Edmund First Light

I headed out to MacMillian Pier to do some public astronomy with the Burgess. Yeah, pretty strange with a brand new scope at home, but the tourist season is almost over and I wanted to get another night of that in. I need to build up my P-town "character" rep, right?

Anyway, I get there and find that the parking lot is full. Now there are many other parking lots in P-town, and no, I won't tell you where the good, secret, ones are, but when you have 3 trips worth of gear, you can only choose the close lot.

I turned around and headed home. I had already setup the Edmund before I left, knowing that I would just have to grab a few peeks before heading to bed. I took the plastic bag off the business end (memo to myself, buy a pair of shower caps) and plopped a 40mm Plossl into the focuser and pointed at the Double Cluster. I had just been there with the binoculars and I knew I'd be able to find it.

First I went to Jupiter but with the short pier it was hidden by my light block shields!

So I'm down on my knees, did I mention the pier is short, trying to see through the soda straw finderscope and dang. I can barely see anything! I can see the Double Cluster with my naked eye and I can't find it in the finderscope! After what seemed like eternity I gave up and headed over to M31. I somehow hit that very quickly.

This was it. The first image.

Well, it was much better than I remember from the Celestro C8, and I could see M110 so it was better than the binoculars, but you know, I didn't have the Burgess set up but I know the image in the Burgess was better, much better actually, M32 was clearly visible in the Burgess. Now, that was another night so the sky conditions could have been better then.

I looked a lot more, trying to look for subtle details that would wow me. But frankly, I wasn't impressed. Don't get me wrong, the image was great, but not as good as the Burgess. And it was work getting the object in the view. I head down and bit and put a nearby bright star in the center of the eyepiece. I figured I should align the finderscope.

Well, the star was right in the middle! But, the stars, as they were, were blurry! I need to focus the finderscope. I got the red flashlight on it but couldn't see an obvious way to rotate or push or pull something so I figured I just wing it for tonight.

I went back to the Double Cluster and found that fine after a few minutes of searching. I looked at this a bit, then switched to a 30mm Plossl. I found the larger image more pleasing and both of them were still nicely framed. Stars were pinpoint, that was nice to see. I could make our serious detail in the centers of them.

I took part of the light shield down and found, after a ton of difficulty, Jupiter. The view was very disappointing but I think I can attribute that to the seeing, it seem to be shimmering and that wouldn't have been the scopes fault. I gave up and headed up to M13

I found that pretty quickly. I'm not how, I think I just got lucky. I certainly didn't find any of the pointer stars in the finderscope. Basically I just pointed in the right area and moved it all around.

M13 look pretty nice, well formed and framed. I took the 30mm out and put in a 9mm Burgess Planetary eyepiece in the focuser.

I moved it around until it was centered and then refocused. It looked a lot better, pou could certainly see some detail in the middle. But alas, it was slowly slipping out of the field of view!

Ah, my first non-tracking scope experience. So which axis do I lock and which axis do I turn? Intellectually I know what the mount needs to do, but I never had to pay attention to that before. I felt down to the mount and found the shaft that had the big gear on it. This shaft must be the Right Ascension axis and that is the one I need to turn. I looked other axis and found that it was very easy to track, a little nudge was all it took. No worries about moving it the proper amount in x and y, GEMs do have their advantages!

So now I wanted to see a bit more, so I headed inside and found the book I bought that afternoon in Hyannis, Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas, 80 single page star charts. I figured I need this since I was moving away from the Goto land.

I figured I find the Double Double in Lyra. Vega was easy to find. Hey look, diffraction spikes! I sure never saw those before in a scope. I never did find the Double Double but when writing this entry I know I had it, I just was reading the char incorrectly! I quickly gave up and head down to M57. I was able, while looking through the 30mm eyepiece not the finderscope, to hop down to Sulafat. And sure enough, M57 was there! I put the 9mm back in and well, I was impressed now. The ring was looking sweet indeed.

Feeling cocky I headed over to Deneb and tried to find the North America Nebula. Yeah, right. I actually thought I was a slightly bright area in what colud have been the right spot. I tired so hard to match up the star patterns in the chart with the star patterns in the eyepiece but I was unable to. This is a skill I'll certainly need to develop.

Next it was back to M31 and the Double Cluster, now that they were higher in the sky. I found them both with ease. Maybe I'm getting used to this manual aiming.

So then I was off to Triangulum, which had now risen above the trees and then some more. I didn't use the star charts, I could remember where it was based on my finding it a few nights ago. And sure enough, there it was. Diane, my neighbor, came over about now. She often looks through the scopes with me and she was anxious to try out the new one. Lets just say that she was less than impressed with M35! So after showing her the Double Cluster with the naked eye, I showed her the Double Cluster in the Edmund. She had seen it with the Burgess before and she pronounced the old scope as a good scope.

So that's where I ended my night. It took about 3 hours and I learned a whole lot about how manual scopes work and how astronomers did it when Kennedy was still president. If you had come up to me in the first hour and offered to me what I paid for it, I would have help load it into your car. It was extremely frustrating. But by midnight, no sir, I wouldn't part with this one. This is a keeper.

1963 Edmund Scientfic Space Conqueror

I just bought a new scope, well, not really new, new for me. The telescope is actually almost as old as I am. It is an Edmund Scientific 6" reflector, the Space Conqueror, as it was called in the catalogs back then. (This scan is from a 1968 catalog.)

I'm pretty sure it is from 1963, I have a typed sheet showing the elongations of Mercury and Venus, as well as the oppositions of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The December 18, 1963 elongation of Mercury is the oldest date on the list.

Now let that last paragraph sink in for a bit. I said "I have a typed sheet." When was the last time you used a typewriter? I can just see the original owner at the library, copying the data from an ephemeris, and then typing them up at home. It is hard to remember a time when information was so precious, so hard to come by. You're reading this on a blog, or reprinted in a newletter which will probably be delivered by email. Yet L. M. Kazarian of Providence, Rhode Island, had to get himself to an ephemeris and then use a typewriter to preserve it. So I'm pretty certain that he would not have type dates in the past!

But, onto the telescope! As I said above, it is a 6" reflector. The optics are provided by UPCO, the same company that provided the mirror for the venerable Criterion RV-6. It is mounted to a GEM on a pier that seems to weigh 200lbs, but in fact only weighs 44 lbs.

The tiny finderscope and clock drive are present, but the clock drive isn't working, the wires are cut off short. Steve Forbes, of Trapezium Telescopes, tells me that this is an easy repair and he may even be able to get it to run on 12v for me.

There is also a box of eyepieces, including a 25mm Kellner and 2 Ramsden eyepieces with focal lengths of 1/2" and 1/4". All are 1.25" eyepieces! An achromatic barlow is also included but I'm not sure that all the spacers are intact. The lenses slide freely in the tube, that can't be right.

4 years later, a few days after January 17, 1967, another package from Edmund arrived at the Kazarian household. With $0.12 of postage on the box, 2 orthoscopic eyepieces showed up, one 6mm and one 12.5mm. I can only imagine a small envelope with an IOU it as a Christmas present.

The OTA is a white metal tube, with a 4 vane spider with a collimateable secondary! The focuser is pretty crude by today's standard with a T cut into the wall, presumable one bent the metal to hold the eyepiece "securely."

The OTA is held to a non-rotating cradle with 2 wing-nuts. There are 3 feet on the short pier, also held on by 3 wingnuts.

I am quite looking forward to seeing how the scope works. It isn't my first non-goto scope, the Swift is, but it will be the first non-goto scope that I'll use. The Swift stayed in the box since I got the Burgess soon after getting the Swift!

I'll keep you posted.

Triangulum!

I was sitting watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees (yeah!) when the phone rang. Our neighbor, Diane, was looking for a lost cat named Lowell and noticed that the stars were gorgeous. So I made a note to check them out after the game. She was right! Many of Truro's nights have some light to the sky, I'll guess it is humidity couple with the lights from the summer people.

So I got the 15x50 Canon IS binoculars out and sat down in the backyard for a few minutes just to see what I could see. Of course I fired up Stellarium first but I didn't bring a chart outside with me so I did it all from memory.

Of course the Double Cluster was nice, and then I dashed upwards just to grab M52, which was easy. I couldn't find M103. I've seen it before but I had forgotten which stars in Cassiopeia it was near!

Of course then I popped over to Andromeda, looking gorgeous as usual, I could really see just how huge it was. When I last saw her I found M110 and M32 easily, but that was with the 5" Burgess 1278 refractor. I half heartedly looked but didn't see either of them, I spent most of the time looking at the edges, trying to see just how far out I could see.

So then I went looking for something I had never seen before, M33 or Triangulum. I'd heard it was big and dim. I went back inside to try and find some pointer asterisms in Stelarium. Found a nice pretty set. Popped down from M31 the right amount, found the star pattern I was looking for, then a bit further down. And yes! There it was.

Big.

Dim.

Very, very, nice.

Public Observing at CCAS

The Cape Cod Astronomy Society holds weekly summer star parties during the summer. (Check their web site for details, but alas, they are done for 2008.) I've managed to miss all of them so far this summer so I was quite pleased to find myself able to attend tonight's.

Unlike the public observing from the New Hampshire Astronomy Society, it seems that CCAS members rarely bring their scopes. This isn't to say that either club is right or wrong. With the big dome and the big scope available for the public, CCAS chooses to use the exceptional facilities. NHAS tends to have mobile star parties, so of course they need to bring out the 'scopes!

But, nothing was stopping me from bringing mine and I just love showing the skies to people. So I packed up the Burgess 1278 and drove off to Dennis Yarmouth High School.

Of course the Clear Sky clock showed a gorgeous forecast and as soon as it got towards dusk, the clouds came, along with the great sunsets. Yes, this is an actual photo from that night.

But the dome was open and I sat down with Mike and Peter and listened as they planned out the night's objects for the guests. Now that is impressive! I went and set up the Burgess and the skies got worse and worse.

Fortunately, holes appeared and we were able to show Jupiter a lot. That was about all we could show at first. Bands were quite visible and everyone was extremely impressed with the Burgess, which really pleased me especially considering that I forgot to bring the Baader Semi-APO filter!

I was especially honored to have Werner Schmidt himself both look my my telescope and be impressed by it. I'll remember that for a long time.

After almost everyone left we pointed the 16" at M13 again just for me, that was very nice. (It was featured all night long for the guests.) And then we tried for Neptune and Uranus. I never did see Neptune but the others were able to discern that it wasn't stellar as you turned it in and out of focus.

We tried the same in Burgess. Uranus was lovely, quite a distinct disk. Same thing as before for Neptune however, others could see it non-stellar but I couldn't.

Next time for sure!

Astronomy 101

Last week or so I gave a talk to a standing room only house, 46 people, at the Truro Library on Astronomy. The title of the talk was called "Astronomy 101: What I Can See in the Sky Tonight."

I talked about the Milky Way, Constellations, Moon, Jupiter the Perseids and Light Pollution. I tried to give some detail but not too much, didn't want to overwhelm anyone, nor bore anyone. The crowed listen attentively, asking questions both during the talk and after the talk.

Afterwards, I set up the Burgess 5" refractor for a look at the Moon and Jupiter. Clouds were very much threatening but they stayed clear and all who wanted to were able to see both them. I had a little patter going on, talking about the terminator on the moon and central peaks, and then talking about the moons of Jupiter and the cloud bands.

I'd really like to thank both Dave Martin who had been the scheduled speaker and Sharon Sullivan of the library for making it all happen.