Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M13

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

M15

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

M31/32

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

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

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

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

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

 

International Observe the Moon Night with Tiny

Years ago, in what is still one of my favorite AstroBlog articles, The Good Tasco, I talked about my second Tasco telescope, an 11TE 4.5-inch reflector, which was indeed a good one. The first? Not so much, muchachos. That was a rather execrable 3-inch Newtonian I was given in 1965—it did get me started, though. Anyhow, some thirty five years after the 11TE, another Tasco fell into my hands. Would the third Tasco be the charm or not?

Number three arrived in the spring of 2010, and it came to me with my sweet little Orange Tube Celestron C90. The feller I purchased it from, the father of a colleague of Miss Dorothy, was moving to a new retirement situation and was disposing of other stuff, too, some of which he passed on to me. In addition to the Celestron, he threw in a handful of old .965 Japanese Standard eyepieces, an Olympus OM-1 (film) camera, and a 60mm Tasco refractor.

What did I do with the Tasco? I set it aside and forgot about it. I mean, what was I supposed to do with the poor little thing? It did move with us from the old Chaos Manor South downtown to the new Chaos Manor South in the ‘burbs in 2014, though. It didn’t look like much of a telescope, but it was a telescope, and your old Uncle would never send one to the junkyard.

A couple of years after our move, I put the Tasco in the back of my 4Runner, Miss Van Pelt and there it stayed. Why? I’m not too clear about that a decade down the line, but I think I’d intended to give it to a scopeless friend, found a better one for them, and just left the Tasco where she was. For—ulp—a decade. Until the other day when I was cleaning out the 4Runner. I’d normally take the Tasco out, vacuum, and then return her to her accustomed spot. Not this time. I carried the forlorn little tube inside, inside my radio shack/Workshop of the Telescopes, the Batcave…

Why? I don’t know. Maybe I felt sorry for the Tasco riding around all over creation and never seeing a photon of starlight. Maybe I was thinking about my rescue telescope, Tanya, who turned out to be more capable than she looked. Or maybe I was just bored and curious. Anyhow, though this appeared to be an inexpensive Tasco, there was still hope. They imported good telescopes in all price ranges—though, naturally, you stood a better chance with their more expensive offerings.

You aren’t a refugee from the 60s – 80s, haven’t read the ‘blog article linked above, and don’t know what “Tasco” is? The short and sweet is that Tasco was an importer who never made a single telescope. They only imported them, just like the renowned Unitron “United Trading Company.” While Tasco is still around and importing telescopes, they are nowhere near as prominent as they once were and have nothing at all to do with the original Tasco. Last time I checked their website, the new Tasco (now a part of Bushnell) was concentrating on binoculars and only offering two telescopes, 70mm and 50mm refractors. Both make the Tasco-branded scopes of the 60s – 80s look like Cadillacs.   

Condition-wise? Not great, but not so bad, either. The objective was OK, if quite (but not horrendously) dirty. Her small finder was missing and so was her objective cap. There was no diagonal, either; an el-cheapo .965 12.5mm H (Huygens!) eyepiece was inserted directly into the drawtube and had served to keep dust out of the OTA interior—about all it would be good for. It did not appear to be an original Tasco eyepiece. Finally, the tripod and small fork mount had not come with the telescope, and I presumed they’d disappeared long ago. But how long ago? How old was this Tasco, anyway?

I deduced “1980s.” The reason for that was the telescope’s badge read “Made in Taiwan,” which is where the Tascos began coming from in the 80s. While the Taiwanese telescopes were lower in quality than the Japanese ones of the 60s and 70s, that was only by a little and mostly had to do with the use of more plastic. Then came Halley’s Comet,  and Tasco was driven to import as many telescopes as possible as cheaply as possible. That was when they turned to mainland China. The initial Chinese scopes were quite a comedown. By the 1990s almost all Tasco’s instruments came from the PRC (apparently some were made in Korea).

This particular telescope had plenty of plastic, but there was metal where it counted, like the drawtube and focuser. The objective cell could be disassembled, something that the cheapest Chinese scopes would forego. But dating it as a product of the 80s was guesswork. Luckily, there was a model number on the nameplate on the focuser, “302058.” I assumed it was a model number, anyway. I didn’t believe the maker (or Tasco) would put a serial number on such a humble instrument.

Bingo! Typing “Tasco 302058” into the dang Google got me the li’l refractor’s real name/model number: 58T. I had at least heard of that one, and some digging (well Googling) got me plenty of information.  That included verification that this girl was indeed a relic from the days of big hair, Rubik’s Cube, and thriving department stores—where the Tasco had likely been purchased. Best of all, I was able to locate and download the 58T’s assembly instructions and separate manual.

The manual is quite OK. Maybe more than OK. It is what must be the last gasp of Tasco’s old and highly regarded book,  A Key to Worlds Beyond. By the time of the 58T, the included book had shrunk to a mere dozen pages and was now titled, Reach to Worlds Beyond, but it is still better than the instructions that come with today’s Department Store/Amazon Telescopes:

It is quite easy to pick out the  "keystone" of Hercules, and your telescope will treat you to a view of the Great Hercules Cluster if you look along the line of the western edge of the keystone. Small telescopes show this great globular cluster of 100,000 stars as a little hazy ball of light.

There is more text, if not a lot more text, from “Key” covering the constellations of each season accompanied by simple charts. There are also tips on using the telescope, like choosing appropriate magnifications for a 60mm.

Reading the simple and charming descriptions of the wonders the Tasco might show, I decided, “Hell, why don’t we see what she can do?” The first requirement would be putting the 58T on a mount. The obvious choice would be my SkyWatcher AZ-4 altazimuth rig. However, to do that, I’d need to get a Vixen dovetail bar on Missy…

That turned out to be easy. I had a plastic block that came with my old and long-gone Short Tube 80 that was designed to allow the scope to be used on a ¼-20 device like a camera tripod. I removed one of the 58T’s metal side bearings and screwed the short tube 80 accessory on in its place, it was solid and would, I thought, do fine with a Vixen bracket.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have one I wasn’t using. I do have a dovetail I bought from Orion for the C90, one with a ¼-20 D-ring bolt that would be perfect for the Tasco. Alas, I searched Chaos Manor South’s overflowing Telescope Vault thoroughly but could not find it. “Welp, that shouldn’t be difficult to rectify.” There wouldn’t be any ordering from out-of-business Orion, but Amazon got an inexpensive Vixen (format) dovetail with the same type of bolt on its way to me.

While waiting for the Amazon truck, I figgered I’d do some preliminary cleaning. Like Tanya, but maybe worse, the 58T’s aluminum tube was dirty and had plenty of nicks and scrapes and scratches. I did the best I could. If the 58T turned out to be worth a flip, I’d do more work. I also took care of objective cleaning. Zeiss lens wipes fixed that. The tailpiece, I noticed, was loose, very loose. All that was required to secure it, though, was tightening a few Phillips-head screws.

Cleaning done, I thought about the finder situation. The finder mount was there (including alignment screws) but I didn’t have a spare finder small enough in diameter to fit in the single ring. What to do? I borrowed the C90’s 24mm finder to give the girl a check-ride. If the scope had possibilities I could fit her with a Rigel Quick Finder base. Or for looks sake, buy a Chinese 24mm finder off eBay or Amazon, where they go for $10. But the 58T would need to prove herself first.

Finally, I propped the waif up on a table in the Sunroom and had a look through her with a good 25mm Plössl (with the aid of the C90’s .965 to 1.25-inch diagonal). It was hard to tell much about the optics from a look through a window at the leaves of a distant tree on an overcast day, but Tiny did snap into focus. Maybe there was hope. Maybe. I settled in to wait for the Amazon truck bearing the Vixen dovetail. If the 58T turned out to be a sad little person devoid of worth, no harm, no foul. I needed the Amazon dovetail for the C90, anyway.

The dovetail I ordered arrived in just a day or two, and I got Tiny on the AZ-4 mount. She looked good, but would she be good? I wouldn’t know for sure until the clear skies predicted for a couple of days hence arrived. I thought I’d get the finder aligned, though, and took the whole works into the backyard to focus on distant trees. That’s when my Tasco project came to a screeching halt. Disaster struck.

“OK, let’s get that finder aligned.” I pointed Tiny at a distant tree line, inserted a  25mm eyepiece and… I ran out of in-focus before the image was quite sharp. I didn’t need a lot more in-travel, but I did need at least ¼-inch. No eyepiece I tried would come to exact focus. The reason was obvious:  The .965 – 1.25-inch diagonal put the eyepiece too far back.

I returned the Tasco to the Workshop of the Telescopes and did some cogitating. The easy solution would be a lower profile, shorter diagonal. I looked on the web but could not find one. Another avenue would be a shorter .965-inch eyepiece adapter for the drawtube. Vixen appeared to have made one suitable for small scopes like the 58T at one time, but no longer. What would I do? What would I do?

I wasn’t ready to toss Tiny back into the 4Runner, so I considered the other options. There was really nothing for it; there were but two alternatives. I could shorten the tube, which would cause complications no matter which end I lopped off. Or… I could take some length off the tailpiece tube the focuser drawtube goes into.  It was plastic, which would be easier to cut than the aluminum tube. That sounded like the only practical solution.

I hated to hack into the little Tasco (literally), but there was just no alternative. I removed the two screws holding the focus knobs/rack and pinion gear in place and was then able to extract the drawtube. I inserted the whole tailpiece (it is one molded plastic part) into my vice with about ½-inch of the tube protruding above the jaws. Then, I took a hacksaw to it. I worked carefully and slowly, and when I’d removed half an inch, I took my Dremel tool and its wire brush attachment and cleaned up the cut. I’ve got to say it came out well. If you didn’t know what to look for, I don’t think you’d know what was done.

Everything together again, out to the back forty the little scope and I went again. I inserted the diagonal and the 25mm Plössl and gave it a try. Excellent! There was now more than enough in-travel for the 25mm and other oculars I tested. Whew! I was finally able to try the scope on distant objects—they looked good—and align the finder. Fingers and toes crossed, I settled in to wait for a clear evening.

When the clouds finally parted, I got the Tasco out for some initial tests. The Moon and planets weren’t visible, so I thought I’d try her on some bright stars and maybe visit M13 as Reach to Worlds Beyond had suggested. My first observation—before it got dark? Your Uncle must really be getting old. The once light and portable SkyWatcher AZ-4 mount was quite a handful.

M13? Ha! I could barely make out the Keystone in the hot and muggy and hazy backyard. After only having been outside half an hour, the little scope’s tube had already begun to collect dew. Luckily, I had printed an objective cap with my 3D printer to replace the Tasco’s missing one. The poor conditions didn’t mean I couldn’t give Tiny an initial check-out, though. There were bright stars visible. Arcturus, Vega, and Altair. Objective cap off, I went to Vega.

Reach to Worlds Beyond!

I inserted a 40mm Plössl (to make pointing easy) into the diagonal and had a look. I was nervous about what I’d see, and, indeed, Vega was kind of a mess at first glance. Surprise:  focusing produced a nice, sharp star. A 20mm ocular brought out an Airy disk and clear diffraction rings when the seeing settled momentarily.

I know what poor optics look like, and this wasn’t it. The image looked good, anyhow. The seeing was hardly perfect, and I judged it not practical to try a star test.  Tiny did appear to be out of collimation a small amount, but I could deal with that if necessary. The Moon was waxing again, and I thought Selene would be a revealing test when she got a little older.

I looked at the other bright suns, and it was the same. Sweet. I also hunted fruitlessly for M57 for a minute or two, but no dice. Before throwing in that proverbial towel, Unk looked around for something/anything else to observe—the stars were fading as conditions worsened. I ended the run with Albireo. The pair looked good, though the colors were suppressed in the heavy haze. Carrying the wee telescope inside, I judged her first light with me to have been a success. Before proceeding to Rebel Yell and YouTube with the felines, I went on Amazon and ordered Tiny (I guess that must be her name; I keep using it) a 24mm Svbony finder of her very own.

When the Moon was back in the sky, and Tropical Storm Bertha had gone on her merry way, I did get a look at Luna. The gibbous Moon was gratifyingly sharp. As always, Copernicus, just off the terminator, was wonderful—the mighty crater’s terracing was sharp. I tried magnifications up to 100x with Tiny, and her images held up well. Why did I stop at 100x (116x, actually)? Two reasons. First, to get past that with 700 millimeters of focal length, you must resort to short focal length, uncomfortable oculars.  I could have fetched a Barlow…but… The other problem is that with a 2.4-inch refractor you run out of light in a hurry. With the 6mm eyepiece, the Moon was getting dim.

The denouement? Tiny was the telescope of choice for me for International Observe the Moon Night, where she did an even better job with Luna. Plato in particular was a spectacle, with the rising sun throwing shadows of the mountainous rim across the crater floor. I also finally got a look at M13. The Great Globular was indeed a little hazy ball of light. At the highest power I could muster, I almost convinced myself I saw a little graininess in the cluster’s halo.

And that was that. The little telescope had proved herself to be a Good Tasco. What’s up next for her? I do have ideas for projects involving her that you’ll (maybe) read about in coming months.

Next Time:  Back on the Messier Road…

 

 

 

How’s one of my favorite telescopes of all time, Charity Hope Valentine, my ETX125 PE Maksutov Cassegrain, doing? Muchachos, the reason you haven’t heard much about her in long while is because the answer to that has been, “Not good, not good at all.” For all practical purposes my long-time companion was dead. I’d tried to take good care of her…but…

Charity,  you see, is no spring chicken; she is going on 21 years old. She’s had a good life for a small (5-inch) telescope, I think.  I know your old Uncle and his slightly neurotic ETX girlfriend have enjoyed countless astronomical adventures.  This one and this one being but two examples of many. Alas, time takes its toll on us all…

I tried to take good care of Missy, but things began to fail. First came her Autostar’s keyboard. I put that right, however, and she was fine for years. Her true decline began with the hand control’s coiled cable giving up the ghost followed swiftly by other minor parts and pieces—the power cord, tripod components, RA lock, etc., etc. It was no problem to replace these things, though (like the self-tapping screws that fell out of the Autostar of their own accord), and Charity said she intended to outlive Unk.

Alas, two years ago, the inevitable critical failure occurred: The Autostar hand control, without which the ETX can’t even track in RA, let out the magic smoke. This was heralded by the display turning to hieroglyphics and going blank as we observed NGC 5053 on an early summer evening. My heart sank. Normally, I’d have grumbled and bought a new Autostar HC, but with the fall of Meade that was no longer an option.

By the light of day, your Old Uncle got the Autostar open and surveyed the damage. I’d hoped it was “only” the display (which is becoming difficult to obtain for older ETXes), but I noticed several burned ICs, too. I trimmed the ribbon cable and cleaned the connector on the board and powered Charity up, but the display remained stubbornly blank. More looking revealed more damaged components. What would I do? What would I do? I’d have to give the situation some thought…and months and months rolled by…

Not that I didn’t think about Charity. I thought about her frequently. In my opinion, the PCB was a basket case, and the display was possibly bad as well. Trying to repair the hand control just didn’t seem like much of an option. So… I kept my eye out for a used Meade Autostar 497 at a reasonable price. I didn’t see one, though. Used Autostars are now going for as much as $400 with no guarantee they aren’t on the edge of failure—assuming they work at all. I considered ponying up the $200 - $400 they cost on the eBay anyway if that was what it took to revive my little girlfriend, but it just didn’t seem wise. Maybe there was a better way.

Deforking Charity was easy--at first!

What was that better way? Deforking the girl. Removing her optical tube from her fork mount, installing a dovetail bracket on her underside (sorry, hon), and using Charity on my Celestron Advanced VX mount—or maybe even purchasing a small GEM  for her. I’d considered that idea before but rejected it. I wanted Charity back just the way she’d always been.

Howsomeever, in addition to me beginning to lose hope about finding a good deal on an Autostar, I began thinking about what the reality of Miss C had always been. I’d originally been attracted to Charity because living here in Possum Swamp there are plenty of iffy nights. It would be nice to have a scope with decent aperture and more portability than a C8 for those “maybe” evenings. The ETX provided that to some extent, but I quickly found the MCT was heavier than I expected (don’t look at me like that, Charity!). Her fork and OTA were frankly not much more portable than a C8. Having the ETX’s tube separate from the mount would make her more manageable for your decrepit correspondent.

Also, the girl had her quirks. Some nights her goto pointing was flat out amazing. Other nights, even nights at the same site with the same alignment stars, she struggled to find anything, especially objects high in the sky. Her tracking? It was OK in alt-azimuth mode, but repositioning an object in the field was a pain due to backlash. Equatorial mode? Let’s just say you could forget doing any imaging other than lunar and planetary. There was plenty of periodic error in addition to the backlash that plagued the telescope no matter how often you did the “drive training” routine.

On the other hand, Charity’s optics are first rate. Also, 5-inches doesn’t fall that far behind 8-inches, not at a dark site, anyway. The times I’ve pitted my girl against Meade and Celestron 8-inch SCTs, she’s kept up with them. And, yes, I still loved Charity Hope Valentine, and in these latter days I believed I’d use her more than ever if I could just bring her back in slightly more portable fashion. If deforking her would allow the girl to live on, that’s just what I would do.

So, one afternoon this past June, I finally undertook to do the deed. With Charity on the operating table in my radio shack/workshop of the telescopes, the Batcave, I got to work. Removing the tube from the fork should have been simple, and on most ETXes it would have been. You just remove four hex bolts, two on either side of the rear cell, that hold the fork adapter plates to the cell. I did that and out they came, no fuss, no muss. Until there was muss. I tried to slide Charity forward or back to remove her from the fork, but she wouldn’t budge.

Done!

The main problem was a part unique to the PE series ETXes, a plastic collar that wraps around the top half of the rear cell. This (I found out after I got it off) is used to protect the cable bundle leading from the drivebase to the telescope’s LNT Smartfinder. That red-dot finder is mounted to the collar, not the rear cell—I’d always assumed the collar was part of the cell. Anyhow, after some experimentation it was clear that without removing this collar Charity wasn’t going anywhere.

The collar was attached to the rear cell with a single bolt.  The bolt was small, but looking closely, even my tired old peepers could see it was some kind of star head. Hokay. I had a bunch of star wrenches, including some small ones. Unfortunately, even the smallest was too large. There was, however, a gap between the bracket holding the collar in place and the rear cell. I was able to press it in enough to allow me to grip the bolt with a pair of forceps and remove it. Whew!

The rest was relatively easy. On most ETXes, you can pull the fork arms apart enough to make it easy to slide the OTA out. However, for the PE, Meade beefed-up the fork (like more recent 125s it is plastic outside, but aluminum inside), and I found it difficult to flex the arms at all. I finally discovered that moving the tube adapter plates that had been screwed into the rear cell down and out of the way provided enough clearance to allow me to free the OTA.  I have hung onto Charity’s fork mount in case it becomes possible/desirable to revive it.

The rest was easy. I got the girl up to the main house and bolted a William Optics Vixen-compatible dovetail bracket into the bracket on the underside of Charity’s tube (she wishes I would stop talking about her underside). Kudos to Meade for providing a ¼-20 “foot” on the ETX. It came to me that the Vixen dovetail would also allow me to use C on my SkyWatcher AZ-4 altazimuth mount on those (not infrequent) nights when I am really lazy.

How was balance when I mounted Charity on the AVX GEM? RA was no problem, though I did have to slide the single Synta pancake weight nearly all the way up to balance. Declination? Charity is quite front end heavy due to her deep and thick Maksutov corrector, and the tube had to be pretty far back in the dovetail, but, again, no problem.

Looking good on the AVX...

Finishing up, I gave the girl a good cleaning/polishing and installed a base for a Rigel Quick Finder on her rear cell. How’d she look? I thought her silkscreened/anodized tube (with a metallic-pink North America Nebula) looked as good as ever. Maybe even better out in the open on a GEM rather than nestled in a fork. As for the Quick Finder, I think that will be perfect. I had been worried about getting her old Smartfinder off and was glad it turned out to be attached to that removable collar instead of the cell.

The only thing I was concerned about? That Charity’s fixed diagonal would cause the equatorial mount to place the eyepiece in some inconvenient positions. Tube rings might be preferable, but they are difficult to find in the correct size, and I’m not a fan of loosening rings to change the eyepiece angle anyway. At best, that’s caused me to mess up my goto alignment and at worst to nearly drop a Newtonian OTA onto the ground. I do have an LAR adapter that might allow me to use a standard diagonal in C. We’ll see if that’s worth fooling with.

All that remained was seeing how the girl performed on the AVX under a starry sky…

I should have waited longer to give the “new” Charity Hope Valentine her First Light. The July evening I set her up in Chaos Manor South’s backyard was miserable, just miserable. When the sun finally began his exit from the hazy, partly cloudy sky, the temperature was still over 80F, the humidity was high, and the skeeters didn’t wait till full dark before biting your poor Uncle. But I was a man with a mission. Would the girl be useable on a GEM? I got to work getting AVX and ETX ready.

Not only had I not used Charity in a long time, I hadn’t used the Celestron mount in a while, either. I wasn’t too concerned, though. I’ve aligned the AVX a million times over the 13 years I’ve had it and know the procedure like the back o’ me hand. I got the tripod up, then decided it needed to be shorter. As above, that fixed ETX diagonal can put the eyepiece in inconvenient positions—mainly “too high” with the scope pointing at targets at lower altitudes.

Tripod? Check. Mount head? Check. Power cord and hand controller plugged in? Check. Counterweight? Check. Charity on mount and balanced? Check. With the telescope pointing toward the North Celestial Pole, however, I could see the eyepiece was still too high to reach. I collapsed the tripod legs some more and went inside to wait for dark.

When astronomical twilight arrived (not till nine freaking thirty), out to the backyard I went. Power up! The Celestron hand control displayed the correct time despite me not having replaced the RTC battery in… well, who knows? Anyhoo, I only fumbled a little with the alignment. I had to skip one calibration star the mount offered because it was too low, and at first wasn’t sure which button to mash to select another. Finally, my last star was in the field of the 25mm crosshair eyepiece at 75x when Missy stopped her slew. What now? Why M13, of course.

She looks right at home on the AZ-4.

If you want to know how the Great Globular looked in my reborn girlfriend, take a gander at last month’s AstroBlog, but I will say it didn’t look like much. Maybe more than I expected, but not much more. Next up? M92, that other Hercules glob. May I commit heresy? I thought M92 looked better than M13 on this lousy night.

By the time I’d spent a while with M92, the sky was, if anything, worse. The clouds weren’t the problem; it was the haze. Chaos Manor South’s sky was milk with only the brightest stars peeping through the mess. I thought I’d try a couple more deep sky objects, beginning with M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, but it was barely visible (it was low in altitude for one thing). I packed it in but didn’t pack it up. I tossed a scope cover over my girl and headed for the den. It’s aways nice to be able to leave a telescope set up in my secure backyard when rain does not appear imminent.

The next morning? The sky was clear, but blocking the Sun showed the sky was still crazy-hazy. I brought C and the AVX back inside.  I was satisfied, however, and had nothing to complain about regarding how Charity had behaved on the Celestron mount. There will be no more  of those evenings when she has some sort of meltdown and refuses to find DSOs. The only gotcha? I need to remember to keep the tripod as low as possible. No matter! Charity was back!

What would come next for my slightly neurotic gal pal? I wanted to try her on the SkyWatcher altazimuth mount when the Moon was back in the sky.  The Moon came back, alright, but with it came Tropical Storm Bertha, which despite Uncle Rod’s pleas, “Bertha doncha come around here anymore!”  brushed our coast. The main effect? More clouds, layers of them.

Nevertheless, I was able to get out and view a few stars and get a glimpse of Luna with Charity on the  AZ-4 mount. Verdict? A manual alt-azimuth mount is not perfect for such a long focal length telescope, but it was OK. At 315x via an Orion (Synta) 6mm Expanse eyepiece, the shakes were there but were bearable. The only somewhat objectionable thing? Due to the ETX’s fixed diagonal, the eyepiece was always to the side.

That’s not a big deal, but it is a deal. If it begins to annoy me, I can use a standard SCT diagonal via the L.A.R. adapter I mentioned above. And, yes, this mount does make C. into quite the portable telescope. However, only a full observing run with her in this configuration will allow me to decide if it’s a useable way for me to observe with The ETX.

Space Summer Comes Again

Ready to go QRV from Battleship Park!

Yes, your increasingly ancient Uncle just completed yet another trip around ol’ Sol last month, his 73^rd. I celebrated it as I have for a long while, with space, ham radio, and Mexican food. How did space travel and the space program come to be associated with my summertime birthday?

Back when I was a little squeaker, I liked to play space and spacemen during those glorious summer vacations of yore, even more than I liked playing army or monsters (“Werewolf’s Out Tonight!”) as the Sun sank on long July afternoons. Once Unk was finally grown up, there were summer vacation trips with Miss Dorothy to the Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This year? Unk’s birthday was decidedly more modest…

Of course there was ham radio. With the coming of Parks on the Air (amateurs go to a national or state park and “activate” it, contact as many fellow operators from there as possible) amateur radio has become more of a summer activity for Unk than ever. The way you play POTA as an activator is you set your portable station up in a park and work a minimum of ten “hunters”—hams hunting parks from home.

As Unk’s birthday week approached. I’d kept a weather eye on the sky, but it looked like I might get lucky this year. The days preceding my birthday on Friday the 17^th were stormy, but when Friday neared, it was obvious the weather gods would cooperate. I loaded the ham radio gear into Miss Van Pelt, my 4Runner, and headed to Battleship Alabama Park, Parks on the Air Park US-11376. 

The Great Gray Lady.

I got the little (Chinese) Xiegu G90 transceiver (20 watts) and my Chameleon portable (vertical) antenna up and got on the air. It was tough sledding, campers. The 20-meter ham band was not in great shape; it was up and down all day. Nevertheless, I got the required number of contacts and worked a couple more for good measure. As noon came in, however, and the temperature hit the mid-90s (let’s not even talk about “real feel”), your ancient Uncle knew it was time to head home.  

Of course, that evening Miss Dorothy and I repaired to my fave Mexican restaurant, El Giro’s (“The Special Chicken”) just down the road a mile or three from Chaos Manor South. There? That’s no mystery. I ordered, as always, the wonderful Number 13:  Chile rellenos, burrito, enchilada. Man was it good! And the margaritas? They were, if anything, extra good.

Back home at Chaos Manor South, I was too tired to take even a small telescope into the backyard, but I fulfilled the space part of Space Summer 2026 with the viewing a bunch of Project Gemini videos on DVDs I got from the old Spacecraft Films. After I’d watched the films to the accompaniment of a little of the Rebel Yell—and catnip for the felines—I began to doze off. I figured I was entitled to. It had been a big day and a fun day.

Next:  A Tasco Comes to Chaos Manor South…

 

Before we get to the subject(s) of this month’s blog, muchachos, I want to acknowledge an anniversary: This month marks twenty years—yes, twenty—of Uncle Rod’s AstroBlog. In that long-ago summer of 2006, did I have an inkling we’d still be here two decades down the line? Hell, no! I’d have laughed if somebody had suggested such an absurdity.

Not that there haven’t been changes as we’ve rolled along. The ‘blog began on AOL, on their long gone “Blogspot on AOL” site.  In the beginning, the posts were short, often centered on current events in amateur astronomy, and were aimed at least partially at my fellow astronomy club members here. Then, AOL began going, err, “belly” up, and I moved the AstroBlog to Google in 2006, where it has remained. That was just the beginning of the changes, however.

The big one came a couple of years later in July of 2008. Without me knowing where it came from, the idea popped into my head that the AstroBlog could be more, and I wanted it to be more. Articles, starting with “The Good Tasco,” became longer, more personal, and aimed at, well, everybody. Soon, I was publishing a new installment every week. I can hardly believe I kept to that schedule for nearly ten years, but I did.

Until 2018. In the spring of that year, I began to find reasons not to publish the ol’ AstroBlog. I’d had a hard time adjusting to early retirement and began to wonder if I really wanted to publish the ‘blog every week—or at all. Was I in need of a change? I eventually got over that, but then, in January 2019, I suffered a near-fatal accident. Being laid up with not much to do and not able to do much got me down in the dumps—again. When I had (more or less) recovered, I found I suddenly had two books to write. All those things conspired to keep the ‘blog off the air.

There was no Uncle Rod’s AstroBlog from April 2018 to November 2019 (I did publish in December 2018 for old time’s sake). Then, the coming of the pandemic and me needing something to do during it conspired to bring the 'blog back regularly starting in December of 2019. It felt good, and I wondered how I could have stopped AstroBlogging. I have reduced my schedule to once a month, though, and that seems to be just right.

‘Nuff said. But I do want to thank all the readers—my friends—who have supported The Little Old AstroBlog from Possum Swamp for (ulp!) twenty years.

Uncle Rod’s Yearly M13

“Yearly M13? What’s that mean, Unk?” If you’re a longtime reader here, you know. If not? Taking an image of the Great Globular in Hercules once a year is one of two annual astronomy rituals I perform—the other being observing M42, the Orion Nebula, on Christmas Eve. How and why did I start this “ritual” business? Don’t ask me; it began many years ago with M42. I suppose I just liked looking at the Great Nebula on Christmas Eve as a kid, turned that, into a yearly routine, and wanted something similar to do on a summer’s eve. I’ve long since come to look forward to these annual milestones.

Since the weather goobers were predicting an unusually rainy summer for us down here in Possum Swamp, I thought I’d best get after M13 at my first opportunity. That opportunity came on a June dark of the Moon evening sandwiched between thunderstorms. It wasn’t at all clear how much time I’d have on that Sunday night, so the telescope of choice would be my little ZWO S50 smartscope, Suzie. If things worked out, M13 would be in the can. If not, it is the work of but five minutes to get The Suze back inside.

What was the weather like? As mid-June came in, temperatures were already in the low 90s without involving the “real feel” business. The humidity was also high, natch. The sky on this particular evening as darkness began to fall (at fracking 9pm)? Milky. Mushy. Hazy. The general feel was what the old folks used to call “close.” Oh, did I mention the mosquitoes? Flocks of ‘em out for blood. If my intent had been to do visual observing, I would have hurried my butt back inside.

It wasn’t, though. Suzie is my ace-in-the-hole on uncomfortable nights like this one. I didn’t expect her to pull a masterpiece out of skies like these, but if the clouds held off (heavy rains were predicted for the morrow), I knew we’d get something. If we didn’t? I’d have spent the evening comfortably on the couch watching TV, not mosquito-bitten and sweat-soaked in the backyard.

With the girl on her wedge (I only use equatorial mode with the S50 now; it’s just mucho bettero) I fired her up, holding down the o-n/o-f-f button until Suzie intoned, “POWER ON! READY TO CONNECT!” I opened the SeeStar app on the iPhone and proceeded to polar alignment—which I’ve described here.

Polar alignment done, I remembered to turn on Suzie’s internal dew heater.  On damp nights, forgetting to do so is a dew-soaked disaster. Then, I headed inside to Chaos Manor South’s cool den. Settled on the couch with the felines, I brought up the SeeStar app’s built-in star atlas, searched for M13, and tapped “goto” when it was on the atlas screen. Suze went to M13, centered the cluster, and began her calibration and focus routines. While doing so, the app told me all about (via audio) M13’s vital statistics. Some find that annoying, but I rather like it.

Suze then began taking 10 second frames and stacking them. I put the phone down, turned on YouTube to watch some crazy ham radio videos, opened a cold 807 or two, and let Missy do the work. I would glance over at the iPhone occasionally to make sure all was well, and it always was. I let Suzie run for an hour, till it was obvious that despite the conditions, she’d got an OK Great Glob. After that, I almost headed to the back 40 to disassemble the S50, but it was still relatively early, and I thought I might catch M92, Herc’s other glob, too, which I did.

By the time half an hour of exposure had elapsed, though, it was after 11pm, well past your old Uncle’s regular bedtime, and he was thus driven to shut ‘er down. I brought Suzie inside and put her on charge—an hour and a half of exposure with the dew heater running had got the scope’s internal battery down to just over 20%. Then it was blessed nighty-night time…

The Messier Project Night 8

When the Moon began to grow old again, your Uncle had a thought (he still has them occasionally): “Say, there are only two Messiers in Hercules, M13 and M92. I’ve got new images of both, why not do some visual observing of them too, and put Hercules in the Messier Project “done” column?”

So, to the backyard I went when the clouds finally drifted off, and summer stars appeared. The telescope? My old girlfriend, Charity Hope Valentine, a Meade ETX-125PE. How would her five inches of aperture compare to the six inches of the little SkyWatcher Newtonian I’ve been using recently for Messier Project observing runs? I had hopes for the girl, since she has always boasted good contrast and sharp, tiny stars. Anyway, I had a reason for using Charity, which you will learn about next month.

M13

Is Messier 13, the so-called "Great Globular," really the greatest globular star cluster in the northern sky? Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. One of summer’s other deep sky wonders, M5, is glob that is a little brighter, a little larger, and a little easier to resolve. M13 has always been the greatest for me, though. It was the first globular cluster I heard about and was a grail for me when I was a young’un. You can read about my adventures (and maybe misadventures) with it here. But even when I became a more sophisticated (ahem) astronomer, it still had (and has) a place in my heart.

Messier 13, NGC 6205, is a magnitude 5.8 Shapley-Sawyer Class V (5) globular cluster residing near the western side of Hercules’ Keystone asterism. At 20.0’ across, it can nearly fill the field of a medium power eyepiece from a dark site. Although it’s possible for sharp-eyed observers to see M13 with the naked eye as a dim “star,” there’s no indication it was seen until Edmond Halley spotted it with his telescope in 1714. Yep, yet another “Messier” not discovered by Messier, who added it to his catalog in 1764.

I’ve observed this old granpappy glob countless times in the 61 years since I began watching the skies. What’s it like in the eyepiece? The most important thing to know about it is that while it’s midrange in concentration with its V classification, it’s still tight, and is difficult for small scopes, especially under light polluted skies, to resolve. As I’ve written before, I never did see any of M13’s stars with my 4-inch Palomar Junior when I was a kid. Maybe because all the experts, including one of my boyhood idols (along with Stan Lee, and Wayne Green, W2NSD), Sam Brown, claimed it could not be done with my little instrument.

Sure, these days, with a lot more observing experience under my belt, and telescopes to shame my poor Pal Junior, I’ve seen stars in M13 easily from my suburban backyard. Including with a fast, three-inch apochromatic refractor. To do that, though, the sky has to be good:  good transparency, decent seeing, and little or no haze.

I did not have any of those things when I set out to observe M13 visually in mid-July. It was hot and hazy with astoundingly poor transparency. My backyard is normally OK light-pollution-wise, bearable, anyhow. But when the haze is heavy, it scatters what light pollution there is, and on this night the sky looked like that of old Chaos Manor South downtown in the Garden District. So… what did I see when the ETX-125’s goto stopped?

There was no doubt we were on the right spot in Hercules. There it was, a big blob smack in the middle of the field of my 25mm Plössl (75x).  From a dark site on a good night, the ETX will show an M13 not unlike what you’ll see with an 8-inch SCT. Tonight? No way. It remained a bright(ish) blob. Well, sort of. As I stared, I could see the Great One looked grainy around its edges, and maybe even close to its core. No stars though, not quite. Upping the magnification close to 100x with a 20mm widefield ocular, however, did deliver the goods. There were stars winking in and out around the periphery of M13. I couldn’t hold any steady, but, yeah, they were there with averted vision.

Let’s turn to Mr. Messier Album, John Mallas to see what he thought about it with a 4-inch achromat from (I presume) a dark site. John opines that M13 is (natch) a magnificent object. The view in his Unitron? Not unlike what I saw with the ETX, just a little moreso ( I bet he didn’t observe on as yucky a night as Unk did). His drawing looks remarkably like what the 5-inch MCT, Charity, showed me: some stars around the periphery are resolved and more densely packed/grainy areas extend in to near the core. I would guess from his writeup that Mr. Mallas was able to hold the little suns steadier than I was (which was not at all).

M92

Over the years, some observers have opined that if M13 wasn’t around, Hercules’ second string globular, M92, would be considered one of the wonders of the sky. Nope. It’s good enough in its own way, but certainly not close to summer’s M5 or spring’s M3. It’s an OK, but just OK, bright globular cluster. I like it, though, and always look in on it when I am done with big sister, M13.

Messier 92, NGC 6341, is a magnitude 6.5 Class IV globular star cluster in Hercules a little less than 10° east of Messier 13. It is 14.0° in size making it dimmer and smaller and looser than M13. The cluster was discovered by Johann Bode on 17 December 1777. However, his discovery was apparently unknown to Charles Messier, who independently discovered/rediscovered it on 18 March 1781 and thereafter added to his catalog.

In Miss Charity Hope Valentine, M92 was nice, real nice, but a little on the small side. You wouldn’t think "only" 6’ less diameter would make M92 look so much smaller, but it does. Maybe because it is obviously looser—I also think the poor conditions had something to do with it. What was my main impression on a lousy night? It looked sharper than M13. Also, like John Mallas, my impression was of streams of stars giving the cluster an elongated appearance. I saw a little resolution here and there, but only a little. Note that under a dark sky M92 looks like a more normal globular in the 5-inch Maksutov. The verdict? As Mallas says, it is “a grand object,” if maybe not as grand as some make it out to be.

And then? Unk was hot and sweaty and scratching bug bites. I looked at a few more showpieces following M92, but they looked poor in the haze, and your tired old Uncle was soon enjoying cold 807s in the den.

Totals: 23 Down, 87 to Go…

Next Time: BIG NEWS! Big Charity Hope Valentine News!