Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Muchachos, down here on the borders of the Great Possum Swamp it sure has been that proverbial long, hot summer. I’ve been able to do some astronomy here and there, but not much, campers, not much. I hope conditions will begin to change as August takes its place in the rearview mirror, but I am not counting on that. In September and October, we here in the ‘Swamp really begin watching the stormy Gulf of Mexico…

SOOO…. No big observing plans or projects till the thunderboomers at least reduce their intensity and frequency. What, then? I got out last month and captured my yearly M13 with the SeeStar S50, Suzie. One reason for using the Smartscope was I wanted to try out her new equatorial mode. Worked fine. I had no problem doing a polar alignment, and The Suze tracked amazingly well, dropping nary a frame over the course of a half-hour. Yep, worked fine, and I thought I was done experimenting with Suzie for now.

Not so. First off, I hadn’t tried longer exposures, longer subframe exposures, that is. EQ mode makes exposing for longer than 10 seconds more practical, and the SeeStars can now go up to a minute. How would that work? I also wanted to test the scope’s new 4K feature. I thought ZWO would rest on their laurels for a while after nailing down EQ mode, but they didn’t. Just weeks ago, they added the option to have the app upscale your pix to 4K resolution. What was that all about?

In typical Unk fashion, howsomeever, that is putting the dadgum cart ahead of the nag. Traditionally, I’ve offered an account of my birthday doings here, though your routine-loving correspondent’s b-day has been much the same year after year. In homage to my days as a space-crazy kid when I’d spend my summers with my head out in the stars, one feature of Unk’s big day is space modeling. I didn’t do much this year, but as you can see, I did continue (slowly) with the launch umbilical tower (LUT) for my completed Airfix Saturn V model. ‘Twas fun, and maybe I’ll pay more attention to my little sub-hobby e’en as summer wanes away.

Natcherly, on Unk’s birthday evening (last month) he and Miss Dorothy made our way to my favorite Mexican (well, Tex-Mex) restaurant, El Giro’s. There, Unk ordered his usual, the Number 13: Chili rellenos, tamale, burrito. Yes, of course there were many, many cold 807s in the mix in celebration of your old Uncle’s 72^nd trip around Sol.

Oh, how Unk loves the number 13!

What’s that? You’re surprised I wasn’t shy about givin’ my age? I’ll tell you what, my young friends, when I hit 70, I decided there was no reason for me to be coy about my age any longer. That emperor has been running around buck nekkid for a while now. I’m old. I look at least older and sometimes act that way. Luckily, only sometimes.

Anyhoo, there’s no denying it. My 60s were fun and rather wild in subdued fashion. Hell, back then I thought nothing of yukking it up in El Giro’s or Heroes till, damn, 10 o’clock at night with me mates! But those days are gone. As they say, “Fun is Fun but Done is Done.” I am feeling fine most of the time, though.

Yep, I am I feeling good, friends, and we are even making plans to attend our area’s long-running and—yes—legendary star party, the Deep South Star Gaze. I am pleased to say it will be back at the Feliciana Retreat Center this November, which furnishes nice, small motel-type rooms with air conditioning and showers, just right for an (ulp!) senior like Uncle Rod. My attendance had dwindled away to practically nothing during the years the star party was at a different and more spartan facility, but I hope to be back now and keep on being back for as long as I can be.  

“Blah-blah-blah. What else happened on your birthday, Unk?” Skeeter, that was about it. I missed out on my other traditional birthday activity this year, activating a park for Parks on the Air. I was all set to head for Gulf Shores State Park. Batteries were charged and my little G90 transceiver was all checked out. But it was just too blamed hot. Even with them Gulf breezes, even under shade trees. Ah well, just like serious observing, serious POTAing will wait for cooler WX. 

I set Suze up in the backyard on the Manfrotto tripod and waited for darkness late on a sultry Tuesday afternoon. The weather station display in the radio shack said, “Feels Like 102.7,” and the sky was festooned with clouds. I was doubtful, but the weather services, including the usually dependable Astrospheric, agreed it was gonna clear by dark. Even if it did, Astrospheric also predicted sky transparency would be just this side of skim milk.

It turned out Astrospheric was right on the money. When astronomical twilight came, it was clear. Well sort of; the haze was as predicted awful heavy, worsening my suburban light pollution. There were also drifting high altitude clouds. I shrugged, “Well, we’re set up, might as well give her a go, I reckon.” I got my girl polar aligned.

That done, I retired to the couch in the cool den with the felines and sent Suzie to the Great Globular, instructing her to take 20 second exposures of M13 till I told her to stop. While she was doing her thing, the cats and I amused ourselves by watching YouTube videos. Tommy, Chaos Manor South’s resident black cat, favors programs about the war in the Pacific, especially Midway, and—even moreso— “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” That is just what we watched until Tommy fell asleep and began snoring heavily as 9pm came in.

I did have to keep an eye on Suzie early on. I’d set her up for, yeah, 20-second subframes, but we weren’t having much success. Less than 50% of ‘em were keepers. After 20 minutes or so, we had maybe 7 minutes worth. The reason was, I thought, twofold: poor conditions and a less than good polar alignment. When I’d done the alignment, I’d been sweating in the high humidity, and was already weary (Unk ain’t quite recovered from the Huntsville Hamfest). I just got the numbers in the green and called it “good enough.”

I know I need to do better and have a SkyWatcher EQ wedge on the way. The Manfrotto is a very good tripod, and very steady indeed, but there is no way to adjust the scope’s tilt with any precision. I was a little disappointed, but there weren’t nothing for it… I backed off to 10-second subframes, let Suze run for just under an hour, and called it a night. A look at the clock showed we were coming up on ten freaking thirty, quite the late one for Unk in these latter days.

The next morning, I imported my M13s into the PC out in the Batcave (my radio shack/workshop of the telescopes) and had a look at them on a large monitor. How were they? OK. Not bad, anyway. Well, nothing to write home about, friends. The high humidity and scattered light pollution made for blotchy, off-color backgrounds. I had to do something I rarely worry about with SeeStar images: I ran the pix through Graxpert to make them look at least presentable.

Hows about the 4K business? Wasn’t much to say about it.  On the live screen before beginning my exposures, I’d touched the three-dot menu and turned on 4K. Or thought I had. By the light of day, it appeared my finished images were the same resolution as always. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong, and the instructions from ZWO are on the vague side, “Turn on 4K before framing.” I assumed (you know what they say about that word) they meant “before beginning a capture sequence.” I thought that was what I’d done but wasn’t sure. I had noted that the switch turned red when I turned it on.

Oh, well. It looked like the next evening’s skies would again be passable if not great. In fact, it ‘peared Wednesday might be a smidge clearer in advance of—yep—another storm front. So, Unk resolved to give the 4K stuff another try. I set The Suze up in the back forty again, and when it was dark enough (not till around 8:45, damn this DST) again polar aligned her.

Night 2, 10-second subframes...

This time I took considerably more pains with the procedure. I used my phone’s angle indicator app to get the tilt right at 31 degrees before beginning, and set the azimuth dead on 000 magnetic north (not much magnetic deviation in these parts) with the phone’s compass. When I began the polar alignment, the numbers were in the green from the get-go, but I refined them best I could.

I was more concerned about the 4K feature than getting 20-second sub-frames, so I set the scope for 10-second subs, letting them run for half an hour. That done, I tried 20-second ones again. This time Suze only rejected a single frame over the course of half an hour. Whether that was due to my better polar alignment, better conditions, or a combination of the two, I do not know.

Next mornin’, I again dumped the pictures to the PC and wound up scratching my head. Yes, they were twice the normal 1080x1920 resolution, just as they should have been after upscaling. But when I brought up the previous night’s photos, so were they, 2160x3840. What the—? I can only presume I got on the wrong directory when I was checking the shots the previous morning. I didn’t pay much attention to the dates on the images and, well, one M13 with the same scope is pretty much like any other. At any rate, the 4K feature does work and does seem to make the images look smoother and just better. It ain’t like night and day, but I do see a difference. Yes, I know, “TANSTAAFL” applies. Upscaling introduces noise, but I couldn’t see that it was any worse in my upscaled frames.  

And that was that. 4K works, and longer subframe exposures are practical now when called for. Were they in my case? Not really. In suburban light pollution, 10-second subs will often be more practical if you ain’t up to doing a lot of processing, which your ignernt old Uncle don’t know how to do anyway. In the wintertime or from a darker site, I suspect it will be a far different story.  

On the Chaos Manor South horizon? The SkyWatcher EQ wedge will be here on Saturday, and I will report on my results with it in the next article rat-cheer. What will that be about other than the wedge? I’d like to say it will concern my big (sort of), new (sort of) observing project. As above, though, I ain’t convinced September will bring better skies to Possum Swamp. We shall see, muchachos, we shall see…