Category: My Observing

Observatory 4: Allegheny

To begin with, here is the link to my pictures from the Allegheny Observatory over at the Googles, taken on my trip there Friday, July 27, 2018. There is some commentary there that will likely overlap with this entry, the core of which was itself written on August 4, 2018, on the train to Chicago at the beginning of the Grand Tour. Here we go.

It has been a wild week or two. I went to Pittsburgh last week for Dad’s birthday and went with Meredith to the Allegheny Observatory. That all came together suddenly, of course. I arranged to go to a Pirates (baseball) game with Dad and Meredith, and in communicating that to Dad, he sent me a note reminding me about the tour schedule at the observatory – Thursdays and Fridays only. Well, the ballgame was on Saturday, so…. I called and left a message Thursday hoping for room in the Friday tour. How popular can this be? I thought to myself.

An Unexpected Journey

Went hiking with Ken K. in Harpers Ferry on Friday morning and heard from the observatory at 1:30 that there was no room on the tour that night. Huh. Not expecting that, but oh, well, okay. I lallygagged around the house a bit, thinking there was no urgency to get to the Burgh. Then I got a call from the observatory at 4:30 that there was a cancellation, and they had spaces available at 8:00! Well, it’s a four hour drive, but yes, of course I’ll take 2 please!

I threw myself and my stuff in the car and drove like crazy to get there. I called M. to have her meet me there. When I hit the turnpike I realized I didn’t really know where I was going. This will end up being a recurring theme, as I had the same problem finding the Holmdel Horn, you may recall. I didn’t have an active smartphone, just my flippy, and I didn’t even have a GPS box in the car. Turns out I didn’t have a PA map in the car, either, let alone a Pittsburgh map. So I stopped at one of the rest areas along the way and set about to buy a map. By the time I found one, about 6 or 8 people had lined up at the counter ahead of me. Ugh! I don’t have time for this! So I opened the map and took a couple pictures of the area around the Allegheny Observatory, and hit the road. Not really proud of that, but it got me there. Except for the part where I missed a turn and ended up going over the Fort Pitt Bridge and through the tunnels toward the airport instead toward the Northside. A little looping around, back across the Westend Bridge, and I was back on track with minimal panic. I arrived about 8:20 p.m., so Whoohoo! Don’t do the math; I was driving fast. Even so, I missed all the introductory lecture and history. The group was just starting on the tour of the building, and M. saw me at the door and let me in.

The Observatory

The large dome of the Allegheny Observatory in sunset and clouds.

The building is a mix of Art Deco, Greek revival, and 20th century scientific lab. We saw some of the museum pieces and labs and such before seeing the two big refractors, which were both very cool: the 30-inch Thaw refractor, which is f/18.8 with a 47-foot long optical tube (!) having been designed and built by Brashear Optical in 1912 (according to the website), and the 13-inch Fitz-Clark refractor. This latter was originally designed and built by Henry Fitz Optical of New York in the 1860s. There is a fascinating story of how the objective lens was stolen and held for ransom, but the director wouldn’t negotiate with terrorists. It was eventually returned, but it was ruined in the process. The observatory hired Alvan Clark to refigure it, which he did, making it a greatly improved instrument. Hence, it is the Fitz-Clark. The tour was quite interesting. Our docent was knowledgeable, having worked or volunteered at the observatory for something like 25 years. He did have an odd verbal tic of sighing dejectedly in the middle of most of his sentences, but otherwise, he was quite good. We got to see how the Thaw scope slews and how the floor is actually an elevator to line you up with the instrument so as to avoid ladders and falls and broken bones. This was fascinating and some brilliant engineering, considering everything was designed to be run without electricity!

The Observing

We got to take turns looking through the Fitz-Clark at Jupiter, as Jupiter was the only thing peeking through the clouds. [Clouds will also become a recurring theme.] Beautiful view, nevertheless. Some detail on the disk, and Ganymede was just on the limb about to disappear. There were about 40 people on the tour, so there wasn’t much chance to hog the scope, unfortunately. Any way, it was very fun to be there with Meredith, and she enjoyed it, too.

My sketch, ex post facto, of Jupiter and Ganymede as seen through the Fitz-Clark refractor.

Epilogue

Just a couple weeks ago Jacob and I watched a documentary about the Allegheny Observatory and some of its key figures on Netf… a movie streaming service. It’s called Undaunted: Forgotten Giants of the Allegheny Observatory. It was fascinating! It made up much of the knowledge I might have gained in the lecture if I had lived an hour closer to Pittsburgh, or if I had better planning skills.

Observatory 7: Kitt Peak, Part 1

Okay, right off the bat, you can see my annotated pictures of Kitt Peak >here.<

I am now writing this in March, so –– Good Lord, it’s more than six months since I was there??!!! I didn’t write much in my journal at the time, or here. Fortunately, I did add some commentary to the pictures linked above. Well, let’s see how much I remember.

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory at Kitt Peak is about an hour’s drive and change west of Tucson. They run three tours through the day most days: the solar observatory, the 2.1 meter, and the 4 meter. They open at 9:00 a.m. and tours start at 10:00. It was my intention to get there for the tours, because that was sort of the point of being in Arizona, so I was up and out by about 8, which is pretty good for me. Had breakfast from McD’s in the car, which was about the worst food I had on the whole trip — except for breakfast on the Capital Limited. After driving about an hour on that beautiful morning, I was starting to see some mountainous terrain pop up, and not much later started thinking I was seeing a shiny white or silver dot on top of one of the mountains. As I got closer I became convinced it was a dome. Sure enough, I soon came upon the turn off to Kitt Peak! I was very excited. The road up the mountain was quite a drive, a bit of a white-knuckler in places with some pretty serious switchbacks and sheer drop offs. Nevertheless, I made it safely to the top.

One of the first things I noticed when I got out of the car in the parking lot was that it was very, very quiet, except for some wind in the trees. I liked that. Which is good, because I spent all day and a good bit of the night there. Well, about twelve hours or so. I made my way to the visitors center, which is a small brick building with a beautiful mural, a fair sized patio with some tables and benches and sciency things, and an observatory dome on the roof of the building. Inside, it is filled with sciency displays in about 2/3 of the space and a gift shop in the remaining 1/3. Went to the counter and paid for the three tours ($15 for the lot) and for the evening observing program ($75). There were two choices for observing, a general objects and deep sky program and “Our Marvelous Moon.” It still being the monsoon season, I had reserved a spot for the moon program as I figured you can see the moon pretty well even in pretty bad conditions, but you can’t see all the faint fuzzies unless it’s pretty good.

Tour #1

The first tour was led by docent Katy, who is a professional astronomer, retired with 50 years experience. She was very knowledgeable as you might expect, and very engaging, as you might not expect. About 15 people had appeared for the tour, which began in the center with a little history about how the site was chosen, negotiated with the Tohono O’odham Nation, and developed as the National Observatory. The object of the tour was the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, which had been retired earlier in the year. It is fascinating design and an exceedingly large instrument. As you can see in the pictures, there is a large vertical column connecting with a diagonal structure that extends underground. This diagonal column is north >polar aligned<, that is, it is aimed at the north celestial pole, the point to which the earth’s rotational axis points in the northern sky, like an equatorial telescope mount. Because it is, sort of. Turns out there is a rotating flat mirror at the top of the structure on the diagonal axis, and it tracks the sun. The sunlight reflects off the mirror and down the axis through a 500 foot optical tunnel to a concave secondary mirror, then back half way up the tunnel to any or all of three more mirrors. These mirrors reflect the light down into a variety of spectrograph instruments in a subterranean laboratory (which sounds more evil than it is). We got to look in from an observation room about half way down the optical tube, which looks kind of like a subway station. We also got to go down to the lab, although since it is closed now we could only look in. They did 5 or 6 decades of groundbreaking solar science there, but now it is considered obsolete. So we’re back to the question of what do you do with giant, historic, obsolete astronomy equipment? Oh, fun fact. While we were walking around the solar observatory, half the sky was clear blue and the other half was entirely socked in and producing lightning and thunder, so that was kind of exciting. What happened to that beautiful morning I drove in on?

Tour #2

We made our way back to the visitor center to see if there was anyone new going on the next tour. I don’t remember now if there was or not, actually. Katy led the second tour, too, which was to the creatively named >2.1 Meter Telescope< (that’s about 84″ or 7 feet). It is a large Cassegrain-style reflector on a large, equatorial fork mount. That it is equatorially mounted means the base is at a 32º angle from vertical. As the mirror alone weighs a ton and a half, having this enormously heavy yet super-sensitive piece of equipment standing at NOT perpendicular to its base felt a bit unsettling, like something was not right. Like the angles! (See what I did there?) Any way, this telescope has done lots of groundbreaking science and is particularly notable for being the first scope to use >adaptive optics<. At this point, several months after the fact, I don’t remember why, but I felt oddly bored with this telescope. Maybe it was that Katy spent a good bit of time explaining adaptive optics, with which I was already familiar. I remember being grumpy about that guy in the group who thought he knew more than the PhD astronomer, so maybe I converted my anger to boredom. Maybe I was hungry. I don’t know. Looking back, it’s an impressive instrument that I’d love to have in my back yard.

Break

We returned to the visitor center, and those of us who were staying on (pretty much everyone) could have lunch if we’d brought it, which it says to do in the literature for the tours. There is no food service for visitors. So I had brought some leftovers from dinner the night before at Za’atar, a mediterranean restaurant in Tucson. The weather was stable and pleasant at that point, so we ate out on the plaza. There are a couple of tables and benches, along with a couple cool sundials that have no practical application to lunch. I sat with the woman who manages the gift shop and schedules people for tours and night programs. She was very interesting to talk with. She is a member of the Tohono Nation and active in her church. She told me that she loves the quiet and the peacefulness at the top of the mountain (me, too!), and that people in her church ask her to pray for them while she is at work because she will be closer to God. We were both a little disappointed in their theology, but she prays for them nevertheless. She told me about her family and some of their struggles, so through the rest of my travels I prayed for her. 

Meanwhile the weather began to deteriorate, with clouds and fog moving in across the valley and across the mountain, too. Great. Made for some interesting photos, any way.

Tour #3a

The third tour was to the Mayall 4.1 meter telescope, the largest on the mountain. This part was led by a different docent, named Dave if I remember correctly. We began with some background and history at the visitor center, then moved to the parking lot. Two reasons for that: first, we were driving to the Mayall dome, and second, in the parking lot is a large cement donut with a mural painted on it. I had noticed it on my way in but not really looked at it. It turns out that the donut is a slug the same size and weight as the mirror for the 4.1 meter telescope that was used to balance the scope during construction. Once everything was finished and nothing was likely to fall, then they put in the actual mirror. Once that was done, they had to figure out what to do with a giant cement donut. Rather than roll it down the mountain, they invited a Tohono O’odham artist to do a mural on it, and it was put on display in the parking lot as you walk toward the visitor center. It’s pretty cool on all counts. Dave pointed out that a 160″ disk of glass weighs a couple tons, or at least this one does. What is remarkable is that the aluminum coating on the glass disk that makes astronomy possible is equivalent to about two paper clips, just a few molecules thick. Amazing!

We all loaded in a big white van to head up to the Mayall dome. We hadn’t gotten a quarter mile down the road when someone raced up, flagged us down, and told us we couldn’t go, because it was a hardhat day. They were renovating the dome and moving stuff with cranes, so it was declared unsafe for visitors. Well, that made for a short tour. We ended up back on the patio, and Dave continued his lecture valiantly. Shortly, though, Katy showed up, talked with Dave for a minute, and then excitedly told us they had arranged to let us see one of the other telescopes, the WIYN 3.5 meter.

Tour #3b

WIYN stands for Wisconsin, Indiana, and Yale Universities, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO, i.e. Kitt Peak). The WIYN scope, a large (obviously) alt-az-mounted Cassegrain reflector, is generally not open for public tours, but it was also down for maintenance, so we got lucky. It is about 20 years newer than the 4.1, and consequently it is vastly lighter and more compact and housed in a much more efficient box with shutters instead of a classic dome. Because the mirror was spin cast and honeycombed, it weighs about 1/8 of what the 4.1 meter mirror does. This means the mount can be correspondingly smaller and lighter, and the whole thing is just a lot easier to deal with. It has capacity for detector instruments in three different places at once that can be switched between easily by, well, I guess throwing a switch to move the tertiary mirror. There are dozens and dozens of actuators on the back of the primary mirror, which are not so much for adaptive optics as to correct for stresses when the mirror is tipped at different angles. Engineer Emily gave us the tour. She has been working on this scope since she was an undergrad, and now she’s the managing engineer for it and probably not yet 30 years old.

That concluded the daytime program, three and a half telescope tours for $15. Not a bad deal. I spent quite a while browsing the swag in the gift shop and exploring the displays in the visitor center before the next part of the adventure began.

Observatory 5: Yerkes, Part 3 – The Observing

Written at Sturtevant, WI, Amtrak Depot on Tuesday, August 14
As for the observing itself, the conditions were less than ideal. It was mostly clear and warm 78F at start, 70F at end. Humidity was predicted to be 70% or higher, which is pretty wet. Thin crescent moon (2 days old) was setting as I arrived. Well, it was low in the west. The sky was thick and hazy, and that was the big problem. High humidity, change from mostly cloudy to mostly clear, and apparently, smoke from the California wildfires all conspired against us. The seeing was muddy and rolling, with brief glimpses of clarity. I was really stunned, though, at my first look at Jupiter. Could hardly get a focus on it, and it was yellowish and dark. The color was from the smoke, acting like a filter. It was low in the sky, too, so that didn’t help – looking through a LOT of unstable air. So the image was very large (because of aforementioned optics) but very distorted. It was hard to make out the North and South Equatorial Bands even. Second time viewing was a little better. Could make out the bands and some occasional details between and a bit of darkening near one of the poles (not sure which it was). Still, I’ve seen better with my 90mm scope at home. So yeah, that was a huge disappointment.

 

Things improved slightly over the evening , but I was frustrated that with 40” of glass to work with here, I consistently have had better views at home. That is the way astronomy goes, though, AND that is perhaps one of the reasons Yerkes is a museum piece more than a research scope these days. Too many nights of weather-degraded viewing a year. Anyhoo,…

 

Saturn was in much the same boat as Jupiter, only a bit higher. The Cassini Gap in the rings was mostly visible most of the time. With patience and a couple turns I could see disk shadow on the rings behind. A little bit of color distinction on the disk — gray at top, less so further down.

Sketch of Saturn from my journal.

M11 Wild Duck Cluster – Even this was underwhelming. Nice full view of the cluster, but I felt like the stars weren’t quite in focus. We could run the focus in and out, but it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference. By this time I was just accepting that the seeing was crap, and I should just relish the experience.
My hope rose again for M17 Swan/Omega Nebula, as nebulae are less affected by bad seeing, but the guys had a hard time even finding it! They added a filter to help. When I got my tern I saw the problem. At f/19 and 475x, we were looking at a tiny portion of the nebula. It served to show noobs what a reflection nebula looks like, but it was like looking at the Mona Lisa’s neck. In fact, we were looking at the neck of the swan, I think. It’s one of my favorite Messier objects, so I think I recognized a pair of stars in the field. Looked like:

Sketch of M17, the Swan Nebula, from my journal

which is cool, but at low power it looks like a swan.

[Here’s a picture I found of what we might have been looking at.]

M27 Dumbbell Nebula – Again, the planetary nebula suffered from narrow field of view and high magnification. It was clearly visible but took up most of the field of view, so there was no sense of scale or contrast. I would have backed off the magnification a bit, but I don’t know where you get an eyepiece longer than 40 mm.

The last object for the night was M2, a globular cluster. This one actually looked good! It was a nice fit in the field of view, and the resolution was good, too. Still felt like it could have had sharper focus, but it was okay. Bright core and grainy cover and pretty even drop off out to the edge. (Yeah, well, I know what I mean.) Really a lovely object, or couple hundred thousand objects, as it were.

Sketch of globular cluster M2 from my journal.

And that was that. They brought the lights up and a bunch of us took pics. I got someone to take a couple of me, one looking at the camera and one looking into the telescope eyepiece. The second was stupid, of course, as (1) the lights were on (2) the dome was closed (3) the scope was no longer even pointed at the shutters. Oh well. The first one is a good picture.

The evening ended pretty unceremoniously.

I stood outside for a little bit, letting my eyes readjust to see what the sky looked like. Pretty much like ours at home, I guess. I hoped to see a meteor before going and pretended I did. It was midnight, and I had an hour to go after a long day, so I hit the road.

Observing from Home – October 1, 2018

I let three good, warm, clear nights slip by me this weekend. Each night right around sundown, the clouds made a strong appearance, so I occupied myself with other trivial endeavors rather than haul out the astro gear. Later in the evening, each evening, as I took a look outside I found the skies to be clear and inviting, but it was too late to set up. There was also a lot of moon on a couple of those nights, but still. So having missed three good chances to get out under the sky, I was determined for last night. Consequently, I was convinced the clouds would close in. That’s the usual pattern. But I lucked out or was given grace, depending on your theology, and the sky remained clear.

I set up the Celestron Nexstar Evolution 8″ on the pool patio. It’s the first time I’ve had it out since Green Bank in July, so it took some work remembering how to get it all put together right and to attach a few doodads that had been taken off for travel. I got it set up as the stars were coming out, so I was able to get it aligned. Then I got the call in for supper (we eat late around here), so I parked it and went to eat. I got back out at about 8:35, and the sky was still clear! Amazing! Also, it was warm enough that a long sleeve shirt was all I needed for my whole time out. That and my Palomar beanie.

What I saw:

Summary:

My primary targets were the planets, especially Mars. I spent a good bit of time bouncing back and forth between Mars, half way up the SE sky, and Saturn getting low in the SSW. More on them in a minute. From there, a quick circuit of the summer glories near Sagittarius, then on to the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus. After that, Andromeda seemed the logical next target. Then, I employed the “Sky Tour” feature of my telescope, letting it suggest nearby goodies. This was cool, because otherwise I might never have seen a couple of these, and I didn’t have a plan, either. I finished the night with three favorite targets around the Summer Triangle, which was still about half way up in the western sky. As I started packing up the gear, a very bright, green fireball crossed the sky in the SW, lasting a couple seconds! Great way to end the night! I was out from 8:30 – 11:45 p.m. EDT.

Conditions:

Weather: Warm! in the upper 60s, maybe over 70. Humid. No wind to speak of. No moon until after midnight (@20 days old).

Seeing: 4/10 – pretty wobbly, based on [magnification/in. aperture]

Transparency: 5/10 – high humidity, maybe a thin layer of cloud even

Observations:

Mars

I’ve been waiting to see Mars all summer. As it was heading for its nearest approach in July, it was blanketed by a global dust storm that obscured any surface markings. I did get a chance to see it at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, in August, and the dust was starting to settle. Some markings were present to the patient observer at that point. As for this night, the seeing was pretty poor and the transparency didn’t help, but I managed to push the magnification to 222x with the 9mm Plossl eyepiece. That’s well below the minimum to resolve much (312x for 8″ aperture), but I was able to discern some surface markings in the better moments. According to Sky&Telescope (S&T), the disk was 16″ (arcseconds). There was a band of darkness along the northern hemisphere, and it seemed to double back on itself about halfway along the equator. What was more striking was that the disk was only 89% illuminated (according to S&T) and showed as a gibbous section, like the moon a couple days after full. That doesn’t happen very often with the outer planets, but there it was. There was a slight hint of the southern polar ice cap, but I wouldn’t say I really saw it.

I tried a few different filters with varying results. Red definitely made the dark area stand out more, but it overwhelmed anything else. The yellow filter did almost as much to increase the surface contrast without being as overbearing. Blue should have helped bring out the polar cap, but it seemed just to wash everything out. Just not good enough conditions for much detail.

Saturn

I went back and forth several times between Mars and Saturn for comparison and because Saturn was heading for the trees, but I wanted to see if there was any movement on the surface features of Mars. Any way, Saturn looked a great as the conditions would allow, which is to say, “meh.” Saturn’s disk was about the same size as Mars, but that’s not counting the rings. Using the same 222x magnification as on Mars, I couldn’t really make out the Cassini division in the rings, as the outer ring appeared unusually dark. I attribute this to the poor transparency. With patience, I could see some shadow on the rings near the eastern limb in the rear and some darkening around the north pole. The disk is covering much but not all of the rings. Usually I can make out some color differences on the disk, but there wasn’t much to be seen this night.

The red and blue filters didn’t do much for Saturn other than make the outer ring almost completely invisible. The yellow filter helped with the contrast a little bit, making the shadow effects more noticeable but not much more.

I’ve seen Saturn this summer in my scope, the Yerkes 40″ Clark refractor, the Lowell 24″ Clark refractor, and the Griffith Zeiss 12″ refractor. This night ranked somewhere in the lower half, although my scope at Green Bank ranked near the top. Conditions make a huge impact, regardless of how awesome the equipment. Of course, my 8″ is 80 years newer than the newest of the rest in the list.

M20

The Trifid forgot to show up for work tonight. It’s fairly faint to start with and the poor transparency made it essentially invisible. I know I was on it because of the two stars that sit in its midst.

M8

The Lagoon is always a pleasure with its large open cluster and broad nebulosity. I’ve noticed that the Nexstar doesn’t pick up the nebulosity as much as my Newts, and again, with the poor transparency, only the brightest areas were clearly visible. I admit I didn’t study the view for very long, as I had other things in mind. I think a nebula filter might be a worthwhile investment, though.

M22

The great Sagittarius globular cluster is a real showpiece. It stands up to a good bit of magnification. At 222x the stars were resolving in a layer across the surface, although the underlying multitude were less forthcoming. The cluster filled most of the field of view with dozens of brighter stars in that top layer. The whole this is sort of tick-shaped, but apart from that, it’s a beauty.

Neptune

I’ve been tracking Neptune for about 10 years. By tracking, I mean I try to find it every year or two when it’s in a favorable place. Well, now is the season. Back in 2008 it was near the point of Capricornus and easily visible in binoculars. It has made its way into easter Aquarius, between Lambda and Phi, and I had a hard time knowing which object was the planet. Part of the problem is my tracking was off a bit because of parking the scope during dinner, but Neptune is also really small (S&T: 2.4″) and faint now. I finally found it, I think. At 333x magnification it showed itself to be a slightly nonstellar disk, just barely. I’ll have to go back and try it again.

Uranus

Same thing with Uranus. That is, I’ve been following it for as long as Neptune, and it’s harder to find than it was when I started. It has traveled from under the Circlet of Pisces to just east of o Piscium moving into Aries. Uranus is an easier find than Neptune, being 3.7″ (S&T). It was clearly nonstellar and a very small disk at 333x. I might even have seen a little bit of color? A hint of blue maybe? Maybe.

M31, 32, 110

The Great Andromeda Galaxy is always a treat. Enormous and bright, it extends past the field of view in my 40mm e.p. at 50x, so it’s over a degree (twice a full moon). The conditions cut it down some, but it’s still huge. The western edge has a dark dust lane running along it, so it’s more defined than the eastern. (I think I have my directions right). There is a bright, small core surrounded by this extended “nebulosity” that is a 100 million suns. Other than the hard edge I didn’t notice much structure.

M32 is an elliptical galaxy just off the side of the M31. It’s tiny by comparison, but still pretty good size as visible galaxies go. It has a bright core surrounded by an oval of rich haze. It didn’t appear to be over or in M31 but pretty close.

M110 is another elliptical galaxy to the NW of M31. It appears larger than M32 but looks similar with bright core and surrounding oval. It’s edges don’t look as well defined as M32. It is very impressive as compared with other Messier galaxies, just small compared to M31.

M33

The Triangulum or Pinwheel Galaxy is a large, face-on spiral, but tonight it looked like a large, faint fuzz. I’ve found it easily in binoculars many nights and occasionally seen it naked eye (maybe?), but the conditions were not favorable this time, and it didn’t have much to offer. Hey, we all have off days.

Eta Cassiopeiae

This was the first of the items suggested by my telescope’s computer that I looked at. It’s a double star with two yellow white stars, one significantly brighter than the other. I haven’t done much with double stars, but this was pretty to look at.

M103

Scope called this the Triangle Cluster, I think. It’s an open cluster with several brighter stars that make up an isosceles or maybe right triangle with fainter stars laced back and forth across it. I’m not a huge fan of open clusters, but this one is pretty interesting.

M77

This is allegedly a face-on spiral galaxy. I’ll believe it when I see it. It wasn’t a good night for galaxies, or at least for the faint ones. I can’t swear that I even identified this. There was a ghost in the field of view, just kind of a faint slash, that moved with the field, so I guess that was it.

M34

Another of those open clusters I don’t care much for, except I spent a long time on this one. If I were going to name it, I’d call it the Atlas Cluster. I imagined a bulky figure standing with arms stretching out and up (toward NW I think), legs locked, and a globe on its back. It started with two close stars that serve as eyes and three down the middle for abs. Strands running up and out in curves that define the limbs. It’s a sizable cluster with a couple dozen brighter components shaping the titan character and dimmer stars surrounding for the globe and environment. I enjoyed it!

Double Cluster

This pair of open clusters leaning against each other between Cassiopeia and Perseus are beautiful in binoculars. You need a pretty wide field of view to take it all in. Even with the 40mm e.p. I could only fit about one and a half of them at a time. Dozens and dozens of stars, mostly bright white or blue with one or two red ones toward the middle of the two.

Kite Cluster

Described as a diamond of stars with a string of five or more for a tail. I think I saw it, now that I’ve seen pictures of it, but it didn’t look like a kite to me.

M76

This planetary nebula (poorly named, having nothing to do with planets other than sort of looking like one) is fairly compact, maybe 15″? and appears kind of pine tree shaped, so it’s doubly badly named as Little Dumbbell. Maybe with better conditions and/or more patience it looks like the Dumbbell. I think I saw mostly the core. It varied in consistency from top to bottom, being kind of patchy. It sits next to one or two field stars to the west.

Gamma Andromeda (Almaach)

This is a beautiful double star out on the tip of Andromeda with the two stars varying in magnitude and color. The brighter partner is several orders of magnitude brighter than the fainter companion. The brighter is a golden yellow tone, while the partner is a bright blue. Very pleasing pairing.

M27

The Dumbbell (planetary) Nebula appears vastly larger than the Little Dumbbell! A large round object with mottled appearance, M27 filled about half the field of view at 222x.  It’s an easy target and impressive to look at. Imagine, that’s what our sun may look like in 5 billion years.

M57

Unless it looks like this. The Ring and the Dumbbell are both remnants of sun-like stars. It’s thought that they appear at 90-degrees rotation to us, so that we are looking at the side of M27 and down the throat of M57. The Ring is farther away and appears smaller. Nevertheless, at 222x it was clearly a ring of nebulosity. I didn’t see anything in the middle, although sometimes material or a star can be seen.

Epsilon Lyrae

The Double Double is a pair of binary stars that orbit each other. With binocs you can split the one star into two, and at 222x the two split into pairs. The two pairs run perpendicular to each other, so that one pair appears up and down while the other appears side to side. Very cool, and a good end point for the night.

Fireball!

While I was starting to tear down, a bright green light lit up the sky, casting reflections from the telescope tripod legs and shadows on the ground. I looked up to see the end of the fireball, a very bright meteor. It was bright green. A remnant tail about a degree wide and 15 degrees long stretched from the endpoint up the sky. It seems to have run a track that appeared almost straight up and down, maybe from Delphinus down past Altair through Aquila, ending about 15 degrees above the horizon. The tail faded out quickly.

In the end…

Although the conditions weren’t ideal, it was still a very fruitful night out under the sky, which always does my heart and soul good. So glory to God who set all things in their courses and gave some of us eyes to see and souls to thrill at the beauty of it all.

Observatory 1: Green Bank, part 2

Radio astronomy is a fascinating branch of science, in part because it is in some ways very different from optical astronomy. Since we can’t see radio, you can observe and gather your data anytime, day or night. The dishes that act as telescopes get basically one-pixel resolution. So where your phone or camera has several megapixels resolution, the largest radio dishes basically act as a single point, if I understand correctly. It is by panning the dish across an object that you are able to form a picture from it. But there is also a great deal to be learned from radio data without even making it into a picture. For example, different chemical elements give off unique radio frequency signatures. Hydrogen emits radio at 21 cm wavelength, which translates to a frequency of 1420.4 MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the galaxy and the universe, you might think that trying to map it would be a little crazy. But an interesting thing happens when you observe a span around that 1420.4 MHz. Because of the nature of space and time and electromagnetic waves, we can detect if the hydrogen being observed is moving toward us or away from us, and how fast it is coming or going, and how far away it is from us. That’s a lot of information! So mapping the hydrogen in the galaxy is like making a navigational map of rivers, harbors, lakes, and seas. It gives you an idea in 3-D of how the galaxy is built and how it is moving and changing.

At the Green Bank Star Quest, I got to do some of that kind of science directly! After a workshop on the basics of radio astronomy (where I learned some of the above), we were given the opportunity to use the 20-meter dish to look at … anything we wanted! A couple others in the class and I looked at two significant radio sources, Cass-A (supernova remnant) and Orion-A (star-forming region). Later we added the Owl Nebula, the moon, Mercury, and a variety of other objects. Some were strong radio sources and others less so, and Mercury not at all, which is weird. I still have a lot to learn about what our scans mean, but it was amazing to be able to run a world-class instrument.

I also got to use the 40-foot radio dish at GBO. It is, I think, the smallest of the active dishes at GBO, but let me tell you, 40 feet is not a small dish! About seven of me end to end would fit across it. This dish is also rather historic in that, as I am led to understand, it was used by Frank Drake for the first SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) experiments in the 1950s and 60s, Project Ozma. This is a transit dish, which means it is always pointed along the N-S meridian, rotating up and down but not side to side. There is a control room in a below ground bunker that looks like a science office from the 1960s. A couple stacks of electronic equipment stand in one corner, the instruments appearing to be of 1980s vintage. By means of analog dials and switches and a digital frequency selector and a tractor-feed data record with two pens, one can collect actual science data by aiming the telescope, selecting a frequency range, and interpreting the graph on the paper strip. It is wildly old school science, and it was a blast! Three of us worked together to get some data under the tutelage of our guide Sophie, but I got to take home the data. I followed some directions on a hand-out and found that the blob of hydrogen we investigated near the center of the galaxy was moving away from earth at (if I recall correctly, as I don’t have it here with me) 48 km/sec. How cool is that?

Along with experiences in several other lectures and workshops, I found that I was just having the best time being a science student again. It gave me a thrill, not only to be learning from professional scientists, but also to do actual science. To be transparent, I also got a thrill from being a good student, knowing or figuring answers to questions ahead of others in the class. Yes, I like being an overachieving, curve-busting, teacher’s pet and always have.

But really, it’s the thrill of the science.

Observing: 12 July 2018, Green Bank, WV

Observing last night was largely a bust. It was mostly cloudy until almost 23:00, after which it was patchy enough for binoculars. Just before midnight it really cleared, but many people had already retired for the night. I dilly-dallied until about 00:15, not trusting the sky to hold, but finally opened the scope. I got about 40 minutes in and the curtain slammed shut again. As predicted.

Nevertheless, I saw…

M55, a smallish-medium globular cluster SE of the Teapot in Sagittarius. Followed up with M28, another globular in Sagittarius, and a brief stop at Saturn. Didn’t spend much time on any of these and was feeling restless and tired. Sort of forcing it.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy was up, but pretty low in the sky still, but there I went. It appeared… oddly unimpressive at 62.5x, filling a good bit of the field of view (f.o.v.). Bright core, northern edge was well defined, or more than the southern edge, any way. Looked for M32 but had to actually use the GOTO to find it (embarrassing). Small, but bigger than stars, a fuzzy oval.

While I was focusing on the NE sky, the SW was clouding over again, and by 00:55 most of the sky was gone. I did attempt M15, a globular in Pegasus, but to no avail. The evening was done.

Bruce and I did see an IRIDIUM flare while he was scanning with his binocs. It was in the SE at about 40º elevation (?) around … 22:30 – 23:00 – not sure; forgot to check the time. It was super bright, ramping up, FLASH!, and ramping down all in about one second. It’s the second one I’ve ever seen, I think.

Observing: 11 July 2018, Green Bank, WV

Last night Bruce, his friend Paul, and I set up scopes near the parking lot while most folks were on the observing field. It was mostly dark by 22:00, but much cloud. It started breaking up, and by 22:45 was almost entirely clear and GORGEOUS! Really dark, transparent, and surprisingly steady. My Celestron 8″ Nexstar Evolution performed beautifully, especially considering I aligned on objects that were still popping in and out of cloud. Mostly used the 32mm eyepiece (e.p.) (62.5x), which showed off several deep space objects (DSOs) really well. For planets, I pushed to either 25mm (80x) or 15mm (133.3x), but not much more than that. Saw four planets – Venus (1/2 phase), Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars – but didn’t spend much time with them.

Venus was in and out of clouds and set soon, so just glimpsed it.

Mars was a blob, maybe with some polar cap, but nothing to write about.

Jupiter, with a neutral density filter to cut the glare, was pretty, and the Great Red Spot was visible about half way from the meridian to the east limb. Not much else visible but a few gray protuberances on the NEB (northern equatorial belt).

Saturn is what it was the other night: rings open, disk overlaps halfway. No evident shadows. Temperate zone to pole (N) shows darker color than below. It was pretty but the seeing was pretty wobbly.

Saw several nebulae of different sorts and also globular clusters and such.

M27  Dumbbell Nebula (planetary neb): large, obvious, sort of boxy, fuzzy thing; brighter on W side than E. Or is it maybe N than S? Edges indistinct.

M39 Open cluster N of Deneb: couple dozen stars. Nice.

Veil Nebula (supernova remnant): faint vertical stripe across star field, kind of like a wrinkle across space.

M11 Wild Duck Cluster (open cluster): almost like a globular! Really beautiful. Looks a lot like…

M22 (globular cluster) in Sagittarius: large, bright, evenly grainy.

M29 (globular): small glob, also in Sagittarius. Bright core with scattered stars around the edges.

M69 (globular): pretty much the same as M29

M6 Butterfly Cluster (open cluster): big, bright, about 3 dozen stars

M7 Jewel Box Cluster (open cluster): much the same as M6.

M8 Lagoon Nebula: looked great w/ SkyGlow light pollution filter! Really helped the contrast, even with pretty dark skies. Dust lanes and nebulosity stand out more.

M20 Triffid Neb: also great w/ filter. Could see dust lanes!

M17 Swan Neb: beautiful w/ filter. Appears upside down with feathery “body” at top, then the arch of the “neck” with two stars upon it. Can’t make out the “bill” so much at this mag.

Then at 01:00-01:15 it went from clear to covered! Clouds smoothly closed the show.

Got to bed @ 01:30. Woke up at 06:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so up and showered at 07:00 or so. Which is pressing me toward a nap, now that it’s afternoon.

This is a great first stop for the sabbatical tour!

Observing, 8 July 2018

21:45-01:00 EDT
68º-58º F clear, calm, humid!
No moon (26 days)
Transparency very good
Seeing bubbly
Celestron 8” Nexstar Evolution
Eyepieces: 40mm, 32mm, 13mm, 9mm, 8.8mm, 6mm

First real observing session with the new C8. It performed very well. I started by playing with the collimation (mirror alignment) a little, but it was really pretty good, even at 500x. Nice job, Celestron!

Celestron 8 Nexstar Evolution out of the box
Then it was off to the races. Having GOTO and tracking is AWESOME! I was out to do more survey work than studying anything in detail, just seeing how the scope performed on different objects. So I looked at planets, globular clusters, nebulae, open clusters, and galaxies. The seeing (measure of atmospheric disturbance) made the planets a little challenging, but I was pleased nevertheless.
Jupiter was super bright, but it was hard to get much detail due to the poor seeing. The two equatorial bands were obvious, kind of thin; a few blue-gray spots under the (… oh dear, which way does an SCT turn things?… ah! Here we are. With a diagonal, it’s right side up, but mirrored left to right.) NEB; a few fainter bands visible; blah blah blah. What was especially interesting was that little black dot right about the meridian and half way up the northern hemisphere. It was visible at low power (62x), but I wasn’t convinced at first it wasn’t an artifact. At higher magnification (222x was best), it remained, so yes, a moon shadow I think! One of the moons appeared just west of the planet, so was it that one? I thought there might be a hint of something emerging from the disk in the NW, but didn’t give it much time or thought. Going back to low power, there were only three moons visible, so something was transiting or eclipsed. Upon research after the fact, it was Io that was transiting and was emerging at about 22:38, which is about when I was there. The shadow was also of Io, which exited the disk at about 23:45. This is consistent with what I saw. I returned to Jupiter later, sometime after midnight, and at 222x there were two moons hanging out west of the disk. So the one I had seen which was westerly of Io was Europa. Ganymede was to the east, and Callisto was way west.
Saturn was better behaved, being not so obnoxiously bright as Jupiter, but still wobbly. Always just such a remarkable sight, though. Even at low power I could see the Cassini Division popping in and out. The rings are still wide open, but now are encroaching on the planet disk. It is still close to opposition, so there isn’t much in the way of disk shadow on the rings, and with the seeing as poor as it was, not much ring shadow on the disk, either. The northern hemisphere change in color was visible, going from yellow near the equator to greenish over the pole. The rings outside Cassini Div. were noticeably darker than those inside. That’s about it for detail that I remember. I did push up to 333x without much benefit or cost.
Went on a tour of globular clusters after that: M4, M3, M5, M10, M12, M80. I was surprised at M4 (in Scorpius) that it was as dim as it was. I remember struggling with it with the 8” Newtonian because it seemed low contrast against the background. I guess it’s just so! There was no bright core to it, just a grainy patch surrounded by a broad ring of resolvable stars. There is a band of stars that stands out running N to S over the center. This is the defining characteristic I remember from previous views. M3 (in Canes Venatici) isn’t where I thought it was, which is over near Ophiuchus, but more on that later. It is a big, bright globular; bright center covered with grainy, resolvable stars at 154x. This is where all these globs start sounding the same, but it is really an impressive object. M5, which is closer to what I thought was M3, but still not where I thought that was either (it’s actually in Serpens Caput), is another really lovely glob. Tight bright core surrounded with a mantle of bright stars. Should have written about it on the scene, as now it’s escaping me, but I just kept saying, “Wow, that’s gorgeous!” M10 is also very pretty in much the same way, just a little less so. M12 is tiny by comparison to all these others, but also very pretty. (10 and 12 are in Ophiuchus.) The other night I was looking around with binocs and saw a big, lovely glob in Ophiuchus, which I thought was either M3 or 5, but now I know it wasn’t either, so I think it must have been M10, except that isn’t where I thought I was looking. The closest to where I thought I was looking is actually M107, but that is really small, so it probably wasn’t. Oh, well. Let’s move on.
By now the Milky Way was well up, and Sagittarius had cleared the trees, with the Teapot sitting nice and level. So I made a run up the galactic core nebulae. Starting with M8, I was astonished that it filled the field of view at 154x (13mm). The nebulosity was visible but not super obvious. I backed off to 62x and maybe that’s when I broke out the 40mm for 50x, even. M8 is just huge! Two bright stars stacked N-S just W of center, then a cascade of smaller stars to the east. Nebulosity most noticeable around the two bright ones with a dust lane cutting between them and the cascade. A small brighter patch of neb just W of the southern of the two stars. Does that make sense? Might need darker skies or a filter to enhance the contrast and bring out the nebula some more.
M20, the Triffid, is tiny and faint by comparison. Also centering on two N-S stars, but much smaller and closer together. (I should learn how to talk about these in terms of magnitude some day.) If averted my gaze, I could sort of see the nebula and the dust lane that divides its lobes. I don’t think it was just constructed from memory. Again, more contrast would help here.
M21 is a small open cluster. Next to these other show pieces, it’s no wonder no-one pays attention to it. Including me. Next….
M24 is the galactic star cloud, which would be a good name for a 70s pop band. It is so big that even with the 40mm, it just looks like a lot of stars. Which of course is what it is, but it isn’t identifiable here as an “object.” Really need binoculars for this one. Just saw something about it, though, pointing out it is actually a hole in the galactic dust lane that allows us to see these stars that are near the heart of the galaxy. It’s not really a cluster of any sort. So that’s cool.
M17, the Swan Nebula, is always a favorite of mine. Here it appears to be on its head. The loop of its neck, as it were, concave to the west with two stars on the curve. The body runs from west to east, pretty large and obvious. (I should learn how to talk about these things in terms of arc minutes and arc seconds some day.) Will always remember how it appeared in the 25” scope in New Mexico. Ohh baby.
M16, the Eagle Nebula, appears as a small open cluster without much in the way of nebula. Again, with some averted vision I could pretend there was some nebula, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Mars had now made its way up to a reasonable height, for all the good it did me. Poor seeing, still a relatively low altitude, and the planet-wide dust storm it is undergoing all conspire to make the current appearance of Mars, just 3 weeks from the closest approach in 15 years, a mess to look at. Basically no detail at all, just a salmon-colored ball. Not so much as a polar cap. I think I went up to 222x. At some points with a little averted vision, I thought I could make out some faint surface markings, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I tried a couple filters. What I think turned out to be a green filter had the interesting effect of making the disk essentially white. Wasn’t expecting that! Again, some impression of faint surface markings. Tried a red filter, which was really, really RED and made everything RED! Not very helpful, but interesting. Tried it on Saturn, too, with much the same effect. Upon further research, it appears that Syrtis Major should have been about on the meridian at midnight, so it is possible I was seeing some of its outline.
By this time things were getting damp. I mean, there was water standing on things on the table. I had my dew shield on the scope, but when I checked, there was some dew on the corrector. I pressed on a little more to catch a few galaxies.
M51, just south of the tip of the Big Dipper’s handle, is always a favorite. It appeared as two bright blobs, the cores of the two galaxies, surrounded to the SW especially by nebulous fuzz. No real sense of structure at all. I think I was running at 154x? Or maybe it was the 32mm at 63x.
Popped over to M81, Bode’s galaxy, a large elliptical that looked kind of an oblong blob. I think I was using either the 32mm or the 40mm and expected to find M82 right next door. I didn’t. So I didn’t spend much time with 81 and went to 82, but again its neighbor was not in sight anywhere. I thought they should both appear in the same field of view at low power, as they are less than a degree apart, but couldn’t find both at the same time after some searching. M82 appeared as a long, bright slash running SW to NE.
By now I had serious dew on the scope. I also had not set the scope up high enough that I could just stand, so I was doing a lot of half bends or high squats, and I was getting tired. All in all, the scope performed admirably. The goto worked really well, and the tracking was quite steady, and these were the things I really wanted in a computerized mount. The tracking motor buzzes in cycles, which may have been enough to send a vibration through the image, which I noticed especially on Saturn. It’s possible, though, that it was just the rippling of the atmosphere keeping time with the mount. I hope for a bit better experience on planets with better seeing conditions. Deep sky will also need some getting used to, trying to find the right magnifications for the various types of objects. The globs and open clusters were the winners of the night. After taking the scope off line, I just spent some time looking, as it was still a really beautiful night, and it felt good to sit down for a few minutes. As usual, I thank God for the beauty of the night sky, the eyes, time, and equipment to behold it, and for all peace I feel in the process.
Stuff I looked at:
Jupiter – with moon shadow
Saturn – Cassini division w/ 32mm
Mars – totally washed out with dust, but maybe a few surface features
M3 – very nice
M4 – oddly dim
M5 – absolutely gorgeous
M8 – enormous
M10 – beautiful
M12 – adorable
M16 – hint of neb
M17 – lovely
M20 – pretend it’s there
M21 – meh
M24 – better in binocs
M51 – getting dewed, dude; two cores and some fuzz
M80 – very pretty
M81 – visible blob
M82 – long, thin, bright