Lunar X Prize!

It's been a long time since I've posted, but tonight I am celebrating my first observation of the Lunar "X". This is an object visible only for one night a month. It is made up of the walls of several craters, and when the light is just right it makes a clear, bright "X". Here is a picture from Wikipedia showing the X, just as I saw it in the Celestron C6 refractor. You can see it on the left of the picture. Notice how the floors of the craters are dark but the walls make up the X by protruding into the sun's rays as they slant over the landscape. It is sunrise on the moon! Unfortunately the high winds we have had for a week have made the atmosphere very turbulent, so fine detail was hard to see.

I also looked at the double cluster in Perseus. This was less affected by the poor seeing, and the individual stars popped right out including the obvious red stars, both within and one special one between the two clusters.

The 16 degree temperature kept me from staying out too long, but it was fun while it lasted!

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.

Getting ready for some observing on Nantucket

Tonight I got the 8" dob carefully collimated just to see how Saturn looked in it since the clouds have finally cleared out. It was beautiful as usual. At 180X I could easily see the gap between the rings and the planet even thought the ring tilt is only a few degrees. I put in a 9mm UO with 2X barlow which gave 266X and the view was spectacular, including cloud belts and at least four pinpoint moons. The Hyperions are great, but when you look at the moons, the Orthoscopic EP is clearly the winner, even over the WO Super Planetary.

This weekend is a work weekend in Nantucket, but I have an 8" dob down there and hope to do some observing during the new moon night on Saturday - right after I put in the new tile in Little Pines...

Saturn on the Sidewalk

Tonight I had some books to return to B&N so I set up the 4" refractor on the sidewalk outside the store in Newington. About 30 people came by in 90 minutes to see Saturn and Titan. Naturally I told everyone what I have just learned about Titan and the Huygens probe in 2007. I need to get some pictures of what Huygens saw. People were really happy to see both Saturn and Titan. In fact the manager of the store came out for a look, and then sent all his employees out for a peek.

Talking about Cassini

Last Friday night I had the honor and pleasure to give a talk on the Cassini-Huygens mission at the newly dedicated McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord.

I was not expecting this, but at the last minute our Astronomy club (New Hampshire Astronomical Society) got a call that the original speaker could not make it, and could we cover the talk.

The club's Educational Outreach Committee (which is fairly new, having met only about four times) came together in the clutch. One member set up web conferences so we could work on the presentation together. Another contacted Jane Houston Jones, JPL Outreach Senior Coordinator for the Cassini mission, who provided us with endless material. On Wednesday I put together an outline of the talk and that evening members of the committee signed up for various sections. Then each person combed through all the JPL presentations looking for the slide or video that best described each item, from launch through the Huygens probe landing on Titan, to the icy moons, Saturn itself, its rings, and finally the Equinox extended mission plans.

Three of us met at Panera's in Concord at 5pm on Friday and went over the talk, had a quick bowl of soup and then headed over to the Discovery Center. We had about 30 people attending including a troop of Boy Scouts who asked the most (and best) questions. We ended the evening with two NHAS members outside operating three scopes so all the kids and parents could see Saturn for real. It was a great ending to a really enjoyable evening.

Shuttle Discovery Launch from Rye, NH, and ISS pass

The shuttle launched tonight from Florida, and my son Jason called me to tell me he'd seen it go up (he lives in Orlando). Sure enough, about 8 minutes later we saw it from the beach in Rye, in the distant southeast, and watched it until it disappeared in the northeast.

Then about 30 minutes later, along came the International Space station, which Discovery will rendezvous with in 2 days. Here's a picture (60 second exposure) of the ISS going past Orion's belt. The exposure ended by lucky chance just as the ISS had reached the belt. Notice the small brightening along the streak - must be a glint from a window or a solar panel. If you look carefully you can see how the stars, normally pinpoints of light, have become streaks due to the earth's rotation. The camera was mounted on a photo tripod which did not make any counter-motion to the rotation of the earth as a telsecopic mount might do. Several families happened to be there so we made it a sidewalk astronomy night too!

Outreach at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center

The NH Astronomical Society has a long-standing relationship with the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, where we provide public skywatches on the first Friday of every month.

Last Friday was extra special, because it was the grand opening and dedication of the new McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, which includes the original planetarium and much more including an observation dome with a 14" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.

Although there were some clouds, we had a mostly clear night with around one hundred visitors between 6pm and 10pm. Four members of the NHAS had scopes set up, ranging in size from 4" refractors to 12" reflectors. Since the famlies were attending the opening of the Discovery Center, this was a very science-literate group and many of the kids knew a lot about the planets and moon already. We showed them Venus and explained why it was showing as a crescent, the lunar terminator and why craters were more clearly visible near sunrise on the moon, Saturn's rings, several star clusters, and a few other objects.

Sidewalk Astronomy in Portsmouth

Wednesday evening I set up the Zenithstar 110 refractor on the Minitower for about two hours of enjoyable sidewalk astronomy near the Parking Garage in Portsmouth. There were lots of very enthusiastic visitors.

I left the scope pointed at the Moon all evening since Saturn was hiding behind the garage most of the time. The "Straight Wall" (Rupes Recta) was easily visible and everyone was able to find it easily once I pointed it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupes_Recta

Temperature was below 10F so I tried the new chemical heater pads for feet. My toes still got cold. Are electric socks in my future?

Omega Centauri and Quadrantids from Florida

Early morning on January 3rd was the best time to see the Quadrantid meteor shower, so I went outside at 5:30 to try to see them. They did not disappoint. My first impression was that these were travelling at very high rates of speed, they flashed across the sky as quickly as any meteor I have ever seen. There was one thirty second interval in which I saw three, but there were a few in each 5-minute interval until the sun came up at 6:30. Very impressive!

Since I am visiting my father in central Florida I decided to try to see Omega Centauri for the first time. I have a pair of binoculars (8x42) and my WO 80mm scope with several EPs with me. But the cluster is not easy to find! It is not near any bright stars, and I don't know the southern constellations very well being from New Hampshire. Still, the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas came in handy. I could see Corvus very clearly, and Omega Centauri is to the SE of Corvus about twice the distance between the two lower stars in Corvus. It turned out to be easy to find in the binoculars, but it took a while to find it in the 80mm even using the 35mm Panoptic EP. But I finally located it in both. Unfortunately it was quite washed out by the light pollution and by being fairly low in the sky. But it was very obvious that this object is big! I would estimate it at 10 times the area of M13, so I can't wait to try again tomorrow morning a little earlier when the sky is darker and I am more familiar with the stars in its area. All in all a very satisfying first glimpse of an object I have wanted to see for a long time.