Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

Yes, I intended to continue the Messier Project this month…but… Hurricane Isaias came through and I wound up not being able to get into the backyard until my prime targets for the month, the crowd of globulars in Ophiuchus, were in the trees…

Talk about synchronicity, muchachos. Last month in the AstroBlog article about my new (ahem) Tasco, I mentioned A Key to Worlds Beyond, the little book/booklet Tasco once included with their telescopes. A copy had come with the 11TE reflector I bought in 1976, and I’d liked it—a lot.  Unfortunately, fifty years and many moves later my copy of “Key” had disappeared. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.

Then, a week or so after Issue 631 (“The Good Tasco Redux”) went live, I was looking for something or other in the mover’s boxes we brought from the old Chaos Manor South and had “temporarily” stored on shelves in the carport. I opened one, looked in, and what should I see? Amazingly, almost unbelievably, A Key to Worlds Beyond! It was still in good shape despite minor dogears. “This must be A SIGN,” thought Unk. A sign of what, I didn’t and don’t know, but I took the book out, sat down with it, and am moved to share my thoughts on it with you.

Where did this little book come from and why was it written? And by whom? As the mid-1960s came in, the public’s attention was focused on NASA and outer space. Tasco was importing and selling plenty of telescopes from the simple 11TE Newtonian to the advanced and impossibly expensive 20TE refractor. I don’t know who at the importer suggested they needed something a little more substantial than brief assembly instructions to help their customers with their new telescopes—maybe it was Tasco’s owner, George Rosenfield, himself. Somebody did, and Arthur P. Smith was contracted to write it for them.

Art Smith was a pretty big name in the amateur astronomy of the 60s. Hell, even us kid members of our quasi-astronomy club, The Backyard Astronomy Society had heard of him. He was an astro bigwig. That I remember. After I pulled A Key to Worlds Beyond out of that moving box I thought I’d try to find out more about the author, but details on him are surprisingly scanty on the web. The basics?

Arthur P. Smith was the director of the Southern Cross Observatory, a facility of the Miami Museum of Science. While I don’t think he was ever professionally associated with Miami’s Space Transit Planetarium (now the Frost Planetarium), he urged and supported its construction. In fact, he’s known as “The Father of the Space Transit Planetarium.” The late Jack Horkhemier, Director of that planetarium, was later instrumental in the establishment of the Astronomical League’s Arthur P. Smith Award in recognition of Art’s contributions (Smith was AL President from 1964-1966). The Star Hustler was not shy about saying that without Arthur Smith he wouldn’t have become interested in astronomy.

So, Smith was an accomplished amateur astronomer and astronomy educator when Tasco came to him with their idea about a guide to telescopes and astronomy to be packed-in with their scopes. Why Smith specifically, though? Sure, he was prominent enough in our small community, being the AL’s President at the time, but why him? Probably because he was a local; Tasco was based in the Miami suburb of Miramar.

That’s all I know about Arthur P. Smith. Did he write other books about astronomy—or anything else? I haven’t found references to any. I have heard he contributed to Horkheimer’s TV program, but that is it. If any of you can fill in the gaps (I haven’t even been able to determine the dates of his birth and death) please let me know. Anyhow, Arthur was contracted to do the work, and in 1966 Tasco published the result under their own imprint and began including the 62 page A Key to Worlds Beyond with their astronomical telescopes.

How did Art do with the book?  Let’s find out…

In Chapter I, we begin quite naturally with Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton and their two different designs of telescope, the refractor and the reflector. I suspect most new owners, old or young, would have at best skimmed this and skipped to the part about setting up the telescope. With the Sun going down on Christmas Day, who wants to hear about this stuff? We want to get the new telescope into the backyard!

Finally in that backyard in the latter part of the chapter, Art helps us with balancing the scope, getting the mount polar aligned if it’s a German equatorial, and aligning the finder. There’s not much to criticize other than that author suggests the reader rely on Polaris for finder alignment and getting the main scope focused initially. To the surprise of most novices, the oft-talked-about North Star is not prominent and it’s better to use the brightest star visible for these tasks, which are surprisingly difficult for beginners. That’s a minor quibble. Smith does a good job of helping us get the new telescope ready to go in just four pages. We hear about everything from differences in telescope mounts to information about eyepieces, including which to use when.

Chapter II educates us as to what to expect from our telescope—sort of. Smith does have some wise words to share, “Your first views through a small telescope may seem somewhat disappointing, but as time goes by, you’ll find that seeing through a telescope is an acquired art,” to paraphrase Sir William Herschel. Wise words, yes, but I’d have preferred stronger ones like, “Don’t expect a 60mm or even a 100mm telescope to deliver images like pictures in books taken with long exposures and giant professional telescopes.” While Art does give us some idea as to what various objects will look like later on, he could have done a better job with misplaced expectations from the beginning. Misplaced expectations are what killed many a new Tasco, not any inherent lack of quality.

The succeeding chapters, III and IV, cover some valuable topics like astronomical seeing and appropriate magnifications for various scopes and objects. Also, some not so valuable ones, like choosing a telescope based on your budget. If I were writing Worlds Beyond, I would have shortened this material by half or eliminated it altogether and carried on with what’s in Chapter V. Why, for example, go on about which scopes cost how much and which are more-better-gooder, when the person reading this little book already has a telescope they are enthusiastic about and anxious to use? Let’s look at some cool stuff in the sky!

Which we finally do in Chapter V, “Finding Your Way About in the Sky.” Here, Smith takes us through the northern skies, season by season. Obviously, there’s a limit to how much he can do in seven small pages, but there is enough to get a newbie started. I sure wish this had come with my first Tasco, a 3-inch reflector, in 1965. Oh, how much easier getting started would have been if I’d had Arthur Smith at my elbow telling me, “Orion, the giant hunter of mythology is one of the brightest of winter’s constellations. High in the southeast in December, the figure can be located by spotting the three bright stars in a straight line which make up the belt.” Instead, in the beginning I had to wander the skies rather aimlessly with only the aid of the Little Golden Book, Stars.

As we travel the sky from Winter to Spring to Summer to Autumn, we are directed to the deep sky wonders to be found in the seasons’ constellations, beginning with Winter’s M42, that funny-looking “hazy star” in the middle of Orion’s sword. “Pick up this hazy star in your telescope and you’ll be gazing at a tremendous swirling cloud of gas…the Great Nebula in Orion.” As we move from season to season, we get more of the brightest wonders in similar fashion. Unfortunately, after a measly five pages we are done. Oh, if only THIS had taken up at least half the book! Or more!

Not that what follows is bad. The chapters on observing the Sun and planets are brief but mostly OK. Your old Uncle was somewhat “bemused” (this is a family-friendly blog) at the solar observing section wherein the author strongly cautions (as he should) the new observer to only observe the Sun by projecting it on an included projection screen or a piece of cardboard. Bemused because many of the Tasco telescopes of the era came with inherently dangerous eyepiece Sun filters. He does caution against using a Sun filter without a Herschel wedge (a beginner won’t have one or know what one is), but he should have been much more explicit:  “DON’T USE AN EYEPIECE SUN FILTER even if one came with your telescope!” He should also have been more specific about Tasco telescopes and what did and did not come with them.

The planetary section is better, but there are things here that shouldn’t be and some that aren’t that should be. The latter includes information about how to find the suckers. You wouldn’t think finding Saturn would be a problem, but it was for me as a kid. Tables showing the constellations the major planets will be “in” for the next few years could easily have been included and superfluous things could have been left out. What could have been left out? Well, the section on Pluto for one. You wouldn’t be seeing that sucka even if you had the bucks for the 20TE 100mm refractor. What is the biggest omission, though? We only—unbelievably—get a few paragraphs about the Moon. Selene would have been the prime target for the small scopes Tasco sold and deserved a chapter unto herself. Or more.

What could a chapter on the Moon have replaced? The next two. The first is on using star charts. Chapter VIII is sufficient as far as general information goes, but it’s not specific enough to be of real value. Smith should have told his novice WHICH star charts and where to get them. Norton’s Star Atlas, for example, which was readily available at the time this book was published, and which was a natural for a beginner. Some talk about it, a few pictures, maybe guidance for the next, more advanced, set of charts, and this chapter would have been worthy of inclusion. As it is? Nope.

Chapter IX, Setting Circles, is even less useful. Oh, Art’s instructions for calibrating setting circles are clear, but so what? Tiny circles on a telescope whose mount has had only the roughest of polar alignments imaginable are going to be a source of nothing but frustration. When I was a kid, I pointed the polar axis of my Edmund Palomar Junior in the general direction of Polaris and expected those little circles to lead me to countless wonders. Ha!

Chapter X and Smith is on the upswing again. “Accessories” is something every new observer needs to know about, and the person who’s received a Tasco may not have realized such things existed. We get decent guidance on improving a refractor’s dew shield, making a solar projection screen, using a clock drive, attaching a camera adapter, and a few other things. The only problem is (again) “too short and not enough information.” “OK. Sounds like a clock drive would be a good thing for my 11TE reflector. Where do I get one?”

The following chapter, Chapter XI, “Photography with Your Telescope” is, again, OK, but there is, yet again, not enough hard data to make it worth much. I would go so far as to say this chapter should have been left out and the next one, Chapter XII, “The Messier List” expanded. Covering astrophotography is silly when you’re mostly talking kids with brand new 60mm refractors that were under the Christmas tree.

On to Chapter XII. The basic M list is here and that’s good and all, but with more room more about how each object would look in a small scope could have been included. For example, “M92 is a fine object for all telescopes but small in a 60mm;” “M101 is very difficult visually in suburban skies with even large telescopes and is far dimmer in the eyepiece than the listed magnitude suggests,” and so forth.

Chapter XIII, “Care of Your Telescope,” is alright. We get things a novice does need to know, like, “Don’t put the cap on if your lens is wet with dew, let it dry first…” The problem is the same thing that makes the whole book a little less helpful than it could have been for the proud new owner of a Tasco telescope: It is too general in nature. This book was commissioned by Tasco and should have had more specifics about their most popular scopes. Instead, there is vague general language, “Consult the Manufacturer if you need accessories or parts,” instead of, “Phone or write Tasco in Miramar, Florida at this address…”

Arthur Smith doesn’t finish strongly, either, I am sorry to say. The final chapter, Chapter XIV, “Where do We Go from Here?” doesn’t tell the novice where to go at all. What they get is “Don’t overlook the local public library as a ready source of [astronomy] books.” What this chapter should have been was a bibliography telling Joe or Jane novice astronomer about Sky and Telescope Magazine, Patrick Moore’s books, The New Handbook of the Heavens, Norton’s Star Atlas, the Edmund Scientific catalog, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Have I been too hard on a book many of us remember fondly? Maybe so. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and this little thing is charming all these long years later. Charming enough that I was moved to have a little star party in the backyard, just me and my 60mm Tasco, to have a look at some of the objects Arthur Smith commends to us…

To begin, let me dispel an idea I’ve heard from younger observers who didn’t live through the 60mm era. They have the mistaken idea that using one of these small telescopes is not much different from using 50 or 60mm binoculars. It is quite different. You have more focal length and thus more—much more—magnification, and that changes what you can see. You won’t have the widefield views of binocs, but when you point the telescope at a globular cluster (for example) you can tell it is a cluster—or at least a faint star. Try to pick out M15 at 10x. Also, being on a mount and being able to change eyepieces make for an entirely different sort of instrument.

So, out to the backyard went Miss Tiny, my 60mm Tasco, and I. Her on my SkyWatcher AZ-4 mount. How was set up? When I got the mount 15 years ago, I thought it was the most portable thing I'd used in a long time. It was nothing to waltz outside with my 80mm SkyWatcher refractor onboard. Now? I remove the 60mm Tasco first and still huff and puff just getting the AZ-4 out the door!

In the Chaos Manor South’s Back forty and set up in my accustomed spot with a little aluminum camp table for the eyepiece box, we got to work. In that eyepiece box (that came from Orion nearly 40 years ago)? A motley assortment including some of Celestron’s old silver-top Plössls, wide-field Synta 1.25-inch oculars, and even a Vixen orthoscopic or three. Charts? I didn’t imagine I’d need any for our casual voyaging on this night, but if I did, I had SkySafari Pro on the iPhone in my pocket. First stop? M13, who was now sinking—and fast.

M13

The superstar glob of the northern sky was something of a surprise. I’d looked at it with the Tasco on a poorer night a while back, but on this much improved evening (though still with a touch of haze), M13 looked noticeably larger than it had. It was obviously a deep sky object, a globular (or maybe a galaxy), at first glance. Not surprisingly, no magnification I tried gave even a hint of graininess. For me, it takes my 80mm WO fluorite Zenithstar APO at fairly high magnification to do that. In Tiny, M13 had that classic appearance in a small scope us old timers remember: “A comet with no tail and a brighter center.” Or, in more personal terms for me, much like it used to look many decades ago with my 4-inch Palomar Junior reflector.  

M15

M15, Pegasus’ brilliant globular star cluster was next. How did it look? It was, as in my old f/5 Short Tube 80mm, a little challenging to pick out as a glob. At lower power, the cluster with its intense core masquerades as a bright field star. Higher magnification, however, 60x with a 12mm ocular, revealed its nature. No, again, no hint of resolution, but it wasn’t just a round fuzzy. The center seemed to assume a jellyfish shape with very faint “arms” splaying out. It sure looked better in the f/12 (well, f/11.6) than it had in the ol’ Short Tube 80.

M31/32

Off the two of us, me and my girl, Tiny, went to M31/M32, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda and its friendly little companion. To give the short and sweet, at 26x the Andromeda Galaxy looked much more like a galaxy than it ever had in my old Palomar Junior thanks to the wider field eyepieces and the Tasco's shorter focal length. There was that same old blob of a core, but the disk looked far more like the disk of a galaxy than in my old Pal Junior to disappointed young eyes. I tried 18x with a 40mm eyepiece, but the suburban light pollution was just too much for that. M32 was pretty, looking star-like. I hunted in vain for the other bright/nearby companion galaxy, NGC 205/M110, but am not sure I saw it. Conditions were beginning to worsen in advance of an approaching storm front.

I had hoped to stay up long enough to catch the Double Cluster, but no dice. The combination of marching clouds, a waning Moon rising, and Unk’s bedtime (usually not long after 9:30pm for this oldster) compelled me to throw the big switch and call it a night. I will admit I wimped out, taking Tiny’s OTA back inside but leaving the AZ-4 outside till morning.

What didn’t I mention? I had A Key to World’s Beyond with me the whole time and kept referring to it. When I was on M31, I read,

“[U]sing your finder, sweep northward two stars [from the “middle” star in Andromeda] and you’ll come upon the Great Nebula in Andromeda, brightest of the galaxies which lie outside our own. The distance to this hazy elliptical patch of light is two million light years.”

Just reading Arthur’s words while at my beloved telescope made me feel good in a slightly ineffable way. No. I’ll go further than that. It made me feel young again.