Sanborn School Star Party with NSAAC

Last night I made it to the NSAAC much-rescheduled star party at the Sanborn school in Andover, Mass. There were about 100 kids and parents, and seven scopes. I set up binoculars on a tripod so folks waiting in line for my scope could see the Pleiades, then showed them the double double in Lyra. Seeing was not very good, the individual doubles were just "barely" visible in the C8. Maybe it needs collimation, however star tests looked good. Quite a few of the kids could split the second doubles (young eyes!) and once in a while a parent could see it when the seeing steadied for a second. I think most folks were amazed that a star could be a double, much less a double double - I still am too!

Sidewalk Astronomy in Portsmouth

After a cloudy few days the sky cleared in time for some sidewalk astronomy in downtown Portsmouth. The town was packed with people enjoying a cool Saturday evening.

I set up the WO 80mm refractor on the iOptron Minitower and it tracked perfectly all evening as Jupiter swung from one side of Market Street to the other. The alignment couldn't have been better, I got about 90 minutes on the west side of the street and then another hour on the east side. At least 100 people looked at Jupiter, marvelled at its moons and took cell-phone pictures through the eyepiece, most with good success.

The most common question I got was, "Is this some kind of a special occurrence?" Using my (now coffee-stained) map of the solar system I explained how we saw different views at different times of the year, and how the planets move around the sun.

The second most common question was, "Why are the moons all in a line." I explained that if you could float *above* Jupiter, you would see the moons going around in circles, but since the Jovian system of moons is pretty much in the same plane as the rest of the Solar System, we see the orbits "edge-on" like looking at the edge of a piece of paper. Most folks understood right away.

Having some signs helped people understand what was going on. I use a whiteboard with some velcro on the back to sketch what people will see in the eyepiece.

It was a wonderful night of sharing!

A Dobsonian Handshake

I'm on a business trip to California, so last night with nothing special to do and a clear night sky, I set up my 80mm refractor in front of a local Safeway to spend the evening showing people Jupiter and the gibbous moon.

There was a lot of interest, but one lady in particular told me that over 20 years ago when her son was 4 years old, she took him to a San Francisco sidewalk star party and met a gentleman named John Dobson who, along with others, was showing people the night sky. She knew his whole story and her son still remembers that evening.

So while I haven't shaken John Dobson's hand personally, last night I shook the hand of someone who did.

Nebraska Star Party 1

It's hard to describe the experience of setting up under the darkest skies in the US, seeing the Milky Way become clearly visible before the sun has completely set, and then being treated to the most incredible display of starry wonder I've ever imagined.

This is the Nebraska Star Party, where I've spent the last two nights enjoying sights I've never seen before. NSP is held every year about 25 miles south of Valentine, NE, in the "sand hills" area of north central Nebraska. Skies are clear and there are no - repeat no - lights visible, other than the tiny light dome of Valentine in the north which we sometimes confuse with the lights of a car on the other side of the reservoir.

Andromeda easily visible to the naked eye. Sagittarius filled with open and globular clusters to the extent that every binocular field of view shows some other breathtaking object, which glow against the black background with the true 'diamonds on black velvet' experience. And just the sight of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, arching overhead from horizon to horizon, showing so many stars that finding Cygnus or Casseiopeia becomes an exercise in patience.

Luckily, my friends John and Pat from Denver were interested in joining me, so I sent my C8 and iOptron minitower to them via FedEx Ground (arrived perfectly and still in collimation) and they brought it with them on their drive. I flew to Omaha and drove to meet them in Valentine.

I don't do astro photography, but I will try to get a few pics of the milky way tonight. Tonight we will eat dinner at the NSP site, then open to the public at 9pm for outreach to say thanks to the residents of Valentine for hosting this Star Party for more than fifteen years.

Ted

Outreach on Star Island

On Wed., June 24th, I took my first-ever trip to Star Island in the Isles of Shoals aboard the M/V Uncle Oscar out of Rye Harbor to present an evening talk on Astronomy to the attendees (called "conferees") at the 2009 Natural History Conference being held at the Oceanic Hotel on Star. This group of adult Natural History devotees has been gathering for a week of lectures, workshops, reading, writing and exploring the island every summer for more than thirty years, and some have attended every conference.

I started by showing the first 5 minutes of the famous Charles & Ray Eames film "Powers of 10" which I'm sure most of you have seen. It pulls the camera back by 10 times the previous distance each 10 seconds, and you go from a picnic on the short of Lake Michigan to out beyond the Virgo Galaxy cluster in about 5 minutes.

From there I talked about the local neighborhood, Moon and Solar System, what some of the "stars that aren't stars" might be (clusters, binaries, nebulae, etc.), the Cassini mission including the Huygens descent movies (always a big hit), why the moon shows phases, and a few other things before wrapping it up some highlights from Saturn. We tried to do some observing but were completely shut in by clouds, so we had to settle for eating ice cream and talking.

The high point of the trip for me was getting to meet an elderly conferee who, in the 1960s, worked at MIT packaging electronics for the Apollo moon missions. Her hands were the last human hands to touch some of the equipment before it went to the moon. I thanked her on behalf of all of us for that dedicated work, and after shaking her hand I am now just one handshake away from touching the original Apollo spacecraft.

A gentleman named Al Doolittle, who had been a member of their conference for many years before passing away, used to bring a home-made 8" dob to every conference. His wife donated it to Star Island, and it now resides in the Natural History Lab building, along with a Bausch & Lomb 8" f/10 SCT (like a Criterion) with wedge and 110V motor drive, and a 3" refractor by Celestron on an alt-az mount with wooden legs. There are 4 eyepieces as well. The equipment is available for anyone to use, just check with the staff during the day if you ever overnight on the island. I left brochures and handouts for NHAS along with documents with links to our website and other web information.

Astronomy Day!

NHAS (the NH Astronomical Society) sponsored a big exhibit at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center on May 2. For the first time NHAS also offered an indoor session in addition to the outdoor display that we always sponsor (well, this is my first year participating!)

Indoors we did a lot of "educating" of the young ones, while outdoors some real demos, explanations, solar scopes, magnification demonstrations, and other hands-on activities really got folks interested.

Great day!

















It was a lot of fun, both inside and out. The pictures tell the story best!

Moon and Saturn on the Sidewalk in Portsmouth, NH

Wednesday evening was a beautiful, clear, calm and fairly warm night so I decided to try something new - set up two telescopes myself for some sidewalk astronomy - one for the Moon and one for Saturn.

Normally this would be difficult because I'd have to be bouncing back and forth between scopes, but I recently purchased (at NEAF, the North East Astro Fest) the Vixen SkyPod. The SkyPod is a neat little alt-az mount with tracking and it's own built-in computer, the Vixen Starbook-S.

Over the weeks since NEAF I worked a bit with the SkyPod and its manual, and got the basic functions down. I also tightened up the backlash on both axes using instructions from Mike Fowler at Vixen Optics. This reduced the play in the azimuth axis quite a bit.

How did it work on the sidewalk? Just great! I put a William Optics 80mm refractor on it, aligned it to the moon and did an "align" operation, then it kept the moon in the field of view pretty much all night, almost three hours. I tweaked it a bit about once an hour, or moved it to focus on a new part of the terminator, but it was a very helpful piece of gear. I could just point people to it and say 'take a look at the moon' while I operated the 8" Orion XT dobsonian and kept it pointed at Saturn. (I have a platform for the XT8 but I was too lazy to set it up.)

I had over fifty visitors in the three hours, including a little girl of about 4 years just recently adopted from Russia, who spoke no English but could certainly understand that beautiful view of the moon. I will never forget her big eyes when she saw it.

To top the night off, my first visitor came back with some Pizza just as I was packing up. That made a nice snack on the way home.