Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

Chalk up another one, muchachos. Another orbit of our friendly G2V star by your aged Uncle. That makes 71.  A few years ago, I wouldn’t have told you that. Like many of my fellow Boomers, I’ve wrestled with old age—we just didn’t believe it could happen to us. But I think I’ve finally come to terms with it, at least to the extent of being able to say, “It is what it is.” Of course, I didn’t let any philosophical mumbo-jumbo interfere with another grand birthday in the old style.

As with many of Unk’s birthdays, this one combined “space” (as in building a new model Launch Umbilical Tower to go with my recent Airfix Saturn V build), Mexican food, ham radio, and a sizable portion of amateur astronomy. Actually, the amateur astronomy got done the evenings prior to and immediately following the big day, since I knew I’d likely be tuckered out from activating a park for Parks on the Air and too full of Tex-Mex chow and margaritas to even think about taking a telescope into the backyard…

Indeed, I was. We had a great time at Park US-1042, Gulf Shores State Park, but oh-was-it-hot. We made 40 CW QSOs with my new Yaesu FT-891 in just over an hour, and that was enough. It was crazy hot, even under a picnic pavilion and even with the constant sea-breezes blowing. Back home, I dumped the sand out of my Crocs, spiffed up a little, and made tracks for Unk’s longtime fave Mexican place, El Giro’s. Many margaritas cooled me off, and I was soon ready to tuck into my unwavering birthday fare, the famous #13.  A little TV with the felines thereafter, and it would be night-night time. I’d hit the backyard the next eve.

If you are a long-time reader of the Little Ol’ AstroBlog from Chaos Manor South, you know five years ago, it had almost run up on the rocks. In 2019, there was but one new post—and not until the end of December of that year! An accident the Rodster suffered at the beginning of ‘19, and the lingering effects of a rather un-looked for early retirement almost spelled curtains for the News from Possum Swamp.

I got back in the saddle as 2020 came in—I found I still wanted to bring the AstroBlog to you—and we are now on the reasonable schedule of one issue per month. At my age and with my physical infirmities, I don’t travel as much as I once did. I did make it back to one star party last year and hope to do so again this fall. But…  No longer traveling from star party to star party like a demented Johnny Appleseed means I don’t have as much to tell you about. It sure ain’t like 2016, the year I did so many events a friend of mine started calling the annum “Uncle Rod’s Farewell Tour.”

Not being hither and yon much and having cut back on my astro-gear addiction means the emphasis now is on observing. In part, that is choice. I just don’t need (and don’t want to spend on) more and more astro-goodies. In part that is necessity. Post-pandemic, there ain’t as much astrostuff to spend on. Mostly, though, as the autumn of your Old Uncle’s time on this world deepens to winter, observing is more important to me than buying. And most of my observing is now right back where it began all those decades ago, in the backyard…

And so, we’ve come to summer in Chaos Manor South’s backyard. This is a better time for me to view the spring deep sky objects than earlier on. They are across the Meridian, into the west, and out of the trees and the most egregious part of the Possum Swamp light dome. Oh, there are more bugs than there were, and it’s hotter and muggier, but at least Suzie the SeeStar, and my friendly old (don’t tell her I called her that) ETX, Charity Hope Valentine, and I, can get a better good look at the great galaxies of Spring.

The Number 13!

And how your Old Uncle does run on! But maybe that has always been one of the strengths of this here ‘blog; leastways, that’s what I tell myself. But, onward to Coma Berenices! I had set out to do this with Charity about a year ago but got sidetracked. I am happy to have finally been able to set the girl loose on the amazing DSOs of Coma. The objects here are in the same order as in “The Tresses of Berenice” chapter in The Urban Astronomer’s Guide. If you’d like to buy a copy and follow along, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings none, but I don’t insist upon it.

Nota Bene:  The imaging was done over the course several evenings, and the visual work on a couple of separate nights…

Do you have to be crazy to do deep sky astronomy in Possum Swamp at the height of a Gulf Coast summer? No, but it helps <badda-bing!>. Me and the girls, Charity and Suzie, did our best, but every evening was plagued by haze and often by drifting clouds. There were nights when it didn’t get much under 90F till near midnight.  Suzie’s exposure times were limited, 30 minutes being about as long as she could often go. Sometimes, Charity and I would cool our heels for quite a spell while waiting for the sky to improve.

M3

Yeah, yeah, I know, Skeeter. Messier 3 ain’t in Coma but in nearby Canes Venatici. So what? On any night it's above the horizon, I am gonna take a look at the ruler of the spring globs (not that it has much competition).  Honestly, I didn’t expect much. The sky was literally milk. There wasn’t a Moon in the sky, however, so Charity and I remained hopeful and went that-a-way.

One long ago Urban Astronomer observing run, I turned my scope to Messier 3 from the heavily light polluted backyard of the old Chaos Manor South. That scope happened to be my humongous C11, and I was amply rewarded: “MAN is M3 beautiful! 127x with the C11 reveals many tiny stars from the outer periphery of the cluster and extending right across its core.”

Beautiful M3...

Alas, that C11, Big Bertha, is long gone to a new home, and I had to make do with Missy’s 5-inches of mirror. Yes, there’s less light pollution out here in the suburbs than there was in the Garden District, but the night I observed this big boy with the C11 was just better, light pollution or no. Oh, it was easy enough to see the cluster when Charity’s slew stopped—she put the glob smack in the middle of the field of my 26mm Meade Plössl —but there wasn’t much to see. A round blob with some slight hint of granularity. My old trick of increasing magnification didn’t help. Going from 75x to 125x with a 15mm widefield Synta ocular made the glob disappear into the bright background this time.

Susie? As you can see, she delivered a credible M3, even with just 21 minutes of exposure. Despite the icky skies, Messier 3 shined on—yeah—just like some crazy diamond. Not only that, one of my favorite little “field” galaxies, NGC 5263, shows off its minute disk in the shot. The image, by the way, is nearly unprocessed. It’s just the .jpg that Suze sent to my phone after she stacked it. I adjusted levels a bit, but that was it.

M64

Hokay, over to tonight’s stomping ground, Coma Berenices. I began where Urban Astronomer begins, with one of the constellation’s showpieces, M64, the Blackeye galaxy.  When Miss Charity stopped her weasels-with-tuberculosis slewing noise and I put my eye to the eyepiece, there the Blackeye was. Well, the galaxy, anyway. Given the sky and the fact M64 is now getting down in the west, I had to guess at the black eye, the dark spot near the M64's nucleus. I thought I could detect it with the 15mm Expanse eyepiece, but that verged on wishful thinking.

Which was really not much different from what I’d seen with my 6-inch Newtonian and younger eyes those years ago at Chaos Manor South: “I convinced myself I saw evidence of the black eye, but, in truth, I’m not sure if I saw it or not. It’s incredibly subtle in this aperture in the light pollution…”  Wanna make the dark feature pop out in the suburbs? 10-inches of telescope and high power on a night of steady seeing is what is needed.

It should be no surprise by now that The Suzie laughed at the minor challenge of the Blackeye. Not only is the feature starkly visible in her images, enlarging the picture and doing some processing revealed surprising detail. Other than cropping, the pic here is, again, purty much as it came out of the telescope.

NGC 4565

There are some deep sky objects that never look bad. Almost any telescope and any sky will give you something of them. That said, NGC 4565, the vaunted Flying Saucer Galaxy is a galaxy, and no other variety of deep sky object is more damaged by light pollution. Nevertheless, one spring eve I had a go at the ‘Saucer with my C11 downtown… 

With direct vision at 127x, NGC 4565 first appears as a round nebulous blob about 1’ or less in diameter with a tiny, bright star-like nucleus.  A little averted vision quickly reveals the edge-on disk that forms the saucer. I’m confident I’m seeing at least 5’ of disk on either side of the core.”

Blackeye lookin' good!

I didn’t mention the equatorial dust lane because I didn’t see it. If I did see the attractive adjacent saucer, NGC 4562, I didn’t mention it—and I do not remember ever seeing it from the Chaos Manor South backyard.

I was afraid Charity’s answer to “Have you see the saucers?” would be NO. My best girl surprised me though, turning up 4565 without fuss in the 26mm Super Plössl. That said, on this eve we didn’t get farther than the “round, nebulous blob” stage, and I’m not convinced I saw a trace of the nucleus, either.

By the time Suze set her sights on the Saucer, it was riding high, and I didn’t think she’d have much trouble with it. I did know that the higher an object, the more apparent the field rotation, but that isjust the way it is with an alt-azimuth mount. Anyhow, Suzie’s shot shows off the nucleus, the bulge of the The-Day-The-Earth-Stood-Still flying saucer, and the equatorial dust lane.  Zooming in even hints at irregularity in the dust-lane. NGC 4562 is easy to see. All that in a mere 25 minute of exposure.

M53

M53 is OK, it really is. But it definitely plays second fiddle to M3. Its main problem is it’s a little small. Resolution is not at all difficult, though, as I found with my urban 6-inch: “Round with a grainy, diffuse core. As I continue to stare…I’m surprised to see stars popping out at the edges.”

That must have been a way above average night. On the night me and Charity were given, the 5-inch MCT required 200x and some averted imagination to pull some stars out of the soup. They were impossible to hold steady and winked in and out like far-distant fireworks.

Charity’s rendition of M53 is pretty pleasing. 22 minutes shows a fine spray of stars and even shows color in them. But you know what? In some ways I prefer her 4-minute exposure. Almost as many stars, and a more even background.

NGC 5053

Lurking near M53 is its little-buddy glob, NGC 5053.  It really is Gilligan to the Skipper of M53. It is loose, very loose, looking much more like an open cluster than a globular (a quick glance at its color-magnitude diagram, however, shows it to be a glob). It is not easy for any telescope in the city—I wasn’t always successful with it even with my 12-inch, Old Betsy.

I think my NexStar 11 GPS did very well to show a few of its stars and the vague general haze that forms the flattened body of the cluster. But it wasn’t much, no not much at all. In the ETX 125PE? Was it there or was it not there at all? I had a tough time deciding. Switching eyepieces, doing lots of looking, and using every visual trick in the book—averted vision, jiggle the scope, etc.—made me decide I’d seen some hint of this toughie.

What’s tough for my aged eyes isn’t at all difficult for young lady Suzie. Her 17 minutes of exposure gave The Blah-blah-blah Cluster (my nickname for it) form and substance. Lots of teeny stars. It made me wonder if a darker sky and a longer exposure could have made it look a little like a glob, as shots from good skies do.

And so, the hour grew late—as your aged Uncle reckons such things now—the dew began to fall ever more heavily, and it was time to wrap up my birthday evening backyard deep sky tour.  Soon, Charity was safely in her case, and I was again ensconced on the couch with the felines watching Project Mercury videos on YouTube to the tune of cold 807s for me and mucho catnip for them.

Postscript… RIP Charity?

The “Tresses” chapter in The Urban Astronomer’s Guide goes on to seven more objects beyond NGC 5053. Why aren’t they here? Because Charity and I did not get to observe them. Just as we finished with NGC 5053, disaster struck. I hit the mode key to select the next DSO…and nothing happened. I mashed it again…and hieroglyphics appeared briefly on the Autostar display before it went blank. I cycled the power, and it was clear the Autostar was booting, just no display.

Next morning, I opened up the HC cleaned the ribbon cable connection with Deoxit, reseated it, etc. No joy. It appears the display is gone. I am examining my options. I could pay a lot of money for a used Autostar on eBay that might last a while or might not. Buying a new Autostar/Audiostar is out of the question.

As you may have heard, Meade has gone out of business along with Orion. There’ve been no official announcements, but it’s clear these companies, at least under their current owner, are GONE PECANS. Even if they weren’t gone, the Autostar, like a lot of other Meade items, has been unavailable for quite some time. Sure, I could defork Charity’s OTA and put her on another mount… but it just wouldn’t be the same.

Miss Charity Hope Valentine 2004 - 2024.

What will I do? What will I do? For now, nothing. I’ll hang back and see if the Meade situation resolves itself somehow. In the meantime, the role of uber-portable goto scope (mostly all I use) will be taken on by a 6-inch f/5 SkyWatcher Newtonian. It hurts my heart to think about the end of observing with Miss Valentine, but however things turn out, we sure had a wonderful 20 years together.