Astronomy

Had the ‘scope out again tonight for about 90 minutes but finished up with more questions than answers.  Went through StarAlign using Vega, Arcturus and Altair, which went well enough, would have gone even better if I hadn’t kicked one of the tripod legs whilst lining up Altair and had to start again.  The sky was still quite light when I started observing, played about with the polarising filter to see if it would cut down the glow a little but it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference.  Fired up Starry Night on the PC to see what was about in the area of sky that I could see and had it slew round to NGC6633 & NGC6341, also had it go to M13, The Hercules Cluster.  None of these commands seemed to put anything significant in the field of view, I’m sure I would have recognised M13 as something of note from the info in Starry Night but before getting the ‘scope to find it again, and for no apparent reason, it told me that I needed to go through the whole alignment procedure again?!  I declined this unexpected offer, broke it down and put it away for the night.  Maybe the batteries are on the way out, if so then I guess it’s been up for about 7-8 hours I will definitely need to get some rechargeable ones.

After three days of solid cloud I’ve realised I’ve made a rather stupid assumption, i.e. that the weather would conform to my observing requirements, particularly at the weekends.  I generally like this time of year, the changing landscape, the mists, the different smells in the air but just now it’s proving frustrating.  There is no doubt that there will be longer periods when the sky will be obscured and there is nothing for it but to get used to it and find other things to do.  One of them is checking the forecast, in addition to the BBC forecast this one seems to have been pretty good over the last few days;http://www.metcheck.com/under the ‘Hobbies’ section there is a specific astronomy forecast.  Maybe not too difficult to predict complete cloud cover though?  Looks like there may be a slight possibility of testing the solar filter tomorrow afternoon.  I also aim to be a little more proactive by checking websites and magazines for events and objects to go looking for over the coming month and draw up a tentative list but it looks like there’ll be more indoor activity than outdoor for the next few days.

Which is what it’s all about I guess.  Went to work on the wish list today on my visit to Green Witch, could have stayed there chatting with, or rather listening to, the guy who served me much longer than I did but came away with two items to do the jobs I wanted, but they were not the two items I had originally gone in for.  I was originally looking for a manufactured solar filter but came away with a sheet of Baader AstroSolar Safety Film and was advised that nowhere near full aperture is needed for viewing the sun.  The end cover for the telescope has an opening in it which is normally capped but can be used for solar viewing in conjunction with the film, either taping a piece over the inside opening or creating a cap to go over the opening on the outside.  I think I will do the former, keeping it very securely in place with black gaffer tape.  So that saved me £25, the manufactured version was going to be £39 and the sheet of film was £14, but this saving wasn’t to stay trousered very long.  I was going to get a bog standard lunar filter which would have simply reduced the transmission by a fixed value, £9, but was persuaded of the merits of a twin polarising filter which would allow the transmission to be varied down to a minimum 5% transmission, £33.  I’m told this allows better viewing of not just the moon but planetary objects and is useful when viewing objects against a blue sky background as it will make the sky appear bluer and increase contrast.  I hope to put this to the test but the weather forecast suggests it may not be anytime soon. Also spoke with the guy about something to go over the end of the ‘scope whilst observing as the end of the tube is open to the elements and any crud that may find it’s way in.  He told me that something could be made to go on the end but for it to be something worthwhile it would have to be optically correct, would still degrade performance and cost about £200!  I passed on that one and we talked about cleaning.  Distilled water, a drop of washing up liquid and very gently using something like a makeup brush, rinse with copious quantities of distilled water and if anything still looks to remain then use alcohol and BP cotton wool.  Unless conditions in which the scope is used are particularly windy and dusty this should only need to be undertaken every two years or so.  Unless, as happened to him, you get a moth in the tube!

Took out the ‘scope again tonight.  By the time the moon had crept around the end of the house it was still fairly light and so couldn’t do the alignment procedure and had to content myself with looking at the moon for a while, which was no bad thing but couldn’t use the lunar tracking facility available in the GOTO system.  Found out a few useful things; some of the paving slabs wobble and even the dog walking past is enough to set the ‘scope vibrating.  When it did get dark I went through the SkyAlign process and got it set up at the second attempt using the Moon, Vega and, I think, Altair.  Lined up the Moon in the 25mm eyepiece at about 9 o’clock and it’s been tracking ever since.  The Moon fills most of the field in the 25mm and after about 90 the track hadn’t appeared to wander at all.  When I swapped to the 9mm the moon was no longer centred but this was most likely due to due to me not quite getting the Moon centred in the 25mm at the outset.  Finding it difficult not to keep clattering the eyepiece, with or without specs on, with or without eye cup extended, which sets off a vibration which takes a few seconds to settle down each time.  Not got the filter yet but might be swinging by Green Witch tomorrow and if I do I will probably get both the lunar and solar filters.

http://www.greenwich-observatory.co.uk/index.html

I’m sure anyone with even a little knowledge of amateur astronomy may well think that I’m a little previous, after just one night’s observing, to be looking to make further purchases but that’s just me and after all it’s just a wish list, not a shopping list.  Yet. The 8 AA batteries were still going strong at the end of the evening but at £9+ for the set I’ll be looking to get some rechargeable batteries or pricing up the mains adapter if they get sucked dry in short order.  I need to look at the options for storing the ‘scope, can’t keep it in the box indefinitely.  I will probably get two holdalls, at least one of which will need to have lots of pockets for the many other bits and bobs.  Viewing the moon was great, but it was only a little over half moon and quite bright in the eyepiece so a lunar filter is the next addition to the list.  Talking of filters, a solar filter is next up.  The most interesting, visual, part of the OU course so far has been the part on the Sun with some really fascinating images in the databank supplied with the course material.  From the place where I got the ‘scope, a solar filter comes to £39, though you can purchase the film used in these filters and knock one together yourself I think I will be going for the manufactured version.  Next up will be a 2x Barlow Lens which will give me four magnification options with the two supplied 1.25” eyepieces, 26x, 52x, 72x & 144x. Should I want to do any photography with my little point and shoot camera I can get an adaptor to clamp it in place, using the external part of the barrel that accepts the eyepieces, and position it at the point my eye would be.  However I’m not too sure this would work too well as the camera doesn’t have TTL focussing and there is no manual focussing option so I will need to look further into this before making this purchase.  I could use my old Canon AE1 but part of the attraction of using digital would be that there are no consumables involved and the useless shots could be discarded with the only cost being time, not so with the AE1.  

So having got it all setup and darkness turning up pretty much as expected, it was time to start to find out if I had something that was going to be a useful tool in my inexperienced hands offering a somewhat larger window on the universe that the Mk. 1 eyeball or just an expensive dust collector, destined to spend an extensive amount of time in a cupboard.  This still remains largely unresolved after just one nights observing, which is no great surprise but I am less concerned than I was.  I thought long and hard before getting the scope due to the fact that anyone with access to the internet can go onto sites such as NASA or ESA and many others and view fabulous imagery of detail and spectacle that is not going to be matched by anything viewed in the eyepiece of a 5” telescope in my backyard, so was the view and the satisfaction of a little hands on stargazing more satisfying than sitting at the PC and trawling for images on the web?  So far the answer is a fairly resounding ‘yes’. So having setup the scope just outside the backdoor, after acquiring 8 AA batteries to drive the GOTO mount, I had a view of about a quarter of the sky, which I expected to be more than enough to go at on the first night as I live in an area with reasonably dark skies, although this particular direction is not the best, with a view to, generally, the southwest.  At the time of night I was out there, this part of the sky contained the moon and so there seemed little question where to start.  And it also started my list of things which I would like to have in addition to everything that came in the box.  It would have been quite a disappointment if the view of the moon had been anything less than spectacular, but notwithstanding our familiarity with it, the view didn’t let me down and even enticed the wife and children out to spend a little chilly time at the eyepiece.  I could have spent far longer looking at the moon but decided that it was time to get the GOTO system (SkyAlign as it’s called by Celestron) fired up and look elsewhere.  Part of the reason for getting this ‘scope was the GOTO system and the ease of setup that I had read about on various forums, but maybe I should have considered that these people who said that it worked first time may have had slightly more time observing and better knowledge of the night sky than I had.  There are a number of options for setup in SkyAlign but the one recommended is to line up on any three stars, or planets, they do not need to be identified, and allied to data input for date, time and location, a comparison to the database held in the system will tell it where it is and how the mount is aligned with sufficient accuracy that it can then automatically slew round to any other of the 4000+ database objects and put it in the eyepiece.  And this is exactly what happened, but not the first time, and not the fifth time, it probably took about ten attempts.  I’m not really sure what the problem was and so I may well encounter it again.  Maybe using the moon and not having it centred well enough was the problem, one of the other objects used was Deneb, I believe, but after that it was a series of much fainter objects for the third alignment.  Had a look at a few objects and, as indicated previously, with my knowledge of the night sky being limited I also got to look at the ground, the walls of the house and some trees in the distance as I told it to go objects that were not visible in the part of the sky I could observe or were not above the horizon!  By this time it was pretty late and I was cold, a couple of conditions that I will have to get used to, but it was time to put it away.  This was no more complicated than taking the OTA off the mount, taking out the eyepiece and replacing the blanking plate and detaching the handset controller.  This is where I found out I had nowhere more convenient to store it than back in the box it came in, this solution has not received a favourable response and leaves it far too accessible to pets and kids and others that I would prefer kept their distance from the kit in my absence.

I realised that the ‘scope was rather large and didn’t seem to have a tailor made place for storage and, after 24 hours thought, still doesn’t.  Oh dear.  Well that’s enough of the down and dirty, I’ll try to elevate a little from the mundane, in the full knowledge that I’ll have to return there soon enough.  If I can work the post properly an image of the principle of the optical tube assembly, as I believe it’s called, should appear somewhere in the vicinity and also of the NexStar130 SLT.

                               

The whole thing weighs in at about 12kg, with I guess between 7-8kg in the tripod and mount, and with the tripod and mount already assembled, went together, with a little ‘help’ from my son, very handily though we did mount the finderscope the wrong way round, not helped by the quick setup guide showing a different design of finderscope.  Added the 2” to 1.25” eyepiece adaptor and inserted the supplied 25mm eyepiece and mounted the OTA on the fork arm, extended the tripod legs and put the accessory tray in place.  All this was done inside and it now seemed time to get it out into the fresh air, minor problem here; the whole thing, tripod legs fully extended, won’t go out through the back door, engineering genius that I am, I managed to work around this.  So now we’re outside and it’s broad daylight, this is somewhat inconvenient but darkness wasn’t long away when the problem with the finderscope became apparent and was, fairly, quickly resolved, after all how many  changes can you make; this way, that way, there you go.  Tweaked the altitude and azimuth adjusters on the finderscope so that the projected red spot appeared in the centre of the coated piece of glass in the far end and we’re just about ready to go.

There was an interest in astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics and associated stuff, nothing practical beyond occasionally standing out in the cold on clear nights, looking up and thinking, well, not sure what I was thinking but always enjoyed the sight. Didn’t have a great deal of knowledge of the night sky, and still don’t, but I’m working on that. When I changed jobs a few years ago I found I had a lot of time which did not occupy my ears to a great extent and my brain, most of the time, to a similar degree. I have no regrets about the change of job but this was just the consequence of that change. Initially I spent this downtime listening to the radio, however it didn’t take too many phone-in programmes to make me realise that I really ought to be able to find something a little more fulfilling to take up the time. So I bought myself an MP3 player, and subsequently an iPod, and went out looking for podcasts. I found some great material on baseball from ESPN and MLB and a few others, on Ice Hockey, particularly Blueline HTR, some science and technology podcasts from BBC and Nature, amongst others, but the richest vein was in Astronomy where there seems to be some remarkable resources with offerings from NASA, ESA, ABC’s Star Stuff and a particular little nugget, podcasts of the lectures of Professor Richard Pogge of Ohio State University.

All this gave me a nudge to start a taster course with the Open University to see if I could get a little direction on what to look at whilst standing outside on these cold nights and more understanding of what it is that I’m looking at.

Which brings me to where I am now. Yesterday I went out and purchased a Celestron 130 SLT telescope, a 5” Newtonian reflector and most of what appears here will be a journal of my experiences using it, how great it is, how much it sucks, how incompetent I am using it, triumphs, failures, monumental screw ups and, in all likelihood, pleas for help.