Moon and Masts

Two schooners in town for the Provincetown Schooner Regatta. Sorry for the poor quality, this is a cell phone photo.

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.

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.

Messier Marathon practice

In preparation for the Messier Marathon at Larry's house, I wanted to run a practice one, too see what setup is like, to see how long it takes to get align from when the first stars come out until you get your first slew.

I setup on the 3rd floor deck at the apartment in Provincetown. I knew it would be wobbly and I knew I'd have light pollution problems but I figured I'd give it a try, why not? I had a black fleece to use as a hood if I needed it.

Sirius was the first star out, of course, and then I think Procyon and soon I had several. Sadly, I did not have Polaris! I eventually found it binoculars and this let me see it naked eye. I moved the tripod and stood behind it, eyeballing Polaris. I never did it through the bore, I was in a hurry, I knew that some dusk objects would be difficult, I was especially worried about M77.

So althought that wasn't the first object on my list, I used McNish's site to print out my lists, using the Phil Harrington, Astronomy 2002 sequence.

The horizon was still in twilight when I slewed to M77. Now I knew my Goto could be off, especially my first one of the evening, but I couldn't even seen Menkar, so I knew it would be bad. For some reason I put the hood on, then I pulled up my chair and waited. I probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for M77. Sometimes I'd stay in the same spot, sometimes I'd nudge the hand controller to move the scope a bit. When I could see the power lines through the finder scope I knew I should give up. The sky still wasn't dark yet so I moved on.

M42 and M43 were the first objects. Well, M45 was but I wanted to bag at least one naked eye so I knew I'd have to wait for that one. For almost all objects I was using my Garrett Optical 30mm wide angle 2" eyepiece. This give about 1.2 degreess field of view. I wasn't using the Siebert, I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to use an eyepice that I was quite familiar with? I dunno. Anyhow, did us the 22.5mm Siebert to pull in M43.

Then the fun start. I slew to the next object, check it off, repeat. If I knew I could grab an object with binoculars, I would. Why not, it was both fun and probably faster than slewing.

Look up an object, slew, check it off. I know, I know. MM purist will say it wasn't a real marathon. You know what? I don't care, I'll still buy you a beer some day. That's ok. I was enjoying myself for the most part.

Why "for the most part?" Well, this was too easy! MM is supposed to be a challenge and this wasn't a challenge at all. Slew, view, check off, repeat. It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!

I'm not going to recount all of the objects, but here are some of the ones I made notes on:

• M76 - hard!
• M48 - impressive. This was with the scope. I had had this as a binocular goal object this fall but I was foolishly feeling time pressure so I just slewed to it instead. I must revisit this one!
• M81 - Meridian flip.

I didn't note the time of the meridian flip but it seemed pretty early for me. I now need to use a hood for more of my objects. There were so many street lights I was getting reflections on my glasses!

• M82 - hard. This surprised me, but I guess it had to do with the conditions. Lots of light and I was essentially never dark adapted because of that. M82 should not be a hard object.
• M108 - hard. Needed the hood and averted vision. Since I was so far away from the alignment stars, I realigned on Mizar.
• M97 - easy with the hood
• M109 - hood and averted
• M40 - failed to split with the binoculars

Arghhhh, I was moving my chair and I kicked the tripod, moving it! Oh, Rags will be laughing now. But, I didn't panic, I just realign on one star and the gotos weren't all that bad.

• M63 - a fishing boat started up in the harbor, I'm now getting a very strong diesel smell. Normally, I'd hate that but it fits in with observing from a fishing village.
• M51 - Saw both parts. Feeling less time pressure now I gave this a good 10 minutes looking for more detail with the 22.5mm Siebert. No detail was visible.

M95. Ok, here it goes. The dim spirals. I didn't have anything centered in the eyepiece but I could see something nearby. But that's isn't enough to confirm it for me. My paper chart from TUMOL was useless since I wasn't star hopping. I went inside and fired up Stellarium, that was useless also. I download Carte des Ciel and that didn't help. I was in a bit of bind. You could say that Goto was letting me down. But, Goto is a just a tool like a Telrad or paper chart. I needed to use my tools better. I could see Leo in the sky with Saturn added. Realign! I replaced my alignment stars with Saturn and Denebola. Slew to M95. Dead center, as expected.

• M105 - 2 objects in the eyepiece. The McNish charts say I'll see two, but TUMOL shows 3, but one is dim. Eventually, with averted I saw the third so I confirmed M105.

The Virgo objects were an easy blur. Everyone was dead nuts centered in the eyepiece. I have no problems claiming a find for them. Did I star hop? Nope. Did I learn how dense Virgo/Leo were? Yup. Clearly this wolud be a fun area to explore from a dark site!

• M3 - Hey, it is back. Very nice.
• M83 - I hear church bells. 11pm? Very hard, tried averted and the hood. The tube is almost horizontal but with essentially only the hills and the dunes of Truro I have perfect horizon here. Sadly, I didn't nab it. In retropspect, I may have tried too early, it could have risen some more! Yup, that's it. I just simulated it in Stellarium, I had 2 more hours until it was high.

At this point I considered giving up. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But, I scanned ahead in the list M13 and M92 were coming up. So I kept on going.

• M12 in Ophicchius. It was below the horizon! So were all the Oph objects.

Time for bed.

Well, actually not. The seeing had been great so I put the 9mm in and did some Saturn viewing. Sadly, the 3rd floor deck just didn't work out for this. I was bummed. This was the best seeing I had ever seen for Saturn, oh well, it will still be there later.

I hibernated the scope and left it all outside.

Next morning, I woke it up. Took the Telrad off and put the solar filter on. 2 sunspots!

Totals:

Found with telescope: 55
Found with binoculars: 7
Found with naked eye: 1
Did not find: 3
Obstructed view: 4

Total found: 63

The missed objects were 83, 33 and 77. If I had waited about 10 minutes, 33 would have been an obstructed, not a missed. But there was no way to get it in the twilight.

I was done by quarter after 11.

I'm looking forward to the real one next week. It will be better with friends. Goto will give me the time to observe. Clearly, I was ahead of schedule most of the night. I didn't like the TUMOL printouts, the McNish printout is better for Goto, the descriptions are better.