Observing from Home – 11 August 2019

Conditions

11 August 2019 – 22:00 (8/11) – 00:30 (8/12) EDT
mild – 60º-65º F; humidity 80-85%
Moon +11 days ~90% illumination
still; clear at first, but increasing clouds toward midnight
seeing – 6 or 7/10 – pretty good
transparency – inconsequential, as I was hunting orbs

Equipment

Celestron NexStar Evolution 8″ SCT
Eyepieces
- 32 mm
- 15 mm
- 9 mm
- 6 mm
2x Barlow
Filters
- Moon, blue, green, yellow

Objects

Moon
Jupiter
Saturn

Observations

A pleasant Sunday night. I pondered long about going out, because, much as I love the NexStar 8, it is a pain to drag it down to the pool deck. I finally discerned that my 3 targets – Jupiter, Moon, and Saturn – would be visible from the deck, so I set up in the northwest corner there. The problems were shakiness (really need to reinforce the deck at some point) and the TV aerial, which turned out to be right in the path of the moon and Saturn. The moon was just a few degrees W of Saturn, both sitting just above the Teapot of Sagittarius. Jupiter was 15º or so to the west just above Antares in Scorpius/Ophiuchus.

Moon

I started with the Moon, using 32 mm = 62.5 X with moon filter and variations with 15 mm, 9 mm, and 2x Barlow. I don’t know the moon that well, so didn’t do much more than identify several craters. In the SW quadrant; Schiller, , a long, squashed crater; Gassendi was just east of the terminator – large with prominent central peak; small Flamsteed; up to Encke and Kepler, just on the terminator. On into the NW, Prinz on the terminator, and I think it was breaking dawn on Aristarchus, which sounds like a new age album. Saw Bianchini and Sharp just outside Sinus Iridum. After that I made my way to Mare Tranquillitatis to see if I could find the Apollo 11 astronaut craters: three small craters in a row just north of the landing site and named Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong. Turns out they are quite small. While theoretically in reach of my scope, I had two problems (at least): 1) I had neglected to add my dew shield and was starting to fog over, and 2) the aforementioned TV aerial was now sitting across the heart of the moon, so that I wasn’t getting good resolution, even at 222 X. [An article in July 2019 Sky&Telescope suggests a 6″ scope can make them out at 250 X with steady seeing.]

Jupiter

Moved on to Jupiter, sitting low in the SW. Tried pushing the magnification to 333 X, and it was just a bit too much. 222 X wasn’t quite enough, but I didn’t think to use the 15 mm + 2X for 266 X, which might have been Goldilocks. Oh well. The GRS (Great Red Spot) was just past transit, very well placed, but so small! It was fairly obvious but just a tight, dark knot (nought? not.) in the SEB (Southern Equatorial Band), which itself was quite light. The NEB (Northern…) was dark and thick, and some “barges” were visible. The equatorial zone remains heavily shaded, darker than the temperate zones. One northern temperate band was visible. The GRS rotated about 2/3 to the limb while I observed, or so it seems to me as I write this. I tried a variety of color filters, including blue, green, and yellow. The blue highlighted the bands and GRS the best, as one would expect. Green and yellow both gave interesting interpretations but were ultimately not that helpful. Of the Galilean moons, I had just missed Io disappearing in eclipse as it turns out, and also just missed Ganymede emerging from eclipse at the other end of my observations. Oh well. Meanwhile, Europa was about 4 Jupiter diameters from the planet to the west. Callisto was about four Europa-Jupiter distances further to the west. I made a sketch at the eyepiece that shows the distances more or less. The GRS in the sketch is bigger than it appeared.

Moon, redux

Went back to the Moon for a bit after it cleared the tower, as it were. Took another stab at the Apollo 11 craters, but no. Poked around the southern highlands for a bit. I’ve always had a soft spot for Clavius, so I looked there for a bit. Noticed a few clouds moving in and wanted to get some Saturn time in, so moved there.

Saturn

Even with deteriorating conditions, Saturn looked pretty good. Again, pushing the mag, it was just a bit much at 333 X, so ended up with the 266 X combo I hadn’t thought of earlier. The rings are tilted so that the other edges are about lined up with the edge of the disk. It’s just a bit past opposition (okay, a month past), so there is just a little bit of shadow on the rings right at the pole, or that’s what I’ve gathered. Any way, the rings kind of squish at that point. Not much color tonight, just a yellowish tint. Darker in the N temperate to polar region with a slightly dark band at the bottom. Very 3-D. Cassini Gap easily visible.

Pics

I took several handheld pictures and videos with my phone at the eyepiece for all three targets. Moon was best, of course, then Saturn. Jupiter was washed out. Clouds were moving in, and I was tired, so I washed out, too.

Best shot of the Moon for the night. North is right and West is down.

Best of Jupiter for the night, which is not that great. North is upper left, West is to the lower left. More or less.

Saturn. Not as impressive as seeing it live. You sort of see the dips where the rings and the disk limb cross, right? North is right.

You can see the full series of pictures I took at my Google Pictures album, >here<.

Sabbatical 2018: The Movie

Here’s a video summary of my sabbatical travels touring U.S. astronomical observatories. It is entirely inadequate to capture the depth and richness of the experience, but it will give you a taste with some pretty pictures and peppy music (from http://www.bensound.com).

The review presentation

I presented this with a review of the whole experience, or bits and pieces of the whole experience, for the congregation after worship on Sunday, December 9, 2018. We also video recorded that presentation, including this. It’s under an hour long, and you can see that here:

Photo Dump… Observatories 7-17!

My sabbatical is drawing quickly to an end. My Grand Tour wrapped up last week. My writing output has been lousy. I do, however, have lots and lots of pictures from the Tour that are in annotated albums over at my Google account. (My last photo dump went to my flickr account, but I got a new Android phone for the Grand Tour, so all the pictures automatically synced with Google, so there we go.) So I’m doing what I did after the Lesser Tour and dumping the pics for you to see. I then hope to go back and add commentary posts here for each leg, plus some interpretive and reflective posts on the whole experience.

So here we go. Click on the headings to see the pictures.

Arizona

Kitt Peak Observatory

Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Arizona, is the National Optical Astronomy Observatory for the United States, established in 1958. There are over two dozen telescopes of various shapes, designs, and age there ranging from 16″ to 4 meters (160″) in size. They do a nice job with their tours, visitor center, and gift shop. I also participated in a nighttime observing program, and that was also well done, despite the monsoon making actual observing impossible.

Sunset at Kitt Peak

As part of the evening program, we got to view the sunset from the crest, which was spectacular. I took many pictures which only hint at the glory. The clouds made it more dramatic, but as the light faded the clouds took control of the night, precluding any astronomical observing.

Mount Graham International Observatories

A couple hours east of Tucson you can find Mount Graham, but you can’t go up it without a permit or signing on with the Eastern Arizona College Discovery Park tour, which is what I did. It takes over an hour to ascend the mountain road with its 108 switchbacks. At the summit are three observatories: the Sub-millimeter Radio Telescope, the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, and the Large Binocular Telescope. We toured all three. Meanwhile, the weather degraded from mostly sunny to socked in, foggy, and 25-30 mph winds. The monsoon is real. I’m sure it had nothing to do with me being there.

Lowell Observatory

I traveled by car from Tucson to Flagstaff to see the Lowell Observatory, about a 4-hour drive. It saved me some logistical nightmares of getting there by train. Lowell is a beautiful facility, and they do very nice interpretive work. They also do public observing every clear night, and we happened to get such a thing while I was there. Lowell, named for famed astronomer Percival Lowell, is where Clyde Thombaugh discovered Pluto.

California

California Science Center

Not an observatory, but a cool science museum that has lots of space artifacts including the space shuttle Endeavor.

Griffith Observatory

Sitting on a hill overlooking Los Angeles is Griffith Observatory, named for Griffith Griffith. Yep, that was his name. This facility has been an important center for science education in L.A. for generations. It’s still very cool. They do public observing through their 12-inch Zeiss every clear night, despite the atrocious light pollution. You still get a decent view of the planets, which can be a real Gee-Whiz! moment, especially for the uninitiated.

Palomar Observatory

The Big Eye, that is the 200″ Hale reflector, one of the most famous telescopes in the world, is housed in this beautiful, Art Deco observatory dome. If you ever see an observatory in a cartoon, it’s probably based on Palomar. It is still among the largest telescopes in active service, and this is an active scientific facility. A couple hours southeast of Los Angeles, actually closer to San Diego, Palomar doesn’t suffer too much from pollution of the bright lights, big city. They have nice gift shop and visitor center and a good tour.

Mount Wilson Observatory

Mount Wilson was one of the first great observatories on the West Coast, developed by George Hale, the man behind Yerkes and (eventually) Palomar. It’s about an hour and change northeast of Los Angeles and is home to several former claimants of World’s Largest Telescope. Now primarily an educational outreach facility and center for outdoor activities like hiking and mountain biking, Mt. Wilson played a key roll in changing the way we understand the shape, structure, size, and age of the Universe.

New Mexico

Molly flew out to join me in Albuquerque 32 days after I boarded the train in Harpers Ferry. We spent a day doing a self-guided Breaking Bad tour, which you can look here at if you’re into the show. We also enjoyed the New Mexico Space History Museum, the White Sands National Monument, the Three Rivers Petroglyph park, and the Valley of Fires lava flow site. Again, if you are interested in these, feel free to click on over. I’m going to keep the major bullet points for the official Grand Tour sites, such as…

Sunspot and Apache Point Observatories

Up on a mountain overlooking Alamogordo and White Sands, near the town of Cloudcroft, and just down the way from Mayhill where I spent a week on my last sabbatical, you can find Sunspot, the national solar observatory. You might have heard about Sunspot in the news recently. It was closed and evacuated by the FBI three days before we got there, leading to all sorts of speculation and conspiracy theories. Turned out to be a criminal investigation of a janitor involved in child porn, and definitely not aliens. Gross. Any way, just around the corner is Apache Point, an active observatory that is home to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an important digital, 3-D map of stars and celestial objects that revolutionized the field about the turn of the century. No visitor center, gift shop, or tours, but the public is welcome to stroll around. So we did.

Monastery of Christ in the Desert

This is the bookend retreat for the sabbatical, balancing the week at the Sienna Center in Wisconsin. Molly and I spent three days and three nights with the Benedictine brotherhood at this monastery on the Chama River near Abiquiu, NM. It is a beautiful and remote setting. Most of the time was spent in silence, or a close facsimile, and we attended quite a few of the services of the hours. The brothers start their day with Vigils at 3:30 a.m. and Lauds at 5:00 a.m., and we managed to miss those somehow. We very much enjoyed our time in reflection there, and the night sky was incredible.

Moon Over the Monastery

Here are many repetitive pictures of the moon, Venus, Jupiter, and friends low over the mountains west of the monastery on two successive nights.

Acoma Sky City Pueblo

Molly’s mom joined us from Colorado when we returned from the monastery to Albuquerque. We spent a day at the Acoma Pueblo, about an hour west of ABQ. I had been planning to go to the Chaco Canyon Native American Heritage site, which is the remains of a very large community dating from about 800-1200 AD in northwestern New Mexico. Chaco shows a great deal of intricate astronomical knowledge built into the layout and architecture of the entire site. Unfortunately, the logistics of travel precluded getting everywhere I hoped to go, and Chaco fell off the list. Sky City was much more doable and turned out to be a fascinating side trip. The Acoma are thought to be descendants of the Chaco people.

The Very Large Array

The last of the Grand Tour observatories, the Very Large Array, is a bookend to the first observatory on my sabbatical, Green Bank. The VLA is the largest radio observatory in the world, a collection of 27 radio dishes, each 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter, set in a Y pattern with a 22-mile diameter. It is well known from Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos series and the Jodie Foster movie (based on a book by Sagan), Contact. Once again, radio astronomy proved to be absolutely fascinating, not only to me, but also to Molly and Mom who were both quite impressed. Good tour, good visitor center, nice gift shop.

And that’s pretty much it!

We spent a couple days with Mom at her place in northern Colorado, after which we took the train from Denver home to Harpers Ferry. I have some pics of the trip home here. I still have a couple places I want to get to in and around DC, but time is running out to get it in under the title “sabbatical.” Like I said, I hope to post more about the journey, things I learned, ideas I’ve pondered, observations I’ve made about life, the universe, and everything, so stay tuned.

Not Quite an Observatory: The University of Arizona Mirror Lab

My first tour in Arizona was the >University of Arizona Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab<, and you can see my pictures and comments at >this link.<

By this point I was becoming aware of the number of places I was visiting that pushed the limits of technology, knowledge, and skill for the sake of science. The Yerkes 40″ is the physical limit for refracting telescopes. LIGO is the most precise measuring instrument ever built. At this lab they craft mirrors that are smooth to one one-millionth of an inch. Such things are staggering to contemplate, at least for me.

While this isn’t an observatory, this lab is making observatories possible. They are making mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope being built in Chile, and they made the mirrors for the two optical telescopes on Mount Graham, which we will get to in a couple posts. >Here is a link< to a time lapse video, taken from inside the kiln, of the glass melting in the making of one of the mirrors. As far as I know, this is the only place doing work like this. There are other mirror labs, but nothing making mirrors this big.

This is also about the time I brought to consciousness a thought I’d had when I was in college working in a wind tunnel lab. Science smells like oil. We tend to think of science as being clean and pristine and airtight, or at least I do, but when you go to these facilities, the labs and the observatories, they smell industrial and oily. Big science in the real world, not your classroom stuff, is much more earthy than we see in the movies, with lubrication, and metalwork, and miles of wire, and countless boxes and drawers of spare parts. It’s not all theory and math and formulas. You need those, of course, but then you have to make them work in physical space.

That’s part of why I think we should focus much more on science, and space science especially, as a national economic priority. Science needs all manner of workers to make it happen. You need theorists, sure, but also technicians and skilled labor to put the parts together; fabricators, tool and die makers, welders and builders making the parts and things that hold the parts; construction workers building the work places and labs; plumbers, electricians, and painters to make the spaces workable; maintenance crews to keep it all in shape; administrators and clerical workers to organize it all; then you have to feed all those folks and provide housing and retail for them. Every big science project should mean work for hundreds or thousands of people with all manner of skills and all for the betterment of humanity. Decent work for decent wages should mean better opportunity and improved economic justice in communities. Better work and pay should mean decreased crime and need for social services. I know I’m an idealist, but am I missing something here?

But I digress. Here they make mirrors the size of swimming pools so we can see the farthest stars.

Observatory 6: LIGO

I’ve been keeping up better with recording my journey with my photos, which are now living at my Google account since I have an Android phone. Say what you will about the evil digital empires, it is convenient.

Any way, going way back to Louisiana and the LIGO facility, you can see my pictures and comments at >this link.<

Short form: >LIGO< stands for Laser Interferometry Gravitational wave Observatory, which consists of two campuses, one in Hanford, WA, and the other in Livingston, LA, where I went. It is an instrument that measures the distortion of spacetime by waves created by the interaction of supermassive bodies like neutron stars and black holes. It is a whole new way of looking at the universe, it is incredibly precise, and it is remarkably expensive. New technology is like that. We don’t know yet what the practical applications of all this will be, but I bet it will be cool.

LIGO Livingston is open to the public one day a month through their educational center. They have a very good collection of interactive displays aimed at kids and novices to help explain the science they do there. The staff are knowledgeable and friendly. Tours don’t really show you much of the actual instrument, as it is pretty inaccessible being encased in evacuated steel tubes surrounded by evacuated concrete tunnels. So you get to see the control room and the outside of the tunnels and a prototype of some of the pieces of the instrument. But somehow, that was adequate for me.

It is mind bending to think about waves in spacetime. They aren’t waves inside space but space itself waving. That means when the waves pass over the earth, the whole planet, your home, your chair, your body are all stretched and squeezed. You don’t notice because the effect is minuscule, but it happens nevertheless.

The universe is a weirder place than you would imagine.

Pictures from My Siena Retreat

I have so much to write about, and I’m so far behind! I hope you took opportunity to look at the pictures at the links I posted last time. I hope you enjoyed doing that, because I’m sending you another set the same way. But not at the same place.

I got a new phone for the Grand Tour. A smart phone. My first smart phone. Yes, I know, but my old flippy was just fine and no one ever tried to hack it, I’m pretty sure. Any way, the new phone is also my new camera, of course. And in a major breach of Douthett etiquette, it’s not an iPhone but an Android-running Samsung thing. It cost about a third of what an iPhone would have been, so I got it. Fine, I’m cheap. I can live with that. But I digress. Any way, since it’s an Android, it syncs with Google Photos, so that’s where my pics are going at this point.

After a stupidly long train trip from Harpers Ferry to Chicago (6.5 hours late arriving) and another hour train from Chicago to Sturtevant, WI, I arrived at the >Siena Retreat Center< on Sunday, August 5. Siena is a ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Racine, and it’s a really lovely facility. There is still a convent there with a fairly small group of sisters who are faithfully living out their vows and their mission of praise, blessing, and preaching. I chose Siena fairly early in my planning process for the Grand Tour, as it is only an hour from Yerkes Observatory, and it looked like a beautiful site right on Lake Michigan with some interesting retreat offerings. These observations turned out to be accurate. It’s a beautiful place, a lovely setting, and I chose an interesting and challenging retreat.

The retreat I signed up for was about the only one I could fit into any plan for the Grand Tour that was open to men and Protestants. It also intrigued me. “Painting and Praying with Icons: Our Lady of the Sign” is what I selected. I remember when I was in seminary and we studied the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Church in 1050 AD, which in no small part focused on the proper use or lack thereof of icons. It was the culmination of what I remember being called the iconoclast controversy. I sided with the iconoclasts, the side that believed icons were a violation of the second commandment. As with many things, I have mellowed on this issue a good bit. Nevertheless, the idea of actually painting (or “writing” as it is said) an icon and praying with it was definitely going to be a stretch! Spoiler, I did paint/write my icon, but its future in my prayer regimen remains in question.

So I have a collection of pictures from the retreat that are primarily showing the progression, step by step of my icon writing. It is a fascinating process, but a bit grueling for beginners to fit in a week. I expected that it would almost a paint by numbers process, and that there would be vary little room for variation from the proscribed structure of the icon. At our level of competence any way, this turned out not to be the case. While all (there were 17 of us in the retreat) of our icons are essentially the same, they are also wildly diverse in their style and detail. This is due to different levels of skill and experience in part, as some of us had never really done any painting before and some were 30-year art teachers. But it also was a product of choice and preference, and maybe also theological emphasis. Any way, in the end, the icons were as unique as the people in the room. I think this was a delightful outcome for our group and is also generally acceptable at the casual iconography level. If we were doing icons for a church installation, I think the rules are more rigid.

Let me say just a word more about the group. It was predominantly women and predominantly Catholic, but there were a few Protestants and a few men. Well, about three of each out of 17. Still. Quite a few of the women were sisters/religious, but only a couple were from Siena. One of the Protestant women was a pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Despite being in the minority in religious tradition, gender, and geography, I felt very much included in the group as a rule. Indeed, the group seemed to gel really well, being very supportive of one another and enjoying one another’s company. You know how in groups like this there is often that one person who is a thorn in the flesh? Well, unless it was me and I didn’t realize it, that thorn was not present.

Now, I did feel a bit like a stranger in a strange land in as much as many of the participants knew each other or knew the same people and places. Perhaps more than that were the distinct theological difference of belief and experience between Catholics and Presbyterians. The icon was of Mary and Jesus (more on that later), and my relationship with Mary is pretty academic. Meanwhile, for most of the Catholic folks, Mary is a present and active player in their daily life. For example, when we were finishing up, some of the women were complimenting my icon, and when I said I had never really painted before they were all the more impressed. One said, “She was really working through you, you can tell that!” I was caught completely off guard by this and had to spend quite a few moments figuring out who “she” was that was working. Of course it was Mary, but it never crossed my mind that Mary was as much author of my icon as its subject.

Okay, well, let’s get to the pictures. The link below will take you to an album full with some additional commentary on the process and the meaning of the icon itself, so I encourage you to go have a look. I say more about him in the album, but our instructor was Drazen Dupor from Croatia, and his website is >here<. Enjoyed getting to know him a bit.

Alright, alright. Enough talk. Let’s look at some >Platytera pictures<. There are a lot of near-duplicates, and some differences from one step to the next are pretty subtle, so you’ll have to pay attention. I’ll be glad to take your questions when you’re done.

And tomorrow, it’s on to the Yerkes Observatory, home of the largest refracting telescope in the world.

Picture this…. Observatories 1, 2, 3, and 4

I’ve been collecting pictures of my sabbatical travels, only a few of which have appeared here so far. I’m putting them on flickr. I think flickr is kind of out of favor, but I’ve got a terabyte of free space, so I’m going to use it. If you want to see my pics, you’ll have to use it, too.

[Update: I ended up putting all my photos on Google, so I’ve added those as secondary links in the descriptions. So you can see them at either Big G or flickr, or both.]

So here are the links for my travels so far. I still have to write up a few of these visits, and I’m about to embark on the Grand Tour, so expect more posts and more pics soon.

Green Bank Observatory

The Green Bank Observatory, Green Bank, WV, is a premiere radio astronomy site and a great place for a star party. Their largest instrument, featured here, is the enormous GBT, or more formally the Robert Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.

Hopkins Observatory

The Hopkins Observatory at Williams College, Williamstown, MA, is the oldest extent and continuous observatory in the United States, with 180 years under its belt. It has been moved on campus twice and hosts a small museum, a planetarium, and Alvan Clark’s first professional telescope, a 7″ refractor.

Princeton Theological Seminary

PTS is not an observatory, but it is my alma mater, and it’s one of my retreat stops. I didn’t spend as long as I had hoped there this trip, but I guess I spent long enough. Pics include my old hall, Miller Chapel, and the very spot where I met my wife, among others.

Holmdel Horn Antenna

The Holmdel Horn is a national historical landmark in Holmdel, NJ, but you have work to find it. It is on the campus of the Nokia lab on Holmdel Road, across the parking lot, up a hill, around the bend, and in the maintenance yard. It is important for being the instrument that found the first evidence of the Big Bang, namely the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Allegheny Observatory

The Allegheny Observatory is on my list primarily because it’s near my hometown, making it easy to also visit my dad and my daughter. It is, however, a pretty cool site with two impressive refracting telescopes. The smaller, the 13″ Fitz-Clark, was built by Fitz, later damaged, and then refigured by Alvan Clark near the height of his career, and we got to look at Jupiter through it. The big scope is called the Thaw (for its benefactor), a 30″ refractor, about 48 feet in length built by Brasheer Optics.

Coming up next…

This weekend I’ll travel by train to Racine, WI, to the Siena Retreat Center for a week, followed by a visit to the Yerkes Observatory, an important historical and scientific facility that is scheduled to close in October. Here’s hoping they find new patrons. After that, it looks like LIGO in Louisiana, then Arizona, southern Cal, back to Arizona, and New Mexico. That should wrap up by mid-September.