New Observing Site

Today was clear after several days of rain so I headed down to the park at dusk to look for a key. Nobody around except the border patrol so I explored for a place to observe instead. The courtyards just outside the A/V room look ok and are certainly convenient. Even with the trees I had a good view down to about 15-20° with no visible street lights. As Venus dipped into the trees I noticed Vega appearing and Jupiter high in the East. Deneb and Altair made their appearance and I started looking for the coathanger (Cr399). It wasn't quite dark enough so I waited for ISS to show at 6:50. I was afraid I had been 'had' again and it was 6:50am instead of pm. Nope, I had it right and ISS showed up right on time, rising to about 5° above Altair and traveling about 5° every 12s. It rose to about 1° above Deneb before decending slowly toward the North. It was visible in binocs just to the east of north and about 20° altitude. By then it was plenty dark and I was able to spot Sagitta in my 7x50's and nearby was Cr399, the fabled coathanger asterism. In the east, Aldeberan was rising, pointing out the Hyades, above and to the left was 'Subaru' the Seven Sisters (visible unaided), and of course, Jupiter. I was able to see 5 stars in Cassiopeia unaided and 6 stars in Cygnus. I was even able to convince myself that I was able to spot M31 the Andromeda Galaxy, unaided. It was nice in 7x50's.
All in all, while it would be nice to have a view of the western horizon, the courtyard is convenient and should work just fine for star parties.

Power Supply Mod

I've been wanting to replace the battery clip style connector on my ETX's 9v supply. Today I picked up a type N bayonet style jack from Radio Shack on Trenton and 10th. Two others on 83X and N Conway were unable to help. Radio Shack seems to be dropping their parts merchandise gradually. Type N is 5.5mm OD and 2.1mm ID. They didn't have the matching plug in stock so I'll either have to use something from the junkbox or wait until the weekend. In the meantime, I can install the jack on the ETX and either switch to the portable power station or keep using the wall wart supply. Tomorrow is partly clear, so maybe I'll get a quick peek at the moon or the sun then.

Train Drives

Rainy today so it was a good day to Calibrate and Train my ETX70 drives. Calibrate is simple and automatic and needs to be done when power supply changes are made. Training was done with my 10x eyepiece and a slow slew rate. I need to redo this when I can train using Polaris. My new focus extender worked well, for awhile. As I was finishing up it broke! I re-glued the knob and will see if that fixes it. The ETX site says that training is indicated by 'rubberbanding' or when the drives slew away from a target that has been manually positioned. Mine does this a lot at higher power. Hopefully this will cure the problem.

Park telescope checkout

I spent about 4 hours today checking out three of the Park's telescopes: Celestron 5", Orion 3", and Meade 4". The Celestron continues to look good. The optics are in pretty good collimation. The targets were all in alignment although it could be a bit better. The tripod is a little bit wobbly but otherwise seems serviceable. It is missing a locking bold on one leg. This tripod is similar to the one's on the Orions and one of those bolds may work temporarily. I plugged the drive into my 12v portable power station (Chicago Electric from Harbor Freight, $90) and everything fired up. Movement is smooth and handbox buttons all work fine. I tried pointing at a distant tree and verified that the 'save land object' and 'goto land object' functions work. If the scope is in the near vertical position there is some interference between the OTA and the tripod. This may be normal but needs to be checked out and if normal, watch out for it. There doesn't appear to be any protection and the gears might be stripped. The view through either 25mm or 10mm eyepieces seems good and I could tell no difference between the available ep's and my Plöessls. Some of the eyepieces are marked KE and others are Orion Explorer II. They all look similar. Tristan Schwartz at Cloudy Nights gives them high marks. They are basically either Kellners (25mm) or Plöessls (10mm). The Celestron's red dot finder needs a 3v battery.

The Orion 3" Spaceprobe needed a bit of tightening and it is now steady as a rock. The tripod seems sturdy enough although I did not extend the legs. The optics were in perfect collimation. The red dot finder also needs a battery. There are three more boxes in the storage room that may also be Orion 3" scopes. These also need to be taken down and checked for missing/damaged parts.

The Meade 4" tripod is pretty much unusable when the legs are fully extended. They flex quite a bit. The azimuth bearing is very wobbly and the altitude bearing a bit so. The most serious problem is that there are no eyepieces. The focuser is a 2" barrel but it was fitted with a .965" adapter. There is a 2" bushing but no threaded ring to hold it on. It needs a 1.25" adapter before the existing eyepieces can be used. I was able to install the second motor. The power supply is 12v but my bayonet connector would not fit so I was not able to check out the drive operation. The Autostar handbox appears to be unused as the protective cover on the screen was still in place!

Here are the magnification firgures for the three scopes. The 3" is a 700mm FL, the 4" is 910, and the 5" is 650mm. Magnification available for the 3" is: 700/25 = 28x, and 700/10=70x. With a 2x shorty barlow this gives magnifications of: 28x, 56x, 70x, and 140x.
Magnification for the 5" is:
650/25 = 26x, and 650/10 = 65x. With a 2x barlow, that gives 26x, 52x, 65x, and 130x.
If the 4" is ever usable, it's 910mm focal length will result in magnifications of: 910/25 = 36.4x, 9210/10 = 91x or 36.4x, 72.8x, 91x, and 182x.
The next step is to try star testing the optics. It'll be interesting to see what sort of detail can be seen on Jupiter and how well the two scopes can split close doubles.

First day as Park Astronomer

Today was my first day on the job as Park Astronomer for Bentsen Palm State Park. First order of business was to find my 'office' and do some inventory on the park's collection of astro-scopes. They have quite a collection of some really nice optics used for their birding outreach but not so much for astronomy outreach. I went in with the expectation that I would either be driven to the depths of despair with junk or completely elated with some fine optics. Actuality was something in between. Definitely not junk though. There are a number of Orion Spaceprobe 3 AltAz newtonians, and a couple of goto newts. All are altaz tripod mounts so alignment will be straightforward and the little Spaceprobes have red dot finders at least. One goto is a Celestron Starseeker and the other is a Meade Telestar DS-114. The Orion mounts are lightweight wiggly-looking altaz tripods. It might be better to try to mount these on a dobsonian base of some sort, either commercial or homemade. All have 10 and 25mm eyepieces. The goto's appear to both be 12v AA driven. One battery box is slightly damaged. One eyepiece appears to be missing. All equipment is in the Audio Visual room which stays locked. I am to contact Javier (off friday and saturdays), Roy, or Melissa to gain access. Observing can be done in the office courtyards (dark with power), or the middle loop in the park (power available near restrooms), or out in the yard. Green laser pointers abound as do binoculars and 50mm spotting scopes.
The park hosts a 'night hike' on Wednesday and Saturdays as well as monthly special programs for volunteers. The Saturday night hike would be a good place to start some sort of outreach program. An astronomy program for volunteers would also be good.
First order of business is to complete checkout of the telescopes and familiarize myself with their operation. As a volunteer, this should be fun. If nothing else, I can work at my own pace!
Research results: The DS-114 gets uniformly bad reviews. The Spaceprobe 3 gets good reviews as a beginner scope, but this is for their SP3 with equatorial mount.
The Celestron is basically a NexStar GT. It remains to be seen about details like which handbox is attached but the site www.nexstarsite.com has a wealth of material on it, similar to Weasner's ETX site. I'm hopeful about this one as Orion sells it and it is essentially a current product with some support. It has a 1.25" focuser and an Orion EZFinder.

A Look at Cassiopeia

It was clear, not too windy, and not too cool tonight (64°F) so I thought I'd set up the ETX-70 in the backyard observatory. I picked weeds and swept the dirt off the bricks, set up my rickety pedestal, leveled it, set up the furniture, and set down to business. I decided to try for the double Eta Cas which was featured in Oct S&T. Cassiopeia is in a nice position for my backyard right now. I thought for awhile that my neighbor's new satellite dish was going to block Polaris and ruin my ability to find north but Polaris was well above the obstacle. I got lined up ok and used Shedir as my alignment star. A little hunting around and checking star fields convinced me I had the right bright light in my eyepiece so I centered up on Eta Cas. Next I put in my 10mm ep and recentered. Still just one star, so I added the 2x barlow. It takes quite a bit of turning of the focus knob to bring things into focus. I need to get a focus extender or electric focuser! I got it all working together which gives me about 70x ((350/10)*2) and thought I had Eta split into a red and blue pair but decided later that it was just an artifact of my eyeball's fancy multifocal lenses. Any bright star looked like a double! I may have to resign myself to not being able to observe doubles very well, other than really wide pairs, at least with the ETX. Things are a bit better with my dob. While I had 70x installed, I decided to slew over to Jupiter and almost gave up trying to find it. I discovered that I can insert my 25mm ep, get the fuzzy blob image of Jupiter centered, then put the 70x assembly back in the tube and voila! A nice big, clear Jupiter! Both storm bands were crystal clear and all four moons (3 on left, one on right) were plainly visible. I played around a bit more with Cassiopeia awhile before it got too cool and I went in about 8:15. All in all, a nice night without too much frustration.

Finally Jupiter

Jupiter has been calling my name, begging to be observed, for the past several nights. Tonight was cool and clear with NO WIND (amazing), so I decided to dust off my ETX-70 and setup in the front of the house, street lights and all. At least I had plenty of light to get things level and check out everything. When I finally turned on the power, the comedy of errors began. I had made a mental note to myself to be sure and change the Site setting from Rolla to GGG. Of course I forgot. I also forgot to snug up all the leveling bolts on my pedestal contraption, soooo... after guessing which way was north, I aligned on my favorite fall star: Capella. The scope was clearly way off, mainly too low. Did I say that I also set the time wrong? After noticing that the base was wobbling, I snugged up the rest of the bolts and made sure things were level. A couple more tries and I finally remembered to set the time and Site correctly. Finally got Capella with a minimum of searching. Aligned more or less, I next slewed to Jupiter, burning bright above the garage. A bit more searching and I had it in the crosshairs too. I spent probably the better part of the next hour admiring the view through various filters, my 10mm and 2x barlow. All four moons were clearly visible in the 10mm, kind of hard to make out with the 26mm. I was able to see two storm bands pretty clearly.
Next I tried for Uranus. No luck, it was behind a palm tree. On to Neptune. I thought I had it but the star field wasn't quite right. I tried lining up on Delta Cap but never was able to snag Neptune for certain. It may also be a bit dim at almost mag 8. Uranus should be ok if it comes out from behind the palm tree (or I move the scope). All in all it wasn't too bad for a first night out. Oh, and I also banged away and cursed the speed button before I realized it wasn't the Enter key! How soon we forget.
Now I'm trying to decide if it is worth hauling this thing down to the park when and if I ever get to do an astronomy outreach program there. We'll see.

Back in The Valley

We've been back in El Valle for a couple of weeks now and I have yet to haul out the little scope. I have been enjoying the near horizon views in the west at sundown and managed to snag Mercury several times, shining through the murk below Venus. Jupiter is nice in the east just after sundown. Need to keep better track of the ISS. Here is a photo I took at Sandcastle Days on South Padre Island right after we got here in October. We're headed back tomorrow for the SPIKE monthly kite fly.

More Garrad

After watching Garrad a couple more times from Sam A Baker park on 26 Sept etc, I decided to try again tonight with my 8".  I checked earlier with my 7x50's but could not see it.  The half moon was still up so I wasn't too concerned.  Later about 10:00 the moon was setting and I tried with the 8" dob.  After a bit of fiddling I managed to get it in the eyepiece.  It wasn't visible in the 9x50 finder but was plain in the 27mm ep.  It was about half way on a line between HD 347950 and HD 165866 with a short tail pointed easterly.  Very nice and comet-like.  Earlier I showed off the moons of Jupiter to our friends Jan and Steve and their friends CB and Joan from St. Louis.  That capped off a very nice day of music and wine at Peaceful Bend Winery and a campfire with brats and more beer/wine at the ranch.  There was a fellow singing and playing like John Hartford at the winery today.  Very very nice.

Comet Garradd on a chilly September night

I read in S&T's newsletter that comet C/2009 P1 Garradd was visible and high in Hercules in the evening so decided to try to find it tonight.  The sky was clear after a night or two of clouds but it was quite cold at 51° F.  I had to bundle up in my watch cap and insulated coveralls!  The comet was supposed to be between magnitude 6 and 7 so I just used my trusty 7x50's and a comfy deck chair.  Armed with a printout from CdC and S&T's finder chart, I started looking.  Mu, Xi, and Omi Her were naked eye visible and about a field width in my 7x50's so that made a good starting point.  Using those three as a sort of parabolic reflector, about two field widths away is a nice little 'house' asterism of 5-8 stars: 101, 102, 95, and 96 Her are the brightest of the group.  Another field width and 90° north is another bright pair: 106 and 109 Her.  I put this pair and 101/102 on the edge of the field and BINGO there was the comet almost dead center.  At first I thought something might be wrong as I was expecting something as bright as nearby HR6852 at 6th magnitude but instead the comet appeared as an elongated dim patch, dim but plainly visible particularly with averted vision.
If the weather holds out the next few days, it'll be interesting to see if the patch moves noticeably.  This is a similar view to one of my first comets back in the 70's while living on Pauline Ln in Rolla.  I compared that one to a dirty snowball.  Garradd appeared to be elongated so perhaps I'll haul out the 8" this weekend to see what it looks like with a bit more light gathering capability.  Should be fun.

SN 2011FE and a Geosync sat try

The moon and rain were gone finally so I thought I'd try to catch a glimpse of the supernova in M101 again.  I read an article in S&T online that said it was still mag 10 and easy to see so I went out about 8:30 with my 8" dob.  Oops, I forgot that the dipper and M101 were slipping behind the house to the west!  Fortunately it was still above the roof and the fog had not settled in so I got the dob pointed and BINGO there it was, south and a bit west of center of M101.  The galaxy was easier to see tonight than last time and SN 2011FE stood out like a sore thumb.  Not a bad sight for a star that's 23 million light years away!
I thought 'that was easy' and decided to swing around to M11 and try for a geosynchronous satellite.  An article in Oct S&T described how to find them but once again I wasn't able to spot one.  I found M11 ok and that put me at about -6 dec which is about where the Clark Belt should be but no cigar.  The fog was settling in so visibility wasn't good.  Maybe next time when it is clearer.
Jupiter was rising as I quit and made an eerie glow through the mist in the hollow. 

More Vesta and M101's supernova

M101 was just about to go behind my house tonight but it was very clear and dark, if a bit dewey tonight so I thought I'd try for the supernova that popped up the other day in M101. I finally got it in the eyepiece; for such a big thing it was a bit hard to find and I practically had to fall off the deck to see it above the house. It has a low surface brightness and is barely visible in my 8" dob with a 27mm ep. I got it, switched to a 10mm and noticed several flickering pinpoints of light in the body of M101. I saw one particularly bright, relatively speaking, just a bit north of the galactic center. That could have been it but I wouldn't care to bet on it! M101 was a nice sight anyway and well worth looking for again.
I next swung around to check out Vesta, with the 8" this time. I've been watching in binoculars, and at mag 6, Vesta is easy to pick out. It's getting close to Psi Cap. There is a little three star hockey stick between Psi and Omega Cap that is visible in my 7x50's and Vesta makes the 4th corner of a box with those three. It is noticeably brighter than the elbow of the stick diagonally opposite Vesta, not quite as bright as the end closer to Omega and brighter than the end closer to Psi. That puts it at about mag 6. I checked it out with my 27mm ep but Vesta really shown forth when I popped in the 10mm. It was smack in the middle of a pentagon of five 10th mag stars! Very pretty. One of the stars was a bit brighter and is in my CdC catalog identified as 9.98 mag SAO189710. Vesta is about the same angular distance from it as TYC6926-00302-1 is from its companion: about 2.5 arc minutes. If the sky stays clear, it'll be fun to watch it get closer to Psi Cap. It should be out of the pentagon in a few hours but I don't think I'll be up to watch. I'm kind of tired after dancing for 5 hours and walking all over tower grove park today!

Vesta and Ceres

After suffering through the heat and humidity of earlier August and a full moon to boot, tonight was finally great seeing. Temperature was in high 60's, no moon, clear and sharp skies. The milky way was visible all the way to Casseopia. I decided to check on Vesta which I've been watching before the moon got too bright, and also see if I could snag Ceres who is also in the neighborhood. Vesta was still pretty bright and has now moved over next to Psi Cap and it makes a nice group with Omega Cap although not nearly as bright as those two. It's about a magnitude 6 now.
Ceres was another matter. It's fairly dim and in an area I'm not that familiar with: Cetus. It's not far from Beta Cetus or Diphda the second frog. Now I wonder what is the 'first frog'? Diphda was easily visible peeking out from behind an oak tree but I decided to hop from Fomalhout instead since the stars seemed a bit brighter in that area. From Alpha PsA I went 'up' to a group of 3 stars about 2 binocular widths: 86, 89, and 88 PsA. From there, east about a half binocular width to 98, 99, 101 PsA and then over about a binocular width to a group of five stars making what I call 'the snake'. It looked like the head of a snake poking up out of the grass: 103, 104, 106, 107, 108 PsA. That was all pretty easy. Now it got a bit trickier. The snake is about a half field width in my 7x50's. If I center 108, 2Cet pops into view making about a 120 degree angle with the snake. If I center 2 Cet, 6 Cet pops into view almost in a direct line from 108 PsA. If I center 6 Cet, I get a little arc of three dim mag 7 stars with Ceres just below the arc. It's a bit dimmer at almost mag 8. 6 Cet, the little arc and a dim little three star 'hocky stick' form a line with Ceres just below the middle of the line about as far as the size of the arc.
I finished off the night by checking out Jupiter which was rising in the east. I could sometimes make out Ganeymede in the glare if I held the binocs against a post.

Sunspots are back!

I read yesterday that sunspots are back after a several year hiatus, so this morning I set up the ETX-70 with its solar filter and got a look at my first sunspot in quite awhile. It was tiny with a tail, like a tadpole. I believe this is sunspot 1263 that has been in the news the last few days and has caused some nice aurora activity in northern Minnesota and other northern states. It's at about 11:00 in the image shown here. I shot this with my Sony point-and-shoot held up to the eyepiece so the spot is a bit fuzzy. I was pleased to be able to see it at all! It was a good thing I looked when I did because a few minutes later, a big cloud covered the sun for most of the rest of the day.
The past few nights with the exception of last night, have been pretty good and I've enjoyed watching Vesta march its way across Capricorn. The moon is about at 1st quarter tonight and there were clouds by Capricorn. If conditions are right when the moon leaves us again, I'll have to check out Vesta and Ceres which is supposed to be in the neighborhood as well.

A Vesta Fiesta

The last few nights have been wonderful. We've had a record heat wave during the daytime but the nights have cooled off into the low 80's and with a light breeze and low humidity have been wonderful for viewing. Last night the milky way was gorgeous, and again tonight. I decided to try for Vesta since it is near opposition and bright. Capricorn was up nicely in the SE although it took a lot of back and forth with my pocket sky atlas and 7x50 binoculars to convince myself it was really Capricorn. By midnight, my eyes had become dark adapted enough to clearly make out the bat-wing shape of Capricornus without binoculars. Earlier, I had updated my asteroid elements and had plotted the position of Vesta with Ciel. Armed with that information and my pocket sky atlas I began to look for something that wasn't supposed to be there. Right now, the stars from Zet and 34 Cap to Eta Cap form a kind of upside down ice cream cone, with a single scoop formed from 33 and 35 on one side with three non-descript stars on the other. The apex of the cone is Zet Cap with one side formed by 27 and Phi Cap, and the other by Chi Cap and Vesta. The clincher was a small group of 4 stars in the atlas that look like an L, 7, or a checkmark. These are all mag 7 with no mag 5 or 6 stars nearby. Bright Vesta is right next to the middle star of the leg of the L (SAO190147), a mag 7 star that stands out nicely from brighter Vesta.
Vesta is the brightest asteroid and large with a diameter of 330 miles. The Dawn spacecraft began orbiting Vesta on July 16, 2011 and is sending back images. It will continue taking data around Vesta until July 2012 when it will leave orbit and head for the dwarf planet Ceres.

Hygeia verified

After a week of rain, lightning, and clouds of doom, we finally had a clear day today. Tonight was perfect with temp in the 70's, cloudless, moonless, and enough wind to keep the bugs away. It was a bit gusty at times but not bad. Saturn was particularly clear and well out of Leo now. I could clearly see Titan and Rhea and was so flabbergasted to see ANY moon of Saturn I didn't notice little Dione on the other side of Saturn. I'm not sure why I've never noticed Titan before except that perhaps it has always been hidden by Saturn's glare. It was very noticeable with my 10x ep. The goal of tonight though was to verify that I really did see Hygeia last Sunday. I looked at my former position and sure enough there was a missing 'star'. It was a bit harder to find this time since the power was off and CdC wasn't available. I used the finder in S&T and noticed that there seemed to be an extra 9th magnitude 'star' in the field near N28, a bright double between Alpha and Sigma Libra. It seemed to form an isosceles triangle with SAO183113 and SAO183119 with the former being the other base and the latter being the apex. CdC put it's position a bit further west but the orbital elements are a bit old.

Hygiea in Libra

Hygiea is a big black carbonaceous asteroid, currently in Libra. It's the fourth largest but has a very low albedo of 7% which means it only reflects 7 percent of the light from the sun. It currently in a favorable opposition and is about mag 9.2. I found it (I think) with my 8" dob just about 3° north of Sig Lib. At least there was a 9.2 mag object that shouldn't be near HR5620 according to CdC. If that is the case, Hygiea is a bit east of the position predicted by CdC, which is not unusual. In order to verify it, I'll have to take another look next time the sky is clear to see if anything has moved. That may take awhile. I think we've only had two clear nights this year! Today was a rare sunny day and we drove to St. Louis for some C1, C2 action with Daryl Lipscomb. Zigzags had 2 squares of C2 and three of C1 and Daryl called a fine dance.

Some ETX doubles in UMa

I can't believe it's been several months since my last observing session! Actually I've been out a couple of times since returning to Rolla in April. Once with the 8" dob to check out Saturn that is nice and high in the evening now, another time earlier this week to check out the four planets at dawn (I only saw two, Jupiter and Venus peeking through the murk before sunup), and once with my ETX70, only to find that the trip up from TX managed to break my focus knob 'fix' loose. I had to use some epoxy to re-glue the washer I used to patch the broken plastic. It worked nicely tonight and I re-acquainted myself with the procedure for entering custom objects. I selected a few binocular doubles from May's S&T. There was an almost half moon, clear, and about 78F, dry with no dew, and a bit windy. The moon cast enough light that the dimmer stars were washed out but I was able to see Polaris easily. I even managed to spot a dim 7.6 mag star between Mizar and its companion Alcor in UMa. A bright satellite passed by Mizar about 10:00pm. It was the first of three that were to pass through my FOV tonight. It's always nice to spot a satellite this way. D1 or Gamma and 11 UMi were the first stop after alignment. I thought they looked a lot like Mizar and Alcor. Next on my list was TT and 8 UMi. These are mag 6.8 stars that were barely visible in my 7x50's but clear in the ETX. I found this pair by GOTO Kocab. The pair I called D2 (lambda and 2 Draconis) looked blue and orange to me. The group I called D3 was a nice string of four stars that I thought all looked blue-white. The 'crouton' in UMa was too large for the ETX but I saw it easily in 7x50's. All in all, it was a pretty successful night.

M43 with a narrowband filter

I recently ordered an Orion narrowband filter which arrived during the waxing moon and clouds. Tonight was nice and clear so I had a chance to really try it out. I set up the ETX and centered M43 in Orion's sword and focused my 27mm EP. I next attached the filter and refocused. Voila! The sky was darker and the nebula was easier to see with higher contrast. The two bright stars embedded in the nebula were somewhat dimmed. Other than having to refocus the ETX which is a pain, the nebula filter looks like it will be very useful.