More sidewalk astronomy at the park

Everything finally converged and we had a great night for star gazing in the park. Roy R. led the night walk tonight and I set up the Orion and Celestron scopes up in the courtyard. It was crystal clear tonight so I was able to give both scopes a pretty good workout. I'm not yet familiar with the Celestron's hc so I was limited in what we could look at with it but found the moon, venus, and jupiter just fine with it. Alignment is a breeze and seems to be pretty accurate. I used the 'skyalign' mode that requires one to center three bright objects in the ep. The hc then figures out what they are and that's it. I used the moon, venus, and sirius which was visible about dusk. The hc did not list jupiter at first since it was near the zenith and out of reach by the scope. It moved enough by 7:45 that we were able to see it and three moons just fine. Europa and Io were actually aligned so all four were visible, it just looked like three. Calisto was particularly bright. Mare Crisium was an obvious feature on the moon. Wrinkle ridges in the mare were very apparent. I tightened up the 3" mount and it behaved much better. I was able to slew it around to both the Orion nebula and andromeda galaxy fairly quickly. I wasn't familiar enough with the Celestron hc to find anything except planets with it. I need to get out early saturday and play with it some more.
I had both scopes set up low in case young children showed up but everyone was older tonight. Older and better informed! We had some nice discussions on how far it was to venus etc, why the moon was in a different orientation here than in Minnesota, whether we were going to crash into the Andromeda galaxy, and how far were Jupiters moons from Jupiter (I didn't know that one).
Shirtsleeves were fine early but it was cool enough later for a long sleeve shirt. Two chairs worked out fine. Some viewers sat while looking but most just stooped over. Several had binoculars and used them.

First light at the park

After last night's debacle with Venus, tonight was a total success. Last night it finally cleared and I went out about 7:30 to catch a glimpse of Venus. I got the ETX all lined up, got Venus in the crosshairs and settled in for a good look. Just in time to see it disappear behind my neighbor's carport! Sigh.
Tonight was the regular night walk at the park. It wasn't clear, far from it, but I thought it might clear at dark like it did last night. So... I packed up my old kit bag and headed south. Melissa drew the short straw and led the party on their night walk while I got the scopes set up. I was optimistic and had both set up. Right on cue, Venus popped out about 6:30 followed shortly after by Jupiter. Oh boy! We're going to have fun. Five minutes later Venus and Jupiter both disappeared behind dark clouds. The clouds appeared just as the sun set and decided to stick around. Both Venus and Jupiter popped out periodically but never long enough to get the scope lined up. I gave up completely on the Celestron since there weren't any stars to line up on. The Orion 3" was at least agile enough to move into position when the opportunity presented. Jupiter was behaving badly and not only popped in and out of visibility, it was too high to reach with the alt-az mount, and the moons were all hiding. Eventually it got low enough to reach with the 3" and came out long enough to snag with the red dot finder. Once I got it centered and focused, all was well. I could see it almost 100% of the time, occasionally even spotting the 2 storm bands. Venus never did cooperate. About 7:30 the night walkers came in and I had a good time showing off Jupiter to about 12 park visitors, a nice mix of adults and kids. Note to self: drop the tripod a few inches and get a step stool for the little guys. Only the taller visitors were able to watch. Even with the clouds and no Galilean moons, everyone seemed pleased and wanted to come back later when it was clear. The night walk was successful too: screech owl, great horned, 3 coyotes, an armadillo, bats, and even a scorpion.
I need to spend some time with the Celestron to familiarize myself with its operation, even if its during daylight. I also need to tighten up the mount on the 3" orion. It's just too wobbly. The Celestron still needs a bolt for one of the tripod legs.
A good plan would be to set up the Celestron on some nice target like Jupiter and leave it, while using the 3" to quickly move to other targets of interest. The mount isn't a dob but it's not hard to move around.
All in all, not a bad night for 'first light'.

A Quadrantid - I think

The annual Quadrantid meteor shower was heralded for last night. It was nice and clear, the moon had set, not too cold (high 40's), no wind, so even though I had a sore throat coming on, I gathered up my stuff and went out back at 3:00 am to take a look for myself. I watched from 3:00 and gave up at 3:30: too cold and not enough meteors to hold my interest. That and I was afraid I'd aggravate that sore throat. It's better today though. I did see one fairly bright one. I'd guess it was at least magnitude 1, maybe even 0 or -1. The limiting magnitude was a bit less than 4. I could usually make out Upsilon Ursa Major which CdC pegs at 3.8 magnitude. Occasionally I even had difficulty with Delta UMa, where the handle meets the bowl. The quad I saw left a trail about as long as the dipper's handle and ran from about the general area of Canes Venatici to the edge of Leo, roughly NE to SW. I was watching in an area roughly 45 degrees in diameter, with loads of light pollution. The worst time was when my neighbor's motion light picked me up and lit up the white fence post just to my right like a beacon. That only lasted a few minutes and then I was back in my nice 'dark' viewing spot. I would have liked to have been out longer and might have if I had a good backyard lounge chair and a blanket. Perhaps if we are back in MO in April and the viewing conditions are good I'll try to catch another shower and try to document it even better.

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.