Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

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.

 

 

Suzie's M13

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime!  You know it is here, Muchachos. No, not officially; the Solstice ain’t arrived just yet. BUT… Memorial Day is in the rearview mirror and M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, is climbing higher night by night.  Even given this fricking-fracking Daylight Savings Time, it is now out of the horizon murk by mid evening and the tail-end of astronomical twilight. So, time for your ol’ Uncle to get after it.

“After what, Unk? Wut you talkin’ ‘bout now? Too much Yell last night? Did you bump your head gettin’ outa bed? What?” Simple, Skeeter:  my yearly quest to image that greatest of all Northern Hemisphere globular star clusters, Messier 13. That is a long-running astronomy ritual with your old Uncle. Like my annual Christmas Eve observation of M42. Weather ‘n stuff conspired to make me miss the Big Glob last annum, and I wasn’t gonna let that happen again this year; I’d get started as soon as possible, like RIGHT AWAY.

The only question was “How would I get M13?”  The last decade, the answer has been “As easily as possible.” Yeah, some years I’d drag out big mount, SCT, computer, and CCD and go whole hog, but those years became fewer as I hit my mid-60s. Mucho fewer. And soon enough, the days of setting up my SBIG CCD on a C11 were gone forever. As the years roll on, and the gear seems to get heavier and the spring and summer nights ever hotter, I've looked for ways to corral ol’ Herc (or whatever) without busting a gut or being a sweat-drenched wreck at the end of the run.

The first Quick and Dirty approach I took to M13 was video, deep sky video. As y’all know, during the years of The Herschel Project, I was all about video. So, it seemed a natural to go after M13 that-a-way. No guiding. I could even use an alt-azimuth mounted scope. The original Stellacam (analog black and white video and <10-second exposures) did a credible job.

The Mallincam Xtreme that followed it was better still with less noise and longer exposures. But while I didn’t have to worry about guide scopes and polar alignments, that was still a load of gear:  scope, mount, camera, cables, monitor, digital video recorder, etc. There was also no denying the results didn’t look that great. Oh, the videos looked pretty good, and the still frames from them were acceptable. But attractive? Not really.  I looked for that much wished-for and sought-after Better Way.

At about this time, quite a few refugees from the analog deep sky video scene began experimenting with a similar imaging mode. This was short-exposure imaging with digital cameras. CCD cams, DSLRs, you name it. The idea was to take a bunch of short—as in 10 - 15 seconds or so—exposures and stack them together in the usual way. I was rather skeptical of the idea, thinking that at a minimum 2 – 3-minute subs were required for a decent image.

However, I had a camera suitable for experimentation—my ZWO ASI 120mc color planetary camera. While I could have used an alt-azimuth scope for my testing, I chose to put the OTA on an equatorial. I figured that would eliminate noise and other trouble from field rotation and would give the short-sub idea its best chance at success.

And away we went. The C8-on-a-GEM setup was a slight pain, but not too bad. Soon my old Ultima 8 OTA, Celeste, was riding on the CG5 with the li’l ZWO cam on the rear cell. Other than that, I had a laptop set up on the deck running the amazingly versatile FireCapture software, which is just as much at home saving single exposure frames of a deep sky object as it is planetary .avi files.

The result? The camera’s chip is a tiny one as is normal with planetary style and guide cameras, but with the C8 reduced to around 700mm it wasn’t bad at all, and suitable for small-medium deep sky objects like M13, or M57 where I began. I could tell from the images coming in that I could stack and process the Ring into something looking pretty nice. Yes, the images were noisy despite the dark frames FireCapture applied, but that was due to the uncooled nature of the camera and warm Possum Swamp spring nights and not any limitations of the short-sub method.

M13? Easy as fallin’ off a log. As you can see in the image here, M13 with the 120mc is considerably better than the inset longer exposure (1-minute subs) of my stacked Meade DSI image from many a Moon ago. I was pleased. But I put the ZWO away and never came back to it for the deep sky. Instead, I took to doing my yearly M13 with an 80mm APO and a DSLR. That was easy to do, but f/6 80mm plus DSLR frame size produced a rather miniscule M13. In retrospect, I could have gotten better images with my ZWO and the little refractor.

That has been the story the last several years. Me using a small, short refractor and a DSLR to do the Great One. Was I satisfied with the images? No. As above, M13 was just too small, and the 80 APO and DSLR were not well-suited for the suburban environment. That’s where my Yearly M13 came to rest for a while, but that was then, ladies and gentlemen. This is now.

What is different now when it comes to taking decent deep sky images easy-peasy? Do I even have to tell you? It is the coming of the smart telescope.  I’ve talked about my little ZWO scope frequently here—I am very fond of her. She's not perfect. Some of the images are better than others, I’ve observed, and it’s not always clear why. Oh, no doubt you could achieve more consistency as far as perfect stars in every shot by downloading individual sub-frames and stacking ‘em yourself. I choose not to do that because I am rather lazy these days and find the stacked .jpgs Suzie delivers to my phone almost always more than acceptable.

Anyhoo, about a week and a half ago, I carried Suze into the backyard. Yes, it was a little early in M13 season and the glob was still a bit low mid-evening, but this is Possum Swamp we are talkin’ about. It can easily be cloudy for weeks and weeks. Easily. Plus, I had already decided M13 would be the subject of this installment of the blog (in part to impel me to get out of the air conditioning and get a few snapshots, at least). Out into the back 40 we went. One look at the sky told me I’d be lucky to get anything, and that our time under the stars would be limited.  Oh, and at 8pm it wasn’t anywhere close to being dark enough to shoot anything. I might, might be able to begin shooting at nine o’clock. 

When I thought it was dark enough to begin, I trotted out, turned Suze on, connected to her with the iPhone, and used the manual altitude slewing buttons (a recent addition to the app) to raise the girl’s little OTA out of parked position. The reason for that was so I could install a dew shield I’d purchased. Not because of dew, though. The scope’s built-in dew heater has always kept that at bay, but I wanted to block some of the ambient light that inevitably intrudes into a suburban backyard. I thought images would look better with minimal processing without the gradients the neighbors’ yard lights inevitably cause.

Which dew shield? Where do you get such a thing for the SeeStar? Take a stroll through the eBay. You’ll find a surprising number of sellers offering dew shields and other plastic 3D-printed SeeStar accessories. I got mine from an outfit called “West Coast Astro.” On the plus side, it is reasonably attractive and works fine. On the minus side? I couldn’t use it the first night after I received it; it wouldn’t fit the SeeStar. I had to do some sanding of the barrel. Not a lot, just a little and then it was fine. On the plus side again? The seller included a bag of Haribo gummies in the box—just like Adrian of Adrian’s Digital Basement often receives in his Mail Call packages… so I was placated.

Me turning on the Suze, connecting to her with iPhone, and installing the dew shield was the extent of my night under the stars. How do I feel about that? I’m not sure. There is certainly something to be said about a calm and peaceful night under the shimmering stars of spring. Instead, I spent the balance of the evening on the couch in the den with Tommy, Chaos Manor South’s resident black cat, watching the aforementioned Adrian’s Digital Basement to the accompaniment of cold 807s (me) and ‘nip (Tom). It was relaxing, yeah, but decidedly lacking that “romance of an evening under the stars.”

On the other hand…  An imaging run done the conventional way is usually spent staring at a laptop screen rather than the stars. What I shoulda done, I guess, was grab the Burgess 16x70 binoculars and do a little bino tour while Suzie did her thing. Next time, perhaps. And I will admit that even purely visual observing ain’t always a picnic. Heat. Bugs. More heat. Dew. Sweat. And, when I was a young’un, the sneaking suspicion THE VISITORS might pounce on me as I stared into my Ramsden. In other words, some, not all, but some, spring/summer visual observing runs are better to relive in fond memory than to experience.

Anyway, next up for this here blog will be some visual. FINALLY, and about time, I reckon. “Wait Unk, what about the pitchers?!” Not too much to say about them. As you can see, Suze did fine, hell, you can even pick out little and dim IC 4617. I’d say her results were better, at least somewhat, than those the ZWO planet-cam produced with an SCT. They are certainly preferable to the eensy-weensy M13s that came out of the 80mm/DSLR combo. So ended the evening of My Yearly M13. With more success, I think, than it has in quite a while.

Postscript:

This past week I got Suzie out for a longer go at the Bigun. 15 minutes does produce decent images with the SeeStar but doubling that to 30 minutes makes the shots look a little smoother and more finished. Half an hour is what I aim for when I am granted clear skies for that long. When M13 was done, I shot M92, too, which also looked right nice.

Before shutting down, I devoted a couple of minutes to The Turtle, NGC 6210. As I’d feared, it was pretty small in a 50mm f/5, so I cut things short and shut ‘er down. In retrospect, I should have given Suzie more time on the nebula. It’s possible that in a longer exposure, I could have picked up a trace of the two ansae, the nebulous extensions on either side of the disk. I didn’t, so all I got was a little green ball. Next time, maybe.

And that, muchachos, is one of the things that has kept me in this business nearly 60 years down the line. There is always that Next Night to look forward to...

 

 

 

 

Eclipse morning at Chaos Manor South.

The eclipse it came, and the eclipse it went, muchachos. This is your Old Uncle's short account of what Miss Dorothy and I saw eclipse Monday. This was, by the way, also published in The Mobile Amateur Radio Club Weekly Newsletter in slightly different form. Thus, the ham radio references...

Ah, yes, THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE How did it play out down here in the Swamp? The night before as I sat on the couch with the felines watching a rerun of a (Bob Heil) Ham Nation episode on the YouTube, I wasn’t feeling overly excited. The weather forecast for Possum Swamp did not look good. No, not good at all:  Clouds, unrelenting clouds. Maybe rain. 

In fact, eclipse day forecasts had sounded lousy for weeks. Not much hope for us—nor for more than a few points west into the path of totality. That was OK; I’d long ago decided to sit this one out. In these latter days, I’m just not up for long drives and trying to find a $250-a-night room at the freaking Motel 6. Anyhoo, I planned to go to bed when I got tired, wake up when I felt like it Monday morning, prepare to teach my afternoon and evening classes at the university, and not spend much time worrying about eclipses.  

Not that I wouldn’t try to see SOMETHING. I had a secret weapon. A special sort of telescope, a ZWO SeeStar S50 smart telescope. Despite the somewhat corny name, this little device is making waves amongst those interested in such things for its ability to take pictures of things in the sky—Sun, Moon, galaxies, nebulae, star clusters—with amazing clarity and to do that cheaply and easily. That, a couple pairs of eclipse glasses for me and Miss Dorothy, and that would be it for our eclipse expedition to the backyard. 

As 11 came and went Monday a.m., I set the SeeStar up out back on a camera tripod, went into the radio shack, and fired up the IC-7610 transceiver. Alas, the bands were lousy. I may have worked a POTA park or two, but that was it. By the time I gave up and hit the big switch, it was after 12pm (the eclipse would begin at 12:34) and time to think about Mr. Sun, finally. Maybe. A glance out the shack door revealed good and bad. Still overcast, yeah. But… for the moment, mostly thin clouds. Shadows were being cast, and the cats were enjoying a little Sun in the sunroom. Worth a shot, I figgered.

What’s involved in taking pictures of the Sun with the SeeStar S50? Not much. Level the camera tripod. Put the scope on it. Push the power button. When the scope says, “Power on! Ready to connect!” Open the SeeStar app on your smartphone, click “connect,” click “Solar,” and the scope will unfold itself and tell you to attach the (included) solar filter. It then finds, centers, and tracks the Sun on its own. 

You don’t have to stay outside with the SeeStar; once you turn on the scope, you can retire inside with your smartphone. In the SeeStar’s normal “station” mode, it communicates with your smartphone through your home network. It also has considerable built-in memory and is, yeah, a smart little telescope.

Inside, sitting on the couch with Miss D, the scope was delivering a live view of the Sun on my phone. You can just watch that. Or you can take still photos the scope will send to your phone. Or you can take videos and time-lapse sequences that are stored in the telescope’s onboard memory for later retrieval. I had intended to do a time-lapse of the whole eclipse, but it looked like the clouds would make that futile. 

Just before eclipse time, though, there was a little more clearing. Oh, it was obvious we were still looking through a layer of clouds, but the Sun was brighter and suddenly I could see a missing chunk that signaled the Great American Eclipse had begun.

I went outside occasionally and looked up at Sol with eclipse glasses but could definitely see more on the iPhone. Not that we were seeing much. A little here, a little there. Just enough to tempt and tantalize. I did take some stills and a short video (posted on the W4IAX Facebook page), but they were really not much. Better than nothing? Sure. More than I’d expected to get? Definitely.

The national eclipse QSO party? The local eclipse net conducted by WX4MOB?  Just never got around to either in the process of constantly staring at clouds on my phone and hoping for brief clearing so I could get an image at the maximum of this deep partial (for us) eclipse. Dorothy and I didn’t get to see that, though. 25 minutes before eclipse maximum, it wasn’t just cloudy, it was CLOUDY. I popped outside to see what I could see:  NUTTIN’ HONEY. Wait. Was that a drop of rain? Yes. I shut down the SeeStar, hauled her inside, and…  THE END. Time to get ready to go to work at the university. 

 

NGC 2903

“A whosit in a whatsit?! Unk, did you break out yet another bottle o’ the Rebel Yell?!”  Not at all, muchachos, not at all. Well, maybe I did, but that title up above is no whiskey-soaked mystery wrapped in an enigma. A “SeeStar” is ZWO’s little robotic “smartscope” that’s on everybody’s lips, mind, and Facebook feeds of late. “Lion’s Den” refers to a chapter in a book that’s near and dear to your Old Uncle’s withered little heart. Namely, The Urban Astronomer’s Guide. Of all the books I’ve written over the years, I reckon it is still the one I like best and am most proud of.

In particular, “Lion’s Den” is the chapter in the book (I often call it “the City Lights book” since its genesis was a series of articles by that name in my old SkyWatch newsletter) concerning Leo the lion and his innumerable galaxies. What I thought I’d do this time was turn the SeeStar loose on those Leo galaxies and see how the little telescope would fare under varying conditions from a typically light polluted suburban backyard.

And light polluted the backyard of Chaos Manor South is. Oh, nothing like the back forty of the original Chaos Manor South downtown. Here, we are on the edge of the suburban/country transition zone. It’s not that bad. On a really good night I suspect you can pick out 5^th magnitude stars at zenith. The trouble is getting a good night, especially in the spring when humidity in the air scatters light pollution, making it worse. I didn’t give a hoot ‘n holler. I’d take what I could get and find out what the ZWO could pull out of the hazy soup.

In particular, I wanted to see what the SeeStar can do more as an “EAA” (“Electronically Assisted Astronomy”) system than the more serious instrument some are using it for. Talented workers are doing flat-out amazing stuff with the little ZWO. You know, the people who append information to their images like, “Ten hours exposure with the SeeStar, processed in PixInsight.”

I ain’t got no PixInsight software. It costs danged near as much as the SeeStar itself. If I had it, I wouldn’t know how to use it, anyway. Hell, I barely know how to work “levels” in Photoshop. What I am interested in is what comes out of the scope and goes straight to my phone. I don’t want to stack, and I don’t want to process—well other than maybe adjust brightness and contrast and maybe do some cropping.

Leo Trio

What I want, really, is the same sort of thing I got out of my old Mallincam Xtreme. Images that deliver details in deep sky objects—including galaxies—in less than perfect skies. Easily. The Mallincam was amazing in even halfway decent conditions, but I found it somewhat challenged by the bright sky background of suburbia—if I wanted still images in addition to videos, anyhow. Still pictures taken from Mallincam video were difficult to make into much. They were analog NTSC frames converted to digital stills, and while they could look OK, they were almost always just slightly ugly and lacking in resolution.

Now, none of that is meant to talk down Rock Mallin’s wonderful cameras. They really are flat-out amazing. During the vaunted Herschel Project, they brought home bushel baskets of PGC galaxies and quasars in addition every one of Willie and Lina Herschel’s thousands of deep sky objects. But… "right tool for right job,” no?

My brief foray with the SeeStar had already shown me it was capable of better on the more prominent objects. And not by me downloading fits frames from the scope and stacking and processing them with fancy software, but just by letting the telescope do the work. And me at most doing some minor processing of the .jpgs the SeeStar sends to the phone. That is where I am at right now for many things, campers: “No fuss, no muss.”

It ain’t just the difficulty involved in making OK-looking still pictures from Mallincam videos, either. The other drawback to the Mallincam Xtreme, you see, is the setup it requires. In addition to telescope and mount, I need a computer to control the camera, a separate DVR to record the video, an analog display for the camera, power supplies, cables, video switcher, etc., etc. I just don’t have as much patience for that sort of thing in these latter days as I used to. Oh, I’ll still do it, or do similar for conventional DSLR astrophotography, but it’s obvious I won’t do it very often.

My routine with the SeeStar couldn’t be more different:  Plunk down my old Manfrotto tripod in the backyard. Eyeball level with a circular bubble level. Mount SeeStar on tripod. Turn on SeeStar. When the little gal says (she talks), “Power on! Ready to connect!” I can head back in the house, plunk myself down on the couch in front of the TV with the felines, tell the scope to go to the target of my choosing, open some cold 807s and some catnip, and let the SeeStar do the work.

Do I miss fiddling with a telescope and computer in the cold or skeeters to take pictures? Not one bit. Now, visual observing is still something I like. A lot. But that is a whole ‘nother kettle o’ fish. Here, we are talking getting nice pictures of the deep sky from suburban skies in a fashion that encourages me to do so more than once in a blue Moon.

NGC 3190 Group

So it was just a little while ago that Miss Suzie, the SeeStar (all my telescopes tell me their names), and I worked up our courage and tiptoed into the Lion’s Den. We began without much Moon in the sky, but realized we’d have to contend with Luna before we’d covered all the copious Leo galaxies we meant to essay. The weather? Not so bad. We’ve had some early spring storms already, but a decent number of clear and even cool evenings.

Let’s go. If you’ve a mind to glom onto a copy of The Urban Astronomer’s Guide and follow along, that won’t hurt my feelins none, but if not, if you rummage through those old issues of SkyWatch, you can find the Leo article “Lion’s Den” germinated from…

Having, as above, set Suzie up on her tripod and returned inside, I opened the SeeStar app, turned on the little scope’s dew heater (it was a rather humid evening just before the change to DST), and accessed the SeeStar app’s built-in star atlas. Oh, I probably could have found my quarry under “Tonight’s Best” on the main page, but I chose to use the nice atlas. I searched on “M65,” and when the app located the galaxy, I told it to center M65 on the star atlas screen.

M65 was up first since, just as in the Urban book, I thought I’d begin with Leo’s showpiece, the Leo Trio, M65, M66, and NGC 3628. The idea was to try to frame the shot so as to include all three in one image. I did that by moving the image format frame the atlas displays until all three galaxies were within its border. Possible, but just barely. I mashed “goto” on the iPhone’s screen and off Suzie went.

After Suze did some various calibration stuff in addition to gotoing, and finally stopped, I could see despite the short exposures of the preview mode that the little scope’s pointing (via platesolving) was right on. There were two obvious dim smudges on the right side of the frame, and maybe the barest hint of one on the left side. The stars in the field looked purty sharp to me, but I engaged autofocus anyhow. The scope took a minute or so to deal with that, and when done I had to admit them stars did look a mite smaller. OK. Off to the races. I touched the “go” button and Suzie began accumulating and stacking 10-second exposures.

While the telescope was doing her thing, I thought I’d refresh my memory as to what I’d thought of the Leo Trio on that long-ago evening when I did the observing for Urban Astronomer. As for M65 and M66:

These galaxies, and especially M66, are fairly impressive in the C11. No core noted for M65, it’s an oval smudge of light. M66 is brighter but looks much the same. The real attraction under these skies is that both can be seen in the same field of a 22mm Panoptic eyepiece at 127x.

The third member of the Trio, NGC 3628, which I cautioned my readers was best left for an especially dry and dark spring night, if possible, wasn’t much, even with a an 11-inch SCT:

The third member of the Leo Trio is substantially harder to see than either M65 or M66 in the C11. It’s a dim smudge that fades in and out as the seeing changes. Some hint of its strong elongation…

M105 and friends...

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Keep in mind, though, these views (which would have been pretty much identical in my largest scope, a 12.5-inch Newtonian) were from a site only a few miles from the center of a city of a quarter of a million people. I could have seen more from farther out, in the suburbs, of course, but not that much more. By the time I’d finished reading up on the Trio, Suze had accumulated about half an hour’s combined exposure, and I had a look at the iPhone.

I’ll let you be the judge (picture above), but it’s clear we are in a whole other dimension here. M65 and M66 aren’t just elongated somethings-or-others without cores. They are detailed, both their outer regions and their centers. No, Unk don’t know pea-turkey about processing, and has overexposed the nuclei, but yeah, detail there. Otherwise? Damn…you don’t have to guess at spiral detail. It slaps you in the face. The “hard” member of the Trio, NGC 3628? It could have used a little more exposure but still looks purty awesome with that dark lane and the distinctive flaring ansae of its disk.

Yes, your Uncle is something of a Luddite, has a hard time wrapping his mind around technology—especially involving smartphones—and is easily impressed. But, yeah, just damn. It simply astounds me I was able to see the Leo Trio like that from my suburban yard. In a few minutes. With a 50mm f/5 telescope. Without me having to do much of anything.

After The Good Ones, the Leo Trio, I traveled the constellation stick figure, beginning with the Sickle, the Lion’s mane, and the galaxies I called <ahem> “Mane Lice” in the book. The first of which was with a sprite I didn’t find exactly overwhelming in the eyepiece, NGC 2903:

Visible but not starkly apparent in the C11. Its large disk tends to wink in and out of view as I switch between averted and direct vision. Averted vision seems to show a tiny nucleus at 127x, but I’m not sure on this.

After Suzie had devoted half an hour to this one, I picked up the phone and had a look. Again, the difference between what I could see in the simple picture and my visual description couldn’t have been starker. In fact, that difference was more apparent here than with the Leo Trio, since NGC 2903 was higher in altitude and well out of the light dome to the east (Greater Possum Swamp).

The bright, small nucleus I’d guessed at all those long years ago was there, but it was accompanied by a bar and by spiral arms that practically knocked my eyes out. Which is not to dismiss visual observing from city or suburbs or anywhere else. That is a special experience, but you can only expect to see so much visually in galaxies, even if your skies are perfect and your scope large.

Lest I make all this seem like magic, it was not at all immune from your silly Old Uncle’s fumbling and bumbling. Take the Leo Trio image. The one shown here is actually one I took a week or two later. The original? It looked good enough, but the bottom half was hurt by a strong light-pollution gradient. Why? “Oh, yeah… Shoulda turned the carport light off, I reckon.” My initial attempt on NGC 2903 failed completely. Why? Forgot to turn on the telescope’s dew heater. So, some things never do change in Uncle Rod Land.

Continuing on down the sickle, getting close to Algieba, we land on the NGC 3190 group of galaxies. There is a bit of confustication here. The brightest galaxy in the group is sometimes identified as NGC 3190, and sometimes as NGC 3189 with the whole group of galaxies being referred to as “the NGC 3190 Group.” Be that as it may be in the sometimes-baffling world of deep sky object nomenclature, I was quite taken by prominent little 3190 and its nearby neighbor, NGC 3193, in my old 12.5-inch Newtonian, “Old Betsy” from my downtown backyard:

This little pair is a real surprise. NGC 3190 is bright, definitely elongated, and shows a small, stellar core. It really “looks like a galaxy” and not just another smudge. NGC 3193 in the same field, is a typical round elliptical, a fuzzy ball… A third galaxy, NGC 3185, should also be present…but I’ve never seen it from light-polluted home.

Looking at the final pic Suzie Q kindly sent to my phone (if you like, you can watch each 10-second exposure come in and be added to the stack and see your subject getting better and better), my visual description with the C11 was pretty right-on. While bright 3190 does offer some detail, especially in its inner region, it’s basically that typical small galaxy with a bright elongated core. 3193? I pretty much nailed it:  bright core set in haze. What’s notable is what I couldn’t see but Miss S. could.

This group actually has a name, “The Leo Quartet.” Galaxy three, NGC 3185, is fairly prominent in my image, but isn’t that interesting. Elongated core, oval haze. The fourth member, which I didn’t mention at all—because I didn't see it in the C11—is NGC 3187.  It could have used more exposure, but when I really cranked up “levels” in Photoshop and made the picture look ugly, I could begin to see its weird bent ends. It’s one of those really barred spirals that look like a pair of connected hockey sticks.

Done with those Mane Lice, we move to the Tummy fleas and M105 and company. I’m not sure how many of you look at this little group of three galaxies regularly, but they deserve your time and are especially rewarding if your skies ain’t perfect:

This trio was quite a treat… M105 is bright and round with a stellar nucleus. NGC 3384 looks larger and dimmer than M105 and shows some elongation.  NGC 3385 is smaller and dimmer and a little difficult in the 12.5-inch scope—it was dim enough that I couldn’t be sure exactly what its shape was and whether or not it displayed a core.

NGC 3521

Not bad, no, not bad at all. This group was one of the first things I looked at with my 12-inch, Betsy, when she was new in the autumn of 1994, and I was thrilled she’d turn up all three fuzzies in my icky backyard sky.

How did 50mm Suzie stack up against 300mm Betsy? In a mere 15-minute exposure (the night was getting a little old and I was ‘bout ready to tell Suze to shut down)? M105 and NGC 3384 are just as I saw them in Bets, if, naturally, better defined. “Bright cores set in haze.” NGC 3385 is more interesting. It’s easy to see in the picture, and, YES, shows off one of its spiral arms. This nice galaxy needed more exposure, and twenty lashes with a wet noodle for Unk for not giving it more, but, yeah, looks way better than just another faint-fuzzie.

A mere degree and a quarter to the southwest is the somewhat far-flung (40’ apart) pair of bright galaxies, M95 and M96. “Bright,” of course, is a relative thing when talking galaxies, and both are fairly large and in the magnitude 9 neighborhood, making them a little dicey in the city at times. Anyhoo, my look at ‘em with my 8-inch f/5 Konus (Synta optics, natch) from the public schools’ suburban Environmental Studies Center where I often observed revealed…

Conditions are not good and getting worse as the night wears on… M96 is large and fairly prominent. It is obviously elongated and shows a stellar core. M95 is considerably harder and requires averted vision at times, but I can see it is elongated and also that it doesn’t possess an obvious nuclear region.

So, I really didn’t see much. In the final image that popped onto my iPhone screen “No nuclear region”?! Both show impressive details. M96's bar is prominent and lovely. M95? The SeeStar shows a lot going on there, including a bright nucleus, bars coming off that nucleus, a “ring of stars” feature, and tenuous spiral arms. In addition to the two nice galaxies, I noticed a roundish fuzzy in the frame and checked Stellarium. The little guy turned out to be PGC 32119, a 14th magnitude galaxy. Good show, Suze, my girl!

I ended my visit to the Lion’s Den with what I called “Hindquarter Ticks,” but that was really kind of a stretch, since the destination, NGC 3521, is considerably removed from the Lion’s triangular rear end, being located some 18 degrees southwest of Denebola. NGC 3521 is sometimes known as the “Bubble Galaxy,” but which I christened “Sunflower Junior” because of the clumpy appearance of its disk. It is a nice one to end on:

On this not-so-good night, I was surprised to find NGC 3521 without much of a struggle. At 220x in the C11, it is large, obviously elongated with a stellar core, and its disk seems to occasionally give up fleeting hints of detail, as if a multitude of spiral arms is just on the edge of detection.

In the Suzie Girl? As you can see…the patchy nature of the disk is on display. However, my experience is that in images as opposed to visual, the galaxy looks a little less like M63's twin and more like a normal intermediate inclination spiral. 

I didn’t end here, actually. One of the things I did in The Urban Astronomer’s Guide is end every chapter with a double or multiple star. I love double stars and am glad I did that. The choice for Lion’s Den was obviously Algieba, which I likened to yellow cat’s eyes winking in the darkness in a low power eyepiece as seeing changed.

Alas, I got distracted and let the sequence run on too long. 10 or 20 seconds would have been appropriate. Two minutes? The comes was buried in the glare of the primary star. Oh, well. I had a pretty portrait of golden Algieba, anyway.

Journey to the Seventh Planet

I still wasn’t quite done. Hanging in the west, about to get too low to fool with was one of my lifelong obsessions. Georgium Sidus, The Mysterious Seventh Planet, Uranus. On a whim, I told Suze to go there and let her accumulate 6-minutes of exposure. Imagine my surprise the next morning when a little zooming, sharpening, and comparing with the Stellarium software’s display showed I had imaged this far-away world’s two large moons, Titania and Oberon. That was something I’ve never done before or even tried to do before. And it just increased by appreciation of Suzie as that most elusive of things, the Good Little Telescope.

Algieba in the can. One for the Road imaged. And the night a big success—given my modest goals—it was time to close down. What that involve? Clicking on the picture of the SeeStar in the app and sliding the shutdown thingie to shut-her-down. By the time I got outside, Suze had folded herself up, turned off her dew heater, and killed main power. I grabbed her and her tripod in one go, took her inside, put her on charge, and settled back on the couch where I had spent the evening. Time for a mite more TV-watching with Thomas Aquinas, Chaos Manor South’s resident black cat.

That wasn’t all. I was pretty darned happy about what The Suze and I had accomplished (the above actually recounts three separate nights under the sky) in pretty short order. Suzie was enjoying a nice shot of 5-volt current, so I thought I’d allow myself a touch of the ‘Yell as my reward. Not that I’d felt like I’d done much. The scope did most of the work. And you know what? At this stage of the game I am just OK with that, muchachos.

Up Next:  The Big Eclipse. If it’s clear. Hope it is. Don’t want to jinx myself.

 

 

Wow, just wow, muchachos… Now, admittedly I’ve turned into something of an astronomical Luddite who is easily impressed by modern technology. Hell, I’d still be using NexRemote if they’d update it to a version that would take advantage of all the features of my 10-year-old Celestron Advanced VX mount. What’s an ASAIR? What’s plate-solving? What sort of witchery is all that?

If I didn’t write the occasional Sky & Telescope Test Report, I’d be even further behind. For example, all y’all know about plate-solving. Been around for years I reckon. But I was recently gob-smacked in the course of doing an S&T Test Report when a plate-solving camera widget would unerringly center the telescope on anything. I mean dead center. Every time! Some kinda hoo-doo it seemed like.

Anyhoo, that was the way it was when a box appeared on the doorstep of (the new, of course) Chaos Manor South. When I saw it there, I was both excited and intimidated. If you read the previous installment of the Little Old AstroBlog from Possum Swamp, you know I was casting about for something that would get me observing more frequently. And you know I decided that might be a Smartscope. One o’ them small, robotic image-makin’ telescopes that are the current rage. To that end, I gave the good folks at Highpoint Scientific, who had ZWO Seestars in stock, my credit card number and hoped for the best.

Why the SeeStar? If you indeed read the previous edition of this-here AstroBlog, you also learned its price—about 500 dollars—was just right for your stingy old Uncle. But it wasn’t just that. I had looked at quite a few online pictures obtained by the scope. And I had viewed a passel of YouTube videos on the SeeStar (our resident black cat, Tommy, Thomas Aquinas, got real tired of those—he favors World War II documentaries). What I gleaned was the pictures the little thing takes are impressive for a 50mm aperture refractor, it appeared simple to use, and nobody had much bad to say about it including Dennis di Cicco in his Test Report in S&T. I was still worried, though. Mostly about getting it going. All the stuff about wi-fi and Bluetooth and blah-blah-blah.

As your Old Uncle is wont to say, though, “Nuthin’ to it but to do it!”  I grabbed up the box, moved it to the dining room table, opened it up, and pulled out a nice-looking color box. The packaging was very professional; ZWO sure has come a long way in the decade-plus since I took a chance on one of their initial products, a little 120MC planetary camera. Inside the pretty box was a nice enough case containing the scope. This case was sorta weird…being made from something like slightly denser Styrofoam…but it was nice to have some kind of case anyhow.

Inside that was the scope itself—which, as you can see, didn’t look anything at all like a telescope—a tripod, a USB C cable for charging and communications with a PC, a solar filter, a couple of small instruction pamphlets, and a packet of silica gel helpfully labeled “DO NOT EAT.”

There was not the slightest chance of using the scope under the stars—or even on the Sun. It had been storming for days. But I figgered I could download the app for my iPhone (there's a version for Android, too), initially connect it to the telescope, and see whether everything at least appeared to work.  

One thing I’ve learned about Chinese widgets from cat toys to radios that are powered by cell-phone-style batteries: it’s best charge ‘em up before doing anything else. From the row of indicator lights on the side of the SeeStar that illuminated when I plugged it into a 5-volt phone charger, it was about 75% charged out of the box. I left for a radio club meeting, and when I returned a couple of hours later, Missy was all charged and ready to go.

Next step, I imaged the QR code on the instructions with my phone and downloaded the impressive-looking app to my iPhone 14 Pro Max. That done, it was rubber-meets-road time. As instructed, I did a short press of the power button, then a long press, and the scope came to life announcing, “POWERING UP! READY TO CONNECT!” (I also had to push a reset button on the underside of the scope’s mount during first-time set up). Unlike some reviews I’ve read that stated the telescope’s initial voice (yes, this telescope talks) was in Chinese, my small wonder spoke in perfectly un-accented English. ZWO must have tidied up some of the installation details.

Then? Well, I just touched "connect." The app responded by asking permission to use Bluetooth, location, etc., etc., etc. I accepted it all. When the app showed “connected,” I clicked the telescope's picture at the top of the screen to go to communications settings and put it in Station Mode. That way, the telescope joins your home network and it and your phone communicate over that network, not directly with each other with wi-fi. That ensures greater range and a simultaneous Internet connection. If you are away from home, you can connect directly to the scope with your phone or tablet. There were no snags when it came to set up. All went smoothly and without problems.

App and Atlas (zoomed way out)...

Well, there was one problem to solve before I could get started with the SeeStar:  the small carbon fiber tripod that comes with the telescope is nice, but fully extended it raises the scope less than two feet off the ground. I don’t want to have to crawl on me belly like a reptile to hit the power button, put the filter solar filter on, or do anything else. I could round up a small camp table to place scope and tripod on, but was afraid that would be too shaky for imaging.

Then it came to me. I’d use my good, old Manfrotto tripod.  Its tilt/pan head has a ¼-inch bolt and the SeeStar takes ⅜-inch, but I recalled you can unscrew the head to reveal, yep, a ⅜-inch bolt. I did that. What I also did was attach a tripod leveling widget (I got from B&H photo some time ago) between scope and tripod in case precise leveling was needed. That done, I put the scope back in her case and the tripod back the closet and waited for clear weather.

Which came the following afternoon when I noticed ol’ Sol peeping out. I got the scope and tripod into the backyard, set the tripod up in the spot where the Advanced VX usually goes (there are three flagstones there for the tripod feet to rest on), leveled the tripod with a bubble level, and mashed the “on” button. After a short interval missy announced she was ready to connect. I opened the app, connected to the scope, tapped the “solar” button just below the weather window. Following instructions, I moved her li’l tube up in altitude with the onscreen buttons so I could insert the solar filter over the objective.

Shortly, the SeeStar informed me she was going to the Sun. When she stopped, I was offered an onscreen joystick thingie and told to adjust until the Sun was centered. I didn’t have to. The Sun was already centered when the scope stopped. I skipped that, mashed “AF” (autofocus), the SeeStar focused, and with “photo” selected, I pushed the big red button to take a picture. I did that several times, and also shot a short video.

The results? Unfortunately, I caught Sol at one of his more peaceful moments of late. There were a couple of big sunspot groups about to rotate off the limb, one small spot in the middle of the disk, and one new group on the opposite limb. However, for a rather short focal length scope the pictures (which were sent to my phone from the SeeStar) were impressive. The lighter areas around the groups were easier to see than they are for me in my white light-filtered C8 SCT. And so was granulation. Miss Dorothy and I thought the video, which showed incoming clouds moving over the Sun’s face, was awful pretty. Yes, the clouds were back.

And then I sat and waited again. The weatherman said it would be clear Sunday evening…but there was a fly buzzing in that butter. I had a Mobile Amateur Radio Club Board meeting to conduct, which would no doubt go on for quite a spell Sunday evenin’. Also, we always have our Board meetings at Heroes Sports Bar and Grill…and it was somewhat likely I’d consume a “few” cold 807s over the course of said meeting—just to wet my whistle for my orations, you unnerstan’. Would I be in any shape to take pictures of M42 with the new scope when I returned?

When I got back to Chaos Manor South that evening at around 8, somewhat groggy Unk was glad he’d had the sense to set the SeeStar up in the backyard beforehand. I removed the plastic bag I’d covered her with “just in case,” connected to the scope, and mashed “M42” in the “tonight’s best” section. Once the li’l gal unfolded herself, pointed to M42, and began taking her brief preview shots, I autofocused and that was about it. I touched the big red button and she started taking and stacking ten second frames. Oh, before that, I had had the presence of mind (barely) to go into the telescope menu and enable the SeeStar’s internal dew heater on this somewhat damp night. The scope had already engaged her built-in dual-band nebula filter herself.

Yes, M42 is bright, but I was still FREAKING AMAZED that by the time I’d got back inside and was in the den with Miss Dorothy, the telescope had already produced an image of the Great Nebula far better lookin’ than what I see visually in a ten-inch telescope like my Zelda in the backyard. And it just kept getting better.

What did I have to do next? Not much. I turned on the cotton-picking television set for me and Tommy, Miss D. went off to bed, and I and that rascally feline sat and watched TV while the SeeStar did her thing out in the cold (man alive, it was around 40F out there!).  You don’t have to watch the scope. The phone doesn’t need to be awake. The SeeStar does just fine on her own.

When our program wrapped up somewhat over half an hour later, I thought to look at the iPhone again. HOLY COW! The SeeStar had accumulated just over half an hour of exposure (she will occasionally discard a frame due to star trailing or other issues). The result was, frankly, competitive with anything I’ve ever done with a “real” telescope and mount! I was just gobsmacked. Yes, it seemed like hoo-doo witchery! The picture at the top of the page is just as it came out of the telescope. I tweaked it a little later, but only with the minimalist tools in my iPhone 14.

With a little processing...

Let me add that what you see at the top of the page is just the .jpg the scope transmits to your phone automatically. If you connect to the SeeStar over the network (like with a PC), you can download the original .fits file of your quarry. If you cannot connect the telescope to a network with its “Station Mode,” like out in the boonies, you can still download images to a computer using a USB cable. If you’ve instructed the scope to save the unstacked frames as well, you can download ‘em and stack ‘em yourself. Unk? In these latter days stuff like that tends to confound me. For now, I’m happy just admiring the simple .jpgs that show up on my iPhone.

That was good. But after the big meeting, those 807s, and the excitement of first light on the night sky, Unk was feeling the need to wind things down. I swiped “shut down” on the app, and by the time I got to the scope in the backyard, she’d tilted her little tube down to its stowed position and powered herself off. I picked her and the tripod up, carried them inside, put her in her case, and was back in the den with Mr. Tommy in about 5 minutes.

And then we waited again. What should I go after next? There are numerous winter targets, but I thought one I should essay before it got too high (the SeeStar does not like tracking objects much about 80 degrees) was M1, Old Crabby. The SeeStar app is quite full featured, and tapping M1 in its object list gave full details of the supernova remnant including a graphic showing its elevation over the course of the evening. Oh, let me also mention the app includes a very high-quality star atlas. You don’t have to select objects from a list. You can go to the atlas—which appears to have a very large complement of DSOs—and select and go-to them from there.

The next night was pretty anticlimactic. Sent the little telescope to her target, Messier 1, and after some hemming and hawing about “enhancing-calibrating-please wait,” she began shooting. I could see she’d do a pretty good job on the Crab after just a couple of frames, but there was a problem:  the object wasn’t well centered. On a hunch, I went to the star atlas. There was a frame around M1, but not centered on M1. I dragged it to center the nebula, missy said she was doing a goto, we began shooting again and all was well.

A this point I had checked into our weekly 6-meter SSB net, signed off, locked up the radio shack, and walked back to the main house. There, I picked up the phone and was greeted by the very nice shot of the Crab Nebula you see here. Oh, it’s not as impressive as M42; M1 is a smallish object not as well suited to a small, widefield telescope. Still, the colors and detail easily rivaled what I used to do with Big Bertha, my old C11, and Mallincam Xtreme from the dark skies of Chiefland, Florida. And the wide-field nature of the SeeStar did place the nebula in a dramatically star-rich field.

Before channel surfing for something for me and Tommy to watch on the dadgum television, I thought I might point missy at "one more." By this time, approaching nine pm, many of the winter marvels were beginning to climb high in the east, putting them out of reach for a little alt-az rig. It was also feeling humid damp out in the yard, so I double-checked I had turned on the dew heater (nope). I took care of that, and, with the star atlas, began searching the eastern sky for a good target.

M35, the big galactic cluster in Gemini would be fine for a while, it appeared. I sent the scope there via the atlas (inexplicably, the wonderful M35 didn’t seem to be in “tonight’s best.”).  There, I adjusted framing to put the smaller, more distant cluster NGC 2158 in the field, autofocused, and let the ZWO have at the cluster for around 15 minutes.  All this was done while sitting on the couch in the den, you understand.

The results? The pair of clusters is maybe not as inherently interesting an object as the supernova remnant, but is really more suited for a widefield instrument (in fact, it coulda used more field). Being able to place the smaller cluster in the frame really helped, and I was pleased with the results. And ready for the evening to begin reaching its conclusion as 10pm came on. When M35 finished up, I commanded “shut down” and retrieved scope and tripod from the yard, putting the little scope back on charge after two nights. Miss Dorothy was somewhat startled to see the odd-looking scope—she’d only seen it briefly once—sitting in the living room attached to a cell charger when she got up the next morning.

And that was that after two nights. I was frankly thrilled by the small scope, think we will have a lot of fun together, and told her she could officially join the Chaos Manor South family. She then whispered me her name (y’all know I name all my telescopes), “Suzie,” as in “Suzie-Q,” she said. That sounded about right. She is a cutie in her odd way. But this little thing is also surprisingly powerful. If you’re an over the hill suburban astronomer like your Old Uncle? RECOMMENDED.