed in “M42.” There it was in the 20mm Orion
Expanse eyepiece which is my usual finding ocular for Miss Valentine. Kinda on
the edge of the field though. How about something on the other side of the sky
as a test? Little ol’ E.T., star cluster NGC 457, was well up, so I sent
Charity that-a-way. She stopped, beeped, I put my eye to the eyepiece and saw—absolutely nuttin’.
When Charity
gives me guff like this, it usually means she’s ready for drive training. That
doesn’t take long, and I went ahead and did it, using Polaris as my target,
since there was no way to use a terrestrial object (which is preferred) on
Pat’s fenced-in deck. Did it help? Maybe a little. E.T. was on the field edge
now instead of half a degree away. M42 was still on the eyepiece’s outer
periphery though. In retrospect, I think it was mostly Charity’s choice of
Sirius that caused the problem, not any o’erweening need for drive training.
Or maybe she
was listening when Pat, who hadn’t seen the little scope in years, asked me how
she was doing. Unk foolishly replied: “Purty good, but she can be a witch with
a capital 'B' when she wants to.” Missy was undoubtedly offended and decided to
teach silly Unk a lesson (yet again). Whatev’. While not bang-on, Charity still
put anything I asked for in the field, if usually on the hairy edge. It was
time to go get some Ms.
“Unk’s
Messier Album 4” was a couple of months back, so a quick review of the rules is
maybe in order before we have a look at the Great Nebula. The plan is to
observe and sketch each of the 110 Messiers, just like legendary observer John
Mallas did in his 1960s Sky and Telescope
columns, which later went on to form his justly famous book (with astrophotographer
Evered Kreimer) The Messier Album.
How does
what Unk sees with the 5-inch ETX compare to what Mr. M. saw with his 4-inch
Unitron? That is what we are here to find out, campers, to the tune of 3 – 4 objects
each installment, something close to the rate at which Mr. Mallas tackled them
in his S&T columns. The matter in italics has been transcribed directly
from my (audio) log.
M42/43 (January 1970)
What can you
say? What I can say about the Great Nebula and have said before is that it
looks good in anything from a pair of teeny-weenie binoculars to the biggest
Dob you can muster. It’s great at low power and it’s great at high power. It’s
just fracking great, period. Seeing it just about perfectly framed in Charity
on this crisp 40-ish January evening took me back to similar nights in the
sixties when I first began to wander this astounding cloud with my Palomar Junior. When the wind changed and the
smoke drifted off, anyhow.
With the smoke from the bonfire
nextdoor pouring across Orion, I didn’t expect much, even from M42. But I was
wrong. It’s hard to make this thing look bad, no matter how poor the
conditions. While I didn’t spy the e and f stars in the Trapezium, I really
didn’t try for ‘em very hard. Besides the smoke, the seeing tonight ain’t all
it could be. When the wind changes direction, I am amazed to see M43’s comma
shape clearly. That is good for a 5-inch telescope in not-so-hot skies.
John Mallas
and I purty much tied as far as what we saw of 42 and 43. He used lower power—he
mentions 25x and 60x—and saw a little more of the nebulosity west of the Trapezium
where it loops back in on itself. His drawing is a splendid one, but his M43 does
look a little strange; more like a triangular patch than the comma most of us
see.
M35 (November 1968)
Wanting to
get away from that dadgum smoke, I moved eastward to Gemini and to one of the
best open clusters in the sky. As a matter of fact, I believe M35 is Unk’s
favorite galactic cluster. Looking at its numberless tiny stars made me think
not of boyhood expeditions to this Messier, but of seeing it with Old Betsy, my
12-inch Dobsonian, from the backyard of Chaos Manor South a mere twenty years ago.
That view of the cluster in all its spangled glory with its smaller companion,
more distant cluster NGC 2158, well resolved, really brought home to me what pouring on a
little aperture can do, even under poor skies. With Charity on this night? NGC
2158 wasn’t resolved, but it was visible and even looked a little grainy…
I’m using the Pro Optic (Adorama) 40mm
Plossl on M35. I don’t normally care for long focal length eyepieces, but it
gave me just a little more field than the Orion 20mm Expanse, and I needed that
to try to squeeze NGC 2158 into the field. The main cluster is beautiful.
Did my best to draw it, but the number of stars visible is overwhelming. NGC
2158 is an elongated haze in the 40mm, and is fairly bold in the 15mm Expanse,
assuming a grainy, “wants to resolve” appearance.
Mr. Mallas
opinion of the cluster? It’s impossible to compare my drawing with his since he
didn’t do one. As always, he declines to draw an open cluster. I’ll admit this
one was tough to sketch—so many tiny stars. Anyhow, Mallas mostly talks about
the “shapelessness” of M35, describing a round, rich patch of stars. Was he
using too little magnification? Too much? I don’t know, but I do know I can see
lines of brighter stars and a strong triangular patch he did not notice. John doesn’t
mention NGC 2158, which is beautiful in the Kreimer image. I’d say Miss Charity
delivered considerably more of this field than his Unitron.
M79 (December 1969)
Globular
cluster M79 in Lepus is another of my favorites, maybe because it is Winter’s
only Messier glob, and is the herald of the return of their hordes beginning in
the spring. Anyhoo, with the fire having died down a little and Hank Williams Junior having
been replaced by Queen—I thought hearing guitar licks from fellow amateur astronomer Brian
May was a good omen—Charity and I headed for the home of the frightened little
hare to have a look at 79.
M79 isn’t much more than a small,
round smudge of a fuzzball tonight—mostly due to the smoke still drifting
through Lepus, I guess. Continued staring does show one prominent star just
outside the nucleus and, as I continue to look and use averted vision, several
tiny little guys closer in to the center. The core is grainy, but not close to
resolved.
Mister M.
makes a strong comeback on M79 with his excellent drawing that depicts
considerably more stars than I saw. He calls the glob “impressive” and I
agree, even though it was badly compromised for me and Charity on this night.
M78 (January 1970)
Globular
essayed, I knocked off the last Album object for the night, reflection nebula
(with a bit of emission nebulosity thrown in) M78. I remember how I sometimes struggled
with this one with the Pal from Mama and Daddy’s semi-dark 60s backyard, so I
was interested to see how bad or good it would be from Pat’s now somewhat light-polluted locale.
M78 is starkly visible as a large
elongated cloud around a prominent double star, PPM 149436, despite lousy
conditions. In fact, not only can I make out the patch that is M78 and see it
is elongated, I can tell that it is offset from the stars; they are not in the
exact center of the nebula. At times, it is obvious the edge of the nebula is irregular.
How did John
Mallas do on this one? Not so hot, I’m afraid. What he draws and describes
couldn’t be more different from what I saw or what is in Kreimer’s excellent astrophoto.
John describes “a faint comet” shape with a “head” (a star) and a broad tail,
and that’s what his drawing shows. It’s almost as if he were looking at Hubble’s
Variable Nebula in nearby Monoceros, not M78. What happened? Unfortunately, we
will never know. John Mallas, an outstanding observer and writer, was taken
from us way too soon in 1975
.
That was
four Ms, the fire next door had been well stoked again, and Hank Junior was once
more hollering some kind of foolishness about something or other, so I thought it was high time for a
break. Looked in on Pat and Big Mama Meade, watching fascinated as they did their
thing, checking check stars, measuring sky brightness, and doing integrations
of variables. To be honest with you-all, I’ve never been much interested in
variable stars, but watching Pat’s Optec photometer clock off photons
cruising in from distant suns gave me some idea, finally, of how you can get
all wrapped up in the AAVSO stuff.
What next
for moi? Thought I’d look at a few
cool things before the clouds, which were predicted to start drifting back in
in mid-late evening, made their disgusting appearance. Where first? A comparatively
recent favorite of mine, Tau Canis Majoris, The Jumping Spider Star. It’s a favorite, yeah, but I can never,
ever remember the NGC number of the cluster it is associated with.
Dadgum good
thing I had my iPhone on my belt. Brought up SkySafari, searched for “Tau Canis
Majoris,” was rewarded with a detailed chart, and had all its specs,
including the cluster’s NGC number, at my fingertips. If you have an iPhone,
iPod, iPad, or an Android, don’t ask questions, just get SkySafari.
I am only sorry I can’t use it on my Windows PCs. It’s good enough that it
sometimes makes me want to go Macintosh (there is a SkySafari for OSX), and that is saying something, brothers and
sisters.
I discovered
Tau when I was writing The Urban Astronomer’s Guide, when I was
constantly on the lookout for interesting, easy objects. What you have got here
is a bright magnitude 4.37 star, Tau Canis Majoris, superimposed on—or maybe even
a member of—a small (8’) open star cluster, NGC 2362. This bright star is sitting
in the middle of a lovely little triangular cluster, looking like a spider
sitting in a dew-drop spangled web, when, suddenly, that spider JUMPS, moves
independently of the cluster stars. There is no doubt this is just due to the
contrast difference between Tau and the compact cluster’s wee stars, but it
sure is cool to see.
What else,
what else? How about good old M50
over in Monoceros? This is an outstanding galactic cluster, a reasonably dense
group about 15’ in size and somewhat triangular in shape. Looks a little like a
less rich M37, I reckon. I learned to love this one back in the mid 1980s. M50
was just so dependable, hanging
reasonably high in my light polluted sky and always looking good. Like it did
on this evening.
I am always
amazed at how small stars look in Charity, even at fairly high magnification. And
especially at medium powers like the 100x I was applying with the 20mm. M50
looked so nice I probably should have sketched it for The Album, but that would
have been one too many for one night, I thought.
Next up?
Since I was in Monceros, had to be the Christmas Tree Cluster, NGC 2264. This is another one I used to
agonize over when I was knee high to a grasshopper. The cluster itself, which
forms the unmistakable shape of a Yule tree complete with a star at the top and
its trunk at the bottom, was cool and easy, yeah, but I was always after a
trace of the vaunted nebulosity near the tree’s “star.” This nebulosity forms
the background of the Cone Nebula. You won’t be surprised to hear I never saw a
pea-picking bit of it, much less the Cone itself.
I suppose
I’d forgot how big the Christmas Tree is—it had been an awful long time since
I’d been here. It’s 20’ across and just barely fit in the ETX’s field. Nice,
but it really needs about twice that much space to strut its stuff. The big
tree admired, I briefly considered slewing over to the Rosette Nebula to see if
I could bring it out with an OIII filter if I could fit it into the 40mm Plossl.
But the smoke was back and, even more seriously, those forecast clouds were
arriving.
One to grow
on? M82 was up, so why not. At first I was right put out at Charity. After she
stopped, not a trace of the peculiar looking edge-on galaxy did I see. Then I noticed
it lurking on the field edge. Centered up, it was obvious but not much good.
Just a little gray wisp of a cigar shape, not a hint of the dark-lane detail the
ETX usually picks up. A look at the sky gave the “why.” More and more clouds
were speeding across the heavens; it looked like Big Switch time for the
Rodster.
Powered off
my small girlfriend and went over to see what Pat was up to. He was on to the
next star of the evening but wasn’t having much luck; the clouds were ruining
his data. He had been able to complete one star during the brief interludes
when our friends next door forgot to stir their fire, so the evening had not
been wasted for him. He was in agreement: we were obviously done for this
Saturday Night.
The real joy
of a Charity Hope Valentine night, especially when you are not feeling quite up
to par, is that she can be back in the vehicle in five or ten minutes. And she
was, which was welcome, even though I wasn’t feeling a bit bad. I’d taken my
antibiotic horse pill at 8:15, and other than that hadn’t given a thought to my
dental situation. Still, it was good I didn’t have to tote no barges nor lift
any bales.
Back at the
Old Manse, still feeling just fine, a little Yell and Svengoolie
put a coda on my evening. I was just in time to see the old fashioned HORROR
HOST run Lon Chaney Junior in The Wolfman.
Did you know it has an astronomy connection? Yep, early in the film, poor, doomed
Larry Talbot looks through a gigantic and beautiful refractor, though he uses it to ogle village girls, not the stars.
To sum up my
slightly “off” Saturday run? Struggled a little with Charity, but that was OK.
It seems my most memorable evenings with her are, strangely, the ones where
everything doesn’t go right. Got
another installment of Unk’s Messier Album in the bag. Got to spend some time
with my old friend Pat and watch him work his variable star wizardry. In other
words, smoke or no smoke, clouds or no clouds. Awful Tooth or no Awful Tooth,
there just wasn’t no downside to my Saturday night, muchachos.
Next Time: More Video Fun...
