Come See the Moon!

"Come see the Moon!"

Ok, I really didn't say that. I'm not sure why, that's what one is supposed to say, right? Last Saturday night I set up my 5" refractor, a Burgess 1278, on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts to do some sidewalk astronomy. I was still setting up when I had my first pair of "customers."

I had originally put the Garret Optical 30mm Wide Angle eyepice in, but I when I saw how some folks had problems getting the sweet spot, I pulled it and used a Celestron 30mm Plossl. Both eyepieces were in a 2x Barlow. This yields 67x with a FOV of about 0.8 degrees. 67x is great because you can see much of the moon yet still make out craters and ever see the central peak in some of them.

You could see the entire waxing gibbous moon plus some to spare. This was good because I set up right at dusk and Polaris was no where to be seen. I had a pretty good guess at North (from looking at the high tide seaweed mark in Google Maps!). The ASGT does not track well at all if your north is off but it turns out I was good enough. I only had to hit the Down button bout every 15 minutes.

But enough of the tech stuff, what about the people? I met Russian, French and German tourist. Couples, singles. Families. The usual response was "Wow" accompanied with a big smile.

Some people were initially distrustful, but when I assured them that it was completely free they came over and put their eye to the eyepiece.

And of course, some were not interested at all.

I should two bicycle police officers who loved it. Later on I showed 2 other officers with a car, whose observations were cut short by a nearby drug transaction!

Many people couldn't believe that I was doing this for free. Some wanted to tip me. I, of course, refused. I told them to donate to a school but that seems lame, I need a better line to handle those situations. I kept telling the story of John Dobson over and over again, talking of his commitment to sidewalk astronomy.

I was setup for about 2 1/2 hours, thin clouds came and put a haze on the moon but nobody really minded. Late in the evening I tried showing Jupiter but the high winds really made it pretty wobbly.

I'll certainly be back to do this again and I encourage all of you to bring your telescopes to the street and share the sky.

Oh, and what did I say instead of "Come see the moon?" My line was "Would you like to see the moon?" I'm not sure why I changed it, I just did.

Burgess 1278 First and Second Light report

I've had the Burgess 1278 for well over a month now. The first month was spent waiting, waiting for clear skies at a time I would be home to enjoy them. I watched the ClearSkyClock almost obsessively, and illogically believed the 10 day forecasts at weather.com. So a little more than a week ago, I was quite pleased to see that the skies would be clear and I would be home, but barely. I was working in Cambridge that day and would not be home until about 9:30 or 10pm that night. Given how long I waited, I didn’t care. I was especially interested in seeing Jupiter. I had viewed it with the 8” SCT a few weeks before and it was impressive, my best Jupiter ever. I wanted to see how the Burgess compared. I had looked at the Great Red Spot calculator from SkyAndTelescope.com and was pleased to see that it was at the meridian at 10:53pm.

Once I got home, I quickly hauled all the equipment from basement. I didn’t bother with the light pollution screens since I was only planning on viewing Jupiter. The neighbors were interested, as usual, and once I was fully setup, around 11pm, I quickly centered Jupiter and then let the kids look.

Then I pulled up my chair and sat down and looked myself. There it was, the Great Red Spot! As others have noted, it is more of a Great Tan Spot these days but still, I was happy. I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was a kid and the GRS had always been on my life list. I guess I wish I had seen it when it was red, not tan, but still, impressive none-the-less. It was so easy to see that I wondered if I was seeing what I wanted to see. Averted Imagination. I sat and observed for perhaps 20 minutes, waiting for a crystal clear moment. That moment really never came. The skies were just good all along. There were the 4 Galileans visible, no shadows. I stared at the GRS, stared at the bands, it was real, no doubt. I was actually seeing it! I tried to see an detail in the bands, or the Little Red Spot and that third one whose name I can’t remember, no luck, but I was still happy.

I also immediately realized that my carefully planned eyepiece collection was a bit limited. A 2000mm f10 scope does not use the same same set of eyepieces that a scope with a focal length of 1000mm uses somewhat different eyepieces than a 2000mm focal length scope! My normal “max power” eyepiece, a 9mm University Optics HD Abbe Orthoscopic was only giving 111x in this scope, my 7mm only gives 143x. I used the 7mm, which was pretty much the first time I had ever used it, that was the “miracle skies” eyepiece for the SCT. I found the eye relief bare acceptable. (I wear glasses.) I tried barlowing the 9mm with a 2x University barlow and the results were unacceptable, which is to be expected since that exceeds the Dawes’ limit rule of 40x per inch of aperture.

Pumped by my success, I decided to do some other viewing. I’ve been using Sue French’s book, Celestial Sampler, to plan my viewing sessions and I had not planned anything for tonight so I just went along ad hoc. First up was my long time favorite, the M81 and M82 pair. They were beautifully framed by the 34mm Siebert Observatory eyepiece. I was starting to see why some astronomers love wide field eyepieces. Unlike with my SCT, there was plenty of room around the two galaxies. It was quite pleasant to see.

I then went to M51, but alas, I still wasn’t able to see any detail in the arms. I’ve always wanted to see that, haven’t yet. I could, of course, see the second galaxy, but I expected to see that!

I can’t recall many of the other objects I saw. I was did try M57 at stupid power, which was, of course, stupid. It was much better with the 7mm. And I was able to split both of the double doubles. I had never been able to do that before, but then again, I hadn’t tried all that much before either!

By now it was getting close to 1AM so I went back to Jupiter. Yup, the GRS was gone, as expected, this only confirmed that I had seen it, not imagined it. M31 had now risen above the house so I went over there. Oh, very nice! I could easily see 32 and 110 in their proper spots. I had seen them in the SCT but the field of view was much narrower so once couldn’t grasp the whole picture.

I waited another half hour or so. I wanted to see the Double Cluster and it had not yet risen from behind the house. While doing so, I just looked at random star fields in the Milky Way. I was a bit dismayed to see that the 34mm Siebert was giving me unacceptable star blurring along the outer quarter or so of the field of view. I was quite upset, this has been my favorite eyepiece! (Note to those who’ve found this by googling, read on to the second light report, the 34mm Siebert is fine...)

I did a GOTO the Double Cluster and pretty much watched the edge of the roof disappear. That was actually a bit of fun, you could get a sense of slow motion of the skies. Once they both cleared I had a tremendous view. Again, like with M81/82 one could fully frame the objects against the background stars, things weren’t as crammed together.

I sadly packed up, happy with the new telescope.

I purchased a Chesire on astromart and set up the scope in the kitchen. It was very easy to collimate it. It didn’t seem to be out of collimation at all so I uncollimated it and then re-collimated it. At least I half collimated it! You, once I put the diagonal in, it was out of collimation again. So I tried another diagonal, it was also out of collimation by the same amount. I may need to shim the focuser (or something, pretty much whatever Steve Forbes of Trapezium Telescopes suggests) to get that centered. I don’t think the diagonal is out of collimation since I saw the same error with 2 different diagonals.

8 days later I was able to try the skies again. There was a first quarter moon so I decided to do lunar and Jupiter observing. From my last session I knew that the cars were annoying even though I was looking at bright objects, so I put up the screens. (Side note, I still have tons more design work to do on the screens, they are effective, but not as easy to install as possible and the tolerances are too tight, the tarps are stretching and I’ve pulled out some grommets already.)

Once everything was setup I still had some time to kill, so I pointed at the moon. This was the signal for the clouds to roll in. You could see the moon, but just as a bright blob. I tried again as the evening wore on. Eventually the skies were clearing with a sharp line coming from the north west. I could see the glow of Arturus so I use that as an alignment star. (Polaris wasn’t visible but I have true north marked on my lawn with 3 sections of PVC embedded in the ground.) I was slewing towards Mizar when it disappeared, so I just “accepted” its coordinates. Then I grabbed Vega for a calibration star. The moon was completely socked in so I went back to Mizar, which was now visible, grabbed it and then to M51. It was an exceptionally dim spot. The moon was really messing with the viewing. I tried for a few more dim things in that area but gave up and just waited out the moon.

I used the Siebert 22.5mm Ultra, both barlowed and not at 44x and 89x, and the 9mm straight @ 111x. I tried the 9mm barlowed (222x) but the skies didn’t permit it. I looked at it for about 45 minutes I think. I particularly like see the long shadow from the central peak in the Alphonsus crater. (I used Astronomist on my Palm PDA for the crater map.) I tried so hard to see the shadow move, never did. There was as a pair of mountain peaks over by where Plato is, perhaps they were from the rim of Plato. They were stick up into the sunlight. The skies were boiling. I sat and and watched and sat and watch and the atmospheric motion never stopped. Like the shadow in Alphonsus, I really wanted to see the sun move down the slopes of these mountains.

The clouds had cleaned up by now so I headed over to Jupiter. A quick look showed that the skies were still active. I only saw 3 moons. I whipped out Astromist and sure enough, Ganymede was occulted and then eclipsed. I never did look up to see if the GRS was visible, the skies didn’t permit it anyhow. I could recall how nice Jupiter looked the previous time, this wasn’t even close.

I next headed up to M27, it was easy to find but I could not make out the lobed appearance. I had seen that before with the SCT using a UHC filter. I tried that and it didn’t help. I’m guessing the moon brightness was still messing with what I could see. I had a nice star field here so I started playing the the two Siebert eyepieces and the University Optics 55mm Plossl. I was trying to learn three things: 1) how bad was the blurring in the 34mm Observatory, 2) did the 22.5mm Ultra have the blurring, and 3) would I use the 55mm Plossl ever?

The first question was easy to answer. I’m not sure what I was seeing before but the 34mm did not sure any of the blurring I saw before. I was quite pleased by this. The same was true of the 22.5mm Siebert, the views were great.

When I put the 55mm in it seemed that the views were sharper than with the 2 Sieberts, but the magnification was so low that I’m not sure I found the view better. I wasn’t able to evaluate the eyepiece for contrast. I also didn’t like the huge eye relief nor do I like the blackouts. I’m still thinking of selling this eyepiece but I’m not sure. I sometimes wonder if I’m not experienced enough to use it.

I looked at some DSO in Sagitarius, trying to work my way over to M8 and M20, but they both required a meridian flip so I put off those slews. There wasn’t anything to write home about so I did do the flip.

I visited the moon again, it was just about to set into the trees, so I wanted to check out that shadow and the 2 mountains again. They had not changed at all. So I guess this means that over an hour or two one cannot see changes on the Moon. Well, I’ll keep on trying. I know I’ve seen changes on a crater rim with binoculars, but I don’t know how much time had passed between sightings.

I next go to M8, the Lagoon Nebula. It wasn’t impressive until I put the UHC in. Wow! Not as nice as M42, of course, but this was delightful. I do think it was dimmer, but only by a bit, than the view in the SCT.

M20 was a disappointment, it was dim and featureless. I can’t recall what it has looked like in the SCT so I’ll have to wait for another time to make that comparison.

I next went down to M7, one of my favorite clusters, and just enjoyed it for a bit. I did try the 3 eyepieces but basically just looked and enjoyed.

Before shutting down for the night, I de-clutched everything and went back to Jupiter. (I didn’t want another meridian flip, it just takes too long.) Hey Ganymede was back! That was nice to see. Like Rags, I also saw a fifth “moon” now but I’m pretty sure that that was a star. I did a bit of reading after seeing the fifth one and seeing Rags’ report. I don’t see any evidence that we should have been able to see a moon. (But it would have been cool if we did!)

Overall I’m quite pleased with the Burgess, to the point I’m thinking of selling the SCT. The only thing it gives me over the Burges is aperture and some will argue that with the central obstruction of the SCT subtracting, the Burgess doesn’t lose all that much. I must say I was disappointed by M20. I’m looking forward to see it with an 8” SCT at the same time as I see it with the Burgess. Selling the SCT has some big financial advantages, not only would the OTA but sold but the Crayford, the 2” diagonal, and the dew controller and strips. Shoot, I could even sell the Telrad since I don’t need two of them.

And of course, that could fund a bigger refractor.... :- )