Ted's Astro Blog

My Review of Red LED with Holder (2-Pack)

2011-02-07T18:50:00.001-08:00

Originally submitted at RadioShack

Use with digital clocks and remotes. Typical MCD is 0.8. This Red LED has a typical wavelength of 655nm.

Good for on-off indicator

By Beachastro from Hampton, New Hampshire on 2/7/2011

Pros: Pkg instr actually clear

Cons: Hole dia not specified

Best Uses: On off ind

Describe Yourself: Enthusiast

Primary use: Personal

Was this a gift?: No

Pkg reads: Power diss. 110 mW, Fwd. current: 40mA
Fwd voltage: 1.7V at 20mA
Luminous intensity: 0.8mcd at 10mA
Long lead is anode (+) connection

Unlike many of the other packages, this one had enough info to actually calculate the resistor required! Since my power supply was 12V I ended up using 2.2K ohms to get the dimmest light I could. A 1K resistor was just too bright, this will be used outdoors while observing with a telescope so dim is better. BTW, correct hole size is 15/64". :-)

(legalese)

Measuring the size of an asteroid

2010-12-05T03:04:00.000-08:00

Asteroids are small and dim, but over time astronomers have managed to calculate the orbits of thousands of them. What is less well known, however, is their size and shape. They are just too far away for even the largest telescopes to get a good picture of any but the very largest ones.

However, once in a while, an asteroid will pass directly in front of a star (as visible from Earth) and for a brief few seconds the star will wink out, then reappear as it emerges from its eclipse. An event like this is called an "occultation" (because the asteroid temporarily occults, or blocks, the light from the star).

Timing the length of the occultation to a fraction of a second can actually give us an estimate of the size of the asteroid. Since we know its orbit and speed, knowing how long it occults a star makes it easy to calculate its size.

But what if the asteroid is oddly shaped, like say a peanut? Then an observer on earth who saw the fat part of the peanut occult the star might measure the star winking out for say 10 seconds, while an observer on earth a small distance away might see the star wink out for only 6 seconds, depending on whether the fat or the skinny part of the asteroid passed between their eye and the star. But if there were many observers, and they each had accurate clocks, you could actually use these observations to sketch an outline of the asteroid!

This is exactly what the members of the International Occultation Timing Association (known as IOTA) do. They coordinate their locations across the path of the asteroid's shadow on earth as well as along its "ground track" and send their data to the organizations central database. Over time, these observations build up and provide information about these objects size and shape. In addition, the actual times of arrival of the shadows lets astronomers improve their estimates of the orbit of the asteroid. All of this knowledge from a few frames on a video camera where a star disappears!

Well, this morning I made an attempt to add to this database by observing and recording the occultation of star TYC 5559-00693-1 (a very dim, 10th magnitude star) by the asteroid Hygiea from Hamton Beach State Park. This asteroid is pretty big, about 470 km across, so the occultation was expected to last about 10 seconds or so and cover a wide swath of ground across the Northeast. The occultation was scheduled to happen at 5:07am, so I set up my equipment (telescope and video camera) at 4am to record the event.

However, as I zoomed in on the area of the star that was going to be occulted, all the stars around it matched up with my sky map of the area except one. There was an extra, dim star very close to the target star, and this dim star did not appear on the star map. For a moment I wondered if I had mistakenly pointed my telescope at the wrong area of the sky. Then I realized with a rush of excitement that this "extra" star was actually the asteroid itself, on its way to pass in front of the target star. I actually saw the asteroid and the star close to each other!

Although I was now sure I had the target star clearly identified in my eyepiece, unfortunately a bank of clouds rolled in at 4:30 and by 5:00am not even bright Venus could be seen in the sky. Such is astronomy in the Northeast. So I hope my fellow IOTA enthusiasts who were spread out across Massachusetts and Connecticut had clearer skies.

There are hundreds of occultations each year, so I will try again soon.

Jupiter takes over from Saturn

2010-09-03T05:42:00.000-07:00

It's with some sadness that we bid Saturn a temporary farewell in the evening sky. Earth's progress in its orbit has brought us around to the side of the Sun where Jupiter is currently travelling, leaving Saturn too low in the west to see it from the East coast. Interestingly, I just got back from a trip to California and out on the West coast Saturn is still high enough after sunset to get about an hour of viewing. We'll give Saturn a well-deserved rest, and when we see it next year those rings will be opened up a few more degrees and the view will be even better.

Meanwhile Jupiter has begun to dominate the evening sky, and in the past week literally hundreds of people have seen it (and its moons) from my usual outpost on the sidewalk in Hampton Beach. This has been one of the clearest weeks in recent memory, and the first time I can remember doing sidewalk astronomy four nights in a row without any interruption for cloudy weather.

We also had a few nights where the waning gibbous moon rose early enough for some clear views.

I have started handing out 4x6 cards with some lists of local astronomy resources (club web sites, web sites for Stellarium and Cloudy Nights, etc.). On the back I put a reproduction of the page of Galileo's notebook in which he made the first sketches of Jupiter's moons in 1609/10. I may have to raise my estimates of how many people looked through the telescope, last night I gave out 30 of these cards in 2 hours, and that was mostly to kids. I think I have been underestimating how many people look through the scope, but I guess I'm having too much fun talking to people to count them!

Teaching depends on what other people think

2010-03-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

An article in last Sunday's New York Times magazine about teaching how to teach contained this quote:

"Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think."

The author of that quote was Deborah Ball, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

I like teaching. Right now I mostly teach Astronomy. I don't claim any special knowlege of the subject over what an interested amateur can aquire in a few years of reading and observing.

I do, however, feel that I have a sense of what my students are thinking, what their mistakes are, how they make them, and how to lead them back to a proper understanding of a subject. Deborah Ball calls this the ability to step outside of your own head.

For me, it involves trying to have a trick, explanation, demonstration or other technique for correcting "wrong thinking" in a way that illuminates the problem and shows why another approach gives better results.

So preparing to teach Astronomy has required learning at two levels. First were the facts and theories themselves. Then came learning how to teach these concepts in ways that were fun, entertaining, and above all "sticky." Some of these techniques I have gotten from books, some from other Astronomy Club members, and some have been born of necessity during that moment of inspiration in front of a group when nothing you have tried has worked and you really need a new approach.

I find the development of the skills to teach the subject as much fun as I have found learning the subject itself. Actually teaching it - where the skills and knowledge come together in real time to make that "aha" moment for people - is more enjoyable still.

I feel I have always been sensitive - some have said perhaps too sensitive - to what other people think. Is it possible that this is a trait which might contribute to success in teaching?

Busy couple of weeks!

2010-03-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been filled with wonderful activities and fun events. Members of my astronomy club, the New Hampshire Astronomical Society, joined me for an evening of sidewalk astronomy in Portsmouth. We had a wonderful time, lots of visitors of all ages. Mars, M42, the Pleiades, and first quarter moon all competed for attention. Then I gave a talk at the Rey Center in Waterville Valley, NH. Margaret and H.A. Rey were lifelong residents of Waterville Valley. Among their many accomplishments were the Curious George series of books, and a book called "The Stars - A New Way to See Them" in which they drew new outlines for the same starts in the constellations to form figures which matched their names more closely.

One of the demonstrations in that book included an umbrella to show why the Big Dipper appears in different orientations (sometimes holding water, sometimes on end, sometimes pouring water out onto the ground) at different seasons of the year. Several years ago I made one of these out of a large clear umbrella and I have used it in many classes. It was a real honor to "bring it home" to the Rey Center and use it in a demonstration where the Reys lived and worked.

NHAS sponsored a skywatch for the Alton School in Alton, NH. I spoke there on the life cycle of stars and various "What's Up Tonight" topics, then we all went outside for a few hours of observing. Some clouds marred the sky for the first hour, but then things cleared up and it was glorious for a couple more hours.

Finally, last night a friend and I spent a relaxing few hours in Portsmouth showing people Mars, M42 and eventually Saturn once it rose over a building. I put some stickers on the curb at the right distances for the planets and invited people to walk down Congress St. on the "Portsmouth Planet Walk" to see the relative distances of the planets. One mom responded, "Oh we know all about that. We parked near Jupiter!"

First light with XT10i

2010-02-04T04:11:00.000-08:00

I picked up a used XT10i from a friend, and it is giving excellent views.

For the first time I was able to see surfact markings on Mars, at about 10:30 pm when Mars was nice and high. A 9mm EP with 2X Barlow gave 266X.

This morning I enjoyed views of Saturn (4 moons clearly visible, but rings are closing...sad). Also nice views of the moon at 3rd quartet. Lots of detail visible including lava flows along the floors of the plains.

Ted

Sidewalk Astronomy - Early Evening Jupiter

2010-01-13T08:12:00.001-08:00

It's been clear and cold in the Northeast lately, so with some warm boots, long underwear and assorted

hand and head coverings I set up on the Portsmouth sidewalk in front of Starbucks for a couple of hours each evening for the past few nights.

Amazingly, it seemed like more people were interested in viewing through the scope than is typically the case in summer - almost 100% of people said sure and enjoyed the views. We looked at Jupiter on nights when I was out early, and Mars and the Pleiades for later events after Jupiter had set. I also took a peek at M42 when nobody was around, but due to the light-polluted sky it was less than impressive.

One of the Portsmouth parking meter readers (yes, the ones who give tickets) thanked me for giving back to the community, he has seen me many times in various spots around town. Jupiter's 4 moons were clearly visible, as was the jet stream blowing past the planet. Cloud bands were vaguely visible at moments when seeing steadied, but these moments were few and far between.

One other thing - it's exactly 400 years ago this week that Galileo recorded sketches of Jupiter's moons in his notebook, later publicized in his "Starry Messenger".

Lunar X Prize!

2009-12-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-17T05:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-11T05:27:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-24T12:27:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-11T13:18:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-23T19:41:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-30T03:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-15T20:46:00.001-07:00

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

2009-03-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-05T14:10:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-03T03:42:00.000-08:00

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.

Veasey Park star hop

2008-11-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

Sunday night was my first time observing from the parking lot at Veasey Park in Groveland. It was pretty dark but high clouds started coming in and brightening the sky about 10pm. By 11 it was clearer but I put the scope away.

I was trying to starhop through Cepheus, the hut-shaped constellation next to Casseopeia. No luck - not a single star appeared to be as described in the book with the exception of M103 which I found on my own and then confirmed with Ken Graun's book.

Ron Sampson was there with his 8" TEC refractor on the AP mount. Looking through this scope at the double cluster using two 24mm Panoptic EPs in a binoviewer is an awe-inspiring experience. Thanks, Ron!

Mercury rising

2008-10-31T13:09:00.001-07:00

Mercury was supposed to be visible in the morning, but I never seemed to be able to catch it due to low clouds over the Atlantic.

This morning was clear and beautiful, so Samantha the astropup and I went out about 6am. Well, there it was big as life, and Saturn above it to increase the pleasure. Saturn's rings are so close to edge on (less then 3 degrees tilt now) that they look more like just a bright line, but still beautiful.

I was able to see Mercury until 6:45am with binoculars, then it was lost in the glare of the rising sun.

The Moon in the Morning

2008-10-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

This morning I got up early and tried to be in time to see Saturn. So I set up the 80mm Zenithstar on the alt-az mount as the eastern sky got brighter and brighter. I found it easily (I think) but there was so much turbulence I could not see the rings.

So I switched to looking at the moon, and after breaking out "The Modern Moon" I was able to identify Gassendi and the Marius Hills, and crater Kepler. The illuminated Western limb of the crescent moon was actually at the bottom so it took some thought to figure out what part of the book to look in, but eventually everything came clear. Sinus Iridium was also visible. A week ago when the moon was half full I saw it on the night when the peaks of Sinus Iridium were illuminated in the shape of a "C" on an otherwise dark half of the moon, as the rising sun's rays caught the upper peaks of the crater rim. Beautiful!

I don't look at the moon enough!

Trahan School 4th grade star party

2008-10-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

Last night the North Shore Amateur Astronomy Club provided a class and star party for the 4th grade classes at Trahan School in Tewksbury, Mass. I was asked to present the indoor class. There were about 30 students and 15 parents ready to go at 7pm. Jim Foy brought the group's LCD projector and the custodian provided a nice screen. The PAC contact, Kathy C., also brought hot chocolate and donuts. The kids got theirs at 7:30 just before going outside, and Kathy was nice enough to bring hot chocolate out to the cold astronomers. Mmmmm!

I enjoy these opportunities a lot, and I try to cover as many things in my presentation as possible. However, I am aware that it is already dark outside, so every minute I talk is a minute the kids are not looking through an eyepiece. Quite a challenge to try to prepare them adequately without wasting any time.

One thing I try to cover is the cosmic distance scale. Sometimes I make up new units to keep things simple. For instance, the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across give or take. Our closest neighbor galaxy is Andromeda which is 2.5 million L.Y. distant. To make this a little easier to compare, I show the kids that Andromeda is 25 "Milky Way diameters" away, with pretty much nothing but empty space in between. 25 is a number they can comprehend.

I also use a 12" beach ball and a 3" nerf ball (for earth and moon) and invite kids up to hold the "moon" at the distance they think it orbits from "earth". Most stand 3-5 feet away. The moon actually orbits 30 earth diameters away, so after getting a good crowd of 'guessers' I give a pre-measured piece of string rolled on a stick to another child and ask them to unroll it until they get to the end. They end up 30 feet out, which seems really far. (I remind them that at this scale the ISS orbits about an inch above the beach ball.) And I always comment on how brave the Apollo astronauts were for going so far from home. Things quiet right down as people contemplate that.

I showed them slides of open clusters, globular clusters, double stars, distant galaxies, and encouraged them to ask the astronomer at the scope whether what they were looking at was inside or outside the Milky Way.

Then the kids went outside, and there were about five or six scopes set up, courtesy of the members of NSAAC. I came out later and set up the 80mm refractor, and most kids who came over had already seen M13, the double cluster, the Plieades, Jupiter, and Andromeda so they got a good cross section.

The Milky Way was *just* barely visible at zenith, but the back yard we used was better (darker) than the baseball diamond that was used last year. Seeing was actually quite good, very little star twinkling and Jupiter was rock solid even at 8:30pm when it was quite low.

Portsmouth again, then dark sky site

2008-09-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I went up to Portsmouth for a little sidewalk astronomy before heading over to the Stratham dark sky site. Tim Mauro who lives in Portsmouth met me there, by the Parking Garage on High St. Luckily Jupiter was visible due south to the left of the parking building so we had good views as it passed over the church steeple in downtown Portsmouth. We had over fifty people stop by, and at one point the lines were long enough that I pulled out the 8" dob and set it up while Tim ran the 3" refractor.

At about 9:15 we headed over to Stratham where we met Tom Cocchiaro and Jim Moe. Tim set up his CPC 925 and it seemed to work like a charm. We saw Neptune as a small blue disc, and with a total of six scopes and numerous EPs to share we had a wonderful few hours of cameraderie until the clouds came rolling in at about 12:30am. M31, the double cluster in Perseus, M13, M92, and many other beautiful sights. I gave the WO 80ED it's head on a tour of the Milky Way and it did not disappoint, either with the 24Pan or 35Pan. Tom put his 13mm Ethos into Tim's C925 and the views were staggering. I also set up the 8" XTi, but did not have the energy to set up the GPD2 and C925. With all the exterior wires, batteries, dew sheild, manual mount, it is a good 30 minutes until things are stable. I know that once it is set up, the views are awesome and the mount is solid as a rock, but I have not been willing to go through that recently. The go-to mounts I see where all the wires are enclosed are starting to look mighty attractive - Tim's CPC 925 for example!

Still it was a great night. We finished with an hour or so of chatting, hoping the skies would clear, but eventually gave up and headed home after sharing the rest of the chocolate donuts. Mmmmm.

End of season at Hampton Boardwalk

2008-09-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening was the beginning of another beautiful night, so I went back to the boardwalk at about 8:30. Lots of people and families enjoyed seeing Jupiter and four moons. I gave out a lot of ISAN stickers to the kids and copies of the one-page "what we are looking at tonight" writeups.

No parking at the beach tonight, way too crowded, so I decided to head down on my bike. I put the scope in a backpack (inside its padded case), AT Voyager tripod across the handlebars and Rubbermaid two-step stool over my shoulder. Easy as pie, in 10 minutes I was on station and ready to go. As I passed one family, a lady shouted "Mike, there's that Astronomy guy we were bringing you to see! I was hoping he'd be here again!" How much fun is that?

Scope was the WO Zenithstar ED II with a Burgess binoviewer with 2 20mm Binolight EPs, plus corrector giving 10mm EP focal length. This gave about 56X, which was plenty to see moons and the two main equatorial cloud belts on Jupiter.

More "Boardwalk" Astronomy

2008-08-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

On Sunday evening I had just returned from a wonderful weekend of Barbershop Harmony, singing songs with members of the Atlantic Harmony Brigade, a group of men who love singing 4-part harmony in the Barbershop style. My lovely wife Tina always supports me in all my crazy hobbies. We had dinner in Hampton beach and then headed back home. Since she had some work to do for the evening, on very little sleep I went out to the boardwalk again at about 8:30 pm.

Tonight was no less thrilling than last week. Many people, some couples, some with kids, stopped by to look at Jupiter and its moons. (Most people said they had seen it in the sky earlier in the evening and most said they had guessed it was Venus.)

Since I only set up the 80mm Zenithstar ED refractor, we saw two equatorial cloud bands and four moons. Unfortunately Io had already emerged from eclipse, but I think next chance I get I will put the electronic EP in and see if I can get a recording on my laptop of some movement of the moons over an hour or so. That would be fun to play back before people look in the binoviewer.

"Boardwalk" Astronomy at Hampton Beach

2008-08-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening was warm and clear, Jupiter was rising nicely in fairly stable air and the moon crested the eastern horizon about 9pm. I grabbed the 80mm ED on the AT Voyager AZ mount and the binoviewers and headed down to the Hampton Beach boardwalk. It didn't take long at all before people were clustered around the scope, with good views of the eastern limb of the Moon just beginning to show signs of sunset with some nice craters becoming visible as their interiors fell into shadow. Jupiter showed four moons for a while, then three as one passed behind the planet for a while. An Indian family stayed the longest, maybe 45 minutes, and there were many visitors from Canada, in particular Montreal. People were a little worried that there might be a charge for looking through the scope - I think a sign would be reassuring in the future. "Sidewalk Astronomy - Free" or something like that. There was some discussion about poor Pluto losing its planetary status. One gentleman from Woburn had a scope and had helped design and implement a "walk through the Solar System" path around a lake, with granite monuments imbedded by the path at distances proportional to the scale of the Solar System. It was great when he said that Pluto would remain a planet in his "Solar System" because it was imbedded in 200 pounds of concrete!

"Parking Lot" Astronomy at Ogunquit Playhouse

2008-08-11T08:18:00.001-07:00

Tina and I were early for the last night of the "The Producers" last Saturday night up at the Ogunquit playhouse in Maine. It was the first clear night in about two weeks, and there was the first quarter moon..just sitting there..and the WO 80ED with AT Voyager mount was in the car. Well it didn't take long before I had that scope set up, and pretty soon the line to see the moon at 80X through the scope and binoviewer was longer than the line to pick up tickets for the play. I took a moment to show some folks Jupiter and its moons, which was also visible over the awning of the theater, but mostly it was the moon - lots of oohs and aahs, and first quarter moon is perfect for public observing. Just goes to show ya - never go anywhere without your grab-and-go scope!

Bringing things up to date

2008-07-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Can't believe it's been over a month since posting here! The old memory ain't what it used to be, so I'll work backwards until I run out of recollections... most recently, I spent Wed. evening at a camp near Contoocook, NH with members of the NHAS showing the kids at the camp as many things as a quarter moon would allow. The kids came in age groups, young ones early and older ones later. We started with the moon, then M13 and Jupiter filled out the evening. We had six telescopes ranging from an older 8" Odyssey (f/4.5) to 11" SCT. The ThermaCells kept the 'skeeters away, I think there were six of them running. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

A couple of nights ago I tried out a couple of Burgess 20mm Bino-lite EPs in a binoviewer. The moon was just amazing in a binoviewer at about 75X, almost a 3D view. Two eyes is definitely better than one.

And last month during a trip to California, a bunch of us converged on Coyote Lake State Park for an evening of stargazing. Kind of hard to find and get to in the dark, but definitely a wonderful dark place esp. given how much light pollution there is in the Bay Area. The SJAA have made sure that astronomers are welcome after dark, and I confirmed this with a phone call to the ranger in advance.

OK, I'm sure there were more, but I have to get better at writing things down as they happen!

Some Moon observations

2008-06-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight was clear (transparent) but turbulent (poor seeing), so I decided to spend some time looking at the moon. We are at the 6th or 7th day past new moon, so I took out 'The Modern Moon' by Charles Woods. This is really the first time I have tried to do any lunar geography at the eyepiece.

At first I was completely lost, but eventually most easy to find was Mare Serenitatis, with crater Bessel marking it's southern half (up in the Newtonian scope). The Serpentine ridge was clearly highlighted by the low sun angle.

Most interesting though was the area of Taurus-Littrow, where Apollo 17 landed. Incredibly, it was quite easy to see the North Massif and South Massif, 11 thousand foot high peaks in between which the Apollo 17 Lunar Module flew on it's descent to the lava plain between them. All the more credit to those brave adventurers.

Farther east, well into daylight, craters Hercules and Atlas were easily identified.

Samantha the astro pooch was happy to hang around for the entire session, lasting about 45 minutes. I closed up by taking a peek at Saturn (2 moons visible due to the light from the moon), and then I calibrated the COL and took a peek at M13 in Hercules just to see how badly lit the sky was by the moon. It was much less contrasty tonight than just two nights ago with my nephew Dan and my friend Martin.

Binocular Astronomy

2008-06-03T05:56:00.001-07:00

I have been waiting for a chance to try the new 20x80 Oberwerk binoculars and the UA mini mount I recently picked up used. Last night was clear and of course dark due to the new moon, so I went up to Stratham field with Samantha our chocolate lab.

I could see all the stars in the Little Dipper, so it was about as dark as it gets here in the Seacoast area. With the binos and a new beach chair from Wally World ($9.97 special!) I was able to lie down and view in several directions. M81 and M82 were easy targets, and I navigated to see M51 and M101 as well (all from Ursa Major, easy targets). M13 was an impressive ball of light, but no stars were resolvable except as tiny points on the outer edges. Saturn showed faint evidence of rings, and Albireo was glorious and colorful with the stars widely separated.

Finally I spent a few minutes just scanning the Milky Way in Cygnus and saw several faint objects which I would have loved to identify but without better star charts, no luck. So Sam and I packed up and headed for home.

Of course, when I woke up about 3am and saw Jupiter out the window I just had to get out the new 80mm refractor. Belts were obvious, and four moons were easily spotted. M13 was a bit of a disappointment in the 3" scope, so I grabbed the 8" XT from the car. Wow, what a difference. Now the globular was spangled with individual stars. What a beautiful sight!

Finally, back to bed for a few hours, work awaits...

Great students!

2008-06-03T05:48:00.001-07:00

I had about twenty wonderful, bright and serious home school students for last Thursday night's Beginning Astronomy class. Jim Moe and Peter Stanistreet both brought scopes (Peter set his up in the store) and after class both helped us outside with viewing of Saturn for all the class members and their parents, plus a few B&N customers who happened by.

We viewed some photos, went over our Sun's place in the Milky Way, looked at pictures of how some of the main celestial objects (clusters, double stars, nebulae, etc.) look. The kids made their own Planispheres (search for Uncle Al's Sky Wheels on the web, courtesy of the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkely, CA). We did a demo of why the constellations look different each season (thanks Brian and Katherine!) and then reviewed the main types of telescopes and binoculars. Then it was outside for some viewing. Jack and Katherine and their mom stayed the longest, and Jack got pretty good at using the Telrad to push the 8" dob around - great job! Due to the lighting (and the big building behind us) Saturn was about all we could see. I tried to find M13 using the COL after aligning on Arcturus and Spica, but it was lost in the glare of the building lights unfortunately.

The store staff was very helpful, especially Bob, who worked with us to hang the screen for the Powerpoint presentation, arranged all the furniture, helped unload and pack up and was there for the whole class in case we needed anything (while of course continuing to do his job at B&N). Thanks to Sally the Customer Relations Manager for inviting me, and for arranging permission with the Mall owners for our outdoor observing after class.

Hope we see all you guys at a Sidewalk Astronomy event sometime this summer!

Markarian's chain in Virgo

2008-05-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

After a quick trip to Newington to 'scope out' the store setup for tomorrow night's class, I headed over to the Stratham Hill park for the darkest site around Portsmouth that I know of.

My goal was to explore the Virgo galaxies for the first time using the Telrad and starhopping with the standard Telrad charts, and my Pocket Sky Atlas. I used the XT8i with mostly the 24mm and 35mm Panoptic, and the 13 mm Hyperion.

Starting from Vindemiatrix (Epsilon Virginis) I found Rho Virginis, the center of a Y-shaped asterism. By using that as an "arrow" to take off in various directions, I found M58 and M60, then M89, then finally M84 and M86. The Milky Way is 100,000 L.Y. in diameter - these two galaxies are 50 million L.Y. away! No wonder they are pretty dim.

Then following the arc of Markarian's chain, I found the rest of the Markarian galaxies ending with the brighter M88. This was all based on recommendations from Cloudy Nights members - thanks!

I then spent about a half hour looking at M13 and then finding M81 and M82 without the COL assistance. This is very satisfying to get to know the sky this way.

Finally as I was packing up to leave, an enormously bright star rose above the trees in the SE. Of course it was Jupiter, seemingly bright enough to read by.

The plan for viewing after class tomorrow night will be Saturn and M13. If anyone can find anything else under the parking lot lights, that will be great.

First light for the WO Zenithstar ED 80

2008-05-23T03:12:00.000-07:00

Grab-and-go is back! In just under a year I am back to owning a (used) 80mm (3 inch) ED (extra-low dispersion) APO (apochromatic, low false color) short tube (fl=545mm) wide-field scope. This was where I started in amateur observing in July of 2007 with the purchase of a Vixen ED80sf on a Portamount. That was the scope we took to Nantucket with my son Ryan just before he joined the Navy and I still remember his "wows" when he first got the moon in focus. It was a wonderful piece of gear, but I remember thinking how big it was! :-) The ZS80 is only 17" long and fits nicely into a small aluminum carry case. It's definitely coming to California with me in June.

This scope is the ultimate in portability and ease of use. It's specialty is wide-field views, but I could not resist pointing it at Saturn. Crisp and clear view of the planet and rings plus two moons, enough to satisfy anyone that they had seen the planet in all its glory. (For more details on planets, of course a longer focal length and bigger aperture is required.)

But how lucky can I be that Mars is now passing directly through the Beehive Cluster, M44, so I next pointed Southwest at Mars. Since the scope has a focal length of 545 mm, a 13mm Hyperion gives a magnfication of 545/13 = 42X. And the 68 deg. AFOV of the Hyperion becomes 68/42 = 1.9 degrees of sky, an huge amount (thus the term "wide field") for viewing extended objects like the Beehive cluster. They say every scope is a compromise, and this one's sweet spot is low power wide-field views.

And there was Mars, I think even showing a small disk, definitely orange in color, but now floating above a background of black sky absolutely spangled with 50+ bright stars in the Beehive cluster. Clouds came and went and made it a frustrating wait for the 2 or 3 second glimpses I could get through the holes but they were worth the wait. Tonight promises to be clear, and I will be out for another look at that beautiful vision. It was also beautiful in binoculars. I'll say it too - Wow!

Last night I visited Tony at Astronomy Shoppe in Plaistow and picked up a 1 1/4" diagonal for the scope. I've mounted the ZS80 on my video tripod for now (Bogen 3011N) using a piece of wood with a couple of holes drilled for a T-nut and a 1/4x20 handle. It kind of slips around a bit, I think I used a piece of wood which was too slippery (very hard cocobolo from my scrap bin). I'll make another one out of unfinished scrap - it needs the rough surface to grab the rubber of the mount and keep things from swinging when the scope is pointed up. Shouldn't be too much trouble, then I'll be ready for tonight.

I should also mention that I enjoyed another backyard rendezvous with my neighbors Chris and Scott to watch the ISS pass at 9:31pm. Chris was the first to spot it rising directly up out of the SW. It passed between several cloud layers and we watched it pick up (apparent) speed as it arched overhead. There must have been some high patchy clouds because there was a very apparent rapid fluctuation in the brightness of the station to the eye, something I've never seen before. Almost every ISS pass is visible evenings and mornings now as we are aligned favorably with the orbital plane of the station during our sunrise/sunset times.

Saturday night is a good possibility for going to Portsmouth for some Sidewalk Astronomy, esp. since there is an outstanding ISS pass at 8:41pm which will arch directly overhead. That should be a real special sight!

Clear skies!

Observing session notes April 25, 2008

2008-04-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

The weather report looked good, and my friend Jim suggested trying a new spot so we met at Stratham Hill park and set up in one of the back parking lots on the grass. This is a great site, quite dark with trees on the edges of the field to block the lower sky glow. The brightest sky was in the SW where Exeter's lights reflected off of some low clouds.

I took out the XT8 and Jim set up his 6" Orion Mak-Newt which gives very nice views for a 6" scope. He has it on a tracking EQ mount so it's possible to keep objects in the field of view for quite a while. Not so the XT...

I did not take notes this night, so this post is from memory. This was one of the darkest and clearest nights in several years around the seacoast area. We spent about the first half hour viewing Saturn, trying out various eyepieces and enjoying the crisp views. The 5mm Hyperion in the XT8 gave crisp and pleasing views at 240X with several moons visible. (If I'd taken notes I could tell you how many! Next time...)

One of the highlights for me was M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. With the 13mm Hyperion the dual nature of the galaxy was obvious, with hundreds of individual stars around the perimeter resolved clearly and even a hint of the spiral nature of the arms (to my eyes anyway.)

I am using the XT8i Computer Object Locator to help find most of these objects, since my starhopping skills are pretty poor.

The "Leo Trio" finally fell to the clear skies and 8" of aperture. M65 and M66 were easily visible, and after much searching NGC 3628 was faintly visible marked by a triangle of brighter stars. I could not see all three in one field of view, because 3628 required higher magnification to darken the background sky.

M13 in Hercules was also a treat, as was M60 in Virgo. M81 and M82 were easily resolved, and I am pleased to say I found them without using the computer. However M101 was invisible in either of our scopes, in spite of the fact that Jim has found it and shown it to me in his mounted 20x80 binoculars! Very strange...

Dew began to settle about 11pm, and since I had forgotten to close the dew cover on the Telrad it was not much use for the rest of the evening. If I had been using the C9.25 this would have been a great night to test out the Astrozap heated dew shield and DewBuster controller. That will have to wait though.

After packing up, Jim mentioned he liked to finish up with a look around the sky, so he took me on a tour of the constellations with the green laser pointer. I am very impressed with how well he knows the sky and constellations. My goal for this summer is to spend more time outside with the planisphere and binoculars and get more familiar with the main guideposts.

I know I have left a few objects out, but regardless this was a wonderful observing session.

Sidewalk Astronomy in Hampton Beach

2008-04-21T05:59:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday night my friend Jim met me outside the band shell in Hampton Beach and we set up the 8" XTi and Jim's 8x20 binoculars on his Astronomics mount to give people views of Saturn and the moon. It was a bit chilly, but lots of people stopped by to take a look and then stayed to talk.

One of Hampton's finest came over to warn us that we should understand the risk of somebody damaging our equipment. I guess cops are trained to look for trouble, but we never had any.

One gentleman couldn't get enough of viewing Saturn through the 8" dob. This was his first night out in a year with his wife after being in a car accident and having an entire hip replaced. He felt the experience was a wonderful way to cap off the night out and the start of his new life, and must have spent fifteen minutes at the scope on and off over the evening.

Jim had his Atlas of the Moon open and several people worked with him to identify the major features, esp. Tycho. It was almost a full moon, so only those large features which don't need grazing light to be visible could be observed. Still these are the easiest to see, and Jim knows his lunar geography very well so many people learned a lot about the moon that evening.

A family of 8 rotated through viewing the moon, and then waited while I repositioned the scope and rotated through viewing Saturn.

Two cars sideswiped each other in the street just down the block from where we were (apparently one car tried to make a left turn from the right lane) so there was a lot of gawking at that activity. Nobody hurt thank goodness.

Successful Sunday Evening in Portsmouth

2008-04-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday evening was clouded out, but by 5pm Sunday the sky was completely clear. My friend Steve Loring and I set up our scopes in downtown Portsmouth from 8-10pm. Temperature was a chilly 35 deg. F. with a wind of about 10 mph.

I set up a pair of 15x70 binoculars on a tripod to give early passers-by something to use to see the moon while I was setting up the mount and C9 for views of Saturn. There were quite a few people who said this was their best view of the moon ever, implying they had never looked at it through a telescope.

Steve arrived and brought his Odyssey 10". He has incorporated a home-made wedge into the base with a very creative lever that allows you to use one knee to track an object while your eye remains at the eyepiece. It works outstandingly well. Steve kept the dob on the moon and varied the eyepieces from 10 to 25mm. 100x was the most popular magnification.
Downtown was very bright, but after finding Polaris and properly aligning the mount, it kept Saturn in view faithfully all evening.

About 75 people stopped by, including several families with kids. Many people asked me if the image of Saturn was real, or some kind of transparency in front of the telescope. My sharpest-eyed observer was a Portsmouth policeman who spotted four of Saturn's moons and may have seen a fifth. We had three different patrolment stop by for a look (not much activity on a cold Sunday evening for police to worry about.)

People were also amazed that they could see Saturn clearly by eye. When people asked me which 'star' was Saturn, I asked if they could tell which of the pair (Regulus and Saturn) was more of a golden color. About 90% of the people could see Saturn's pale golden hue especially with bright white Regulus close by for reference. Much of science progresses by this kind of comparison rather than by just observation. (In fact, as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, the official name of the facility where he worked is the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.)
There was a restaurant very close by and over the course of the evening every employee made it out to observe. Apparently they went back in and told their colleagues "you have to go see the moon and Saturn" and several came out twice. One of the cooks actually drove home at 9:30 to bring his son back, which was a treat for us, and I think for young Gregory too.

All in all it was a wonderful night. Looking forward to many more, especially when the weather warms up a bit.

Sunday evening will be a go in Portsmouth!

2008-04-13T15:39:00.001-07:00

At least one and maybe two telescopes will be up this evening from about 8-10pm in Portsmouth outside the main entrance to the parking garage on Hanover St. Hope to see you there!

50% chance of clear skies Sunday evening Apr 13

2008-04-13T07:33:00.001-07:00

From the weather reports, it looks like this evening (Sunday) might work out after all. Stay tuned, and if it looks promising I'll post here with the final go/no-go about 5 or 6pm. Scopes will be up from 8pm to 10pm if we do have a break in the clouds, on the sidewalk outside the Portsmouth, NH main parking garage entrance on Hanover St.

Sidewalk Astronomy Night (Apr 12) unlikely due to weather

2008-04-11T06:49:00.001-07:00

Due to weather reports of clouds and rain for Saturday and Sunday Apr. 12-13, we'll likely have to schedule our celebration of ISAN for the following weekend. If the weather clears early and Sunday evening looks possible, I'll put a post up here with that information.

Last night I set up the XT8i for a couple of hours in our new Sidewalk Astronomy site in downtown Portsmouth, just outside the Parking Garage on Hanover St. It's got the usual light problems of any downtown location, but there were lots of people walking by and over fifty people got a chance to see Saturn and the Moon in spite of a few high clouds early on. This area is very convenient to pedestrian traffic but is off the sidewalk so there is no impact on passersby. Hats off to the City Manager's office for approving this site. Many of the folks who stopped by were on their way back to their cars after their visit to downtown, so they left with some extra happiness. Several saw either one or two of Saturn's moons in addition to the rings.

On a technical note, the moon's image was very low contrast, consistent with a lot of stray light entering the tube from all directions. (The sky behind Saturn seemed brighter than usual as well.) It's time to add black flocking to the inside of the tube, along with a light shield on the front to eliminate stray light from making it to the eyepiece. This is a project I've wanted to do for some time, so now there's a good reason, since there are bright streetlights all around that area.

International Sidewalk Astronomy Night - April 12th

2008-04-04T05:15:00.001-07:00

Location: Small seating area off the sidewalk near the main entrance to the Portsmouth Parking Garage on Hanover St.

Tonight, Thursday, April 10th: At least one scope will be there from approximately 8pm to 10pm if the current clear sky conditions hold up. Could we call this a "dry run?" :-)

Weekend: the weather forecast for the weekend does not look good, unless you are a duck.

Automatic notification: To receive automatic notifications of upcoming Sidewalk Astronomy events, please subscribe to Yahoo group SeacoastSidewalkAstronomers-Notify at http://groups.yahoo.com/

Scope update: Are you an amateur astronomer? If so, set up your scope somewhere convenient and give your neighbors a peek at Saturn or the Moon in the next few weeks. You'll be glad you did!

April 12th is the date for the 2nd annual International Sidewalk Astronomy Night. Sidewalk astronomy can be done any time and any where, but on this night amateurs will be out in cities all around the world showing people the wonders of the sky all on the same night. It's a nice way to bring the people of the world together. Pictures will be posted on http://www.sidewalkastronomynight.com/ where you can see last year's pictures. Right now there are about fifteen countries with people signed up to participate. I expect many more.

Stay tuned to this blog for a decision on where we will set up the scopes. Of course if it is cloudy or raining out, the event will be postponed.

I have put in an application to the Portsmouth City Council for permission to set up on the sidewalk in the downtown area where there will be a lot of people around. We are working to find a location in town which has the right sky view but does not interfere with pedestrian traffic. Hampton Beach is also a possibility. We'll stick with very bright objects like the moon and Saturn, and perhaps some double stars.

At this moment, Harvey, Steve and Jim are all likely to join me for the evening with their scopes, so there should be plenty of eyepieces to look through for the public.

Stay tuned to this blog for the eventual location, and a final decision based on the weather. Rain date will be Sunday night, April 13th, but if both nights are rained out we'll try again the following weekend.

March activities

2008-04-04T04:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy month and I've missed a few posts so I'll try to summarize.

In early March I set up the XT8 in front of Barnes & Noble in Newington. About 20 people on their way in or out of the store stopped by for a look at Saturn and the Moon. I heard several people say "that can't be real" and "you can't see Saturn from a parking lot can you?" I was very impressed that several people immediately suggested that they might be seeing Saturn's moons (in fact they were!). The moon was almost full but there was still some area where the terminator provided some grazing illumination so people could see the craters and mountains in more relief.

Mall security eventually suggested I needed approval from the mall management to be on the sidewalk so I packed up and went inside to speak to the store manager. She was very nice and gave my name to their Customer Relations Manager who called me the next day and asked if I could present an astronomy talk to the home schooler group which meets at the store once a month. I agreed of course, and that is scheduled for May 29th. I'll bring a scope of course, and the mall has given permission for us to go out on the sidewalk afterward for some observing. Weather permitting that's just what we'll do.

Since then, I've been over at the Hampton Beach State Park several times with friends Patrick and Jim. I've just gotten a new telescope, the Celestron C9, a 9.25" Schmitt Cassegrain design. This scope has already given awesome views of Saturn, but it has a long focal length (2350 mm) so magnification is fairly high - even with my 30mm EP I cannot fit the entire Pleiades into the field of view. I am practicing the procedure for collimating the optics, and while not too difficult it is best done at high magnification, which requires if not perfect seeing at least calm air. Calm air has been in short supply around Hampton Beach this year - more typically we have 30 mph winds than not, and gusts to 50 have not been uncommon. (I'm thinking of laying in a supply of Dramamine for when I work in my 3rd floor office!)

Patrick is new to amateur astronomy. He has a CR6 refractor and a C9 carbon tube so we are working on getting him familiar with the operation of his go-to mount and scopes. He lives down in Mass. so it's a bit of a drive up to Hampton, but he says the skies are much darker here. Of course, I look at the Boston light dome and imagine how the sky must look farther North also!

Jim is an experienced observer with a Mak-Cass and a parallelogram binocular mount. He brought this binocular setup over the other night and let me try it out with his 20x80's. What a pleasure to lay on a reclining chair with your head on a pillow and have the binoculars floating right above your eyes. It really is like floating in space and a completely different experience than looking through a telescope, even with a nice observing chair like my Stardust chair.

2008-03-07T04:07:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since I saw the Ring Nebula, M57. In fact it the summer of 2007, under the very dark Adirondack skies of my friends Peter and Ben. We were using my 80mm Vixen ED refractor on a Portamount, and it was the first time trying to star-hop to any celestial object. Following the normal Cygnus -> Lyra -> Vega neighborhood hop (hey, we're not lost yet!) we eventually found it, very small but quite recognizable as a smoky donut. I am pretty sure it was the first DSO I ever saw since we hadn't found any clusters yet, although I do recall looking at Albireo.

This morning Tina had to get up early to get ready for a trip to DC, so I headed to the beach at about 4:15 to see what M57 would look like in the XT8i, which has about 45 times the light gathering ability of the 80mm refractor. It didn't take long at all until I was looking right at it, and it was certainly bigger and brighter than I remember it being last summer. In the 24 Pan it was clear and crisp, but using the 5mm Hyperion it was less distinct, which of course matches its physical characteristics since it's a planetary nebula.

I also tried out the new 35mm Pan that just arrived yesterday (good old Astromart, bargains galore!) Stars were not quite as pinpoint as they are in the 24 Pan, but the field of view is amazingly large. Since the Pleiades had already set I did not have a chance to view them in their entirety in the 35 Pan, but next chance I get this will be the first target. Andromeda is another one I'm looking forward to seeing but it is setting early enough that it's difficult to see in the West.

The eastern sky was quickly brightening by now, so I took a look at Jupiter which has now risen to about 20° in the SE by dawn. Incredible! All four of the Galilean moons were on one side of the planet, and the inner three were in a straight line, slightly angled down from a line drawn from Jupiter to the outer-most moon. There were three bands distinctly visible in the 24 Pan at 50X. This is going to be a great sprint and summer for Jupiter as it is rising earlier and higher each day.

I finished up with a quick binocular scan of the SE sky, and spotted a faint fuzzy object, which I quickly found in the scope. It was a very pretty open cluster with a single bright star in the middle and two more bright ones off to one side. At first I thought this was M13 in Hercules, but after consulting some books and maps it turns out it was M11, the Wild Duck cluster. My first view of this object! It appeared that the long axis of Cygnus was pointing almost right at it. I confirmed that with Cartes du Ciel since I remember the arc of 5 stars pointing right at the cluster. The first two stars in my "arc" were 14 and 15 Aquila, then Lambda Aquila, then 12 Aquila, then Eta Scutum, and then M11.

Since M11 was 37° above the horizon, I just realized that Sagittarius is high enough to see many of the southern galaxies and clusters I have never seen. (This is why Messier Marathons are held in early spring!) Virgo should be visible also. Well, now I know what I'll be looking for next time I'm out in the early morning.

Giving a friend a peek at the sky's wonders

2008-03-05T09:02:00.001-08:00

After quartet practice at my friends the Dodges, I set up the XT8 in their driveway and invited Joanne and Jim out to have a peek at whatever was up. Joanne came out first, and was amazed at the size of the scope. It's really not that big and I have gotten used to it, but I think she has a little Tasco on a tripod so I can understand the reaction!

We looked at M42 through some trees, then Saturn (a big wow) and finally M35, an open cluster, which was a first for her. She made the comment that the various chains of stars seemed to divide the cluster up into areas like a stained glass composition! What a pretty thought!

Jim came out for a peek at Saturn (he's just recovering from knee surgery, so this was a quick peek) but it was a pleasure giving them a look at some beautiful objects in the sky.

The GSW Super Planisphere - a great product!

2008-03-05T08:46:00.000-08:00

Sunday evening, March 2, I almost drove to Bedford, Ma to observe with Greg Stone, but at the last minute he was clouded out so I stayed home and set up in the State Park across the street. It was very cold and windy, but the chemical warmers in boots and gloves worked wonders.

The XT8i COL has been giving great warp factors of +0.1 every time since I carefully leveled the base and adjusted the vertical stop to insure that the OTA was at a perfect 90 degrees to the base. Once you do this, you can set up even on sloping ground and still get perfect COL alignment. In fact, one trick I recently read about to make observing near the zenith more convenient with a Dob is to purposely shim the base on one side by several inches before doing the alignment. If I try this, I'll use a couple of 2x4's to start.

I spent about an hour just poking around the clusters in Auriga, and taking a few peeks at M42 before it got too low in the west, and of course looking at Saturn. I made an attempt to do some AP with the new Orion SteadyPix camera mount and a Canon S410 Powershot, but no luck at all. I'll post on that separately if I make any progress.

I purchased the GSW Super Planisphere2 about a month ago, but Sunday night was the first time I was able to convince myself to put down the eyepieces and and COL for a while and just spend some time learning the sky a bit better. (Part of the problem is that clear skies have been so rare the last few months that when it does clear up I want to use that scope all I can!) I am completely satisfied and actually overjoyed with how much the product helped me.

I've had a scope for only a year so I am a real beginner. I would say I knew the easy constellations (Ursa Major, Cass., Orion) but Perseus was "over there somewhere" and any two similarly bright stars could have been Castor and Pollux, and many times were.

I have tried planispheres from several manufacturers with the normal amount of success, but for me they show too many things crowded into too small of a space. The P2 (as I'll call it) does come with a traditional whole-sky planisphere with date and time circles, but it is used more as an index to the ten double-sided disks which show individual constellations at higher magnification. I have a lot more to learn about how this index planisphere works, as it has a compass built in, and tells you which way to look and how high in the sky the constellation will be found on your time and date, etc. All very useful, but I haven't really worked on it so I'll defer that for now.

The individual disks were the key for me. They are about 8" in diameter, and each covers between 1 and 3 major constellations. The background is a deep blue and the stars are white with larger dots for brighter stars, and the main outlines drawn in. They are printed on both sides, so there are actually 20 disks on 10 cards. The brighter Messier objects are indicated but the key is that the disks are simple and they match the sky as observed in my typical suburban skies very well. This is good, but also a sad commmentary on how much light pollution is up there.

Around the outer edge of each disk are the names of the neighboring constellations, and the disk number on which they can be found. This is so useful! If there is an arrow next to the name, it indicates that the neighbor is some distance away in that direction, but if there is no arrow it indicates that the named constellation is "right next door." These small things make a huge difference when you are just learning your way around the sky, like a child exploring his neighborhood for the first time.

Just inside the ring of names of neighboring constellations is the name of the disk you are holding, printed over and over around the edge so it's easy to find any disk by number if you can see a bit of its outside edge.

I found the best way to use the disks for me was to hold one up in the light of my red headlamp, tilting the bottom of the disk away from me slightly to avoid glare from the smooth surface of the disk. (Here's where my bifocals came in really handy.) By rotating the disk until it matched that part of the sky, all the relationships to neighboring constellations were immediately apparent without the distortion imposed by a single disk trying to cover the entire sky. This is a big help! Leo was easy to spot, neighbor Cancer much dimmer but still apparent, Bootes and Virgo were both exact matches for what I could see on the disk even though they were just rising in the east. The bright stars in each constellation (Regulus in Leo, Arcturus in Bootes, Spica in Virgo, etc.) have now become easier to remember. I could not have told you any of these stars by memory yesterday - hope I got them right! :-) Perseus has a home now between Gemini and Cass., and I can find the double cluster easily now. Ursa Minor was hard to see early in the night, but later as it rotated up out of the skyglow to my north I could finally see most of its stars, and using the disk as a guide really helped.In summary, I could not be happier with this purchase. I think I learned more in an hour than with all the planispheres I've used in the last year.

The product also comes with a card to place on the ground with letters on it so that up to ten people can stand in a circle facing out by the correct letter, and each use one of the disks to identify things in their part of the sky.I guess the people then rotate around the card, passing their disk back to the person taking their place. This would be a very good educational program for beginners, but again I have not explored this feature enough to comment on it.

Saturn at 480x

2008-02-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

The evening was clear and cold and I needed to take a trip to Seabrook for some cold medicine, so I set up the XT8i and started the cooling fan before leaving. About an hour later I returned and looked at Saturn in the 13mm Hyperion. Crisp and clear image, and I thought I could see the Cassini Division! So I went to the 5mm and the planet just popped out, totally in focus with the CD clearly visible in direct vision, for the first time for me. Bands on the planetary cloud cover were clearly visible as well.

With the 5mm EP the mag is already at 240x but I figured why not try the 2x barlow as well, so we went to 480x and amazingly the image held together well. CD still plainly visible, but of course the image only stays in the FOV for about 10 seconds.

The movements of the scope at this magnification are so tiny that I can see a real need to improve the stiction/friction properties of the dob base. Luckily there are many web sites describing upgrades to these areas (different types of surface, Pledge furniture polish, beeswax, replacing some of the UHMW plastic with teflon or Ebony Star, etc.) One of these days... and I'm definitely planning on flocking and baffling the interior of the tube to improve contrast, since there is so much artificial light in most places I'm observing from.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

2008-02-19T10:39:00.000-08:00

The weather has been typical New England winter weather, but this morning was forecast to be clear so at 5am I headed across the street to Hampton Beach State Park for an hour or so of observing with the XT8i.

The sun was coming up quickly, so it was a race to find and identify two stars for the Orion COL alignment. Polaris was going to be star #2, but I used the good old planisphere to find Spica as star #1. Quickly swing to both stars, don't bother with high powered eyepiece - bingo, warp factor -0.5. Good enough!

Now what to look at in the remaining minutes? I decide to take the tour, but I have to select the April tour since the February tour assumes you are out at a 'normal' time like 9pm. M3 is the first target - wow, I have never seen it before and it's just beautiful even as the sky lightens around it. A globular cluster, clearly visible with the 13mm Hyperion at about 92x.

I tried a few more objects, but none were visible, so I used the scope and COL to identify some stars and begin to learn my way around the constellations. A bright star in Scorpio turned out to be Antares, and above Spica in the west was Arcturus (easy to identify if you can find Ursa Major, the big dipper, using the 'arc to Arcturus' mnemonic.

Now it was really getting light, so time to take a peek at Jupiter, saved for last since it really shines brightly even against a lightening sky. Jupiter is still very low, maybe 15 degrees above the horizon, so there was very little detail visible. I could see a few bands, but mostly the planet's detail was obscured by clearly visible high winds in the atmosphere. However, the Galilean moons were clearly visible, three on one side and on on the other.

After this, I packed up and drove back home, then took Samantha to the beach again for our morning walk.