Binocular Box For The Eyes of Texas

Ever since I built the Couch Potato Telescope chair, I have wanted to get a larger binocular. For a discussion on why, the patient reader may want to go back and read my blog titled “Binoculars” in June of 2009. I have looked at several different binoculars since that time and finally decided to get a medium priced 80mm binocular. Two weeks ago, I was quite pleased to see that the price of the Celestron 20x80 binoculars with braced mounting had gone from the mid $200 range to $130. At that price, the binocular was a steal!

The binocular arrived this week and a quick back-yard check of its optics was impressive. So I decided to give it a welcome home present. I should give it a name too – and what would be better than “The Eyes of Texas.”

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them,
At night, or early in the morn'.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
Till Gabriel blows his horn!

The binocular came in a cardboard box, with foam padding, not Styrofoam. That offered the possibility of building a good looking and practical wood instrument case for the binocular. The foam padding could be recycled as the instrument case padding.

In my building the eyepiece warming box the previous week, I had learned a couple lessons about plywood. The main learning point was that I needed a hollow ground blade for my circular saw instead of the all-purpose blade I had made the previous box with. I was tired of the badly frayed edges on some of the plywood cuts.


I wanted to dress the box up a little, so I went to the local hardware store (Home Depot) and picked up some brass colored hardware. I chose a pair of hinges of reasonable size, two bail latches, a handle, and a set of eight brass corners.

After measuring the foam block, I set about designing the box sides from ½ inch hardwood ply. I joined the sides with countersunk brass screws. Because I wanted the lid to be a little like a briefcase lid, I put a lip on the top 1-1/2 inches deep.

To the two rectangular box pieces, I screwed a top of ¼ inch Luan plywood. I varnished the wood components inside and out and set it out to dry for a couple hours. Unfortunately, there was a thunder storm at lunch time on Sunday and it took a little longer for the pieces to dry than I wanted. I was impatient to get the hardware on the box.


I put the hinges, latches, and handle on. Lastly, I screwed on the corners. This ended up being a very handsome box for The Eyes of Texas and she seemed to enjoy it.

Last night, Matt R and I went out to Hill Country State Natural Area and did some star gazing in a dark sky. Conditions were not perfect – there was a lot of moisture in the air – but I had a couple involuntary “Wow”s after I attached the binocular to the rotating binocular chair. I don’t believe I have ever seen M31 to the extent that I saw it through that binocular last night. M110 was easily visible in the same field along with M32. I scanned through the Messier objects in Sagittarius and the Milky Way above it and was quite pleased with my purchase and with first dark sky light on those Big Eyes.

Warm Eyepiece Box

When I was at the Eldorado star party last month, I listened to a talk on dew heaters. It was appropriate because the dew at this party was hard to deal with. This was the first time that I needed to break out my hair dryer for optics.

One of the problems I had was the new mount for my eyepieces on the side of the Looking Glass scope. The eyepieces, sitting there radiating all their heat into a clear sky cooled very quickly and began to collect dew.

I was able to cope with that a little by laying a clean sock over the top of eyepieces with a hand warmer in the sock. However I knew there must be a better way. So I began to think of options.

Two weeks ago, I finally sat down to build a small box that can hang on the side of my scope. It has room for my three most often used eyepieces and the three-hole receiver can be removed so that a hand warmer can be dropped into the bottom of the box.

I have used the box several times now. I have not had to use a hand warmer, as the dew has not been so bad again, but I have discovered that I spend less time watching folks at public star parties. Having those eyepieces in a container makes me worry less about them.

It’s a Big Galaxy Out There

Last month, I was trying to remember how far away an open star cluster was. I was showcasing NGC 457 at a state park star party. This cluster is a cute appearing cluster in Cassiopeia. It is called the ET cluster or the Owl cluster. For kids these days, I call it the WALL-E cluster.

Since I could not remember its distance, I came up with something that seemed like it might make sense. I said that it was probably a couple hundred light years away. Boy was I wrong. I should have just said that I could not remember. Now there are maybe a dozen kids and parents roaming the world thinking that ET is a lot closer to home than he really is…

Of course, hundreds of light years away is still a long, long way.

Here is one way of thinking of these distances. It is about 3000 miles from the east coast of the US to the west coast. The circumference of the earth is about 24000 miles. Light travels at about 186000 miles in one second.

That means it would take about 1/7 of a second for light to circle the earth. 1/50th of a second is all it would take for light to make it from the left coast to the right coast of the US.

The moon is about 240,000 miles from the earth on average. So it takes about 1-1/3 seconds for light to travel from the moon to the earth. The sun is about 93,000,000 miles from earth. So it takes about 500 seconds or 8-1/3 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth.

Jupiter is hanging high in the evening sky right now. It is about 484 million miles from the sun. That is five times as far as the earth is from the sun. One way to talk about distances in the solar system is to measure in Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is the average distance of the earth from the sun. Jupiter’s distance from earth ranges from 4 AU to 6AU. In light minutes, Jupiter’s distance from the sun is about 41 minutes. But when I look at Jupiter right now, the time it takes for light to leave the sun, travel to Jupiter, reflect off the clouds and come back to my eye is closer to 80 minutes – almost an hour and a half.

I was pointing out Neptune to one of our club members from the light polluted city streets of San Antonio last week. Neptune is 4.5 billion miles from the sun. That is about 6.7 light hours from the sun. When I was pointing out Neptune, its light had been traveling for more than 13 hours since it left the surface of the sun. Another way to think of Neptune’s distance is that it is about a million times as far away as the distance across our country.

But that’s just peanuts.

The second nearest star is about 3 light years away. That’s 2000 times as far away as Neptune. Sirius, the brightest star in our sky is about 8-1/2 light years away. Star clusters are much further away. The Pleiades are a close cluster and are about 440 light years away. Maybe that is what I was thinking when I told my listeners that the ET cluster was several hundred light years away. As it is, the light from the Pleiades left those young suns about the time that Galileo was born.

But the ET cluster is a lot further away. When I finally looked it up while hiking yesterday, I was taken back when I read that this cute little open cluster is about 9000 light years away. The light I looked at the other night started heading this way about the time that people first began writing in Mesopotamia and the Chinese began making wine.

That’s a long time ago, and the galaxy we live in is a big place.

Astronomers look out for themselves

I've been at the Eldorado Star Party for the last couple days. The weather has been nice, with clear skies and pleasant temperatures. There was some rain in the last week and that has made dew a bit of a problem, and hair driers are frequently heard on the starfield at night.



Last night, Matt R. And I began the Texas Hash list. It is a lot harder than most of the TSP lists I ran last spring. We got through 15 objects we attempted last night, with only one object we could not find. We have another 10 to go tonight if we decide to proceed with the list.

It was sometime yesterday, while cleaning up camp to leave for lunch, that the title of this post occurred to me. We were talking about the fact that astronomers were a pretty honest crew. Nevertheless, it is never a good idea to leave expensive items lying around. We were cleaning up, "Because astronomers look out for themselves."

I laughed at the appropriateness of the words, because that is exactly what we do. Instead of looking at pictures of stars in books or the Internet, we stay up late at night to find and admire those objects ourselves. That is why it is about.

National Night Out

Last evening, I remembered that it was our Texas version of National Night Out (NNO) when I saw the 6PM news coverage of some events near San Antonio. Some months ago I had decided that the NNO might make a great time to have a neighborhood star party.

I walked to the front of the house and saw that the sky was relatively clear. We have recently had a lot of clouds, and I was a little surprised that there were few clouds in the sky.

It took almost 5 minutes to set up my Orion XT10 in the driveway and focus it on Jupiter. With a 10 mm eyepiece, the magnification was 120 times and the brightness was such that the bands of Jupiter were clearly visible.

Three star-like moons were arrayed to the right of Jupiter, toward the East it turns out. Jupiter would slip off the left side of the field of view every couple minutes. The fourth major moon of Jupiter was not visible behind its disc.

The top equitorial band (the southern one) had a great lump in its top edge. There was a small dark spot just to the right side of the lump within the band. In moments of clarity and improved seeing, I could make out the internal border of the Great Red Spot. Over the course of the evening, that Red Spot moved leftward (westward) until it seemed to be falling off the left side of the Jupiter "marble".

During the two hours I had my scope up, different groups of my neighbors that had been at the formal celebration of NNO at our pool walked past the house. I genially called them over to take a look at Jupiter. One group of kids, with their mom, spent quite a bit of time learning how to readjust the scope to put Jupiter back in the center of the field of view.

They had lots of good questions. How big is Jupiter compared with Mars and with Earth? How far away is it? Why are the moons in a line? What causes the bands on Jupiter and the Great Red Spot?

I had done some thinking since a couple recent star parties, and decided to try to answer the questions with the purpose of helping them to think about the process of science instead of a science text book. The same way that I had helped them learn to find Jupiter when it slid out of the field of view, instead of doing that myself, I wanted them to think about the answers to their questions.

So I helped them think through their questions instead of giving them textbook answers. How could one find out how big Jupiter is? How would it be possible to find out how far away Jupiter is? How long does it take for light from Jupiter to get to the earth? Why would you believe my answers when there are good ways of finding out answers?

It was interesting to see their reaction. They clearly expected to be told the answers to their questions - just like I was some kind of encyclopedia or Google search engine. But when I started asking questions in return, they either took it well or did not. Some were interested in the guy with the telescope that asked questions and some were bored.

I hope the effort will encourage some kid to get a little more interested in science questions. Maybe they will become interested enough to take a little more science than they were expecting to take in school. Maybe they will make a little better citizen or jurror in a case that involves scientific testimony. Maybe one of them will invent the cure for whatever disease or injury is going to try to do me in 20 years from now - or one of my children or grandchildren.

It felt good to challenge my charges a little.

Dark Skies!
Risk

Astronomy and Fitness

Over the last eight or nine months, as I have become more and more interested in astronomy, I have taken less time to hike and walk and ride my mountain bike. Unfortunately, I found that this had an effect on my weight and my waistline. My weight rose from about 185 to 215 pounds. At first, my 36 inch waist pants got tight and then intolerable. I moved to 38 inch waist pants and then they got tight too!

It is time for me to become a shadow of my present self. I need to weigh less. I need to be in better shape.

This week, my wife persuaded me to start joining her in regularly attending a health club. She has been very good at getting exercise for most of a year now, and finally I am on the way back to health too. I thank her for the encouragement and inspiration.

We decided to plunk down the money to join the local Spectrum health club after visiting the local clubs. Spectrum was lighter, a little less crowded, and smelled better than the other club we visited. It is close enough that I can get there after working my day job, instead of just wishing that I could drive to Lackland AFB to use their gym for free. Yeah, it was also a little more expensive.

So, here I am a few days later with some soreness of my muscles and I’m slowly starting my way down the weight loss path again. (I am reducing portion sizes and abandoning all snacks too.) I know it will take a number of months to get back down to fighting weight, but the journey has started.

Astronomy is a great activity, but the problem with it is that there is not much activity to it. If you are having as much fun under the dark sky as I am, maybe a review of your other activities is in order – like it was for me. We want to enjoy the sky for as many years as possible. Staying in shape and staying healthy is part of that equation.

Huff and puff,
Dark skies too,

Rick

Free Tools – Cartes Du Ciel and Virtual Moon Atlas

One of the premier tools available free to the amateur observer is the planetarium program that goes by the French name “Cartes Du Ciel.” True to its name, this program is a Sky Chart system that incorporates many of the features of full feature programs costing hundreds of dollars.

I have a number of sky charts that I find to be very useful in book form. When I am searching for a double star or a Messier Object, I really like these bound versions of sky charts. However, for some purposes, a software program is very handy. That is especially true when trying to track down comets, planets, and asteroids. The planetarium program can be set for today, or for next week when I will be out at a dark sky site. It can give different magnification levels, and I can create both right side up views for my finder scope as well as upside down and backwards views for my Dobsonian scope. Fact is, the program will also create right side up and reversed left right views for SCT scopes too!

For planning a Messier Marathon, the program is a great way to create a set of star hopping charts or to add to a published set, as I described in my Messier marathon piece last winter.

My preferred set up is to use a black on white format. It prints very well. With a red filter on a laptop computer it is also easy to read in the dark.

One of the ways I use the program is to print out a full sky chart to use instead of a planisphere for a certain time/place/and date. It is a little easier to show constellations to folks with this round version of the sky than a squished planisphere version – it also is more accurate than most planispheres for my south Texas observing location.

One of the things I like most about the Cartes du Ciel program is the ability to scale to any magnification and to add or subract star detail. This allows me to create simple charts and detailed charts on the fly. If I am interested in seeing very dim stars near where an asteroid is to be found in an eyepiece view, I can do that. If I am interested in seeing the overall picture of a full constellation, I can do that too.

Switching gears, I might as well mention the lunar equivalent of this planetarium program. The “Virtual Moon Atlas” is a great tool for locating almost all the small objects that one might be interested in on the lunar surface. It is a searchable atlas, and will identify any crater or feature that I click on the picture of the moon. There are several levels of complexity of the moon atlas. I have always used the biggest version. I really don’t know how limited the other versions might be.
Again the cool thing about this atlas is that it follows the libration of the moon, the phases of the moon, and the visible portion of the moon from any observing location. The view can also be adjusted up/down and left/right for any sort of scope.

Both programs can be downloaded from the Internet. Google search for them, download, install, and enjoy.