Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

Well, well, well, muchachos… November is almost here, and it looks as if we in Possum Swamp may have dodged a bullet hurricane-wise this season. The skies had been improving since the thunderstorms of summer diminished, and that had got me to thinking it might be time to do some visual deep sky observing in the ol’ backyard. Maybe even with my “big” telescope in these latter days, Zelda, a Zhumell (GSO) 10-inch Dobsonian.

Maybe. While clearer and drier as September came in, the sky could still be hazy, and there is considerable light pollution here at the suburban Chaos Manor South. Not horrible like downtown, no, but enough to make locating objects with a finder scope, much less a zero-power red-dot finder, a right good pain in the rear. I got to thinking I might want to put digital setting circles on Zelda.

If you’re a long-time fan of the Little Ol’ AstroBlog from Possum Swamp, you know I had DSCs on my long-gone truss tube Dob, Old Betsy. Sky Commanders they was, and they worked a treat. I think I saw more with Bets in the first year or two I had the ‘Commanders than I’d seen with her the previous decade. So, I started shopping. But it turned out ordering circles for the Dob wouldn't be so easy this time.

The problem, it appeared, would be mounting the encoders, the widgets that tell the DSC computer where the scope is pointed, to Zelda’s somewhat different altitude and azimuth axes. She is nicely equipped with smooth bearings and large tension knobs for altitude and a lazy-Susan-style azimuth bearing system, but those things make encoder mounting more complicated than with a simpler “Teflon on Ebony Star” Dobbie.

I did find a set of DSCs available with an encoder hardware kit for my GSO, but it was expensive, would have to be ordered from overseas, and it appeared I’d have to ship them one of the mount’s altitude trunnions for modification. All the way to Australia. That seemed like a deal-breaker to moi. I kept looking and found a digital circle vendor stateside who could provide encoders and encoder mountings for Z, but still…more than I was comfortable paying given—to be honest—the limited number of nights I observe with the Z-girl. If only there were another way…

Then, I ran across a YouTube video about that “another way.” It seemed there was a (free) program for smartphones, both iOS and Android smartphones, AstroHopper, that used a phone to replace digital setting circles. Unk was mighty skeptical, however.

Folks tried that years ago when smartphone astronomy apps that could find sky objects with the aid of a phone’s compass became popular. Oh, they worked well enough to point the way to naked eye objects but weren’t nearly accurate enough for use with a telescope. I didn’t imagine anything had changed, but I watched some more YouTube videos on AstroHopper anyhow.

Surprisingly, the consensus seemed to be AstroHopper does work with a telescope and delivers accuracy similar to DSCs.  I did note video posters seemed to have a range of results from “works great” to “well, sorta works.” Sounded to me like I should at least have a look-see at AstroHopper’s website, which I did:  AstroHopper - Web Application for Sky Navigation Manual.

What I found there sounded encouraging and convincing. Obviously, Artyom Beilis, the author, has been working on his app for a while and it seems rather mature. Yeah, it sounded good enough to make me want to at least give it a try:

AstroHopper (formerly known as SkyHopper) is a free and open-source web application developed by Artyom Beilis that helps to find objects across the night sky. It does this by allowing an accurate hop from a well-known and easily identifiable star to other fainter stars or DSO by measuring changes in pointing angles of the cell phone using built in gyroscope and gravity sensors. It is similar to Digital Setting Circles implemented in a smart phone.

Then came the hard part, figuring out how to mount the phone on the telescope’s tube. It needs to be secure and needs to be pointing along the scope’s optical axis. I had a couple of ideas how I might do that if ‘Hopper worked, but I certainly wasn’t going to go drillin’ holes in poor Zelda’s OTA without being convinced this was for real. The solution, then?

What came to mind was a smartphone camera mount for telescopes I’d bought some time back to take afocal Moon pictures for an S&T Test Report. Maybe I could use the phone-holder part of it to affix Siri to Zelda’s tube temporarily?  I taped the holder to Z with blue painters’ tape (to avoid damaging Zelda’s finish) using enough tape to ensure the iPhone would be held as securely as possible. I inserted my iPhone 14 Pro Max into the taped-down camera mount and called that “good enough.”

It looked wacky and Rube Goldberg-ish, and as a mild September evening came in, I didn’t have much hope. Hell, I felt a little silly, y’all. Nevertheless, I got Miss Z into the backyard, inserted a reasonably low power (50x), reasonably wide-field (70⁰) Bresser 25mm ocular into Zelda’s focuser, and got started.

I hadn’t installed the app on the phone yet. You don’t have to; you can just run it as a web page. Obviously, you have to have an internet connection, though, so if you plan to go to a dark site somewheres without a cell tower signal, you need to install AstroHopper on the phone (full instructions are on the ‘Hopper website). Anyhoo, with the web page up (it was in red-screen mode from the get-go), I set out to put it to the acid test.

When you have the app onscreen, you’ll get step by step instructions as to how to align AstroHopper, but in truth there ain’t much to it. Find a bright star near the object of your desire, center it in the eyepiece, tap “align” on the app, and touch the alignment star (or planet) on the displayed star chart.  Once ‘Hopper says it is aligned, enter your target's designation in a search box and you will be given onscreen directions—a line pointing the way and azimuth and altitude distance figures—to your object. Then, yep, just move the scope to the indicated spot and there you are. That’s what the app said, but, yeah, your skeptical old Uncle was skeptical.

Hokay, alignment star… I was after M13 as a first object, and while Herc was purty high on the September evening when I first gave AstroHopper a go, we were still experiencing some of the humidity and haze of summer, and I thought a brighter star than one of Hercules’ suns would be easier. Alkaid in Ursa Major, the end star of the dipper’s handle, was still well above the horizon. A bit far from the Great Globular, but, well, I was after an acid test. If (more like “when,” I thought) it didn’t work, I’d find a star closer to M13.

Alkaid in the center of the 25mm Bresser’s field (could have rounded up a crosshair eyepiece, but didn’t), I clicked “align,” and chose Alkaid on the map. StarHopper claimed it was aligned, so I typed M13 in the little box and followed the app’s directions to the Great Glob. When it indicated we was there, I put my eye to the eyepiece, expecting absolutely nothing…

Damn! There was M13! Not centered, no, but not on the field edge, either. Howsabout M92? Boom! M57? There was the little smoke ring. M56? Looked better than I thought it would. I was frankly amazed. I can only suppose cell phone compasses and accelerometers have improved a lot over the years. And obviously Mr. Beilis is a talented programmer.

Takeaways? Having an alignment star reasonably close to the target object helps, but it doesn’t have to be right next door. As with many alt-az DSC and goto systems, avoid alignment stars that are near zenith. Also, if you let your phone go to sleep, you will have to realign. It will claim to still be aligned, but it won’t be. Finally, yes, AstroHopper worked. It worked as well as many DSCs and better than some I’ve used. Only aligning on one star and using a compass and accelerometers rather than inherently more accurate encoders means it doesn’t yield the horizon-to-horizon alignment of the Sky Commanders, but for my purposes it is good enough.

Convinced AstroHopper at least worked, the next step for your old Uncle was ginning up some kind o’ more elegant mounting for the iPhone than fricking masking tape.  That was easy enough to do. The camera mount came with a knob-headed bolt that screws into the back of the phone-holder portion. I hated to take an electric drill to Zelda’s beautiful black steel tube, but if AstroHopper worked consistently, I judged doing surgery on the girl would be worth it as it might impel me to get Z under the stars more frequently.

I drilled an appropriate hole in Zeldas’s tube, and after I was done spent a little time cleaning up that hole with a file. Done, I inserted that knob-head bolt through the hole and fastened the phone-holder down. The result looked purty darned good, I must say. Now to see if my original success had been a fluke. Why not undertake “A Trio of Fall Globulars” from The Urban Astronomer’s Guide? The sky was clear, and all were riding high…

To cut to the chase? AstroHopper’s performance the first time out was not a fluke; it did every bit as well on this evening. Casually aligning on a star (no high-power crosshair eyepiece) again yielded good accuracy. I didn’t try to quantify it, but it appeared I could hit targets at least 20⁰ from alignment stars. Most objects were near the center of the field, some were centered, and none was “out.” I was happy with my phone mount, and had remembered to set “lock screen” to “never” so the iPhone didn’t go to sleep and ruin my alignment, so this run went considerably more smoothly than the first one.

So, me and Zelda hopped from globular to globular under (once again) humid and hazy October skies. How did those globs look in the 10-inch? That, muchachos, is a story for next time. While it seemed I’d only been out under the stars a few minutes, the falling dew and the wheeling vault of heaven that had sent old Hercules into the horizon told me Z and I had been voyaging the sky for hours, not minutes. I reluctantly covered the girl and headed inside for TV and Yell with the felines (well, catnip for them). Need I say it? It was a good night, y’all.

The Comet…

Of course, your lazy old Unk saw the comet, but being lazy, waited till Tsuchinshan-ATLAS had rounded the Sun and got into the evening sky before hunting her up. A good buddy of mine and a longtime friend of this here blog, astrophotographer Max Harrell, got some lovely pictures from our local dark site. Alas, the evening he and some other fellers headed out there was my teaching day (and night) at the University. So, I had to be content with the front yard of Chaos Manor South, which offers a view low enough in the west to allow me to spot the visitor.

And spot her visually was about all I did. I scanned around in the correct area with my much-loved Burgess 15x70 binoculars, and finally saw…well…a slightly fuzzy star. My SeeStar, Suzie, laughed at me and told me to go back in the house and have some Rebel Yell while she fetched the comet. Which she did in rather impressive fashion (above) given the sky quality and the comet’s low altitude.

Next Time:  A Trio of Fall Globulars with Zelda and Suzie…

What’s up this month, muchachos? What’s goin’ down at Chaos Manor South? Well, I thought I’d get out and “do” one of the late-summer chapters from The Urban Astronomer’s Guide, maybe one of my favorites, “The Friendly Stars.” Yeah…no.  I’ve revisited that one more than once in the years since the book was published. What then? Howsabout a chapter from somebody else’s observing book? One far more famous than my scribblings?

Set the WABAC machine for a decade ago. In 2014, your just-retired Uncle had finally wrapped up the vaunted Herschel Project and was looking for something to replace it. I thought that might be what I initially called “The Burnham Project,” and later “The BCH Project.” What I planned to do was observe all the objects in Robert Burnham Junior’s justly famous Burnham’s Celestial Handbook.

Well, not quite all of them. There are thousands of bright stars, variable stars, and double and multiple stars in the Handbook if you include the object lists that accompany each constellation’s chapter. A huge number of mostly pedestrian-looking stars would be a bit much, I reckoned, and pared things down, but even the resulting 800 objects began to seem to be that daunting “too much.” So, I thought I’d confine myself to the DSOs Burnham details in the body of each chapter in his “Descriptive Notes.”

That’s what I thought I was gonna do, anyway. Unfortunately, The BCH Project died on the vine. Why? The reasons I gave myself, including that I didn’t feel a “connection” with Burnham, weren’t really the problem. The problem was after three years of observing the Herschel objects like a madman, everything else seemed like small potatoes. Or, maybe even moreso, that I wasn’t quite ready to let the Herschel Project go.

What I really wanted was to relive the years of the Herschel Project. In 2014, my life was changing, and I sure did miss the go-go days of The Project—jumping in the 4Runner and heading for the Chiefland Astronomy Village (and Cedar Key) at the drop of a hat.

So, the BCH Project never did get off the ground. I did some preliminary observing for it and dropped it. I tried again, but no-go. I started looking for something else, some other big project. That failed miserably, as well. The truth, Unk eventually admitted? The Herschel Project was the big observing project of a lifetime, and there was no replacing it.

Today, my perspective is decidedly different. I don’t like to drive the Interstates anymore, and even if I did, there’s no bringing back the Chiefland of a decade or two ago. Latter-day Unk likes relaxed observing, both with telescopes and cameras, in the comforting surroundings of the backyard of the (new) Chaos Manor South. So, as I was wondering what to write about, I got to thinking about the BCH Project again…

The more I thunk, the more fun it sounded, and the more I came to believe I was awful misguided saying I felt no connection to Burnham and his Handbook. Just looking at the covers of the three volumes took me back to the early 1980s when I got my first copies from the old Astronomy Book Club. Between their covers were countless marvels and mysteries I had yet to visit. The deep sky was still relatively new to me, and I turned to its depths with a will. Now, the Handbook is delicious nostalgia, but not just that. Every time I read one of Bob’s DSO descriptions, he teaches me something.

So, the plan was… the plan was…  The BCH Project will be back—in the informal style that suits your now-aged Uncle. No time limits, no object quotas, no rules. It will be simple: When I want to, I will visit one of Burnham’s constellations. I’ll observe his objects visually with one of my instruments and image the wonders in my simple fashion.

Other than “informal,” what’s different from my initial go at Burnham? My decision the first time out to limit myself to just the Descriptive Notes objects won’t do. Some constellations, like Hercules, only describe one or two objects. So, in addition to the Descriptive Notes fuzzies, I’d also observe the choicer deep sky objects in each constellation’s accompanying list. 

Simple. Neat. No trouble at all (I hope). If there are objects in the list I don’t think will look worth a flip (like teeny-tiny planetary nebulae), I’ll skip ‘em:  NO RULES. I am now calling this series “Project BCH,” to distinguish it from the earlier attempts. I swear I will actually DO IT this time, y’all!

Up first? Everybody’s favorite hero and demigod, great Hercules. The night I took the images (with my SeeStar, Suzie) was relatively good. Hazy, sure, but mostly clear. Then came an intermission due to clouds while we waited for Hurricane Helene to pass by well to our East. That brought a spell of clear weather. Even one night (barely) good enough to impel your lazy old Unk to get his 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, into the backyard.

What was notable about that night? Other than the heavy dew? For one thing, I found I can still wrassle the Zhumell Dob into the back forty without much trouble. Oh, it’s not something I’d want to do every day, but I can still do it. What’s really notable is how I sent Miss Z to her targets:  with a cell phone app called “AstroHopper.” More about that next month (maybe); for now, all I'll say is it worked amazingly well, placing anything I asked for in the field of a 70-degree 25mm eyepiece.

Anyhoo, here we go (as above, I skipped the teeny tiny objects in Burnham's’ list) ...

M13

What could I possibly say about this globular star cluster that Bob Burnham didn’t say eloquently in the 15 pages he devoted to the Great Glob?  Not much, muchachos, not much. While much of the science (though not all) Bob gives us is now badly dated, that is OK. The historical background makes reading Burnham’s Descriptive Notes more than worthwhile; it is a joy.

Unk? I did not take a separate image of Messier 13 on this night. After all, I devoted a blog entry to “My Yearly M13” not long back. Old Globbie did photobomb my shot of NGC 6207 and I figgered that was enough. He was looking good, though, showing colors in his stars and considerable resolution in a mere 15 minutes of exposure.

In the eyepiece? Well, it was what it was. Obviously, the 10-inch showed considerable resolution even at 50x. The sky background with the humidity spiking ever higher was gray, however, even at higher magnifications and didn’t make for an overly satisfying view. Yeah, it was what it was, but I have seen far worse.

NGC 6207

In the 10-inch, even on what was turning into what Unk calls "a pretty punk night," the Great Globular wasn't a problem. But NGC 6207 was—a little bit, anyhow.  Ain’t run this one down, yet? It’s a little magnitude 11.65 SA galaxy less than half a degree from M13. Ain’t much to it:  bright core and a little elongated fuzz around that core. The main/only attraction is that it’s close to M13 and in the field with it in a wide field eyepiece under good conditions in a medium-sized scope. The saving grace here is the galaxy is small enough—2’30”—that its light is not badly spread out and it’s fairly “bright” visually.

Well, these weren’t good conditions by any stretch of the imagination. It took about 190x with an 8mm TeleVue Ethos to convince me I was even seeing 6207 on a worsening night (I was now having the fogged eyepiece blues). I saw it, though, if not quite in the field with the Great One.  Suze had no trouble with it whatsoever, even lending the little sprite some form and substance.

What did Burnham say about it? Nuttin’ Honey. NGC 6207 only appears in Hercules' “List of Star Clusters, Nebulae, and Galaxies.” As above, only two deep sky objects, M13 and M92, get Descriptive Notes. And yet, he goes on for 18 pages about what most of us modern observers would deem nondescript stars.  That is not so much a failing as it is just witness to the fact that Burnham’s book is from the amateur astronomy of another age.

M92

As I have often said, M92 ain’t, as some claim, a rival for M13. Even if it were in a constellation where the spotlight wasn’t stolen by an M13, it wouldn’t be top of the pops glob-wise. Let’s face it. It is more like an M30 than an M2, much less an M5. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t good. As Burnham notes, it shows resolution in fairly small telescopes—I’ve seen stars in it with fair ease with my 3-inch APO refractor at high power. It’s considerably looser in structure than brighter M13, making it easier to break into teeny-weeny stars.

Which Miss Zelda did this evening without complaint (I'd imaged M92 with Suzie not long ago, so we skipped this one). Not that it looked that great visually. As did M13, it appeared badly washed out in the eyepiece. But you take what you can get, campers. I was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to see how low ol’ Herc has gotten by mid-evening. By 9:30 local, M13 was barely 30 degrees above the horizon. If you want a last look at the Hero’s wonders, best get on it.

NGC 6229

Did you know there’s another fairly easy globular star cluster in Hercules? There is, little (2.0’) NGC 6229, one of the objects discovered by the sainted Sir William Herschel. This magnitude 9.86 star-clump lies about 11 degrees north of M13. I said “fairly easy,” and the emphasis is definitely on the “fairly.”

The small size of the cluster is both a blessing and a curse. As with NGC 6207, it does keep it reasonably bright, but it’s small enough and still dim enough to be passed over if you don’t really pay attention to what’s in your field. 150x is probably the magnification to begin with. As many observers have noted, what this glob looks like visually is a small, round planetary nebula.

Visually for me on this night? I was purty happy just to see it as that “planetary nebula.” I have achieved resolution of 6229 from good sites under steady seeing, but there wasn’t a prayer of that on this evening. The Suze? As usual, she impressed, not only resolving some of the little guy’s stars, but even showin’ some color in them.

Hercules Galaxy Cluster Abell 2151 and NGC 6045A

I reluctantly passed NGC 6210 by. This wasn’t the night for the tiny Turtle Nebula. Suze doesn’t have enough focal length to show much there other than a fuzz-spot. Oh, I could have applied high magnification to the reptile with Zelda, but, strangely, on this very humid evening the seeing was poor; usually it’s the opposite. Onward to one last object, then. One I considered impossible all the way up until the 1990s, the distant Hercules Galaxy Cluster, which lies some 500 million light years from the Third Stone from the Sun.

The word on this object for amateur astronomers in the 60s – 70s? Burnham does a good job of summing it up with his caption for a 200-inch Hale Reflector picture of the (unnamed) cluster in the book: “DISTANT FIELD OF GALAXIES in HERCULES. A very remote group of galaxies, showing a variety of types in a single photograph.”

Certainly, by the 1990s, I’d seen members of Abell 2151 visually with modern telescopes and eyepieces, and I’d imaged many, many of its members with my old C11, Big Bertha, and my Mallincam Xtreme. But bring home the Hercules Cluster with a 2-inch f/5 telescope? Nah. “That’s just too much for you, ain’t it, Suzie?” She laughed.

You’ll find The Hercules Cluster to the west of the main part of the constellation and the stick figure. It’s near the border with Serpens Caput. I wasn’t sure the SeeStar Atlas includes the Abell clusters, so I searched on the most prominent member, NGC 6045A. Suze slewed that-a-way and began taking her 10-second integrations. Amazingly, 6045 was visible almost immediately, and more members began to pop in as the exposure progressed. Alas, by the time I’d got 21 minutes, the cluster was low and in the limbs of a neighbor’s tree.

That final result? It won’t put your eyes out, but if you zoom in a bit, Suzie’s frame shows a crazy number of wee galaxies. 6045A's wide open barred-spiral shape is even evident. Staring at the unprocessed jpg that Suze sent to my phone, it’s fair to say this old hillbilly’s jaw dropped, nearly to the floor. The freaking Hercules Cluster? With this tiny scope? Man the times they are a-changin’.

 

I had just finished last month’s AstroBlog, muchachos, when I was moved to begin the next one. The way the weather’s been this summer, and the knowledge it will likely get worse as September and October approach, impelled me to get back to work rather than take a break. One late July evening it ‘peared the sky might be good enough for the SeeStar, Suzie, to take a few of her little celestial snapshots. The Gulf beginning to churn with storms, I figgered I’d better get after it. I’d do some visual observing of the objects next break in the clouds. Whenever that was.

“Wut objects, Unk? Wut objects, huh?”  Well, Skeeter, I’ve kinda been on a roll revisiting the chapters of my urban deep sky observing book, The Urban Astrnomer's Guide, so I figgered I’d keep on keepin’ on with that for now. Specifically, with the Cygnus chapter, “Star Nests in Cygnus.” The ol’ Northern Cross would be near-perfectly placed in the east mid evening, and maybe the weather gods would indeed show your ever-hopeful Uncle some mercy.

By “star nests,” natcherly I meant “open (galactic) star clusters.” They were a favorite of mine when Miss Dorothy and I lived downtown in the original Chaos Manor South. They were the one deep sky object I could see easily and well. “Opens” became something of an obsession with moi—one time I set out to view all the clusters in Cassiopeia visible with a 12-inch telescope from an urban backyard (recounted in Urban Astronomer’s “The Cassiopeia Clusters”). That’s a lotta star clusters, campers, but, amazingly, I wasn’t tired of ‘em after that binge and soon went on to survey the Swan’s clutch.

Anyhoo, after checking-in to the Mobile Amateur Radio Club’s Wednesday Night Net, I stuck my head out of the radio shack and had a look. As astronomical twilight came in, it was just as Astrospheric had said: “Mostly clear.” But that blessed clear sky was accompanied by haze and poor, very poor, transparency. Oh, well, as Unk often says, “Ain’t nuthin’ to it but to do it.” I’d see what Suzie could pull out of a milk-washed Cygnus.

I had set the SeeStar up on my old Manfrotto tripod just before dark. She was leveled (a good idea if you want decent tracking) and ready to go. All I had to do was remove the scope cover I’d put over her to ward off the errant shower—they can show up any time of the day or night in the Swamp. Mashed the power button, and The Suze intoned, “Power on! Ready to connect!”

Zelda.

Once I’d connected to the girl with the iPhone app, next step was turning on her built-in dew heater. Sure felt like she’d need it on this night. I also installed the plastic dewshield I purchased some weeks ago. The heater would probably have been enough to keep the wet stuff at bay, but the dewshield also keeps ambient light off the girl’s objective. That was it. I headed inside, plunked myself down on the couch, and enjoyed the glorious air conditioning. Outside it was just under 90F at 2100 local.

The first target would be Messier 39, an old favorite located to the Northeast of shimmering Deneb. To get to it, I brought up the SeeStar’s star atlas on the iPhone, searched for and located M39, and chose “gazing.” Suze performed her usual initial calibrations, and, in a minute or three, headed for the cluster. Our target was obvious even in the short “gazing” exposures. As usual, she had placed it dead center in the frame. I started the exposures, ten second exposures, rolling in, and headed to the kitchen to retrieve some cold 807s (for me) and catnip (for the felines).

All Unk and the cats did for the balance of the evening was choose the next target when the stacked results Suzie delivered to my phone looked good enough. Given the conditions, I didn’t want to go too long. Also, I hoped to cover all the targets in one night, and, so, limited each open cluster to 10 minutes or less. With just a few minutes exposure, they looked purty derned good. I did go a little longer on globular cluster M71 and M27, The Dumbbell Nebula, my pièce de resistance for the evening. Suzie did a nice job given the conditions.

Anyhoo, that was part one of the observing for this one. The next morning, Miss Dorothy asked me if I didn’t miss being outside with the telescope, “Not on a night like that one,” was my quick reply, but, truthfully, I did miss being under the stars. That came some days later when we got another clear—if no more transparent—evening.

Into the backyard went the 6-inch SkyWatcher (who whispered to me her name is “Brandy,” which seems to fit). It was pretty much a semi-scrub. Out there in the humid heat, I refamiliarized myself with the SynScan Pro app on my iPhone that serves as Brandy’s hand control. Once I got the hang of it, gotos were fine, even with just a two-star alignment. But you know what? The punk sky conditions were just too much for the girl.

An extra inch of aperture compared to Charity, the ETX 125, helped some, but not enough. To be honest, it was hardly noticeable. And Charity certainly has a contrast advantage. In the haze, M13 was a slightly grainy blob and M3, which is getting low by 2100 local, was almost invisible. The gap between what I could see with my aged eyes and what young Suzie could see with her electronic sensor was vast. Ground truth? Neither Charity nor Brandy would be good enough this time of year when I wanted to get semi-serious about visual backyard deep sky observing.

I was disappointed, but not much surprised. Thinking back to my initial visual testing in the backyard of New Chaos Manor South a decade ago, that was exactly what I’d experienced. Yes, of course the skies are better than they were downtown. On a good, dry night, magnitude 5 stars are visible in this suburban/country transition zone. On a dry night, which is something we don’t often get in spring and summer (and increasingly, fall) in Possum Swamp. On a humid summer’s eve, the heavens look much like they did from the original Chaos Manor South in the Garden District.

How much telescope is needed for rewarding deep sky observing under these conditions? The aforementioned testing showed that often even 8-inches wasn’t enough. At 10-inches, however, the improvement was marked. The deep sky went from “kinda icky” to at least “interesting.” It looked to me as if the visual scope for work from my backyard would have to be my 10-inch Zhumell (GSO) Dobsonian, Zelda, at least until summer wanes and some semblance of autumn comes in.

Miss Zelda is a great telescope with a surprisingly excellent primary mirror. No, she’s not grab ‘n go in any shape form or fashion, but it’s no problem to leave her outside under a scope cover in our secure backyard as long as violent thunderstorms are not forecast. The only question was whether I could still get her safely into the backyard without damaging her, myself, or both of us.

One mostly clear if hazy afternoon, I found the answer is still “yes.”  To begin, I cautiously removed Zelda from her rocker box—first time I’d done that in several years, I was embarrassed to realize. Heavy, but not too heavy; at least not when just lifting her out and standing her up on her (sorry, girl) rear end. Well, there would be a problem if somebody decided to push the tube over with a paw, which is why I locked the felines out of the sunroom to their outrage.

Moving the rockerbox/groundboard to the backyard was simplicity itself. There’s a nice big handle on the front. Then, I returned to the tube, lifted it with one hand on the rear cell and one arm around the middle of the OTA. It’s harder to describe than do but suffice to say that while I wouldn’t want to waltz Miss Zelda across the dance floor, carrying her ten meters into the yard was no problem, even considering I had to go down three steps.

The verdict? The tube is heavy. Heavier than I remembered. Eventually I’ll likely have to use a hand truck to get the scope into the back 40. But if I must do that, I will do that. The last 30 years, a 10-inch has come to be thought of as a “small” telescope. It’s not. One is a powerful performer on the deep sky.

In the 1960s, and even into the 70s, for the amateur astronomer a 10-inch was a big, even huge, telescope. It is, in fact, the largest instrument used regularly by that sainted dean of deep sky observers, Scotty Houston. As many of us age out of owning or even dreaming about owning 20 or 25 or 30-inch telescopes, I think the humble 10-inch might regain some of its lost glory. Anyhoo, I have no intention of giving up one’s horsepower as long as I can safely manage a "10."

Zelda mostly ready to go, I plugged in the battery pack that powers her cooling fan; she’d been in the air-conditioned house, and, while not as bad as it had been, the weather wasn’t exactly cool as the afternoon waned. Next? A little TV with the cats until the long, slow DST hours between now and astronomical twilight passed…

Nota Bene:  The order of the objects I looked at with Z was the same as in the book, Urban Astronomer.

M39

It took me a long time to learn to appreciate this galactic cluster, which lies well away from the Northern Cross asterism, about nine-and-a-half degrees to the northeast. On a summer’s eve’ as a kid astronomer, I’d maybe take a quick look at it and move on. All it was was a patch of medium-bright stars, with the more brilliant ones forming a triangle. It was soon in the rearview mirror as me and my fellow members of the Backyard Astronomy Society continued our fruitless search for the veil nebula with our long focal length three and four-inch scopes.

As the years rolled on, and I turned more appropriate instruments on M39, my opinion of this magnitude 4.6 cluster began to change. What’s “appropriate”? A scope/eyepiece combo that puts some space around this half-degree size group. Oh, and aperture doesn’t hurt either. Enough dark space to frame it, and enough aperture to begin to show off the magnitude 12 and dimmer stars that lurk inside the triangle of magnitude 6-range suns, and you begin to have something.

While M39 will never be a showpiece, yeah, it is something. How do you look at it? On this evening, it showed off plenty of stars in Zelda with a wide field 13mm ocular, but it just wasn’t pretty.  I knew the solution:  more field, less magnification. Inserting my 35mm Panoptic into Zelda’s focuser rewarded me with the, yes, awful pretty. All those dim stars higher magnification revealed had disappeared, but just as in Urban Astronomer, where I switched from a "big" scope to my old Short Tube 80 (mm) refractor, I thought it was worth it. With plenty of space around it, M39 it looks more distinctive and just better.

How about the SeeStar, Suzie? As you can see, she’s a mite field-challenged for this one given the geometry of her chip. Oh, she shows scads of stars. Everywhere. Yes, the bright triangle stands out. But the cluster doesn’t have much snap. It doesn’t pop out of the background as it does with a wide-field visual scope.

M29

Something puzzled me and my BAS buddies back in the day. There’s only one other Messier object in Cygnus, a rather lackluster galactic cluster that pales compared to some of the other sights in the Swan. Why? Who knows, and be that as it may, with M29, it is what it is.

Once you’re on M29, which lies just under two degrees south-southeast of bright Sadr at the Swan’s heart, don’t expect much. What I had in Zelda with a 13mm Ethos eyepiece was a little dipper-like asterism of stars maybe ten minutes across. I do sound fairly enthusiastic in the book, “Four bright stars stand out extremely well at 48x in the 4.25 inch…I can see seven other cluster members despite scattered clouds and fairly heavy haze.”  And that is about what I saw in similarly heavy haze with Zelda. Oh, a few more dimmer suns were visible, but not many. As I also say in the book, after 6-inches of aperture, M29 doesn’t improve much.

Suze? I devoted a mere 6-minutes exposure to Messier 29, and that was all it took. Even in that snapshot, many dim background stars are visible across the frame that weren’t seen in Zelda. The cluster itself looks much the same; it sure stands out from the background. What helps this magnitude 6.6 group? That small 10’ size. Dare I say it? It’s almost photogenic.

M71

Despite titling this chapter “Star Nests in Cygnus,” I did take some detours, including to nearby Sagitta’s M71, which is 5 degrees south-southwest of its famous neighbor, M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. The only claim to fame M71 has is that while it is a globular cluster, it doesn’t look much like one, appearing to be a rich and compressed open cluster like M11. There was supposedly some debate over its status for a while, but I’m skeptical about that. One look at M71’s color-magnitude diagram says “globular.” And that is what it is, a (very) loose Shapley-Sawyer Class XI glob.

So, what’s it like visually? You’d think this magnitude 8.6 object would be as challenging as Lyra’s M56 or Coma’s NGC 5053. Nope, it’s easier with smaller aperture scopes due to its small, 7.0’ size. It was certainly visible with a 6-inch telescope on good nights. As I observe in Urban Astronomer, though, more aperture helps. In the 12mm Ethos in the 10-inch, it’s an obviously resolved little clump o’ stars.

In pictures, this wee globular is pretty and interesting if not spectacular. Missy Suzy easily resolved hordes of cluster stars set against a very rich background. You know what M71 looks like in Suze’s shot? It looks amazingly like the Wild Duck Cluster. But, no, M71, which I’ve heard called “The Angelfish Cluster” (?) in recent years, is a globular star cluster, y’all.

NGC 6910

And that exhausts the Messiers. What’s left galactic clusters-wise is, yes, NGC clusters. Now, now, don’t take on like that. Some of ‘em ain’t that bad, like 6910 which those long years ago I thought was, “A real surprise with the 8-inch f/5! Very nice indeed for a non-Messier…about 10 – 15 stars visible.” In Zelda with the 150x delivered with an 8mm Ethos, what was in the field was a scattering of dimmish stars around an acute triangle of 9 – 10 magnitude ones. As on that long ago night, there appeared to be around a dozen dimmer stars visible.

In the SeeStar? When looking at an image of a galactic cluster, it’s hard to say what’s a cluster member and what isn’t. Maybe 25 – 30 likely member suns? At any rate, unlike some NGC opens, it is “well detached” from the background. One look at the picture and you see the cluster.

NGC 6866

What did I see when I took a gander at 6866 with my old Meade 12.5-inch way back in the 1990s (it seems odd to say that; lately it seems like yesterday)? “Beautiful field with the cluster looking like a miniature M39.” And that’s still accurate; that was also my impression with Zelda: a vaguely triangular shape of suns (I’ve heard this group called the “Kite Cluster”).  This magnitude 7.6, 6.0’ size cluster is another NGC open that’s easy to see.

Suzie did a nice job on this one in only 5 minutes. Yes, there are hordes of background stars, but the cluster is again easy to pick out. Maybe it even looks a little more like a kite than it does visually, with two curving arcs of stars that aren’t as noticeable visually forming the sides of the kite.

NGC 6819

This is yet another example that makes a lie of the old saw, “All NGC open clusters are the same—boring.”  The somewhat well-known Fox Head Cluster has a combined magnitude of 7.6 and covers a mere 6.0’ of sky. In the book, I pronounced it, “A very attractive NGC open cluster in the 11-inch Schmidt Cassegrain…looked more oval than square.” In Miss Z, the impression was, conversely, a diamond shaped pattern of many tiny stars.

Inexplicably, I didn’t get NGC 6819 on my observing list and, so, didn’t get a SeeStar image.

NGC 6834

For this one, we leave the “cross” area of Cygnus and head towards Albireo. Our quarry is a small magnitude 7.8, 4.0’ across group. My impression in the 10-inch Dobsonian was “small and dim,” and that was also what my old 11-inch SCT showed in the glorious Day: “Small and dim. In the 11-inch scope, I see a 5.0’ oval of faint stars…crossed by a prominent line of brighter stars.

Which is exactly what Suze pulled in in 6 minutes. She did pick up many, many even fainter stars I couldn’t see visually, and in her shot, the cluster begins to assume a more triangular than oval shape.

NGC 6830

And yet another good NGC open star cluster glowing softly at magnitude 7.9 and extending 8.0’.  For this one, I again ventured out of Cygnus to another small nearby constellation, Vulpecula, The Little Fox, home of the abovementioned Dumbbell. In Urban Astronomer, I found 6830 to be, “Very distinct from the rich beautiful field it is set in. Rectangular in shape.” Today? Much the same. A vaguely rectangular or diamond-shaped pattern of a fair number of magnitude 9-10 stars and many dimmer ones. Oh, for some inexplicable reason, some call this “The Poodle Cluster.”

In the Suzie-shot, the cluster is identifiable around a diamond of brighter suns, but, admittedly, it is beginning to recede into the background. In the image it’s still easy to pick out but proceeding toward “not well detached.”

NGC 6823

This magnitude 7.0’, 10.0’ size group is involved with a large complex of nebulosity which was totally invisible in my urban skies. What was visible was a nice enough galactic cluster: “A nice medium-sized open cluster in the 8-inch f/5.” I also observed that the cluster looked like a miniature Scorpius. I didn’t see that on this latter-day night with a 10-inch. What I saw was a rather shapeless sprinkling of magnitude 10 and dimmer stars.

That is what I saw with the SeeStar as well. I didn’t expose for long, and didn’t use a filter, so any nebulosity that might be there wasn’t visible. I do note some star chains that give 6823 a vaguely flower-like shape.

Albireo              

I ended each chapter of Urban Astronomer with a double star. For this chapter, Albireo was obviously it. Now, the lustrous blue and gold “Cub Scout Double” is not an object for a 50mm f/5 scope, but Suze still did a fair job, showing a pair of strongly colored stars.

And that was that.  Oh, on my imaging night, I did send Suzie to M27 to see what she could do, and she did a very fine job for a wee telescope. All that remained was to throw a cover over Zelda (I didn’t feel like—ahem—wrestling with the girl at the tail end of a long and hot evening). She’d be fine in our secure backyard, and getting her back to the Sunroom would be a far less daunting task in the morn’.

So…I saw some cool sights and found I could still (fairly) easily set up the 10-inch.  This night was a win, then, especially since I’d had a good time, and it had brought back some nice memories of my Urban Astronomer runs.

Next up? Another observing article, but we’ll give Urban Astronomer a rest in favor of something (sort of) new.

 

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.

 

 

Muchachos, I make no secret of the fact I miss the go-go days of Baby Boomer astronomy. Which was at its height from the 1980s through the oughts or a little past that, maybe almost to the time of the plague. Like many of you then, I was almost as interested and obsessed about THE GEAR as I was about actually using it on the sky.

There were times in the decades I lived downtown at the original and storied Chaos Manor South that collecting and dreaming about new Astrostuff was almost my sole focus in the hobby. It was often all I could do night-by-night. I was lucky to get out to a dark site once a month, and what I could see from my oak-enshrouded backyard was limited to say the least.

How things have changed. It seems I am back to observing with telescopes rather than collecting them. And that is observing in a relaxed fashion. When you have a decent—if not perfect—suburban backyard as I do at the new Chaos Manor South, you don’t feel as pressured to go pedal-to-the metal every time you are out under the night sky.

But that’s not the only reason. Post pandemic, it’s no secret there’s less of that astrostuff to buy (Taken a stroll through the astromag ad pages lately?) and what there is is more expensive and often backordered. There have been some interesting advances over the last few years, nevertheless, like the rise of the smartscope and black boxes like ZWO’s ASIAIR, both of which make astro-imaging into a new ballgame. But we no longer wait breathlessly for the next ginormous Meade technicolor catalog extravaganza. That sort of amateur astronomy appears to be in the rearview mirror.

There’s also the ME factor. As in, I am a different me than I was when I retired in 2013. When we left ol’ Chaos Manor South, all, it seemed, would go on as it had the past two decades. I’d just transfer the contents of the Massive Equipment Vault to the new manse. Then, shockingly, your Old Uncle began to realize he was tired. Tired of ALL THE STUFF. Now that I could use telescopes, it seemed I was more interested in doing that than worrying about what, if anything, might come next. And, so, I began to thin the telescope herd…

Tanya the Rescue Scope

Those of y’all who know me or who are regular readers, are aware the waters ran a lot deeper than that. That the changes retirement brought to my outlook were much more profound. But, nevertheless, the result was I wanted less stuff, sold much, and don’t use half of what I retain. “But what do ya still use Unk, what you do ya use, huh?”

That’s a good question, Skeeter. I could go on about the lovely APOs I still have, and the beautiful Losmandy mount, yadda, yadda, yadda. That would be whistling past the graveyard, though. The only time any of that gets pulled out is when I need it for a Sky & Telescope assignment. I don’t choose to use it because I want to use it.

What do I use first and foremost? A pair of 15x70 binoculars I bought from the late (that is hard to believe) Bill Burgess twenty-one years ago. If there’s a more versatile pair of glasses than 15x70s (or so), I don’t know what it is. They offer good aperture, but also enough magnification to keep compromised suburban skies on the dark side. Also, they are still handholdable—if a slight pain for extended use. I have numerous pairs of binoculars, from exquisite 35mms all the way up to 100mm giants. None get used other than the 15x70s. The Burgess binoculars are what I will and do use.

When I want or need to use a telescope? If I’m lazy and/or need wide fields, the scope I grab ‘n go with is one I would have laughed at 20 years ago. I am talking about Tanya, the Rescue Telescope. She is a 4.5-inch Celestron Newtonian with a focal ratio of f/5.2 and a spherical mirror. She is perched on an alt-az fork on a spindly extruded aluminum tripod, the kind I used to preach against those decades ago. Why would your Old Uncle use a Department Store telescope? Why would I allow one in my presence?

That is simple. When I want to see something, whether a planet, or a deep sky object, or the latest comet, or whatever I use Tanya because she works. The way I want a scope to work. She sits in my radio shack/workshop of the telescopes, the Batcave, near the door and is ready to go at a moment’s notice. Oh, she takes a little while to acclimate, but by the time I’ve rounded-up a box of 1.25-inch eyepieces she is ready to run. When I am done, or if the sky clouds over, or hour grows late (that is now 10pm) I can pick her up in one hand, tripod and all, and waltz her back inside.

“But Unk, ain’t the images pitiful?” No, they ain’t. Yes, there is a limit to the resolution of a 4.5-inch spherical mirror. At f/5.2 one approaches ½ wave of error. But guess what, campers? At 100x and lower her images are just fine. The Moon is beautiful and sharp, I can see the Great Red Spot, and Saturn is the detailed wonder he always has been. She will even go beyond, a little beyond, 100x without complaint. More than that and the trouble is more with her little mount than her mirror.

Miss Valentine

All that’s just OK; the sort of looking I do now…admiring and wondering over the Double or ET clusters or just the Pleiads...doesn’t require more magnification or a big mirror or a fine pedigree. Anyhoo, the ground truth is the same as with the Burgesses, she is what I will use and, so, is what I do use.

Of course, there are times when I want more. Specifically, a goto telescope so I don’t have to spend my night squinting up at the hazy suburban sky with a red dot finder when I am hunting subtler prey (which for me now is DSOs like M82, not some dadgum PGC).  And one with a little more focal length to make achieving higher magnification easier. As with the Burgess binocs, more magnification makes the field darker and improves contrast. What spells relief? 5-inches at f/15 on a goto mount. That of course is my old girlfriend, the one you’ve so often read about in these pages, Miss Charity Hope Valentine, an ETX-125PE.

I used to make fun of Charity’s sometimes varying goto accuracy. Now? I don’t care if she puts something on the edge of the field instead of smack in the middle (which she often does anyway).  I am no longer obsessed by such things. Her optics are sharp, dead sharp, and she has enough aperture to make most of the deep sky objects I visit, the bright and prominent ones, “acceptable.” Which is enough for me now, it seems. At any rate, as with the binoculars and Tanya, when I want more telescope, Charity is what I will use.

Are “telescope years” like dog years or more like human years? I ain’t sure. One thing I am sure of is that Charity is almost 20 years old now. There is the chance she will let out the Magic Smoke some night. I’ve taken care of her and done any repairs she’s needed. But it could happen. If it did, her replacement would be a six-inch f/5 SkyWatcher Newtonian on a goto mount. The optics are good, the goto is accurate, and it is controlled from a smartphone, something I find handy in my old age as I get lazier and lazier. Right now, the SkyWatcher gets out under the stars when I need goto, but a little more field than what the f/15 Miss Valentine can offer. 

How about eyepieces? Oh, I haven't got rid of any of them. No need to; they don't take up much room and most do get into a focuser occasionally. The same old crew is still here, ranging from time-honored Vixen Plössls to high-toned Televue Ethoses. If I needed more, I wouldn't hesitate to still buy oculars, but I seem to have what I need. Since the telescopes I use are 1.25-inch only, naturally the 2-inchers don't get pulled out often. Luckily, the Ethoses and Explore Scientific eyepieces I own are all 1.25-inch capable. "Come on, Unk. Which ones do ya use?" OK, I'll fess up. That's most often the 1.25-inchers in the old Orion eyepiece box. Those Vixen Plössls, some Expanse Wide Fields, and that wonderful König I bought at a long-ago star party.

Dang! Almost back where I started!

Imaging? I have probably said enough about how I do that recently to make you tired of hearing about it. What I use is my ZWO S50 SeeStar. She takes pictures that please me and allows me to image the deep sky frequently—if I had to drag out the Losmandy mount, a laptop, an SBIG CCD cam, and all the rest of the yadda-yadda-yadda, it’s likely I might do astrophotography once or twice a year, which is pretty much what my recent output had been. Since I got the SeeStar, Suzie, however, astrophotos have been pouring out of my iPhone.  But, again with that much sought after ground truth:  She is what I will use and, so, is what I do use. 

Staying on the topic of what I will use, but switching gears a mite to astro-software, there have been changes aplenty there as well, muchachos. Yes, sometimes I just grab the Sky & Telescope Jumbo Pocket Sky Atlas and use that to plot my journey. But I find I see more if I generate an observing list with software. And my aging eyes do find it easier to decipher a chart on a smartphone or laptop screen than on dew-laden paper. So, yeah, I still use an observing planner, if not the sophisticated sort I once did.

Back in the glorious Day, when I was decidedly more ambitious than I am now, I’d use huge and powerful planning programs like SkyTools or Deep Sky Planner to generate my object lists. Those are two wonderful pieces of software and I recommend them highly if you are more hardcore than latter-day Unk.  Now? The lists I can generate with the SkySafari app on my iPhone are more than good enough. Click “observe,” create a new list, and start populating it with objects, all with a few touches of the iPhone screen. No, it ain’t got the power of DSP or SkyTools, but—soundin’ like that proverbial broken record—it is what I will to use and is mostly all I do use.

I don’t just use SkySafari for list-making, either. I use it for almost everything astronomical ‘round here. As y’all may know, I’ve at least tried just about every piece of astronomy software from Sky Travel (Commodore 64) onward that has come down the ol’ pike. All the biggies. And I’ve loved many of them and found many of them indispensable for our pursuit. Now, though, SkySafari does what I need, does it well, and is beautiful.

I do love me some SkySafari!

Of course, there are times when I don’t want to squint at a phone. I want the more expansive screen real estate of a laptop/desktop. When that’s been the case for moi, I’ve mostly used the shareware (do they still call it that?) program Stellarium. It isn’t quite SkySafari, but close. I do still use Cartes du Ciel with my astronomy students, since it does some things in ways I prefer for the classroom. Honestly, though?  What I’ve really wanted is SkySafari on a laptop.

When I finally got tired of dumb old Winders and got myself a MacBook Air M2, I thought, “Well, dang, now I can get the Mac version of SkySafari!” Alas, the Mac page at the maker’s, Simulation Curriculum’s, site was gone. The program was still apparently available in the app store but had not been updated in years. What the—?  I temporarily gave up the idea of SkySafari on a laptop and loaded up the Mac flavor of Stellarium.

Then, recently, I decided to do some research about SkySafari on the Mac. The gist of it? Seemed as how the old Mac SkySafari was dead. As dead as the Intel Macintoshes. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t have SkySafari for my Mac, it ‘peared. Many iOS apps now run jus’ fine on the new Macs, the Silicon Macs (machines with an Apple M1 processor or better). Was it possible I could run SkySafari Pro on my Apple Computer, my M2? ‘Deed it was.

For less than 20 bucks I could download SkySafari Pro from the Mac app store. Which I did. After it installed? SHAZAM! There was my favorite astroware on a big(ger) screen and looking pretty—awful pretty! I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it yet but suffice it to say it seems to work great on the Mac, looks beautiful, and, not surprisingly, seems to have every feature of the iPhone app (which is what it really is, after all).

Anyhoo, there you have it. That short list is the astronomy tools I use, binoculars, a couple of smallish telescopes, my iPhone, and a laptop once in a while. But I’m keeping on trucking, onward and upward as they say, whoever “they” are.

And what’s onward from here? This installment was supposed to cover my reobservation of the objects in Coma from my book, The Urban Astronomer’s Guide. The “Tresses of Berenice” chapter, that is. Urania had other ideas, keeping her sky veiled down here in the Swamp night after night. Coma is sinking now, and I hope I get a shot at it before the Gulf storms begin spinning up. Yay or nay, though, I’ll be back here next month with more of my down-home astro-foolishness...

Excelsior.