Sunday, February 08, 2015
Big Time
What would be the subject of this week’s blog? That was kinda hard. I have not, as I
feared when I took this weekly, run out of things to say, muchachos, but sometimes a topic doesn't immediately suggest itself. Those “sometimes” usually being
the times when not much is going on around here astronomically.
Following my last minute comet-save recounted last week, I
thought I’d so some Moon pictures for another installment of my Destination Moon project. I still had
the C11, Big Bertha, set up in the backyard following my abortive try for
asteroid 2004 BL86. Alas, the seeing was just not good enough. Even given my
humble standards, not a single image was usable. OK, I’d back off to a more
forgiving C8 the next evening. Nope. The .avis I got with my 8-incher, Celeste,
were better but not better enough. Into the recycle bin they went.
Should I go RSpecing again? I’ve promised myself I will re-familiarize
myself with RSpec, that wonderful spectroscopy software. Unfortunately, the seeing was
still bad enough following my failed lunar voyages to suggest I would be
wasting my time. Couldn't even do any visual observing, since clouds and rain were
now moving back in. Astronomical road-trips? I would be heading down to the Chiefland
Astronomy Village next dark of the Moon, but that was still weeks away.
I thunk and I thunk and I thunk, but I was stumped. Till one
afternoon I was hunting something or other out in the Shop. I opened a cabinet,
pulled out a box, looked in, and what should I see but my first real planetary
camera, the good, old SAC 7B. Which brought to mind my adventures with that
humble CCD—which I have talked about here before—but even moreso, it reminded
me of all the fun I had during the great
Mars opposition of 2003, something I haven’t talked with y’all about at
length.
By 2003, Unk had been observing Mars in decidedly on-again,
off-again fashion for over three decades. I’d been at least trying to see the planet since 1965. Mars,
maybe even more than Saturn, was the world young Rod, like other space-crazy
kids in the 1960s, wanted to see with his own eyes. Even when I was the
greenest of greenhorns, I knew that most of the time Mars was nothing more than
a subdued orangish star-like object. However, I also knew there were times,
“oppositions,” when the planet was close to us, when Mars showed his mysterious
face to Earthlings and their puny telescopes.
I did look around for Mars in Leo's area occasionally, but
none of the stars looked as obviously different to my naked eye as I thought
Mars should. Certainly nothing I got in my low power eyepiece looked like
anything but a pinpoint (it’s likely I actually did see Mars but mistook him for a bright star). In retrospect, I didn’t
miss much. Mars was small, 14”, that opposition, and would have been a tiny,
featureless b-b in my somewhat putrid little scope.
The next opposition of Mars was in April of 1967, and he was
better, but only a little better,
15.5”. This was the first one I was there for. Not only did I have a mucho
bettero telescope, my 4.25-inch Palomar Junior
reflector, which, if not exactly a planetary powerhouse due to its small
aperture, did deliver sharp images with its f/10 (actually closer to f/11)
spherical primary mirror. Also, I had learned to find stuff in the sky. The
epiphany arriving in December of 1965, when, just after taking my first look at
M42, I captured M78 by star-hopping to it—not that I knew what I was doing was
called “star-hopping” (which term may not even have been in use at then). And I had Sky & Telescope to guide me.
I’d educated myself about Mars as well as I could. Not just
with the trashy sci-fi movies like The Angry Red Planet
I saw down at the Roxy Theatre, but with Patrick Moore’s books. I tried to take Patrick’s
cautionary words in The Amateur
Astronomer to heart and not expect too much: “When you first look at Mars through a
telescope, you…may…feel a sensation of anticlimax. Instead of a globe streaked
with canals and blue green vegetation, you may…make out nothing but a tiny red
disk.”
I comprehended that Mars was small and far, far away even
when closest to Earth, but, still, this was MARS. There must be more to it than just Patrick’s
small, red disk. To be honest, what stuck in my mind from the above quote was
not “small, red, disk” but “canals and
blue green vegetation,” the very things my astronomy mentor was warning me
not to expect.
So, one warm spring night I finally tracked down the
mysterious fourth planet. Amazingly, it wasn’t even hard. Even if I hadn’t done
a pretty good job or learning the constellations since that wonderful morning
when the Old Man had walked into my room bearing the Tasco—I even knew subdued Virgo where the planet was now hanging out —more experienced me
couldn’t have missed it. Even though this was an average opposition at best,
there was Mars just burning up the sky, looking like a baleful red eye gazing
down at the Rodster.
If only the view in the Pal Junior had lived up the promise
of the planet’s naked eye appearance. It didn’t, of course. Not surprisingly,
Patrick Moore was right on the freaking money. There were neither razor thin
canals nor mysterious forests in view. It was just that damned tiny red ball.
As I stared into my ½-inch Ramsden eyepiece, which delivered a magnification of
96x, I thought I caught the barest
hint of a polar ice cap. But I wasn’t sure.
My big mistake? I didn’t take Patrick’s other words seriously. In
addition to warning that I wouldn’t see imaginary canals and forests, he
went on reassuringly to say that, with experience, I would be able to make out not
just that polar cap, but also fascinating dark areas and more. I wasn’t
convinced. I looked at Mars briefly a couple more times that opposition and
that was it. Frankly, young Unk was not big on patience and
perseverance. It would take another decade and some hard knocks
before I learned better. I filed Mars away as a bust, and went back to trying
to see Messier objects.
Was I disappointed? Sort of, but not really surprised. Beyond
Patrick’s cautions, the photograph of Mars in my dog-eared copy of The New Handbook of the Heavens
suggested I might not see much of anything. Though taken with the giant Yerkes
refractor, the picture (excellent for the day) was disturbingly blurry.
 |
| Yerkes Mars... |
Nothing much changed till 1995. My life was more settled
and happy than it had been in a long time with Miss Dorothy at my side, and I had the biggest telescope I’d
ever owned, Old Betsy, a 12.5-inch Dobsonian. Betsy, in addition to pulling a
lot of surprisingly faint stuff out of our bright Garden District sky, was,
biggest surprise of all, something of a planetary
powerhouse with an excellent primary mirror despite its humble Meade pedigree.
The most important thing in helping me begin to see Mars,
though, was the patience and
perseverance I’d been able to develop (finally). When I first got Betsy, I
began spending hours with Jupiter, trying many different magnifications and using
different colored filters. I saw more of the King of the Solar System than I
ever had in my life. Might the same things work with Mars?
The 1995 opposition wasn’t much of one. At a maximum size of
13.8 arc seconds, the angry one was about a quarter the size of Jupiter’s
average diameter. That didn’t stop me. Seeing detail wasn’t easy. I had to wait
for Mars to get as high as he could, and I had to wait for particularly stable
February nights (a problem even on the Gulf Coast) so I could use high power,
but from the get-go I was scoring coups. First night out, there was Syrtis
Major, clear as a bell. Oh, and the polar cap was putting Unk’s eye out; how
had I ever found it difficult?
I continued night after night, sometimes seeing new
features, sometimes being thwarted by clouds or seeing. But I almost always saw
something. The one thing I never did
do, though? Photograph the planet. Given that my (film) images of much easier
Jupiter resembled custard pies—at best—I figured I’d be wasting my time. Two
things changed my mind about that over the following eight years: the promise
of the 2003 opposition, when Mars would be bigger than he’d been for centuries
or would be again for centuries, and the coming of electronic photography.
As ought-three approached, I assumed I’d be doing my Mars
picture taking with my first CCD camera, a Starlight Xpress MX516. It had done
a pretty good job on Jupiter. Hell, it had bettered my film images by a long
shot, and was a considerable improvement over my camcorder experiments (the camcorder results were pitiful).
The MX516 probably would have done a respectable job on
Mars, but as 2003 got underway, I decided I wasn’t happy with the camera. There
were several reasons for that, but the foremost one was that it wasn't color.
To me, the planets cry out for color. I decided I’d sell the camera on
Astromart and search for the elusive more better gooder, which I at first
thought was Starlight Xpress color CCD cam, the MX7C.
Soon, however, I learned that More Better Gooder for the
Solar System was not another CCD camera. No, the path to Solar System success,
it seemed, lay on another path. The webcam path. By 2003, amateurs had learned
that webcams, the little USB video cameras used for video conferencing (and other
somewhat less savory things) on the Internet were the way to go. Take an .avi
movie of a planet, use software to select the best frames out of hundreds or thousands,
stack those frames into a final image with this new program, Registax, and you had planetary and
lunar images easily better than the best pro Solar System photos of the decade
before.
 |
| The SAC7b arrived just in time for Mars--it really was a good little camera! |
I’ve talked a little about SAC Imaging here
before, but only a little. Frankly, I don’t know
that much and I am not sure how much more than what I do know there is to tell,
anyhow. The gist? This is the story as it’s been told to me. I’d welcome
corrections from y’all.
“SAC” does not stand for “Strategic Air Command,” Unk’s old
outfit. It is “Sonfest Astronomical Cameras.” Wha? Apparently a dude down in Melbourne,
Florida, Bill Snyder, had a business promoting Christian music concerts,
“Son-fest Promotions.” He was also apparently very interested in astronomy, and
decided to begin selling astronomical CCD cameras.
Well, sorta. In the beginning, they were CCD cameras only in
the sense that back in the early years of this century most webcams had (small)
CCD chips rather than CMOS sensors. The SACs were humble things, just Logitech
Quickcams that were repackaged in more robust bodies and equipped with 1.25-inch
nosepieces for insertion in a focuser or Barlow. Yeah, “humble” is the word, but the
SAC cams hit the marketplace at the perfect time, just as amateurs were discovering
how good webcams were for imaging the Solar System—how amazing they were for that task.
Snyder didn’t stand still. When he met with some success, he
began offering upgraded and more interesting cameras. Initially, that was the
SAC 7B, which featured a Peltier cooler and was modified to yield long
exposures so it could (supposedly) image the deep sky as well as the planets.
The SAC 7B was remarkably popular, enabling SAC to do the
SAC 8, a more or less genuine CCD camera capable of real deep sky work. The SAC
7B was simply too noisy to be much good there, though its long exposure mode
was useful for imaging Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the dimmer moons of the
outer worlds. The SAC 8 was followed by the SAC 10 (designed in part by CCD
Labs’ Bill Behrens). CCD/imaging software guru Craig Stark also had a hand in the
project. The 10, with its, for the time, very impressive 3.3 megapixel sensor, was
supposed to land SAC in the big-time of CCD imaging. Then, suddenly, the SAC story
ended.
 |
| Did I ever dream I'd get Mars images like this? NO. |
What happened? As is sometimes the case, apparently too much
success rather than too little killed SAC. The owner made a deal with Orion
(Telescope and Binocular Center) to furnish what was essentially the SAC 8 with
an Orion nametag on it. Alas, Mr. Snyder couldn’t produce enough cameras to
keep up with demand from Orion. He also couldn’t produce the SAC 10 cameras in
numbers large enough to satisfy orders. QA problems also began to mount. Things
spun out of control and SAC crashed. As far as I know, Snyder went back to his
primary business—which was neither concert promoting nor camera building, but,
I’ve been told, managing a Florida motel.
I am still sorry SAC is gone. Bill Snyder had some great
ideas, hired some great people, and I believe that if he’d been able to stay in
business there’d be far more choices in the low-medium price CCD arena than there
are today (i.e. very few). Anyhow, SAC was great while it lasted, and Mr.
Snyder was responsible for me getting the Mars images of a lifetime.
As soon as I heard about the SAC 7B, I knew it was for me.
It produced 640x480 images, larger than those of my Starlight Xpress cam and twice the size of my Quickcam’s, had that cooler
and the long exposure mod in case I wanted to experiment with longer exposures,
and was ready to go out of the box. No hot gluing a 35mm film canister on the
front of the camera to serve as a nosepiece like we used to do with webcams. In
retrospect, I could have probably just bought the less expensive SAC 7 (no “B”), the air-cooled (no Peltier)
version of the camera, and I was tempted to do that, but I’d sold my MX516 for
a decent price on Astromart, so I figured I’d get the top of the line SAC. I
gave Mr. Snyder my credit card number.
I ordered in early spring, and after a couple of weeks of no
camera appearing on Chaos Manor South’s front porch, I began to sweat. The
planet would be getting big soon, and now I didn't even have that dadgum
Starlight Xpress to use on it. I understood Bill probably built cameras as
orders were received, so I tried to be patient. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore
and fired off an email. The response was rapid, assuring me I’d soon have my
SAC.
 |
| One of my first Mars images with C8 and SAC 7. |
When it arrived, I was fairly impressed. No, the build
quality wasn't comparable to the machined beauty of the MX516, but it was
alright. Robust enough (tin-can-like) metal body. Good hefty cables for USB,
Peltier power, and the long exposure interface. The power supply provided for
the cooler was impressive in its capacity. It was undoubtedly just a surplus PC
switching power supply, but it was in a nice plastic box and had a cigarette
lighter output (all these years later I still use it for various things).
The only think I didn’t like about the camera was the
included software, AstroVideo. It appeared to be capable, but not very user
friendly, and you know how I am about that. No problemo. My astro-BBS surfing
had turned up a program many webcammers were using, K3CCD Tools. It did almost as
much as AstroVideo, but in a less
convoluted fashion. Today, it has been surpassed by programs like FireCapture, of course, but even now it is still somewhat usable. After playing with an evaluation copy, I handed over my bucks for K3CCD
right quick. With the software in place, it looked like we was ready to go.
The opposition itself was almost anticlimactic because it
went so smoothly. The weather usually cooperated, and my friend Pat and I were
able to live up to our vow to take advantage of every second of Mars. It was a
wild time if you were an amateur astronomer. We were all obsessed by Mars; some
of us even moreso than others. I was a speaker at ALCON 2003 in Nashville, and hated to give up a few nights of the planet in
July. I did, however, and had a good time. Others were not so willing to part
with the Old Red for even a little while. Legendary planetary imager Don Parker flew in, gave his talk, and
flew right back out to get at Mars again that night.
Every clear evening, and there were plenty of them, I’d set
up one of my three driven scopes in Chaos Manor South's backyard. Often that was Celestron Ultima 8, Celeste (then
still on her non-goto fork). I also used the 8-inch Konus (Synta) f/5 Newtonian
I'd bought to help do some of the observing for my book, The Urban Astronomer’s Guide. When I needed horsepower, it was my new NexStar
11, Big Bertha. Even with our often good
seeing, however, the focal length of the 11 tended to be a bit much most of the
time. The Konus, in contrast, was too short and was mainly useful when the
seeing was punk. The C8? As C8s always are, it was JUST RIGHT.
I did a little “just looking” with eyepieces on some nights,
but mostly my game was pictures of Mars. Initially, I wasn’t
sure how good they’d be, but I found out in a right quick hurry. On the very
first evening with the camera in a 2x Barlow plugged into the visual back of
the C8, Mars was surprisingly large, even in the spring (opposition didn’t come
till August). And, heck, I could see signs of detail in the image on my monitor. Not just the polar cap, but
those always elusive dark markings, the supposed BLUE-GREEN VEGETATION of my boyhood!
 |
| Small but sharp: Mars with the Konus newtonian. |
My mind wasn't truly blown, however, till I ran the night’s
.avi movie files through Registax. I
was somewhat familiar with the program already from experimenting with it with
some of my camcorder images, but I didn't expect anything like what I got. What
I got when I finished fooling with the program’s “wavelet sliders” (sharpening filters)
was the best planetary images of my life. And not just that. The detail was
indeed in excess of what Pic du Midi and other professional outfits had done a
decade before. See the video below to get an idea of the difference Registax
made.
So it went, night after night after night. As the planet
rotated, more and more mysterious features came into view and went on the hard
drive (of the desktop computer I dragged into the backyard). Syrtis Major, Solis Lacus, Mons Olympus. I toured all those fabled
sites, and almost felt as if I were on the surface with the crew of Angry Red Planet’s Rocketship MR-1.
Then August was past and Mars was dwindling back to its
normal pink b-b aspect. Was I sorry to see it go? Dang right. However, I must
admit the opposition almost exhausted me. Night after
night with one target, it was the most sustained planetary campaign of my
amateur career, with even my most enthusiastic lunar tears being a distant
second.
Will I return to Mars? I haven't, not with a camera, though
I have visited the other planets with my webcams, which have slowly evolved
into more sophisticated planetary cameras like the ZWO ASI120MC I use now.
However, Mars is growing again from is puny 14” diameter of recent oppositions
to an impressive 24” in 2018, just a smidge smaller than in 2003. You can bet I’ll
have boots on that red, red ground when that happens, muchachos.
Next Time: The Return of the King...
Comments:
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Great reading Mr. Rod. All the references to the 60s and 70s reminded me of my early days of looking through my 60 mm x 800 mm Selsi scope (that I still have and use) .
I have fond memories of the 2003 opposition as well. Mine were visual as I had only one night of exceptional seeing and a couple of ok nights. I has a MX7C then but I was too mesmerized by what I was seeing....using an 8" MN at up to 504X, the most magnification I could muster. I did get my best Mars image in 2005 using a Meade LPI that just squeaked in before fog rolled in. Living east of the Rockies really does a number on seeing here an even OK seeing is a rare event. I often checked seeing using a 4.5 F10 Newt before I bothered getting out a larger scope. It often put up a sharper image d/t the seeing. I am looking forward to Mars this year with a better camera the QHY5Lii color. Thanks for your column each week....Dwight
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