Failed Astronomy

Some nights, things just don’t work out. I had one of those nights on Sunday.

After a long week of cloudy skies, Sunday daylight broke with hints of sunshine on the top of a fog bank. As Diane and I sat in Starbucks having coffee and coffee cake, my spirits began to rise with the glucose and caffeine levels in my blood stream.

Confidently, I said that the clouds would burn off by noon and we had the potential of a clear sky for the evening. That was a nice thought because we were very close to new moon and the Geminid meteor shower was scheduled to peak before midnight.

I set about to cautiously think about an observing evening. Maybe the night would turn out well.

As I worked around the house during the afternoon, I was overjoyed to see that the sky was bright blue. The recent rain had pushed out haze and left the sky cloudless.

I looked up Hill Country State Natural Area on the internet and saw that a public hunt was scheduled to start on Monday. The park would be closed at 10 PM. That was good enough for a nice night of Herschel observing, but it was a little disappointing that the park would not be open for the peak of the meteor shower.

I called the park office, intending to let them know that I would be at our observing site that evening, and that I would be out by the 10 PM closing time. The nice ranger on the phone told me that the park would actually be closed beginning at sunset, not 10PM. Not wanting to argue, I thanked the ranger and started to think of other options.

“Oh well”, I said to myself. “I have observed from a pull off on the park road before”, and I decided that I could do it again. Yes, I knew that I could expect to have 15-20 cars with bright headlights come by, but the rest of the time I would have 5.5 magnitude stars visible. It could be a nice night of Herschel observing (maybe I could finish the December list in O’Meara’s book) and then I could settle down to watch meteors toward 10 or 11 PM. The drive home would be 10 minutes shorter as well!

I arrived at my observing spot about 6:30 PM. Diane begged out because she had some work to do as Santa’s Elf. No one else answered my email on the San Antonio Astronomy Yahoo group when I posted that I would be out near the park. I planned on being by myself. I was.

When the sky turned dark enough to see the “faint fuzzys” on the Herschel list, I pulled out the O’Meara book and reached for my trusty digital recorder. But that recorder was back in my house in Helotes, 40 minutes away. Oh Well! I looked at a couple of the objects, but lost interest fairly quickly, knowing that I was not set up to record my observations. I looked at a number of Messier objects with my 16 inch scope. But I was a bit bummed out.

About that time, I realized that the rising Orion constellation was dimming noticeably. I looked straight up. The Milky Way had disappeared too. I looked further west, and Jupiter was shining brightly and those constellations were all present.

So it was just a local cloud.

Except that about 15 minutes after the sky cleared, there was a general dimming of all the stars and then they all winked out. They stayed that way. It was 8:45 PM. I never saw another star.

On this little trip, I had experienced loss of an observing field to a “hunt” on the State Natural Area park lands. I had to set up where bright car lights spoiled my night vision every 10 minutes or so. I forgot to bring a little recorder which spoiled my ability to run the list I had intended on. And finally I was shut out by a thick bank of clouds that suddenly formed from a perfectly clear sky. The sky has stubbornly remained cloudy all week long, ever since.

I just thought I would post this, to remind me how special it is when everything works out splendidly! Surprisingly often, the weather, the moon, the place, and the gathering of friends are all perfect. As I sit here today, I am planning on that all working out for this Saturday evening.

Wishing you Dark Skies and a Merry Christmas,
Eternally the optimist,

Risk

Simple dew shields from "Fun Foam"

I went to Hobby Lobby last week to buy a few sheets of 2mm thick black foam rubber. I found them in the children's education part of the store. I bought the foam to make a backdrop for my secondary on the ring structure of my new Looking Glass.

While I was there, I bought a couple more sheets to play with. Nearly simultaneously, Matt R. was there and working with the foam. He kindly made me a pair of dew shields for the Eyes of Texas, my 80mm binocular. He also cut a sheet for my Telrad.

From my scraps of Fun Foam, I built a simple wrap-around dew shield for my 50mm finder. I built it so that I could put a hand warmer packet inside the ring if I desired.

Last night, in my observing session at Hill Country State Natural Area, the dew was pretty heavy and early. (On the way home, there were blankets of radiation fog in every valley.) I had put the finder scope dew cover on and it kept that objective clear of dew all evening. I ended up needing to wrap a hand warmer around the eyepiece of the finder with a rubber band. that worked, but I was late in choosing to do this and had to deal with occasional dew on the eyepiece.

The Telrad cover was attached by wrapping rubber band around the long axis of the Telrad base. The cover was held nicely in place by the rubber band. This kept the Telrad remarkably free of dew without sacrificing the utility of the finder.

I was finally done in for the night at about 830 PM, two hours after I began to observe, by dew forming on my secondary. I forgot to bring my hair dryer for that. With a hair dryer, I would have been able to continue for a while longer, until fog formed in the observing area.

For just a couple bucks, these "throw-away" dew covers are extremely easy to make and work very well. Their outer surfaces were *covered* with dew by the time I packed up, but the optics were nice and clear.

Best telescope for Christmas

It seems to be the time of year to help out folks that are thinking about a Christmas telescope. Let me help out some more. This is going to be simple.

If you are part of a family or a single person who thinks that looking at stars would be fun and that you want a telescope to do so, then read this blog post.

If you have read other folks say that it really would be wise to get a planisphere and you *have* to have a scope for Christmas, then read this blog post.

If you have considered a pair of 10x50 binoculars and still *must* get a scope for Christmas, then read on.

Don't go to a department store to get your scope. You still have time to get one in the mail from an internet sales place. Unless you really know what you are doing, don't go to Craig's list - and if you really knew what you are doing, why would you be reading this blog post??

What you want is the Orion XT6. It is a six inch dobsonian scope with no bells and no whistles. It comes with one eyepiece and a red dot finder. That should be all you need to find hundreds of objects in the Texas sky. It will fit in the back seat of almost any car.

If you search well on the internet, you should be able to buy it for less than $300 and get most of the shipping for under that number too.

After placing your order, the most important thing you should do is to find an astronomy club to help you find out how to use the scope. In San Antonio, do a search for the San Antonio Astronomical Association. We will help you. You will have fun.

Next most important: buy a copy of the Sky and Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas. It will be your map to the sky. A planisphere will also help. So will a pair of binoculars.

Dark skies to all, and to all a good night!

Risk

Comet Sweeper

I just finished a very nice book about Caroline Herschel by Claire Brock. The Comet Sweeper follows Caroline's rise to fame in the late 18th century. First as an assistant to Wm Herschel and later to her nephew John, Caroline had a large number of her own accomplishments of her own. The NGC catalog was mostly her organization of the o servations that the siblings made.

As a finder of comets, Caroline ranked in the upper tier of discoverers of her time. Entirely self taught, Caroline taught herself math, singing, and astronomy. When she was provided a yearly stipend by king George III she may have been the first professional female scientist and was certainly the first female professional astronomer.

For readers in the San Antonio Astronomy club, I will be making the book available at a meeting soon.

Best of the Best

As I was sitting in the back yard the other night hoping for clear
skies, I started to think about what would be on my list of the best of
the best objects in the night sky. I thought that a list of 5 might be
harder to come up with than a list of 10.

The list I came up with was:

Moon
Milky Way
Saturn
Jupiter
M42 - Orion Nebula

Next on my list might be:

M45 - Pleiades
M31 - Andromeda Galaxy
M13 - Hercules Globular Cluster
M9 - Lagoon Nebula
M57 - Ring Nebula

My 11th would be the Crab Nebula, M1.

What would be on *your* list of the 5 and 10 top night-time sky objects?

Next question I have for myself is how much do I know about these
objects? What class of object are they? What has been their history?
How far away are they? What was going on in history when the light from
them started this way? For the deep space objects, who discovered them,
and when?

Looking Glass Accessories

This wood telescope is coming along very well. Here is a photo of the scope before paint and varnish to show how much of the scope is new woodwork.

Since that photo, I have done a few modifications:

I rebuilt the focuser holder out of a piece of 1/2 inch ply wood.

I painted and varnished all the pieces of the scope.

I cut an inch and a half from the height of the scope.

I built a primary mirror cover for the lower box.

I built a new brace system for the top of the primary mirror box.

I sewed a secondary mirror cover

I sewed a container for the trusses for transport.

I modified the white nylon cover I had built for the HyperLightbridge and it now fits Looking Glass very well.

OK. Now I need some clear, dark skies after full moon. Lets put the request in.

Introducing Looking Glass II

A couple nights of work in the garage was transformed into a new telescope housing for my 16 inch Lightbridge. When I bought the scope last summer, I originally knew that I wanted to use the optics to build a new scope.

But wanting to get the scope in the field led me to a project to do a partial rebuild to correct the two main problems that I knew about with the Lightbridge. I was able to move the center of the altitude bearing up a couple inches and was able to reduce the weight of the base.

But this never really left me satisfied. I knew that I wanted to build a StarMaster type housing for the optics. I wanted to build in wood. I wanted to put something of myself in the design.

So this last weekend, I began the process. I stole some of the woodwork that I had done for the Looking Glass project - one that I called the Hyperlightbridge base.

I finished the woodwork on Tuesday evening and had a first light celebration. Last night I finished the wood with a combination of varnish and black paint.

There will still be a couple improvements. I need to build a mirror cover. I need to find a good way to transport the scope. I need to make a new cloth cover for dew.

The nice thing about building something myself is fearlessness in modifying it!