More "Boardwalk" Astronomy

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!