Sunday, November 19, 2023
Issue 598: When is a Star Party Not a Star Party? Redux…
The extended forecasts for the event’s location near
Sandy Hook, Mississippi hadn’t been looking good for weeks. They indicated the
time Miss Dorothy and I would be on site, Thursday – Sunday, would be resolutely
cloudy, and most likely rainy—game over, end of story zip up your fly. The “safe”
thing to have done would have been not to even register. Or, to have saved some
gas and not hit the road for the Mississippi backwoods when November 9th
came around.
Nope. No way. I was finally back in the mood for a
star party, and, in particular, for this star party after a lay-off of
six years. After not the best star party experience in 2017, mostly thanks to
deteriorating conditions at the event’s previous location, the Feliciana Retreat
Center in Louisiana, and the change of venue in ’18 to the current White Horse
Christian Retreat Center, we took a couple of years off. Then came covid. And
we hadn’t been back since the end of the plague. Once you get out of the habit
of going to a star party, it’s sometimes hard to get with it again, but this
year, I’d decided, would be different.
In dipping-toe-into-shallow-end-of-pool fashion, Miss D. and
I began slowly, ever so slowly, planning for the 2023 Deep South Star Gaze. At
first it seemed strange to be rounding up the sleeping bags and the tent canopy
again (I sprayed plenty of waterproofing on the latter in view of the forecast).
But mostly, it just seemed right and natural. After all, Deep South was
something we’d been doing together since we were married in 1994. What was
feeling strange now was those six autumns without a Deep South.
In addition to gathering up the ancillary gear, I naturally
had to decide “Which telescope?” The weather forecasts didn’t quite look
horrible, not yet, but they did not look good. It was not a year for fancy
mounts and SCTs and computers. Also, something simpler would be more in line
with the “dipping-a-toe-back-in” theme for the year. So, what I decided on (at
first) was my 10-inch GSO Dobsonian, Zelda. Object
finding assistance? Her 50mm finder, her Rigel Quickfinder, and Sky &
Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas Jumbo Edition backed by my treasured deck of George
Kepple’s legendary Astro Cards.
Wednesday evening before our departure, I loaded up the
4Runner, Miss Van Pelt. What I did not load up, after all, was Zelda. Why lug
a 10-inch when there was little—if any—doubt it would be clouds and rain for our
entire stay at White Horse? The forecasts had just got worse, not better. I wouldn’t
be without a scope, though. I packed a smallish one just in case we saw something.
Frankly, for reasonable people (obviously that does not include your
strange, old Uncle) this would have been the time to say, “Let’s stay home
and watch it rain in comfort.”
Nope, nosir-buddy. Not only were we interested in
giving the new star party site a look-see, we wanted to show we still support
the event, and, maybe more than anything else, we wanted to see friends we hadn’t
seen in years and whom I’d begun to wonder if we we’d ever seen again. I
finished loading the truck, just like the good, old days and called it a night
reasonably early…after indulging our resident black cat, Thomas Aquinas, by watching WWII
videos on YouTube (he favors “Midway” and “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”).
Interior of the rustic lodge... |
The drive was, yeah, a short one, and there wouldn’t have
been much to say about it if not for the nostalgia factor. Like our long-ago
visits to Percy Quin State Park, original home of the star party, the journey
to White Horse is up Highway 98 to Hattiesburg (and then on to Sandy Hook). Miss
D. and I sure did a lot of reminiscin’ about our trip on this very road through
the Mississippi piney woods in 1994 when we were newlyweds.
A big difference this time? No AAA trip-ticks or Rand McNally
Road Atlas. It was GPS all the way, and she did get us to White Horse, albeit not without one bit of minor unpleasantness. As we neared our destination, the GPS, Samantha,
told us to turn onto THE ROAD. Yep, no name, just “the road.” A dirt
road that quickly devolved into a rutted two-lane track, and then into mudholes
just short of a swamp. Miss Van Pelt loved it, since she rarely gets to be a
real off-road 4Runner. Dorothy and I sure were bemused…to put it mildly…wondering
what would have happened if we’d turned down THE ROAD in her Camry! I am still washing the mud off Miss Van P.
Soon, we were on another nondescript (but at least paved)
road. The excellent directions Barry provided
for the area near the site reassured us we were indeed in the right place. Soon, there was, as mentioned in said directions, a column with, yep, a white horse sculpture
atop it. And…in just a moment we were at the facility.
White Horse Observing Field... |
Driving toward the building we noticed a paddock-like area on
the right festooned with a few tent canopies and even a few telescopes. We figgered
that must be the place, parked there, grabbed our suitcases, and headed back to
the main building. Inside, we were informed by the friendly star-partiers there
that DSSG Director Barry Simon had left the site for lunch and would be back
shortly. We spent half an hour or so looking around and getting a feel for the
place. The interior of the lodge continued the hunting camp theme but was
really purty darned nice. Oh, and there was Wi-Fi. At poor, old Feliciana that
had often been missing.
Upon Barry’s return, he pointed us at our room—the facility
has several small motel-like rooms in addition to bunkhouses. It was even tinier
than what we had become accustomed to at Feliciana, but was clean and really
just perfect for us. The window air conditioner was noisy but cooled remarkably
well.
The storied pumpkin... |
Afterwards, there not being much to do before supper, it was
back to the main building, “the lodge,” for web surfing and getting reacquainted
with old friends. If I don’t list your name here, I’m not slighting you. It’s
just that I’d have to list 40 or more. All of you, old friends and
new ones alike, are important to us.
That hour or two in the lodge was the high point of the star
party. What else did I do other then get caught up with buddies? I took frequent trips outside for looks at
the sky—all in vain. And I kept my eye on an app recommended to me by Sky
& Telescope’s Sean Walker some time back, Astropheric. It
took a while for me to get used to it, but, yeah, it really is better
than Clear Sky Charts. In fact, it’s like CSC on steroids. If you don’t
have it on your phone already, you should (it's free).
Then came supper. Miss Dorothy and I were signed up for the
meal plan, but were informed that had been cancelled (because the weather kept
attendance down so much, I guess). Instead, there were hamburger and hotdog plates
available for a reasonable price. Dorothy and I ordered hamburgers…and were a
little surprised at their definitely different taste. The ebullient lady
who owns White Horse informed us that was because they were made from not just
beef, but pork, and deer meat, too! Well, when in Rome do as the Romans
do, I reckon.
My usual mascot promoting "Dark Nights." |
The good thing? While the Wi-Fi was not exactly strong
outside the lodge, it was strong enough in our room for my Macintosh Airbook M2
to pull in YouTube with ease. I spent the evening looking at whatever whack-a-doodle
videos my heart desired until it was nigh-on ten o’clock.
In the morning, another cloudy morning, Dorothy and I
showered, dressed, and said our farewells. There were to be talks Friday, but we’d decided it would be best to get back down Highway 98
before the weather worsened. Barry was already planning on finishing up with
all the talks and the prize drawings as well that afternoon. Which was wise—the field was
already practically empty, and it was clear few folks would hang on till Saturday, much less the
official end of DSSG Sunday morning.
As we pulled away from White Horse, was I sad to be leaving?
Well, sort of. I was happy to have seen my old buddies again. But…leaving
a clouded-out star party just doesn’t have the same feel—that wistful regret—you
get when departing one that’s had nights and nights of deep space voyaging. Well,
maybe next fall. Maybe even this coming spring (Deep South still does its smaller Spring
Scrimmage edition).
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Issue 597: The Big Eclipse
Well, in a small way, muchachos. Not that it wasn’t a fairly big deal, but it hadn’t assumed much prominence in my reckonings in the days before the event. Saturday morning’s annular eclipse had been somewhat on your ol’ Uncle’s mind, of course. How could it not be? Every weatherman, local and national, had been talking about little else for the last week. And yet, and yet… I felt unmoved. Yes, it would be a fairly deep eclipse, around 75% of Sol’s face would be covered by Miss Hecate in the environs of Possum Swamp…but…yeah, just another partial eclipse.
Anyhoo, Eclipse morning, I wasn’t thinking much about the Sun;
I was thinking more about my current addiction: breakfast biscuits, fried
chicken breakfast biscuits slathered in honey sauce. “Guess I’ll head up to
Whataburger for breakfast with the hams like I do every Saturday.” In addition to
my guilty pleasure, those dadgum biscuits, I am the president of the Mobile Amateur Radio Club and feel like it’s part of my job to attend every edition of
the Saturday morning assemblage of OMs and YLs—the fried chicken is just a perk (uh-huh)
It was a jolly gathering at Whataburger that morning.
Everybody was awful excited about the Swains Island DXpedition, which had been
causing quite the stimulation of the HF ether. But, also, the solar eclipse, which would begin about 90 minutes
from the time the nice li’l girl brought Unk his breakfast tray.
Hams and astronomy? There are lots of amateur radio operators
who are also amateur astronomers. Radio propagation depends on the Sun, so most hams have a natural interest in it. More than that, amateur radio is a scientific
hobby, and hams tend to be curious about things like, yeah, The Great Out
There. Question a ham and you’ll often find she/he has a telescope. A dealer at
our last tailgater, Bud’s Tailgator, had a couple of scopes for sale, smallish
Meades, and they generated a heck of a lot of interest. “Rod! What do you think
of this one?”
Our efforts and success or lack thereof in working Swains
Island in the South Pacific (I got him without much trouble on CW) talked over
at fair length, the ragchewing turned to ECLIPSE, ECLIPSE, ECLIPSE. I grumbled
it was just an annular eclipse, and a partial one at that from the Gulf
Coast. Nothing to get excited about. My friends looked at me as if I
were crazy, “But W4NNF, it’s a solar eclipse!”
Well, I had to admit, I’ve been moved by even a partial
eclipse. Unfortunately, I reckon I got off on a bad foot when it comes to solar
eclipses just over 50 years ago. I am talking about the great total eclipse of
March 1970. Not only would it be a deep partial
one for Possum Swamp, over 90%, the path of totality wouldn’t be far away. It would
pass relatively near here in fact, the path going right through this little town on the
Florida – Georgia Parkway, Chiefland, Florida (!).
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The "pinhole effect." |
While I had enough money saved up from my various endeavors—mostly
lawn mowing—to pay for gas and maybe even enough for a cheap motel room, one
impediment remained—the old man. OK, no use holding back; nothing to it but
to do it. I apprised W4SLJ of my plans for the eclipse expedition.
His reaction? About the same as the previous month when I’d
asked if I could borrow $24.95 for a Gotham Vertical antenna for WN4NNF: “Daddy," I'd said, waving a copy of 73 Magazine under his nose, "It says right here in the ad it will let me work plenty of DX!” When I paused for breath after pouring out my eclipse plans, alas, he gave a me a look that indicated he was momentarily
speechless and/or concerned his peculiar young son had finally taken complete leave
of his senses. He grabbed me by the shoulder and led me outside to the driveway
where my prized Galaxie was parked.
“For crying out loud, you are going to drive six or eight
hours on Highway 98 with this? Look at those tires! I’m surprised when you go into the gas
station and ask for a dollar’s worth that the attendant doesn’t ask ‘Gas or
oil?’ No. I’m guessing you wouldn’t get halfway there. And I’d have to take
a day off work to come and retrieve you and figure out what to do with this—junker.”
Said he, looking over at my poor Ford and shaking his head.
To soften the blow, he patted me on the shoulder. “Sorry
coach. That’s the way it is. Say, you want to put up an HF vertical? Let’s build
you one. I’ve got some aluminum tubing here somewhere, and we’ll put together a
loading coil.” And that was that.
I was frankly embarrassed I’d troubled the OM, who usually maintained a
serious demeanor indicative of his European heritage. I imagined daddy was a
lot like Enrico Fermi must have been. Yes, I was embarrassed and had no intention
of bringing the subject up again.
The coda on the big spring eclipse of 1970? The OM was
mostly right. Oh, I still wonder if the Galaxie might not have made it there and back
in one piece…but it wouldn’t have made any difference. It was cloudy in Chiefland.
And it was cloudy up here on the Northern Gulf Coast. The way I remember it, I
didn’t get a glimpse of the eclipsed Sun that day.
The above memory did pass through my mind at breakfast, but,
on the other hand, no eclipse I’ve ever actually been able to see has, yes, failed to move
me. Anyway, I was brought back to the present by the excited chirping of my
fellow ops about the cardboard box solar viewers they had ready to go—I’d
printed instructions on safe solar viewing and plans for a pinhole viewer in
the radio club’s weekly newsletter.
I looked at my watch. 9:30 had come and gone and the eclipse
would begin at 10:37. I announced we’d all better get a move on, and we headed for the doors nearly en masse—no doubt to the astonishment of the Whataburger crew.
Back home, I couldn’t deny it; a bit of the ol’ eclipse
fever was setting in. If you want heresy, lunar eclipses have always meant more
to me than solar ones. Maybe because of the events surrounding a memorable one early in my astronomy career. But, like the ops had said, “’NNF, it’s an eclipse!” Having not prepared in advance for this one,
there wouldn’t be any fancy telescopes or cameras. I grabbed my humble 80mm
SkyWatcher refractor, Eloise, and headed for the backyard. I plunked her down
on the driveway in a spot with a good view to the east, slapped the Thousand
Oaks solar filter over her objective end, and was ready.
![]() |
iPhone 14 Sun. |
What was it like? Yes, any solar eclipse is an experience,
one that isn’t duplicated by looking at photos of one. For one thing, looking
at the Moon blotting out the Sun always gives me a real feeling for the depth
of the sky. The Moon, our nearby pal, passing in front of far more distant Sol…I
almost get a feeling of vertigo and the view in the eyepiece seems to assume almost
the look of 3D.
Feeling that semi-vertigo, I pulled away from the eyepiece
for a moment and thought, “Hell, this is a GOOD ONE. Oughta take a picture.”
How? Just with my cell phone. I recalled I’d purchased a smartphone mount, a
plastic widget that clamps your phone onto an eyepiece, to use when I was writing
a Sky &Telescope Test Report on a SkyWatcher reflector and ran inside
to fetch it.
With a little fiddling, I got the iPhone 14 set up and
starting taking little snapshots. I didn’t expect much, just a souvenir of the
day, but the iPhone 14 Pro Max does have a surprisingly good and versatile
camera as phone cameras go, and I was able to get a couple of OK snapshots
despite my excited fumbling.
With eclipse maximum upon us, I ran inside to get Miss Dorothy
so she could have a look (and also document Unk’s uber-simple setup). Soon that eerie semi-twilight that comes with a deep partial eclipse set in, and the world was silent and still for a while. And we looked and we looked and we looked until the Moon passed on in her timeless
path. It was a good one y’all and I was happy to have seen it.
Next time:
Shortly, I should have finished my yearly M13 image quest (I would have done
that this evening but for dratted clouds moving in in advance of a mild front).
So that will—knock on wood—be my subject next edition.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Issue 596: My Favorite Star Parties
![]() |
Miss Dorothy and Friend, 1994... |
What did I start thinking about as I was pondering what to
write about here? Star parties. Why? Well it is definitely and obviously
the fall star party season in the Northern Hemisphere. There was more to it
than that, however. Mostly, how much I miss the star party experience. I
haven’t been to one in, oh, about four years.
“Whyzat, Unk, whyzat, huh?” A couple of reasons, Scooter. The biggest one being covid. 2020 wasn’t any year to gather with a bunch of people even if you tried to keep your distance. 2021 wasn’t either. 2022, the supposed last year of the plague? I had a relatively mild case late that year and I am not anxious to get it again. But…
I sure got sick of the fracking lockdown and am glad to be back teaching undergraduates in person. Dorothy and I made it through this year’s big Huntsville Hamfest no problem…so, what's to worry? I can still get skittish about crowds. Psychological more than anything else, I reckon (though folks down here are getting sick in numbers again).
That ain’t all that’s kept me off the star party trail, though.
A combination of health issues and me getting older is maybe
more the reason I haven’t been back to an observing field than fear of the covid
cooties. Miss Dorothy and I made a short trip the other day, to Biloxi,
Mississippi, and I realized I was just…I dunno…hesitant about driving I-10. I
felt shaky behind the wheel. Of course, that is probably just that I haven’t
driven long distances much thanks to the combination of retirement and the virus. I’m thinking I
could get more comfortable with it again—though it will never be like the days
of two-hour daily Interstate commutes.
Anyhow, thinking about these things just naturally led me
to thinking about the wonderful star parties I’ve attended. I became a
regular at the game about 30 years ago. Oh, I’d been to a couple before that,
but wasn’t a regular goer. By the 2000s, though, I was star party crazy and
you could find me on observing fields from sea to shining sea. In fact, I did
so many star parties in 2016 a friend said in retrospect that that long spring and summer
was Uncle Rod’s Farewell Tour.
Maybe, maybe not. I am thinking about the Deep South Star
Gaze in November as a way of dipping my toe back in—we shall see. And who
knows what the new year will bring? I know I’m interested in going again. But
I will only go if I want to. If I know it will be fun.
Be that as it may, over the years I have naturally accumulated
some favorites when it comes to star parties, and I thought I would share them
with you this morning. As in the old series of articles, My Favorite Star
Parties I ran for a long time, “favorite” doesn’t necessarily mean “best.”
Sometimes it does…but mostly these are the ones where your ol’ Unk just had him a
Real Good Time.
This event is still ongoing, now being called the “Deep
South Star Gaze.” So why do I refer to it by its older name? I’ve had good
times at this Mississippi/Louisiana event for three solid decades, but I
believe I loved it best when it was in its original home at beautiful Percy
Quin State Park near McComb, Mississippi.
Why is this one of my great ones? I’ll fess up that
is mostly because it was the first star party I went to with my beautiful new
bride, Miss Dorothy, way back in 1994. But that’s not the only reason. Another
is this one is focused like a laser on observing. Oh,
there’ve been talks and occasional contests over the years, but what everybody
is out for at this star party is observing. It’s also that I’ve been so
many times over the years my fellow attendees have become my genuine friends. I
will have to admit it’s also been wonderful to have a good—no, great—star
party just around the corner, about three hours from home.
How is it now? I’ll just have to go to find out, now won’t
I? While the star party is in its fourth home, and while I still miss Percy
Quin, I admit I have had terrific times at all of the DSRSG’s locations. Stay tuned…
This one is long gone. Oh, various people have tried to revive it a time or two. And a semi-Chiefland was held fairly recently when a hurricane caused the Winter’s Star Party’s usual home to be unavailable one year. I will make no bones about it: I loved the Chiefland Star Party. Expansive observing field. Motels and (good) restaurants close at hand. Often outstanding skies. Hell, they had wireless internet on the field years ago.
The straight poop on Chiefland? It was held year after year
in the first decade of this new century at the Chiefland Astronomy Village
near, natch, Chiefland, Florida. Other folks loved it, too, for the above
reasons, and also for the incredible friendliness and welcoming attitude of the
CAV residents. Maybe we loved it too much. The attendance became so
large it overwhelmed the facilities (like porta-potties) and caused various headaches
for the residents.
In addition to the WSP year, there’ve been several revivals
of the CSP. In fact, I was at one of the last organized ones. But…while it was
a good star party…it just wasn’t the same. How could it be? The movers and shakers
at Chiefland have like all of us grown older. Billy and Alice Dodd are
gone, have passed away. My old friend Carl Wright has left us as well.
Others, like the heart and soul of Chiefland, Tom and Jeannie Clark, moved away
years ago. I’m thinking I’ll have to be content with my memories. I won’t lie,
though: If somebody decided to put on
a CSP in the old mode, your uncle would be SOUTHBOUND.
There’s got to be a number one in everything, ain’t there? There are other events that might lay claim to the title of “The Greatest” when it comes to star parties, like Stellafane or the (now gone) Riverside. Most active observers will admit, however, that when it comes to deep sky pedal-to-the-metal, The Texas Star Party is it.
How could it not be? Where is it? Near Fort Davis Texas.
Where is that? Go west till you almost run out of Texas. There’s little there
other than the picturesque town of Fort Davis, McDonald Observatory, and, yeah,
the Prude Ranch. Sometimes it doesn’t rain for months and months. The dude ranch
where the event his held is dark, oh, it’s real dark, folks. It’s
so dark the sky is that dark gray color it assumes when there is no light
pollution. The Prude Ranch is also very nice, the food great, and if you want
to meet the big names in amateur astronomy, you will meet them there.
I am proud to say I was at Prude Ranch twice (as an
unassuming attendee, not a speaker or anything). It was wonderful. I’ll never
forget it. I haven’t been back, though. It’s such a long way. When
Dorothy and I were at the height of our careers, there wasn’t time. Now that I’m
retired? As above, the idea of that long of a trip on crazy I-10 is a
non-starter with moi.
If you haven’t heard of this one, you should have. It’s another Real Dark One with outstanding facilities. It is held on Spruce Knob Mountain in West Virginia, at the Mountain Institute facility there. Do you long for dark, DARK skies (only compromised, of course, by our weather east of the Mississip)? Do you want to sleep in a wooden yurt? Hear great speakers? Go. Just go. You’ll thank me later.
I have been at Spruce Knob many times thanks to the kindness
of a couple of sets of organizers (associated with Washington DC’s outstanding
NOVAC) who had me up as a speaker. God knows why they’d want to hear your silly
Uncle more than once, but I’m glad they did. I would dearly love to go back. As
with TSP, what has prevented me post-pandemic is my physical ailments brought
on by the accident I had in 2019. An airplane ride from the ‘Swamp to DC (and a
car ride from there to West Virginny) just doesn’t seem doable. Well, it hasn’t
seemed so. Maybe next year will be different. Sure hope so…
Five Star Final
Those are my big four, y’all. But there are other greats, some of which I
only got to experience once. The Idaho Star Party is sure one. Dark, I
mean CRAZY dark—topped off by folks who instantly became friends. One of the
nicest times I’ve ever had and another of the friendliest groups I’ve encountered
is the Miami Valley Astronomical Society (in Ohio, not Florida), who put on
the Apollo Rendezvous. You want to get out of the heat, meet some great observers,
and experience truly dark skies? Try the North Woods Starfest (Chippewa Valley
Astronomy Society) in Wisconsin. Their star party at Hobbs Observatory is just….well,
it’s fab, y’all, fab, I tell you.
Next time? Keep your fingers crossed for Unk to get
some hours with M13…
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Issue 595: A New Way to Autostar Part II
Well, muchachos, don’t ever say your old Uncle doesn’t love you. It was hot—90F well after sunset—it was humid. There was a bad something brewing out in the Gulf. Nevertheless, I did not shy from the accomplishment of my goals. I wanted to get out and finish testing Digital Optica’s new Bluetooth module for the Meade Autostar. Secondly, I have resolved not to let a single month go by without an update to this here old blog, so I had to do something so I could write about something.
So it was on one recent passable, though far from good,
evening I got my ETX125PE, Miss Charity Hope Valentine, out into the backyard.
No, the sky wasn’t good at all. A
gibbous Moon was shining bravely in the east, but one look at her and I knew
there was a layer of haze encompassing at least that part of the sky. And despite Sweet Charity not being much of a handful to set up, I was sweatin’ by
the time I was done getting her on her tripod. I quickly retired to the den to
cool off and await darkness.
As those of y’all who’ve observed with me know, however,
when there is observing on the menu your old Unk tends to get Go Fever. I fidgeted on the couch for a
while, tried to watch the boob tube (Ahsoka),
then went back outside to Charity to see how things was a-goin’.
They were going just a mite slow. Yes, here at the tail-end
of August it is getting dark a little—a little—earlier, but we won’t see much
improvement on that score till dadgum Daylight Savings Time ends. So, I fiddled
around, repositioning the eyepiece case, opening it up and looking inside to
make sure my fave 1.25-inch ocular was still in there (a Konig I’ve had for almost 30 years), and taking an occasional gander at
the sky. I didn’t like the way it
looked, but reckoned it was better than nuthin’. I did precious little
observing last month, and August has been even worse in that regard. One good
thing: It has been strangely dry the
last few weeks and there were no skeeters buzzing.
Maybe it was thinking about that Konig that somehow led me
to ruminating on my long-ago Chaos Manor South nights. Those who haven’t been
with this here blog for long might not know what “Chaos Manor South” is (or
was). Well, it was the old Victorian Manse where Unk lived with Miss Dorothy
from the time of our marriage till about a decade ago, when Unk retired and he
and D. decided they no longer needed the space the stately manor offered, nor wanted
to do the upkeep it required.
Oh, those long-ago nights under the stars in an urban backyard! Yes, the light pollution was heavy. The Milky Way was utterly invisible—well you might catch the merest glimpse of it on a cold and clear December’s eve. I could make out M31 naked eye on any reasonable night, but that was as good as it got. I didn’t care. I was in astro-heaven. As recounted here, not only had the lovely Miss Dorothy recently come into my life, so had Old Betsy, a 12-inch Meade StarFinder Dobsonian. She was the largest telescope I’d ever owned, and I was amazed at what and how much I could see with her from downtown Possum Swamp.
An evening of
observing would begin with me dodging cats. Chaos Manor South’s resident
Siamese cat (and queen, she thought), Miss
Sue Lynn would watch as I began to gather the things I needed for an
observing run and would resolutely insist I needed her help. I had a horror of
her wandering off in the dark. And being downtown, there was enough traffic to
make that a real hazard for her. So, I’d bribe her with a can of Fancy Feast
and somehow try to get that enormous old OTA outside before she wised up (in
those days, Betsy was still in her original Sonotube body, and it was like
wrestling with a water heater).
With Old Betsy in our small urban backyard, what else did I
need? The observing table (a TV tray) held the very same old black plastic Orion
eyepiece box full of 1.25-inchers I had outside with Charity on this evening.
Inside it? Some treasured Plössls from Orion and Vixen, the utterly horrible
“Modified Achromats” that shipped from Meade with Bets (why I didn’t just toss
them in the trash I don’t know—that
bad), and of course, that lovely 17mm Konig I bought at the 1993 Deep South
Regional Star Gaze.
This was long before I began using a laptop computer in the
field with a telescope. At the time, a laptop was still an expensive thing. It
gave me the heebie-jeebies to think about subjecting one to Possum Swamp’s
dew-laden night air. I was using a
computer (a genu-wine IBM 486) for amateur astronomy though. I’d print out charts from
two of the greatest astro-programs there ever were: David Chandler’s Deep Space 3D,
and Emil Bonanno’s Megastar. Both
are more or less forgotten relics of the amateur astronomy past (DS3D never
even made the transition from DOS to Windows), but both could produce very beautiful, very
detailed, very deep printed charts.
You might think it funny I’d need detailed charts for a
light-polluted urban sky. But in those days, they were actually more valuable
to me there than they were under dark skies. As you know, higher magnification
tends to spread out light pollution, revealing objects that might be invisible
at lower powers. Often, I’d star-hop in an area like the Virgo Cluster with the
main scope. I would, as I called it, eyepiece
hop with my treasured 12mm Nagler Type II and those DS3D or Megastar printouts.
What else was out there with me as a slight chill descended on a
mid-autumn urban evening? If I was being serious, I had some blank observing
forms and a sketchpad, pencils, and pens to record what I saw of the urban sky.
Not so serious? Just my Orion astronomer’s flashlight (the yellow one
with—gasp—an incandescent flashlight bulb powered by two D-cells). Those were
the simple days, weren’t they? Of late, at least when it comes to backyard
astronomy, I seem to be pining for them.
And then… I’d just
pick a constellation in the clear from the huge old oaks that blocked much of it
and see how deep I could drill down. A typical project (I’ve always liked
observing projects)? Observe every single open cluster Betsy and me could see in
Cassiopeia (there are a few).
Whatever I looked at, it was wonderful.
Said ruminations came
to a halt when I realized it was finally getting good and dark, and no matter
how much I missed The Old Way, it was time to concentrate on new-fangled stuff
like Bluetooth…
Well, alrighty then. As I mentioned in Part I, the Digital
Optica Bluetooth Module is impressive. It snaps onto the bottom of the Autostar
hand paddle and honestly looks like it came out of the same factory that
produced Charity. Module plugged into the Autostar, and hand control cable
plugged into it and into Charity, it was time to get aligned.
The ETX PE provides a semi-automatic goto alignment routine
that makes it a joy to use. Put the tube in home position (level and rotated
counterclockwise to the hard azimuth stop), turn the girl on, and she does a
little dance, finding north and level. That done, she heads for two alignment
stars, bright stars. You center them with the red-dot finder and in the main
eyepiece (I use an ancient Kellner equipped with crosshairs) and you are done.
Charity’s gotos were good all night, as I expected them to be, since she’d
stopped close to both alignment stars.
Next up, I went inside to fetch the laptop I’ve used for
astronomy the last several years. A nice Lenovo with a solid-state hard drive.
On said drive being more astro-ware than humans should be allowed to have. What
I intended to use on this summer night would be my favorite in my current
“simpler” days, Stellarium. It is
really a capable program now, containing many thousands of deep sky objects. It
certainly does everything this old boy can even dream of needing to do.
With it successfully paired, the rest is duck
soup if you’ve ever used Stellarium
with a telescope. In Stellarium’s
scope-set up menu, establish an Autostar connection; you will see there is a
com port (like “com 3”) now associated with ScopeAccess. Choose that, click “connect,” and you should be, well, connected.
The Stellarium software is savvy
enough to establish a serial connection over Bluetooth for you; you don’t have
to know anything about any of that—thankfully. Once you are connected, the
scope is controlled exactly the same as if you had a serial cable between scope
and computer—no difference.
What is the bottom line on Digital Optica Bluetooth device? It works. It just works. It never dropped out on me or did anything
funny. There were no delays when I’d choose an object in Stellarium and issue a goto command. If you didn’t know the scope
and computer were connected by radio, you’d think you had a serial cable
plugged in. I think that is the most praise I can give any observing tool—it
worked well, and it worked simply and transparently. Note that the module does
not require you to use Stellarium.
Any program you can connect to a telescope over a serial port should work just
fine. I just like Stellarium. It’s
pretty and it is cheap.
“But what did you
look at, Unk? What did you look at,
huh?” I looked at quite a few
things. Beginning with M3 and M13 and M53. Which
almost ended my evening. One gaze at the Great Globular in Hercules and I
near about threw the Big Switch, “Hell, it don’t look worth a flip tonight.” But then I thought back
to those ancient nights at Chaos Manor South. What would I have done then?
I knew the answer very well. I’d tell myself, “Wait. Concentrate. Look some more. Spend
plenty of time with the object. Increase the magnification. Try a different
eyepiece. You will only see if you look.”
Indeed, following those old strictures I
began to see. "Dang! There are some stars in M3! Wonder if I can pick up some
in M13 with a 5-inch on a punk night? Yep, takes 200x, but I’m seeing ‘em. M92? Stars, yay!” And so it went till
the night grew old (it did not grow cold, alas), and I had finally had enough
of the deep sky. Well, enough for one late August’s eve.
As for the Digital Optica Bluetooth widget (well, “module,” or “transceiver” if you prefer). It works. End of story. Game over. Zip up your fly. If you think you’d prefer connecting wirelessly to the scope rather than having a cord you will inevitably trip over for your Autostar equipped Meade, just to get you one. The price sure is right.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Issue #594: Telescopes I Have Known
Well, Doggonit, Muchachos. I very much wanted to finish up my review of the Digital Optica Bluetooth Adapter for Autostar. I intended to, as a matter of fact. I even set Charity Hope Valentine’s (for newcomers, Charity is a Meade ETX125PE) tripod up in the backyard. Not only was I gonna check-out the Bluetooth widget with Stellarium and other programs, I was gonna do a mini tour of the late spring sky.
Yeah, I know it’s not spring anymore. Of late, Unk
sometimes don’t know what day it is, but he still (usually) knows what season
it is. Although spring 2023 is but a memory, and even summer is slowly
fading, the marvels of spring are still on display. Hell, Coma Berenices and Canes
Venatici are very well placed for early evening viewing (early
evening being a must for your aged Uncle).
Alas, ‘twas not to be. Yeah, I’d set that tripod up
about 5pm every day, just as it was slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to cool
off this hellish summer. And, sure enough, in would come the clouds. Usually
great big dark ones festooned with lightning. And the Moon, a fat post-First
Quarter one, was back. And it was humid. And it was hazy. Sigh.
I will get to the Digital Optica adapter as soon as possible.
Given what little use I’ve been able to give it, it has impressed me. It will not
be used to revisit “The Tresses of Berenice” objects from Unk’s The Urban
Astronomer’s Guide, of course. More likely, we’ll be doing late summer DSOs
instead (if I’m lucky). Oh, well. So it goes here on the borders of the Great
Possum Swamp.
I have resolved not to let a month go by without an
AstroBlog for y’all. What would I write about, though? I wasn’t sure.
Then it came to me: “Telescopes I Have Known,” a rundown of the instruments I’ve
used the past 30 (or so) years…something I thought y’all might find to be of at
least passing interest. Nota Bene: These
aren’t every telescope I had in my hot little hands over the last three
decades—for a while there, I was quite the gear addict—these are the ones that
meant the most to me.
Coulter f/7 8-inch Odyssey
They could and did sell me a complete 8-inch Dob, and it
didn’t even take that long to arrive (back in the glorious day, now-gone
Coulter was notorious for horrendously long delivery times). The telescope wasn’t
exactly pretty. She was awfully plain, in fact. Sonotube tube painted fire
engine red, a focuser made from plumbing parts, and a rocker box made of particle board
that appeared to have been cut with a chainsaw. That was about what I expected.
Coulter kept costs down by cheapening their scopes year by year.
Plain, she was. Would she be serviceable?
Indeed, she was, giving nice views of the Moon and planets.
Maybe not quite as exquisite as I hoped for from an f/7 reflector, but
certainly better than those of the other Coulter 8-inch, an f/4.5, I’d had the opportunity
to try one night. A star test revealed
some turned-down edge, but not too bad, and wattaya want for 200 bucks? The Odyssey did well on the deep sky from my club’s
old dark site on the Mississippi line. 30 years down the road, I still recall
how beautiful the Swan Nebula looked in the Odyssey one summer’s eve.
What became of Mabel (given that name in recognition of her plain
yet solid nature)? My brother-in-law in Colorado was without a telescope, and
all Mabel had done for years was gather dust in old Chaos Manor South’s Massive
Equipment Vault. So, way out west she went, where, I understand, she prospers
and thrives to this very day.
Meade StarFinder 12.5-inch Dobsonian
Just when I had accumulated a few more dineros toward a C8, yet
another Dobsonian turned my head. Meade’s new 12.5-inch StarFinder Dob
was making a big splash in ads in the holiday issues of Sky & Telescope
and Astronomy that yule of ’93. She certainly wasn’t 200 bucks, but she
was still cheaper than any telescope in this aperture range I knew of other than
Coulter’s 13.1-inch Odyssey.
One thing was sure, in the pictures at least, the Meade was
a lot purtier than the Coulter 13.1. Lovely gleaming white tube and rocker box.
A real rack and pinion focuser. A finder (the Coulter did not come with a
finder). A real secondary mount and spider (don’t ask what the Coulter had).
Once again, out the door went money meant for a new SCT.
After ordering the StarFinder from Astronomics (an upgrade
package that included a couple of eyepieces and a 50mm finder), a long, long
wait ensued. How long? When I ordered the scope, I was single and expected
to stay that way. I wasn't e'en dating anybody. By the time the 12.5-inch arrived as August was running out in ’94, Miss
Dorothy and I were planning our wedding at Chaos Manor South!
In fact, the StarFinder arrived shortly before we were wed, and I
wasn’t able to get it under the stars until we returned from our honeymoon.
When I did, I was absolutely gobsmacked. I’d expected optical quality in the neighborhood
of what Coulter offered. One look at the Moon and Jupiter (followed by a star
test) showed she instead had an excellent, outstanding primary mirror.
“Old Betsy,” as the scope became known far and wide, was
with me many a long year and went to many a star party. She progressed from her
original Meade body to a lovely truss tube configuration (thanks to ATM, Pat Rochford),
and to a couple of upgrades—weight saving, better secondary, Sky Commander
digital setting circles, super-duper primary coatings. She was always wonderful
and I used her till I couldn’t, till she was too much for me and I passed
her on. I shall say no more about Betsy lest I get choked up…
Celestron Ultima 8
The price for Celestron's top-of-the-line C8, the Ultima 8, seemed way high (hell, over
two-THOUSAND dollars), but Miss Dorothy counseled me to buy quality. I did, and
that paid off over the long run. She did need her drive repaired by Celestron
shortly after she was delivered, but that was the only problem I had with her
over more than 20 years of use. Quality was the word. Massive forks, Starbright
coatings, super heavy-duty rubber-coated tripod, same wedge Celestron used for
the 11 inch Ultima, PEC (whatever that was). Celeste had it all.
Perhaps the most notable thing about Celeste? She was the
telescope that brought me home to astrophotography after a multi-year layoff. And
man was she good at it, beginning with closeups and piggyback shots of
Comet Hale Bopp. She went with me to the Texas Star Party in ’97 to take pictures, and she was
the SCT who taught me electronic imaging with the Meade DSI and the SAC 7b.
What friends we were! I did eventually dispense with
that huge fork and drivebase. As above, the Ultima had everything…EXCEPT
GOTO. I wanted that, and I was sick of wedges. So, I deforked Celeste and
we kept on trucking for many years with A Celestron ASGT CG5. Why did she leave?
After I got the Edge 800 (below), Celeste was not being used. Heck, if I still
had her, she still wouldn’t be used. I sold her and believe she want to
a good home.
Celestron Short Tube 80
"Grab ‘n go" is a cliché in these latter days, I reckon. But a
scope I could easily get into the backyard and easily move around when I got
there was a must for me at Chaos Manor South.
I had to have a telescope I could move around to peer up through clear spaces between
the limbs of the Garden District's many ancient oaks.
I didn’t get the Orion, though. By this time, the Chinese
maker, a little outfit called “Synta,” was selling 80 f/5s to all comers, and
it turned out Celestron had one with a pretty black tube emblazoned with the Celestron
logo. I figgered it would look right fine piggybacked on Celeste. But…it also came
with a little GEM, an EQ-1 perfect for waltzing around Chaos Manor South’s
backyard. Oh, and a couple of decent eyepieces. All the better? A Celestron dealer,
Eagle Optics, was offering a special edition (their logo added to the tube) for
an amazing—at the time—price of just under 300 bucks. You got scope, mount,
eyepieces, and some other accessories for what Orion charged for just the tube
alone.
I had a tremendous amount of fun with Woodstock everywhere
from the backyard of Chaos Manor South to the Great Smoky Mountains, as you can
read here. I eventually passed the scope on (I
acquired a 66mm ED refractor that was frankly mucho better). But I have no
complaints about the little scope some have looked down upon then and now. I
still remember watching a double satellite transit on Jupiter, and then me and
Woodstock being back in the house and enjoying a glass o’ the Rebel Yell in
five freaking minutes.
William Optics 80mm Fluorite Zenithstar
Gosh, by the time I finally got my paws on a genu-wine APO refractor, they had been the rage for a long time. Unk was not any sort of a refractor guy back in the first years of this new millennium, having been Schmidt Cassegrain CRAZY for a long time. Suddenly everything changed; a beautiful little refractor made a believer outa me. Oh, I didn’t give up SCTs for visual use and planetary imaging…but as the years rolled on, I got to where I didn’t want to use anything but APO refractors for deep sky picture taking.It wasn’t just the William Optics scope’s exquisite optics. I
named the scope Veronica Lodge in recognition of her high-toned build quality. This
80mm f/7 was the heaviest 3-inch scope I’d ever lifted. Tube, cell, dew shield,
focuser (especially), just everything, reeked of high quality and
convinced me it does make a difference. Great optics, not so great everything
else…and you cannot have a great scope.
But, yeah, while the little 80 has amazed me with what she can
do visually from my suburban backyard, it’s imaging where she excels. At f/7,
the image scale is good, but the focal length is still short enough that
guiding is easy. Assuming you even need to guide. Ronnie is the only
telescope I have ever known where imaging isn’t just “easy”…she almost seems to
take pictures by herself. I still have and love this telescope.
Celestron NexStar 11 GPS
By 2003, I was more than convinced goto was the way to go. The way I wanted to go, anyway. I had been following the revival of Celestron heralded by its release of the new goto NexStars, and, finally, the NexStar 11 GPS. I came into some unlooked-for money from an inheritance, Dorothy said “do it!” and I did. Soon enough, an enormous box was on the front porch.
At first, I was afraid of Big Bertha. She was so
humongous I despaired of getting her safely on her tripod, even in alt-AZ fashion.
It took a little practice for me to become confident mounting the scope, but I did get confident, and could finally admire her: huge fork, beautiful CARBON FIBER tube,
futuristic NexStar hand controller, and a giant 2-inch diagonal on her rear port.
I loved Bertha from the beginning. She was perfection itself. The first few days after she came to live with us
at Chaos Manor South, I went around mumbling “I have a C11…I have a C11…I
have a C11.” Miss Dorothy sure did look at me funny. Bertha's GPS-fueled goto
was amazing—she would put any target I requested from horizon to horizon on the
tiny chip of my Mallincam Xtreme. Visually, she was just terrific. I can still see in
my mind’s eye all the wonders she presented to me at her first dark sky outing
at the Chiefland Astronomy Village one long-ago spring.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Maybe the
most notable thing about her? She was the telescope that allowed me to conquer 2500+
Herschel objects, to view all the wonders discovered by William and Caroline Herschel.
And to do that in just a few years. Stationed under a dark Chiefland sky, Xtreme
on her rear port, she’d easily bring home a hundred (or more) faint
fuzzies in an evening. She wasn’t the only telescope I used for the Herschel
Project, but she was the one I enjoyed using the most for it (including visually).
As my 60s wound down, alas, Bertha became a problem. She was
just too much. Getting her to the club dark site became not just laborious
but dangerous. She nearly messed up one of my knees when I was lugging her down the front steps of Chaos Manor South in her humongous case one afternoon.
I deforked her and put her on a nice Celestron CGEM…but eventually that
was too much, too. Her beautiful OTA now lives with my friend Charles, a
talented observer over in New Orleans. I sometimes miss her, but realize, she
would just be gathering dust here.
Celestron Edge 800
What a lovely scope she has been (mostly). And what fun we
had on her first deep sky outing to the Deep South Spring Scrimmage 2013 (sans her defective AVX which had to be replaced
by Celestron). I had come to laugh at the idea an SCT’s images could be
described as “refractor like,” but Mrs. Emma Peel, my new Edge, changed my
mind.
Ten years down the road, the replacement AVX mount Celestron
quickly got to me has been great, guiding amazingly well and delivering
many astrophotos that have pleased me. Mrs. Peel? Mostly good,
but one big problem. Several years ago, I found the paint on the interior of
her tube was failing. I had to repaint her myself (I had no intention of shipping
her to Celestron at the height of the covid pandemic). A pain in the butt, but
I believe we are good to go with her excellent optics for many years to come.
SkyWatcher 120 APO
When I let Bertha go, I was really quite sad. My sadness was assuaged by this big SkyWatcher 120. This is the sought-after one these days. I believe it is still available but is certainly not the bargain it was when I got mine pre-covid. This is the one with the beautiful and color-free FPL-53 doublet. I named here “Hermione” because she is magic.She was and is beautiful. Her build quality is not up there
with what you’d get from William Optics but her price at the time was much more
doable than what a 5-inch class WO would have cost. No, her focuser isn’t a
monster, but it doesn't slip with my DSLR on it, even when I am pointed at zenith.
From her first big astrophotography outing at the Deep South Regional Star Gaze,
she has delivered the goods easily. Nota Bene: While she was initially on my CGEM, I quickly
replaced that with a far more manageable (for me) Losmandy GM811!
Zhumell 10-inch Dobsonian
Zelda is a cut above the old StarFinder in several
ways. While her mirror is comparable in quality to that of the Meade, she has a
beautifully finished steel tube, an excellent 2-inch Crayford focuser, butter-smooth lazy Susan azimuth bearings, adjustable altitude balance, and a REAL
mirror cell (don’t even ask about the old Meade’s primary cell or what passed
for one).
I can still handle Zelda without much trouble, and 10-inches
of aperture really helps in suburban light pollution. She has been to the club
dark site a few times, but I am thinking she deserves some real dark-sky time.
I have been ruminating about doing the Deep South Regional Star Gaze this autumn,
and if I do, I think I want to do it simply…no computers, no motors,
just a manual Dob and a star atlas…and that is just how Zelda rolls.
And we are out of space and time this Sunday. I really should have mentioned the StarBlast. Certainly, Miss Valentine should be in there. How about my beloved 80mm f/11 SkyWatcher? Well, nothing says there cannot be a "Part II." Anyhow, thanks for indulging me in this trip down memory lane, and I swear I will get out and do some actual observing soon. I hope….
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Issue 593: The Astronomer Looks at 70
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call,
since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.
I
have been drunk now for over two weeks,
I
passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks,
But
I've got to stop wishin',
Got
to go fishin', I'm down to rock bottom again.
Just
a few friends, just a few friends.
—Jimmy Buffet
I did this ten years ago on my birthday, muchachos, took stock of me and that avocation, amateur astronomy, I’ve loved so well over the years. Why am I doing
it again? 60 just didn’t feel that momentous, not in
the way 50 had. And not much had really changed with me between 50 and 60. 70?
That’s different. Way different.
That summer I was 60, summer 2013, Unk carried on merrily as I
normally do. I was still chasin’ the countless faint fuzzies of the Herschel
Project, jaunting down to the Chiefland Astronomy Village at the drop of a hat.
And, having retired just three months before my birthday, I was really livin’ the
life. Well, or so your old Uncle thought…
You are not reading this exactly on my birthday. I may provide an update on the activities of my Big Day—such as it may be—three weeks hence, but I am writing on this dadgummed subject today for two reasons. First, I kinda want to get it out of the way.
These days, we tend to laugh at 60: “Man, it’s the new 50, donchaknow!” But 70? Comes that, and you have to finally admit you are, yes, OLD. The toughest thing in the world for a baby-boomer? The acknowledgement that no matter how you slice it, your time onstage is running out. Best, face-front on that and get it off Unk’s mind (such as it is).Secondly, I hope—hopes I tells you!—July will be a month of observing.
June was anything but. When it has not been cloudy or stormy (most often the
latter), it’s been boiling hot. Looking over at the weather station
readout here in the Batcave, I see the “real-feel” temperature is 114F
right now. And, worse, it hasn’t been cooling off much at night. Oh, and while
it hasn’t been overwhelming, we here in Possum Swamp are getting some of the
smoke that has plagued our Yankee brothers and sisters. Not the sorta weather
that makes you anxious to haul a scope into the back 40, that’s for sure.
I’m hoping this weather will pass, and I’ll be able to give
you Part II of the article on the Digital Optica Bluetooth interface for
Autostar. And maybe even do some deep sky touring with the ETX125, Miss
Charity Hope Valentine. After that? Gotta be Unk’s yearly M13. Need I say more?
Unk
Hokay…nuthin' to it but to do it... What has the last
decade wrought concerning that rascal, your old Uncle Rod? As above, following a great 60th birthday, which consisted
of mucho Rebel Yell, Mexican food, and gifts aplenty, Unk settled in to face another
decade of trips around our friendly G2V star. And that is just what he did at
first. Yep, nothing changed, just Unk continuing on his merry way. Until he wasn’t.
Funny thing…the changes Unk experienced over the next years
came in with a comet and finally went out with one. What I experienced was
rather sudden. One night in early 2015 I was out in the backyard imaging Comet
Lovejoy, who was no Great Comet, but looked very good in the eyepiece and especially
in images. I was mindin’ me own bidness as the light frames rolled in when,
suddenly, it came to me: “Hey, wait a minute! Where am I? Is this where I’m supposed
to be? How the hell did I get here?!”
In retrospect, I don’t believe my epiphany, if that is what
it was, had anything to do with the comet. I believe it was more a rather unlooked-for early retirement and a move out to the suburbs
where Unk was plunked down amidst a lot of other retirees. A change of scene
and a sudden feeling of “What comes now? Nothing?” threw me for a loop.
I had a rather rough year thereafter, but I had help, and to everybody who helped
me out of my midlife crisis (you know who you are), THANK you!
During this time, it wasn’t like Unk gave up observing or anything. In fact, a friend of mine began calling 2016, “Uncle Rod’s farewell tour.” I was everywhere speaking at star parties…Maine in the northeast, West Viriginia in the east, Wisconsin in the far north, Oregon in the west, and all points in-between. And I didn’t just do star parties as an astronomy writer and educator; I went as a “civilian.”
Or did until two whammies hit. The first was silly old Unk falling
off the house. I was up there adjusting an HF antenna and got to feeling a
little shaky. It was 2019 and I was “only” 65 going on 66, but I suddenly felt
like I was not up to scampering around on top of a house (much less a tower). I
climbed down, saying to myself, "Get one of your ham buddies to come help." If I’d
just left it there, all would have been well. Alas, Unk got to thinking
(disaster is always in the offing when he does that) “All the younger OMs have
to work. What if I can’t get anybody out here till the weekend? I left some
tools up there. Best get them down!”
Stupidly, instead of placing the ladder on the ground, it
was on the deck. I’d got away with that a bunch of times. Why should today be
any different? I got the tools and headed down. I put one foot on the ladder
and then the other. Down went the ladder and on top of it went Unk to the tune
of about 15 feet. To cut to the chase, I spent a week in the hospital and was convalescing for months.
And that was, to this point, the end of Unk’s star partying.
Turned out my “Farewell Tour” really was that. Or…you know what? Maybe
not. My old-time favorite local star party, the Deep South Regional Star
Gaze is coming up this fall, and suddenly I want to go again. Maybe.
There are a couple of impediments to that, or even—sometimes—to
me observing in the ol’ backyard. I seem to have developed a rather strong and
unreasoning fear of falling in the dark. Maybe this isn’t logical, but it’s the
way I feel. Sometimes. I also notice I am very much less willing to bear the
cold. At 60F I feel uncomfortable indeed. And yet…and yet…the idea of observing
under the dark skies of Mississippi’s piney woods again has grabbed me in a big
way. We shall see. Till then I shall make do with the backyard.
“But what was the SECOND WHAMMIE, UNK? WHAT WAS THAT?” The pandemic, of course, and that was hell.
As 2019 ended, I was feeling more like myself than I had in a long while. I told
more than one person, “You know, I FEEL YOUNG AGAIN!” I was at Heroes Sports
Bar and Grill Regularly, hoo-hawing till all hours—well 10 or 11pm anyhow.
Then <BOOM> we were all trapped at home for over a year. I was afraid all
those hours with little to do would bring on that more intense version of the
blues, the MEAN REDS, but it didn’t.
I was indeed over all that mess. But I didn’t fully realize it till the lockdown was well and truly in the rearview mirror. Earlier this year, a night almost exactly 8 years down the line from that strange evening with Lovejoy. I was out having a look at the briefly loved “Green Comet,” C/2022 E3 ZTF, when it came to me, “Hey! What the—?! This feels like old times! I feel just like MESELF AGAIN!
The People
When I say there were plenty of people who helped me through
the doldrums those years ago, I include astronomy people in their number. Some of those I’ve
known in our wonderful avocation were instrumental in me righting my keel. But “people”
as in "astronomy club," my old astronomy club?
Even before my minor existential crisis, I’d
pretty much given up on the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society. Oh, as the decade
of my 60s began, Miss Dorothy and I were still attending the monthly meetings.
Howsomeever, we eventually found we had to include a stop at the nearby
Applebees for drinks before the meeting to induce ourselves to attend.
Eventually, Miss D. was like, “The astronomy club meeting is tonight; are we
going to that?” Unk is very much a creature of habit, and I’d
been at PSAS meetings every month since 1993, but I finally had to say, “Nope.”
I put in a lot of years with the club. And by the past decade, the fact was I
wasn’t getting anything out of it. I shall just leave it at that.
I don’t know I am alone in that experience. I hear the
same from folks who were very much into the club scene for most of
their astronomy careers. The fact is, even more than amateur radio, our hobby
is aging. I don’t even want to think about the way the demographic skews now.
Clubs are mostly smaller and less active and less enthusiastic. Might a new
generation come in and revitalize astronomy clubs? Perhaps.
That oft-feared ground truth? The babyboom generation came
along at a special time, during the age of Apollo. A time when everybody was
space crazy, many wanted a telescope to see those wonders with their own eyes,
and wanted to hang out with those who shared their passion. I don’t see another
generation of people like that coming. Not in the numbers we had.
The Gear
Uncle Rod is the wrong person to ask about this. I have
pretty much eschewed new-fangled scopes and accessories. Hell, I wouldn’t know
an ASAIR (that everybody and their cat is mad for lately) from the window
air-conditioner in the Batcave. Oh, I exaggerate a bit. I do keep up mainly
through reviewing products for my Sky & Telescope Test Reports. If
it weren’t that, I’d be a real Luddite.
If you are a regular reader, you know I thinned the scope
herd some years ago. Some of it I could no longer handle post-2019. And some of
it just wasn’t used anymore. What I am left with is two GEMs, an Advanced VX
and a Losmandy GM811; a small altazimuth mount; an Edge 800 C8, 5-inch, 80mm
and 66mm APOs; some nice achromats; Zelda, my 10-inch Chinese dob; and Charity
Hope Valentine; my ETX. Now that might sound like a lotta telescopes to you,
but trust me, it is NOTHING like the long-lost days of Chaos Manor
South.
The only new telescope that has come here in a very long
time is a very modest one indeed, Tanya, a Celestron 4.5-inch Newtonian I stumbled upon in a Goodwill store. But I am content. Even
after the cull, I have more telescopes than I use. What gets used most? Often,
it’s not a scope at all, but my time-honored Burgess Optical 15x70 binoculars.
Should I talk about telescope companies? Things have not
changed much. Except that post-pandemic the crazy-low prices for scopes are,
like anything else, a thing of the past. I still can’t believe I got Zelda (a
10-inch GSO dob), two eyepieces (one a decent 2-incher), a laser collimator, a
cooling fan, a two-speed focuser, and a RACI 50mm finder delivered for 500
bucks. I don’t expect those days will come again, but telescopes are still quite
inexpensive.
To be specific about telescope companies? Celestron is what
it is. They are a Chinese company with the strengths and weaknesses inherent in
that. Meade? They are in some sense an American company again, now being owned by
Telescope and Binocular Center (Orion) after a legal victory against Meade’s Chinese
masters (or really “master,” which was really, as I long thought, Celestron
owner Synta). They only make telescopes in Mexico, still, and most of their
gear is imported from China. But, yeah, a heartening sign.
And back to your Unk’s journey down the timestream…
I’m 70, or soon will be, Lord willin’. When I get up in the
morning, I feel every bit of that. The whistling past the graveyard of the
couple of years before the pandemic, the "I FEEL YOUNG!" stuff, is history. But
you know what? Yes, the pandemic changed everything and much not for the good.
But I feel OK. I am pressing on. I’ve got two more books under my belt. I continue
with Sky & Telescope, and next semester I am going to increase my
teaching load.
Hell, I may be over the hill, muchachos, but I am not quite
ready to give up, collapse, and roll down the opposite slope and into oblivion.
Excelsior!