Sunday, July 28, 2013
A Tale of Two Cameras
Unk is pretty
cautious, muchachos; I am a big fan of looking before leaping. Maybe
because more than a few of the times I’ve jumped in feet first without a good
look at what I’ve been jumping into have been disastrous. And that’s exactly how
it was in early 2002 when I decided to desert film astrophotography for that
new-fangled electronic CCD picture taking.
That I was even
thinking about going CCD was ironic, since after about five years of my latest
bout of film astrophotography I was finally starting to get somewhere. The
Possum Swamp skies, which do not encourage frequent celestial picture taking,
and Unk’s fumble-bumble approach to astrophotography meant my pictures were not
perfect, but darned if they weren't getting closer to it. There was no danger
of me becoming a celestial Ansel Adams, but I was now bringing
home a decent shot or two from every single run.
But CCDs
were the thing, man. Heck, Sky & Telescope had a whole spin-off
magazine devoted to them, CCD Astronomy
(for a while). What I thought was the
big decision facing the Rodster was which CCD camera to buy. By the turn of the
century, there were more than a few choices. The real question actually should
have been: “Should I buy a CCD camera
before upgrading my old-fashioned manual-pointing SCT?”
I didn't realize that was something I should think about, and began shopping for cameras
starting with Richard Berry’s homebrew Cookbook Camera. After working on my
club’s camera’s circuit boards (you could buy unpopulated PCBs and other camera
components through Willman-Bell at the time) for a little while, I knew the
Cookbook CCD was not for me. The electronic assembly was easy, but I just
didn’t have the time to devote to it. I’d passed the project on to a fellow
Possum Swamp Astronomical Society astronomer-ham.
Then there
was SBIG, Santa Barbara Instrument Group. In the wake of the tremendous success
of their groundbreaking ST-4 they were riding high. I looked long and lovingly
at the ST-5, ST-6, and, especially, the ST-7. That camera looked nearly perfect for me, but the buzzing fly in the butter was that it was way too
expensive. I had 1000 bucks to spend, tops. I coulda got the ST-4, but that
seemed more like a guide camera than an imager to me.
In
retrospect, the ST-4 would have been great. I could have used it to get my feet
wet with digital imaging, and as an autoguider for my film astrophotos. But you
know what they say about Monday morning quarterbacking. Truth was, like a lot
of imagers, I was ready to move on to the next big thing in 2001.
If I had it
to do over I’d get the ST-4. But we don’t get (many) do-overs in this life, and
my desire for the elusive More Better Gooder got the best of me. That came in
the form of a camera from a burgeoning UK company, Starlight Xpress. One thing
that impressed me was that the images I saw on the web page for the Starlight
camera that fit my budget, the MX516, were substantially larger than those of
the ST-4 due to the larger chip of the MX516—not that its 500 x 290 pixel chip
was large even by the standards of the time. As a guider? That was the most
impressive thing of all.
The MX516
could, you see, guide and image at the
same time. It did that differently from any other camera I’ve run across.
Today’s “self guiding” cameras from SBIG are able to guide and image at the
same time because the camera housing incorporates a separate CCD guide chip.
It’s kinda like having an off-axis guider with the smaller CCD chip stationed
at the edge of the camera frame. Not the MX516. It used an interlaced video-type
CCD sensor that devoted alternating “fields” to imaging and guiding. I thought
that sounded awful cool.
It was here
that I should have stopped and thought things through. The first thing I should
have ruminated on was that while the MX516 might be more sensitive than the ISO
800 film I was using, meaning shorter, less painful exposures that might even
be done unguided, the resulting pix would be small and in black and white. I
was used to color 35mm images that could easily be enlarged to 8x10-inches. Why
I thought I’d be happy with postage stamp sized (well, almost) shots I don’t
know.
The other thing
that should have been a showstopper was something I was aware of and had thought about. Just not enough. With
that tiny chip, it would be hard to find objects. Even with the SCT reduced to
f/3.3 with the Meade focal reducer I’d ordered, the field would be on the order
of 15’ or smaller. I’d planned to order a set of digital setting circles for
the C8. I even tried to.
Back in those days, most folks purchased their DSCs from one of two sources, JMI or
Lumicon—the old Lumicon, three owners back. I’d heard good things about Lumicon’s
Sky Vector system, and since I knew their computers and JMI’s were essentially
the same, both based on Tangent guts, I thought the extra objects in the Sky
Vector as compared to the library of the comparably priced JMI made the Lumicon
DSCs a better value.
The trouble
was getting a Sky Vector. The folks
at Lumicon were happy to take my credit card number, but weeks passed and I
heard nothing from them. I started calling and the results were always along
these lines: “The big cheese, Dr. Acula,
ain’t here right now,” “I think it will ship next Thursday,” “Mr. Binky and Mr.
Bunny handle those and they are at a star party.” I eventually had enough: “You-all aren’t ever going to get it together to send me a Sky Vector, are you?”
The mousy and halting response amounted to “No, Unk, we are not.”
What I should have done right then and there
was pick up the phone and call the
reliable and good folk at Jim’s
Mobile. In typical Unk fashion, though, my nose was out of joint about the
whole DSC idea. Plus I had come up with what I thought was a better and cheaper
idea: “Hell, I’ll use a flip mirror.” I
ordered that very thing, an attachment that would allow me to either view the
telescope’s images with an eyepiece, or, with the flip of a mirror, send them to the camera, from Meade. In
retrospect, failing to get digital setting circles for the Ultima 8 brought my
whole big CCD thing down like a house of cards made of wet toilet paper if
y’all don’t mind me mixing a couple of metaphors.
I don’t
remember who I ordered the MX516 from, but it was probably Astronomics if they
carried it, since they were my go-to guys for gear back then. While the camera
arrived fairly promptly, it did take a couple of weeks, and its delivery was
bumping up against a trip to Florida to visit Dorothy’s relatives. I was
in an agony of suspense before our departure, but it worked out that the camera
would not arrive until until after our return.
When I
finally got to rip into its smallish box, I was both impressed and not
impressed by the Starlight. The hardware itself was quite impressive. The
camera had the “eyepiece camera” look Starlight maintained in those days; it
was not much larger than an oversize 2-inch ocular in those innocent pre-Ethos
days. Nicely machined with cooling fins. Sturdy. Solid. Also in the box were a
few cables and the Star 2000 box that handled the guide-while-imaging bidness.
What did not
impress was “the rest,” the last two items in the box. The instructions
amounted to nothing more than a slim sheaf of stapled-together pages. The
software? What there was, a simple camera control program, was contained on a
single 3.5-inch floppy. Yes, I mean floppy
disk. Most PCs sold in 2001 still came with 3.5-inch drives, but disks to
put in ‘em were becoming rare, with most software, including CCD camera
software, now coming on CDs.
But maybe
that was OK, I thought. Simpler might be better when getting started in this
CCD folderol and fiddle-dee-dee. The program, minimalist as it was, actually
turned out to be pretty good. Not only did it allow you to take series of pictures,
it even included some processing tools like a utility to stack multiple images.
It wasn’t much worse than SBIG’s CCDops,
frankly. My first light night disaster had nothing to do with camera and
software.
‘Twas a hot
summer’s night and I was nervous. Would this thing, on which I’d spent a fair portion
of the advance I got for my first book, Choosing
and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope, work? To find out, I lugged the
Ultima 8 SCT and my desktop computer (I was still too cheap to glom onto a
laptop) into the backyard, got everything cabled up, and did a polar alignment
that can best be described as “casual” with the telescope’s polar finder. Screwed
the Meade flip mirror onto the C8’s rear port, inserted the camera into the
flip mirror along with a 12mm illuminated reticle eyepiece, and got to work.
Everything
seemed OK at first; at least the camera and computer appeared to be talking
over the cotton-picking parallel printer port (that's right, younguns). Now all I had to do was focus up
on an bright star and get the first object of the run, M13, in the camera’s
field. Simple, right? Uh-huh.
What to
focus on? Eta Hercules was relatively bright and not far from the glob. Hokay,
got the star dead in the center of the 9x50 finder crosshairs, flipped the flip
mirror down for viewing through the eyepiece, and had a look. Nuttin’ honey.
Considerable focusing of the telescope and the flip mirror eyepiece’s helical
focuser did begin to reveal a subtle something, a badly out of focus Eta, I
presumed. Bottom line? The flip mirror eyepiece
would not focus with the Meade f/3.3 reducer on the scope. Period.
What to do? Other
than wishing I had some DSCs, all there was to do was soldier bravely on. With
heroic effort, I finally got Eta—some bright star, anyhow—in the camera’s frame
and focused up. I peeped through the finder and, yes, Eta was dead in the
crosshairs. Maybe I’d be OK. Let’s get M13 in the field.
I hunted and
I hunted and I hunted and I slewed and I slewed and I slewed. And you know
what? I never did get M13 in the camera
that night. I settled for an anonymous star field. What did that tell me? Well,
that the RS-232 interface was kinda slow, if not pathetically slow, and that
the camera did not seem near as sensitive as my buddy Pat’s SBIG. Finally, the
pictures the 516 produced were a lot smaller than I thought they would be.
Despite a less than stellar first light night with the camera, I wasn’t
close to ready to give up. As soon as I could, I lugged all the gear out to
Pat’s Stargage Observatory, and there things went a hair better. With heroic
effort, I got M13 in the field and fired off a few 30-second frames. What I
didn’t get working was the auto-guiding. I polar aligned as close as I could and
followed the instructions in the manual. What happened? Nuttin’ honey. When I
got home, I checked all cables and connections, and when that didn’t turn up
any problems, I fired off an email to Starlight Xpress. They were very
responsive, with head honcho Terry Platt promptly emailing me back. Turned out
my Ultima 8 needed a relay box between guider and hand control connector.
I sent the
Starlight folks a few more dollars and got the relays, but I was never quite
sure the Star 2000 system worked. I was always too occupied with trying to
frame and focus my targets to worry about niceties like guiding. I did image a
few objects over the next several months: M13, the Cone Nebula, The Ring
Nebula, a part of M42, and a couple more. How were they? My CCD pictures got
better, slowly, but there was no escaping the facts that they were small, they
were black and white, and they were grainy. My film M13s were a million times
better.
I could at
least have done something about the "grainy" if I’d stacked images. It took me quite
a while to wrap my mind around the fact that electronic imagers usually stacked
multiple frames into a finished image. I was still approaching CCDing from a
film perspective. I also knew I could get color with a filter wheel and
tri-color imaging, but I couldn’t imagine adding another layer of complexity
when I couldn’t handle what I already had.
I did
discover the MX516 could do a fairly good job on the planets. The images I took
of Jupiter—single frames since I didn't know I should stack planetary images either—looked
far better than anything I’d done with film. That didn’t make me happy, though.
I was in a snit that the deep sky images I was able to obtain were far worse
than what I could do with film. I put the MX516 in its case where it stayed for
about a year.
If you’ve
been in our avocation since 2003, you know the big story of that yeear: MARS. In 2003, the Angry Red Planet was bigger than it had been in many a long century and
bigger than it would be for eons to come. We all wanted to spend the year
gazing at the red planet, and many of us, me for instance, wanted to take
pictures of it. This was a once in a lifetime chance, and I didn't want to
screw up.
Film was
out. Film exposures of even bright Jupiter take too long. Detail is blurred.
Oh, you might get hints of cloud bands, but most of the time Jupe would look
like a custard pie. Mars would be worse. It would be bright at the 2003
opposition, but its surface features would be even subtler than Jupiter’s
cloud bands. If not film, what? The MX516? Maybe, but I was not overly fond of
the camera after that long summer of my discontent. Then I began hearing about
a third way, webcams, and, especially, a professionally modified webcam, the SAC 7B.
I was aware
of the webcam planetary imaging revolution by this time. Amateurs had found
that if they took the little video cameras—that were originally intended for
video conferencing and were often used for (ahem) more interesting purposes—and stacked the many frames they produced into
a finished image, the level of detail they brought back was amazing. Their
small chips with tiny pixels were perfect for producing high-resolution
planetary images.
I ordered a
cheap Quickcam off eBay as a test, and found the combination of it and an
easy to use stacking program I’d discovered, Registax, got me the best close-up
Moon pictures of my life. Not only was the camera cheap and easy to use, it
delivered color images. Only downchecks? It’s 320x240 pictures were even
smaller than those produced by the MX5. The Quickcam was also not near
sensitive enough to capture deep sky objects. Then I heard about SAC.
When I first
heard “SAC” I thought of the Strategic Air Command. “SAC” in this
case couldn’t have stood for something more different. The maker of the camera
had apparently been a Christian music promoter who’d been involved in a music festival
of that genre, the “Sonfest.” He was now, it seemed, dividing his time between
managing a motel down in Melbourne, Flordia and producing SAC cameras “Sonfest
Astronomical Cameras.”
The model
that most interested me was their top of the line, the 7b. It was a converted
Phillips or Quickcam webcam that had the ability to do long exposures for the
deep sky. It was also equipped with a Peltier cooler and fan to keep the noise
down. It was color, and produced images that, while not huge, 640x480, were
still bigger than what I got with the darned MX516. All for the comparatively
modest price of $499.00.
The problem
was that I didn't have a bill with a picture of old Bill McKinley on it in my
wallet. The solution? Simple: the MX516
would have to go on the Astromart. I put it up, asked for a reasonable amount
of bucks, just enough to cover the 7b with some left over for a couple of
bottles of Rebel Yell, and crossed
my fingers. Wasn't long before I got a bite, and the MX5 was off to a new home.
Was I sorry to see it go? Not a bit. There were some good things about the
camera, but I never made friends with it. Today, I consider the SAC 7b to be my
first CCD.
Compared to
the MX5, the coming of the SAC7b went smoothly. Took a little while to get it
from its garage-style maker, but I’d expected that and the wait was not bad.
When it did arrive, just as Mars was beginning to grow, it was an immediate
success. The camera was, like the MX5, equipped with a nosepiece that slid into
the Meade flip mirror’s camera port. From experimenting with the Quickcam, I
knew the flip mirror would be vital for finding planets, and would work just
fine without that f/3.3 reducer in the imaging train.
“Once
burned” was my middle name when it came to this electronic imaging stuff, so I
had the good sense to start out simple with the SAC. I left the long exposure
cable and the Peltier cooler for later and aimed the scope at the Moon. While
the SAC had come with a CCD full of image acquisition and processing software,
I found a program I liked better for camera control, Peter Katreniak’s K3CCD tools.
The K3CCD software was designed with astronomy in mind and could control both standard
webcams and modified long-exposure ones like the SAC 7b.
Even before
I ran my lunar videos through Registax,
I knew the SAC was a winner for Solar System imaging. So encouraged was Unk by
what he saw on the monitor that he removed the camera from the flip mirror
plugged into the NexStar 11, Big Bertha, and added a Barlow lens ahead of it.
The picture of Copernicus that resulted after I stacked with Registax and tweaked with Paint Shop Pro was the kind of Moon
picture I’d been dreaming of since I was knee high to a grasshopper. One thing
that helped one heck of a lot? Having a laptop computer. No more toting a
19-inch CRT into the backyard!
Mars was a
revelation. The bigger it got, the better my pictures got. The polar caps were
nothing. I began getting the legendary dark areas in astounding detail. Then
Olympus Mons and its fellow shield volcanoes swam into view. When Mars attained
its max diameter, I was even able to pick out a smudge that might have been a sign
of a particularly large crater in the “armpit” of Syrtis Major.
I stared at
Mars night after night on my monitor and it stared back at me with its baleful
eye, Solis Lacus. Today, imagers using sophisticated planetary cameras, the
souped-up descendants of my humble SAC 7, are far exceeding my paltry efforts.
Still, as one of my colleagues at Sky and
Telescope pointed out recently when I resurrected one of my Mars images for
an article in S&T’s Skywatch, my
2003 images showed more detail than had been achieved by the largest professional
scopes in the film days.
I didn’t
stop at Mars; I headed deeper into the Solar System. What the SAC could do with
Jupiter (well, with the aid of the incredible Registax) on a steady night amazed me. Yes, the MX5 had shown some detail, but not this much detail, and it was in color.
Saturn was next and not only did the SAC 7 allow me to see disk details that
I’d struggled to see visually, it
brought back the Encke Minima, the narrow zone around the Encke Gap at the
rings’ edge that I’d only seen visually once or twice in my entire observing
career.
“But how
about the deep sky, Unk? Ain’t that why you started with the CCD stuff in the
first place?” A few users were working wonders with the SAC on the deep sky
when it was in its heyday, and while my efforts on bright Messiers were not
great, the camera had at least a little potential there, and I was able to accomplish more with it than I had with the MX5. The main strike against it was that
that chip was just too tiny to be well-suited for deep space imaging.
That was OK,
I learned a lot with the SAC, and that helped me finally get somewhere with
electronic imaging with my next camera, the Meade DSI, without much heartburn at
all. What I learned with the SAC even stood me in good stead when I moved up to
an SBIG ST2000 and a Canon DSLR.
So, whatever
happened to SAC? They’ve been gone for years. Ironically, it was not a lack of
success, but too much of it that apparently killed them. That, surprisingly, is
often what does in small businesses. SAC had a hit with the follow-on to the
SAC 7, the SAC 8, which was more a genuine CCD camera than a webcam. So popular
was it that Orion, I’m told, contracted to sell the SAC 8 under its brand name.
In the course of trying to keep up with demand from Orion and produce the BIG CHIP
camera it was promising SAC users, the SAC 10, out the door, the enterprise
stalled and crashed.
The SAC7b
with its tin can body was in some ways a silly little camera when compared to
the beautifully executed MX516. Anybody looking at the two would have had the
impression that the Starlight Xpress was better.
Maybe it was, but the SAC was the better camera for me. I have no hard feelings about Starlight Xpress; they
continue in business and produce excellent CCD cameras. And I guess I learned a
considerable amount in the time I owned the MX516—call it the school of hard
knocks. Still, the SAC 7b was really my first camera. I loved it,
still have it, and even still use it on the planets on occasion. You cannot
beat that, muchachos.
2018 Update
Not a lot more need be said about the Starlight Express, the SAC 7, and my early days of electronic imaging that are, amazingly, nearly 20 years in the past. Then as now, hindsight is 20-20, and, yes, I should have begun with a set if digital setting circle and the SAC 7. I was not ashamed to admit my error, though, including to myself, and soon had things put right.
Not long after that amazing Mars apparition, I removed the Ultima 8 from her fork mount, bought a goto mount, my beloved CG5, and, using Meade's DSI camera, I finally began making CCD progress. I did keep the SAC 7 (I still have it), which I continued to use as my planet-cam. After cutting my teeth on the DSI for a bit, I was onto an ST2000, and, then, Canon DSLRs, which are what I mostly use for imaging even to this day.
 |
| Crescent Nebula with the DSI |
Not long after that amazing Mars apparition, I removed the Ultima 8 from her fork mount, bought a goto mount, my beloved CG5, and, using Meade's DSI camera, I finally began making CCD progress. I did keep the SAC 7 (I still have it), which I continued to use as my planet-cam. After cutting my teeth on the DSI for a bit, I was onto an ST2000, and, then, Canon DSLRs, which are what I mostly use for imaging even to this day.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
The Astronomer Looks at 60…
Mother, mother ocean, I
have heard you call,
Wanted to sail upon your waters
since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.
I have been drunk now for over two weeks,
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks,
But I've got to stop wishin',
Got to go fishin', I'm down to rock bottom again.
Just a few friends, just a few friends.
Wanted to sail upon your waters
since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.
I have been drunk now for over two weeks,
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks,
But I've got to stop wishin',
Got to go fishin', I'm down to rock bottom again.
Just a few friends, just a few friends.
—Jimmy
Buffet
I
did this five years ago muchachos, so why am I doing it again? While our
insular little avocation doesn't change much year to year, it changes a lot more
quickly now than it did when I was a sprout, when amateur astronomy changed
about as fast as the Jaeger’s ad in Sky & Telescope. These days, a lot happens in five years in amateur
astronomy--relatively speaking, anyhow. That and the fact that the big
six-oh seems like some kind of
milestone. 60 ain’t considered REAL old these days, but I do feel like I’ve
covered a lot of ground and want to talk about that, at least as regards the
pursuit you and me love.
Last
time we went this way, in 2008, I bent your ears about three things, amateur
astronomy’s people, gear, and the pursuit itself. This time, I added a fourth, “Uncle Rod;” we know
each other a lot better five years down the line, and I thought you’d like to hear
a little bit about Unk’s current state of mind—such as it is.
My
state of mind is actually purty good on the day after my big day. I will admit
to y’all I was slightly freaked-out by the approach of 6-0, but having
a wonderful birthday celebration put Unk in a better frame of mind. It would be
hard to top last year, but
this one may have done just that.
I
spent the day, just like I did last year, working on my tabletop space program,
working on one of my space models, that is. Last birthday, it was a big Apollo
Command Module; this year it was a humongous Launch Umbilical Tower to go with
my latest creation, a 1/144 Airfix Saturn V. As I was agonizing over the
countless tiny parts, there came the AH-OOOOGAH! That means “mail's in” at the
ol’ Manse.
And
not just mail. There was a nice big box on the front porch emblazoned with
“B&H,” as in “B&H Photo,” my fave photography supplier. Inside was this year’s main
gift, a new gadget (camera) bag. The one I’ve been toting around for the
last decade and a half has been looking awful tattered and has been too small
for a long time. Thanks, Miss Dorothy! The birthday goodies didn't end there,
though. Among other things, I also got a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition, Halo I in other words. I had a ball playing the old warhorse, which
looks brand new with fantastically spiffed-up Xbox 360 graphics. I had also
hoped to receive a Celestron f/7 reducer
for the Edge 800, Mrs. Peel, but no dice. Cotton-picking Celestron has delayed
it again. Its page on the B&H
website now says “July 26.” We’ll see.
My
mood was further improved when I saw all the kind birthday wishes y’all had
left on my Facebook page, but the pièce
de résistance was a visit to a Mexican restaurant, which is what ol’ Unk
likes to do every b-day. Last year’s little joint was great, but this time we
decided to go a mite upscale, to Fuego, who bill themselves as
a “coastal Mexican eatery.” The restaurant, in a funky and interesting old
building originally occupied by a 1930s A&P grocery, looks cool and the
food was, yes, several clicks
upscale. Unk, as per usual, got the fajitas, shrimp fajitas in keeping with
Fuego’s theme. They were simply excellent, as was their presentation and the
service. Did Unk have a gigantanormous Margarita? What do you think?
By
the time Unk and Miss D. made it home, I was in a rather philosophical but
mellow mood, perfect for contemplating the things you will find below…
The People
What I talked about people-wise last time was what still seems to concern a lot of y’all: amateur astronomy’s demographics. What the h-double-L am I going on about? Something
you probably hear frequently from the old timers in your club: “Amateur astronomy is doomed. Nobody in the hobby under 50. Bring kids in? Hell, kids
today ain’t worth a hoot.”
I began thinking
about this anew the udder day while reading a long, long thread on the Cloudy Nights astronomy
bulletin board concerning Meade,
who, as you may know, is in the process of imploding and is looking for a buyer.
We’ll talk about the fate of Meade Instruments a little later, but what interested
me most about the CN discussion was how many seemingly knowledgeable folks there
took a fracking ridiculous Los Angeles Times article about Meade’s troubles seriously.
This article was written
by somebody who probably knows something about the world of finance, but who doesn't know pea-turkey about amateur astronomy. That’s neither surprising nor
distressing. What is is that the writer didn't bother to find out a thing about
us before turning in this load of codswallop. The writer’s brilliant
conclusion? Meade is in trouble because amateur astronomy is dying: “People
no longer hold stargazing parties, and households that once proudly displayed
their telescopes no longer think they are trendy, analysts said.”
Who were the analysts
doing the postmortem on amateur astronomy’s carcass? In this old boy’s suspicions,
probably someone close to the principals, someone who wanted to deflect
criticism, “It wasn’t our fault; we ran Meade like a well oiled machine!”
Yes, people still
hold “stargazing parties.” Yes, people still love their telescopes, if not
because they are trendy. No, amateur astronomy is not dying. That shouldn't be news to any of y’all, especially those of you who've been around a while.
I know if li’l Rod were transported from 1965 to 2013, he sure wouldn’t think
amateur astronomy is on its last legs. All those full color ads in Sky and Telescope and Astronomy. The hordes of people at the big star parties.
Hell, young Unk wouldn’t have guessed there were as many amateur astronomers in
the world as congregate yearly at Prude Ranch. Amateur astronomy ain’t dying, it’s plain to
see. Why do some of our brothers and sisters think it is?
There was plenty of
venting on that pea-picking thread, and not just by the oldest of the old-timers,
either. Everybody seemed to want to write the obit: “Kids don’t give a hoot and
holler about astronomy. All they want to do is play with them cell phones,” “It
ain’t just astronomy, kids today hate all of science,” “In my day every
teenager wanted a telescope and a chemistry set; now it’s them consarned Xboxes,”
“Amateur astronomy is finished.”
Damn. Enough to
depress even glass-half-full Unk. But I know this ain’t true. Starting with the
assertion that my generation was so scientifically advanced compared to the
current one. The 1960s was an exciting time to be interested in science or math. NASA was riding high and the Moon did not seem
to be the limit. Don’t fool yourself, though. For every sprout who dreamed of a
4-inch Unitron or a big A.C. Gilbert chemistry set, there were ten thousand who lusted after slot cars and mini-bikes.
So, what makes
otherwise knowledgeable amateurs think today’s younguns are a bunch of nogoodniks?
The older generation always just naturally believes the younger ain’t worth pea-turkey,
and that the whole country, or at least amateur astronomy, is going to hell in
a hand-basket. But that’s always been the case. I remember hearing this from the
codgers in the first (adult) club I belonged to back in the 70s ("Them
new-fangled digital setting circles have ruined astronomy"). Grownups having been saying
this about the younger generation since at least as far back as Socrates’ time.
Another reason? Some
of the thread’s despair about the younger generation came from people who have
a lot emotionally invested in Meade and
prefer to think it’s them dadgum kids (or the Gen Xers, or the yuppies, or
whomever) that are responsible for their favorite scope company’s demise rather
than Meade itself. Sorry, y’all; Meade is not in trouble because Bud and Cathy stopped
asking for scopes for Christmas, but because nobody much wants a Meade telescope right now.
Like Mark Twain’s,
amateur astronomy’s demise has often been predicted and announced, but here we
still are and here we shall remain. Since I teach a university astronomy class
aimed at the general student population, I believe I am uniquely qualified to
comment on young people and astronomy, and what I see is heartening. Today’s youngsters are every bit as smart and
good as my generation was. And they still come to amateur astronomy. I am constantly
amazed at how many students ask me for advice on a first telescope. I was even
more amazed when our students, including quite a few non-math, non-science
majors, took it upon themselves to organize their own astronomy club.
The Gear
In one sense, we are
in a happy place astronomy equipment-wise. An example? The 1970 “Orange Tube”
C8’s cost in current dollars would be at least $5,000.00.
That’s right, for the price of a simple non-go-to, barebones, uncoated SCT in
1970, you can now buy an Edge C11 on a sophisticated go-to mount—and have a
grand left over for eyepieces and bottles of Rebel Yell.
“So telescopes are
far more accessible than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. What’s bad about
that, Unk?” The reason for them becoming so cheap has some of us nervous. That reason,
of course, is that except for a few top-tier brands like Astro-Physics that
most us can’t afford and don’t need, telescope production has moved to China.
Yes, Chinese telescopes are cheap. Yes, they’ve become surprisingly good. What’s
the catch? Some of us wonder who’s going to be left to buy them at any price
once the few remaining U.S. manufacturing jobs are gone.
I don’t like to see
one American telescope company after another fall by the wayside, but the truth
is neither you nor I can do squat about it. If I want a TV set I have to buy
Chinese (or Korean), and if I want a telescope that fits my needs, I have to
buy Chinese. The only foreseeable change will come when Chinese scope prices go
up because Chinese workers demand an increasingly higher standard of living. I
reckon we’ll be buying Indonesian or Vietnamese telescopes then.
Which I suppose
brings us to the latest victim, Meade. It’s not quite clear how the story ends
for Old Blue—at least three (Chinese, natch) buyers are interested—but it is
pretty clear its days as an independent U.S. owned telescope company are numbered.
How did that happen to what was the largest scope company in the world in the
go-go days of the late 1990s? Three strikes, y’all…
Strike One: Meade made
plenty of money for a small-medium sized company in the 90s. But it went to
their heads, I reckon. They were going to be HUGE, and not just in telescopes
and astronomy. They went public, and, shortly after that, it appeared they set out to cripple their main competitor, Celestron, in part by suing the pants off 'em.
Unfortunately for
Blue, the lawsuit battles with Celestron seemed to do more harm than good. I
would guess lawyers sucked up lots of Meade cash for not much in the way of
results. Yes, they somehow convinced a judge you could patent having a
telescope point north for its go-to alignment (!), but that didn't do much to
help ‘em. Celestron soon switched to a non-infringing alignment system, and
Meade garnered little in the way of royalties. And they began to lose the affection of some of their
fans—Meade didn't seem special anymore. What had once been an innovative
underdog began to look like any other ruthless corporation run by dadgum pencil-pushers.
Strike Two: Meade seemed slow to realize it was just too expensive to produce SCTs in California anymore. Their
belated move to Mexico and the production problems incurred in that move lost
them more good will. I mean, hell, even their most trouble-free telescope of
all, the LX90, got screwed up, which made more folks mad at and wary of Meade.
Strike Three: In 2006,
Meade started down an awful bad road: advertising innovative products out the
ying-yang that were delivered late and didn’t work right when they were finally
delivered. The RCX 400 “Advanced Ritchey – Chretien” (ahem) was the first. Its
innovations were many, but so were its problems. At least some of them worked
out of the box, though, in contrast to last year’s LX800, which didn’t work at
all.
What puzzles me is
that Meade must have spent a significant portion of whatever cash remained on the
development of the LX800/850, which was too expensive to appeal to their
traditional customers. It was, instead, aimed at the crowd that would usually
buy at least Losmandy if not Astro-Physics or Takahashi, and who were not likely to
deign to purchase anything with a Meade nameplate on it.
The true shame? Meade
had one new one, the LX80 alt-azimuth/EQ mount, which, if it had been done
right, could have hit a homerun and maybe, just maybe, have turned the company
around late in the ninth inning. If Meade had devoted every ounce of its
resources to making sure the LX80 didn’t just meet but exceeded customers’ expectations, the story might be
different now. But they didn’t. I tried one of the mounts, owned briefly by my buddy
Jack Huerkamp, last year: pitiful, just pitiful.
The Pursuit
Whether you’ve got an
humble SkyWatcher or a tony Tele-Vue telescope, what the hell do you do with
it? If you read the Astromart and Cloudy Nights BBSes a lot, you might conclude
from all the fuss over CCD cameras and mount periodic error that we are all
doing long duration deep sky imaging. That most of us are auto-guiding six-hour
shots of PGC umptysquat.
Not at all. Most of
us are doing what we have always done, looking through the eyepieces of medium
size (6 – 12-inch) telescopes at the brighter and prettier deep sky objects,
the Moon, and planets. What has changed since Unk was a sprout? “Bright, easy,
and pretty” has pushed farther and farther out. Back in The Day, Unk and his
teenage chums in the Backyard Astronomy Society considered the Veil Nebula, for
example, to be a PROFESSIONAL object, well beyond the reach of our puny scopes.
Today it, and many, many NGC DSOs, are bread and butter targets, for novices.
The reason for that is
twofold. Better equipment—much better eyepieces and filters—is one. More than
that, it’s information. Back in that hallowed Day, we didn't know what to look at or how to
look at it. Beyond Scotty’s column once a month in Sky and Telescope, there was no one to tell us those whats and hows.
Now, there is tons of info, including not just wonderful books like The Night Sky
Observers Guide, but websites like Adventures in Deep Space. And all the software. And the discussion
forums. The amateur astronomy information
explosion has done more than anything else, including bigger and better
telescopes, to push back the amateur astronomy deep sky frontier.
I said most of us are
not imaging, but that may be changing when it comes to one formerly specialized
type of astrophotography. More and more amateurs are turning to deep sky video cameras to counteract light pollution. While the light
pollution in my small city ain’t that much worse than it was in the 1970s, it’s
more widespread at least. I have to travel farther to get to a decent site.
Video allows you to observe the Messier and NGC in detail from a putrid
backyard. From the average club site? You will be ticking off 16th magnitude
galaxies with a C8.
If you want the
details, the straight poop about video astronomy, see my article in the February 2013 issue of Sky and Telescope. Suffice to say video is catching on because of
two things: it allows you to see the deep sky in detail and in color with a modest
telescope, and it does not require the investment of gear, time, and talent CCD
imaging does. With video, you see your object in near real time, looking good,
no processing required. Guiding is usually not needed. You don’t even have to
involve a computer if’n you don’t want to.
The one thing holding
deep sky video back has been the admission fee. You could have either cheap but limited, like the Orion StarShoot Deep Space Video Camera, or expensive and
capable like the Mallincam Xtreme or Stellacam III. The Orion or modified
off-the-shelf cameras could give you a taste, but maybe not enough or one to convince you video
astronomy was worth the trouble. To really get going, you needed to invest well over a thousand dollars on a top of the line Mallincam or Stellacam.
I can’t give you any details yet, but I believe the above is about to
change rather dramatically. There is a camera on the way that will be considerably
more advanced than the Orion and similar offerings but won’t cost much more. It
is poised to allow Joe and Jane Amateur to go as deep as they want for less
than the price of a top-of-the-line eyepiece. More on it as soon as I can spill
the beans, y’all...stay tuned.
Uncle Rod
Which
brings us to your favorite southern-fried country cousin and raconteur, moi. The words that come to mind as I
begin my 60th orbit on the third rock from the sun and approach (next year) my
50th anniversary in amateur astronomy? “What
a long, strange trip it’s been.” There’ve been some troublesome spells; most
everybody makes mistakes and wrong turns in the course of growing up, and I made more than my share. Believe me, if I could go back 40 years and change everything--or at least one thing--I would. Of course, I have been very lucky. If you’d told young Rod that one day he’d be writing
for his favorite magazine, observing and imaging the sky with computerized
SCTs, and going to and speaking at star parties at the drop of a hat, he dang
sure would not have dared believe you.
Yeah,
when I get up in the morning, there are a few more aches and pains than there
used to be, but only a few. I feel good. Yes, I try to get more exercise and
watch what I eat—except when I am on a deep sky tear down in Chiefland—but
mostly I’m doing exactly what I want to do.
Now
that I am retired from the engineering game, I have more time to devote to my
astronomy students, to observing, to writing for the best astronomy magazine on
the planet, Sky and Telescope, and, of course to the little old AstroBlog. Yeah, “60” feels weird for somebody from the
generation that didn't trust anybody over thirty, but that is just OK,
muchachos. I hope the next ten years are going to be gooduns, and I look
forward to living them with, you, my friends.
Next Time: A Tale of Two Cameras...
Sunday, July 14, 2013
A Chiefland 4th
 |
| Those are RAINDROPS |
I shouldn’t
be bitter about our near skunking, anyway. It was obvious a couple of days
before our departure on Thursday the 4th that the weather would not be
cooperative. Oh, I kept checking all the weather resources, Wunderground, TWC,
Clear Sky Clock, Scope Nights, hoping for
encouragement, but there was none to be had and hadn’t been for days.
Our July
Chiefland Astronomy Village getaway unfortunately coincided with one of the
nastiest storms to hit the southeast in quite a while. This system sat over the
Gulf Coast from Mobile to well east of Panama City and dumped rain. Some places
along the coast, and even inland, got over a foot of precipitation. I contented
myself with the observation that the Chiefland/Nature Coast area appeared to be
slightly east of the worst of the weather.
Dorothy and
I did talk about delaying our departure till Saturday and staying an extra
couple of days, but, honestly, the forecasts were not much better as you got
into the following week. Monday might be a slight improvement, but only slight.
Chances of precipitation ranged from 30 to 60 percent for the rest of the
ten-day forecast. We decided we’d leave on the 4th as planned and hope we got
lucky. In the four years I’d been doing the “If it’s July, this must be Chiefland” thing, I’d always had at
least one good/semi-good evening. In spite of similarly depressing weather
forecasts, summer 2010 in Chiefland was spectacular.
So, come
Wednesday afternoon I began loading the 4Runner with the tons of gear I’d
marshaled in Chaos Manor South’s front parlor a couple of days before. There
was plenty of astro-junk, but the loading went easier than it ever had before.
Maybe because, in the course of writing a recent blog
article about astro-packing, I’d done a lot of thinking about the
process.
What did I
pack? The usual for a CAV expedition—almost. Over the last five years, the
Chiefland scope of choice has been Big Bertha, our NexStar 11 GPS. I can’t say
she’ll never get back down CAV way, but right now we sure are enjoying the new
one, Mrs. Emma Peel, the Edge 800 SCT and her VX mount. What else? The usual:
Mallincam Xtreme, computer, digital video recorder, gear boxes, tent canopy,
observing table, etc., etc., etc.
Come the
morning of the 4th, Miss D. and I were ready—more than ready—to get on the road
for our holiday, come what may. We were out of the Old Manse not long after 8
a.m., and following a quick stop at the neighborhood Mickey D’s, where Unk got
his traditional fried chicken biscuit, we were headed east for the Florida line.
The five and
a half hours to C-land was, as always, uneventful. The only difference this
time was that we’d had to replace our old Tom-Tom GPS with a new one from
Garmin. Some miscreant absconded with the Tom-Tom, but it was really time to
upgrade, anyway. The Garmin has a larger screen, free map updates, a more
legible display, and the same voice, “Samantha.”
Weather? The
first couple of hours or so was OK, but as we passed Destin, the rain began to
fall, and by Tallahassee it was fracking pouring. Funny thing, though? When we
left I-10 for Highway 19, The Florida Georgia Parkway, stopping for gas at the
good, old Sunoco station, the rain quit. As we traveled the last 100 miles,
Unk, mind and body refreshed with a Sasquatch Big Stick from the filling
station, began to feel hopeful.
Those hopes
began to be dashed as we neared town, with the clouds building again. When we got
to our motel, the Suwannee Best Western,
it began to rain, and shortly after we'd got settled in our room it was pouring.
I tried not to let that bother me. We’ve had quite a few trips where the first
night has been skunk city—Chiefland Thursday seems cursed—but have gotten
plenty of good hours Friday and Saturday. Also, since I don’t teach my astronomy
class in the summer and am retired from the day job, we could extend through
Monday, at least, if necessary.
“Best Western?! Unk, what happened to
the Days Inn you’ve been staying at for as long as this here blog has been on
the air?” Oh, it’s
still there Skeezix, but as I related in our last CAV report, it’s been going downhill since it switched chains from
Holiday Inn Express several years ago. The last time we stayed there, it was
close to pitiful: dirty, poor service, a
laughably scanty breakfast, almost non-existent maid service. It was time for a
change.
The new one,
the Best Western, is about the same age as the Day’s Inn, but is considerably
better maintained. The TV was a nice big LG flat-screen, the carpet in our
suite-style room was new, and the staff to a person was friendly and helpful.
Even better, it was a mile or two closer to the CAV, and there was a liquor store and a Bubbaque’s right across Highway
19 (more on that later). Looks like it will be Best Western for our Chiefland
trips from here on out.
I
felt bad about not heading to the site and at least trying to set up, but it
was purty clear that would be a mistake. The chance of rain was not going down;
it was going up. It was at 40% now and would, if you believed the weather
goobers, rise to 60% by morning. We stuck to the hallowed plan: “If you can’t
set up, head to Wal-Mart for supplies.”
What was to
be had at the cotton-picking Wally-World? Same old – same old: Jack Links and granola bars for the field,
bottled water, 12-pack of Kolorado Kool-aid for after run celebrating. I looked
for a new Star Wars t-shirt to add to
my wardrobe, but no dice. I did find two cool tees, though, a Batman and a Flash.
After we’d deposited
our Wal-Mart purchases in the room, it was going on seven and time to think
“suppertime.” On nights when we’re sure we’ll be observing, we do fast food,
usually Taco Bell. When it’s apparent we won’t see a thing? Our old favorite, Bill’s Bar-B-Q. I never tire of the
place and neither does D. Since there would be no astronomy on this night, I
had a couple of brews to go with my excellent smoked ribs. Miss Dorothy’s
rib-eye looked real good and I was sorry I hadn’t chosen that.
Back at the
motel afterwards, I was still annoyed we hadn’t gone out to the site. Heck, it
might not even be raining there. Then, the thunder began to boom, the lightning
began to flash, and it rained so hard the satellite TV picture pixilated and
faded out. My guilt at not attempting gear set up left me; I was happy I’d
listened to reason for once, and spent a pleasant evening watching The
Big Bang Theory on the tube.
Friday
dawned to partly cloudy, but only partly cloudy, skies, and the weather didn't
seem anywhere near as dire as the “60% chance of rain” prediction had made it
sound. After checking out the Best Western breakfast, which was fine, if not
much different from what the Days Inn had on a good morning, it was out to the
CAV to get the gear unloaded.
At the site,
I was pleased to see several travel-trailers lined up, and one of my buddies
puttering around. I don’t normally get spooked at the CAV when I am alone, but
it is still nice to have company. More than anything, it indicated I wasn’t
completely crazy. Some of my pals, at
least, thought there might be a chance of us seeing something over the long
holiday weekend.
The equipment
had gone in Ms. Van Pelt, the 4Runner, easily, and it came out just as easily.
I love my C11, but there is no denying a C8 on a German equatorial is just a
whole lot more pleasant to deal with when, like Unk, you get within spitting
distance of your 60th annum on the third stone from the sun. It’s also nice to have to have plentiful AC power on the field. Plugged up the VX mount’s AC power supply, got the DewBuster dew heater ready to go, and, after erecting
the tailgating canopy and putting up the observing table, we were done.
Well, sorta.
There was still the computer, the Mallincam camera, the video display, the DVR,
and plenty of other stuff to arrange before I could observe, but given the look
of the sky, which as noon approached was tending to “worse,” I decided to wait
till closer to sundown to prepare the rest of the astro-stuff.
Set up done,
or at least as much of it done as I thought wise to do, there wasn’t
much point in hanging out at the CAV. Naturally, everybody was undercover at
the height of a July day. Not that the heat was that bad. If there was one redeeming
feature of the weather, it was that the temps never got above the 80s, even
during the few sunny periods. Dorothy and I headed back north, past Chiefland
to the next little town up the road, Fanning Springs, to tour one of our
favorite Nature Coast attractions.
D. and I
have been to Fanning Springs State Park
several times over the last couple of years, but like Bill’s, it’s something we
never tire of. In summer, the Park is beautifully green and shady, and the
springs are filled with almost unbelievably clear water. To top it off, a short
walk takes you to the banks of the legendary Suwannee River meandering its leisurely
way to the Gulf of Mexico. Miss Dorothy and I spent at least an hour strolling
in the shady cool. I even went down to the river’s edge and dipped my feet in
those storied waters. Dorothy was afraid I’d become a meal for Mr. Gator, but that
cold and clear river just calls to me.
Once we’d
had enough of the springs and the river, it was time for
another of our Chiefland traditions, the
19/98 grill. This little place not far from the Park has become justly
famous with visiting CAV observers for its huge menu of fresh food. One of
these days, I’m going to explore that menu, but this time I ordered my fave
once again, the buffalo chicken sandwich: spicy (but not too spicy) buffalo
chicken, a fresh seed roll, lettuce and tomato straight out of a garden,
slathered with chunky blue cheese. The fries? Cut from potatoes recently, not poured from a freezer bag.
I had sweet tea, but I was mucho tempted by the old-fashioned bottles of Nehi
Grape and Nehi Peach.
After a much
needed rest period at the Best Western, it was time to go back to the site.
First things first, though. The Alabama State Stores still don’t have Rebel Yell.
Not a drop. Salvation was at hand at the liquor store across Highway 19 from
the motel, where they were practically giving the stuff away. Unk got a huge bottle for a twenty and change.
Said bottle of Yell would constitute my backup “observing plan,” which I might
need given that the sky was continuing to degrade.
Out at the
CAV with darkness slowly coming on, it was decision time. The weather was
looking worse still. It wasn’t raining, but that appeared to be a distinct possibility.
Would I really want to be faced with packing up the computer and all the video
gear in a hurry if the weather turned nasty? Nope. If I got any observing in on
this night, it would be visual observing with the mount operated with its hand
control instead of with NexRemote on
the laptop. I’d brought along the “good” eyepiece case, so at least I’d be able
to wow my buddies with Edge and Ethos vistas. Maybe.
With not much else to do, I spent the gloaming hanging with my pals. Amazingly, given
the WX forecasts, seven other hearty and hardcore observers joined me before the evening was out. Eventually, somebody broke out the sparklers and we had a
good old time playing 4th of July on the 5th. Urania? She just couldn’t make up
her pea-picking mind. The sky occasionally looked like it might want to give
birth to a sucker hole, but didn’t—not for a while.
If I
couldn’t look through the scope, at least I could play with it, or at least
play with the new DewBuster controller. If you read my article
on dew in the July 2013 issue of Sky and
Telescope, you know I am serious about my dew removal tools. Not long after
the original Kendrick Dew Removal System became available, I got me one.
Nothing works better for keeping your scope, finder, and eyepieces clear of the
wet stuff than heater strips.
The Kendrick
system worked fine, but then, about a decade back, Ron Keating over in
Louisiana came up with a better idea. The controller on the original Kendrick system was time-based. The farther you advanced its knob , the longer the
heater strips stayed on. That worked, but was inefficient. Ron’s DewBuster,
which uses a temperature probe, and cycles the heaters on and off according to
temperature, is much easier on the battery. It is also much easier to find a
setting that will keep moisture off your lenses with the ‘Buster. Adjusting the
original Kendrick was pretty much guesstimate-hit-and-miss.
So, the
DewBuster was the cat’s meow and couldn’t be improved? That’s what I thought,
but then I got word from Ron that he had a new and improved controller ready to
go. The difference? The old controller had one temperature-sensing probe, and
the new one has two. That means you have two independent temperature-regulated
outputs. Maybe one for your corrector or objective, and the other for a
piggybacked scope or camera.
The
controller still has the “medium power" outlets that cycle on and off like those on
the old Kendrick, but Ron has added non-cycling accessory outputs for 12-volt
devices. According to Mr. K., the new controller is also less likely to
generate electrical interference that might bother your scope or camera
electronics.
That all
sounded cool, but, as y’all know, I am not a big fan of change. When it comes to
astro-gear, I prefer “the same, not
different.” Still, I thought I’d give the new ‘Buster a try on this trip.
With the sky nearing the fully socked-in stage, that was all I could do. I removed the C8’s aperture cover and cranked
the ‘Buster up to 10-degrees-above-ambient, which I thought appropriate for the
conditions.
It was damp,
campers. Wet, I mean. It was hard to
tell where the dew left off and the haze and rain sprinkles took over. How did
the new DewBuster act? At first I was disappointed: “Hell, this dadgum thing
don’t work at all.” The red LED that indicates power is flowing to the corrector
heater only cycled on occasionally. Under similar circumstances, the light on
the old controller would have been flashing like mad. And yet…and yet…Mrs.
Peel’s corrector remained bone dry for the next several hours, till I finally
gave up on the night.
It appears the
new DewBuster is more efficient than the old one. Given that and the fact that
it is also less “noisy,” I might be able to power the VX mount and the DewBuster off
the same battery. It sure will be nice to leave one battery at home when I am
without AC power at the club dark site. Anyhow, I love the new DewBuster. It
seems even better than the original, if that's possible.
DewBuster
tested, all that remained was to wait on sucker holes. Amazingly, not long
after 10 p.m. we did get a few breaks. I didn’t bother to try to align Mrs.
Peel; it was obvious there wouldn’t be time for that. Instead, I had a look
through my friend Paul’s StarStructure Dob. M51 was beautiful, with its
“bridge” and companion galaxy, NGC 5195, looking real sweet. The galaxy has the
distinction of being the one and only deep sky object I saw through a scope the
whole time we were Down Chiefland Way. I also got a look at Omega Centauri, now
well past culmination, in a pair of binoculars, and that was freaking it.
Just as I
was beginning to wonder whether I oughtn't get the VX aligned after all,
another bunch of clouds came pouring in and I called it quits. At least there
wasn’t much involved in throwing The Big Switch on this night. Turn off the
‘Buster, tuck the C8 in with her Desert Storm Cover, and that was it.
It had been
a disappointing Friday evening at CAV, but back at the Best Western it was a
relaxing and jolly Chiefland denouement: Rebel Yell and those silly, silly Ghost
Adventures on the TV. Zack, Nick, and Aaron were, once again, locked in
a scary old hotel with the haints running rampant. I watched the spooky
nonsense and sipped the magic elixir until Morpheus called to me and I knew nothing
more till morning.
Saturday
dawned to mostly clear skies, but that didn’t reassure me. The weather pattern
had become a rather disgusting one for astronomers: clear up at about 6 a.m. each morning, grow
progressively cloudier during the day, rain by late afternoon, clouds till well
after midnight. What would be would be, but Saturday was rubber-meets-road
time. The forecasts for Sunday and Monday still didn't look good, and Miss
Dorothy and I’d decided that even if we didn’t see anything Saturday evening,
we’d head back home to the Swamp on Sunday.
On Chiefland
Saturday afternoons, Dorothy and I always motor over to Duma Key, which is our pet name for the touristy little fishing village
of Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico. That
is just what we did, or tried to do, anyhow. The drive and the coastal scenery were
nice, but when we got to the Key, it was a fracking madhouse. People and cars
everywhere. We literally could not find a parking place. Seems as Cedar Key is
not the secret it once was. Neither D. nor I wanted to wait for a table at a
restaurant or endure uber crowded
shops. We headed back to Chiefland where we’d do lunch somewhere.
Miss Dorothy
and I had been laughing about Chiefland’s other
barbeque joint, Bubbaque’s
ever since it opened in a shopping center storefront some years ago. But we’d
never considered actually trying the
place. Now, however, it was in a convenient new location just across the highway from our
motel. We were hungry and decided “why not?”
I sure am
glad we did. Bubbaque’s is a little small, and you Yankees will be puzzled by
the redneck décor, but the food is danged good. I ordered the pulled pork,
fries, and beans and all was excellent. Maybe not quite in Bills’ territory, but close. The pork was juicy, and the
crinkle cut fries (the way Unk likes ‘em) tasted fresh. What was really cool
was the selection of six barbeque sauces and two hot sauces. Unk had a fine old
time trying all of ‘em (beware the Rump
Roaster sauce). Large portions, gallons of sweet tea, friendly servers. I
liked Bubbaque’s—a lot.
Back at the
room, I spent the next couple of hours doing some catch-up astronomy reading,
mainly of Astronomy Magazine. While I
write for Sky and Telescope and
naturally think it is the best, I like Dave Eicher’s Astronomy, and now that I
am retired, I hope to have more time to actually read the magazine.
After seeing
what the competition was up to, I took a dip in the motel’s wonderful old swimming
pool. It was big and filled with cold, strongly chlorinated water that reminded
me of boyhood July afternoons at the neighborhood swim club (a.k.a. “The
Redneck Country Club”). The Best Western pool was truly in the ancient mode,
emblazoned with huge frescoes of frolicking manatees and turtles. I would have
stayed in longer, but the thunder began to boom after half an hour and it was soon
raining hard again.
Eventually,
the rain quit and it was rubber-meets-road time indeed. I motored back to CAV
resolved that I wouldn’t leave the field until I saw something with Mrs. Peel. At
least I had some work to distract me early on. I needed to take some pictures of
telescopes and computers for a couple of Sky
and Telescope articles I was working on. That kept my mind off the sky for
the couple of hours remaining till dark. After that? I’d just hang on the field
till the sky cleared.
I didn't
care if it took till freaking four in the a.m. to get a sucker hole; I was not
leaving without using my new scope. That was the plan, anyhow. The reality was
that the C8 was never uncovered. By eleven, there was substantial lightning
ringing the field, and booms of thunder began to be audible as yet another
storm approached. I said goodbye to my fellow observers, grabbed the laptop,
and headed for the 4Runner.
Back at the
Best Western before midnight, I was a mite disgruntled.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so hasty. I guessed my friends would get in a
couple of good hours before dawn. I should have been with them. Oh, well. Cable
TV (just missed Svengoolie) and
Rebel Yell served to lift my spirits a little bit.
The next
morning, early the next morning, since I sure hadn’t had a late night, me and
D. had another Best Western breakfast, packed up, checked out, and were back at
the CAV by 9 a.m. I was flabbergasted when we arrived at Dodd Field. Except for
Carl Wright, everybody else had pulled up stakes and left—and Carl was fixing
to. Miss Dorothy and I are usually the
first to go. I stopped and inquired with Mr. W. as to whether they’d got
anything after I’d left. They hadn’t, and with the forecast looking no better for
Sunday night, the consensus was that you have to know when you are licked.
Dorothy and
I were packed and on the road in about an hour—we were careful to take it easy.
It wasn’t too hot, but it was crazy humid. All that remained, then, was
100-miles of Highway 19, gas up at the Sunoco, and on to I-10. After I scored a
basket of insanely good “Highway 19 peaches” at the produce stand next to the
filling station, we were on our way back to Possum Swamp.
I tried to
be philosophical on the drive home, as I always do in the wake of a GOOD SKUNKING. Actually, I found I didn’t have to put a happy face on our
Chiefland July. It already had one. I
didn’t see much, but I saw something—certainly
more than I would have had we stayed home. I’d got to spend some time with my
Chiefland friends. D. and I had an excellent time playing tourist in the Old
Florida style of the Nature Coast. As far as I am concerned, you cannot beat
any of that with a stick, muchachos.
N.B.:
If you’d like to see more pictures from our trip, they are as close as
ol’ Unk’s Facebook page…
Next Time: The Astronomer Looks at 60...
