Frustration and a rare connection

Morning after

. . . an Observing Orgy Hey, I have fun observing and why waste "dark time" putting stuff away? I'll clean up later. Anyway - this is the way the Driftway Observing Deck really looks - not the way it looks when I usually photograph it. ;-) (Click to enlarge.)

Jump to comments on:

• Star Tracker chair
• Argo Navis problem
• LX90 Red Dot Finder
• Mars – 15 vs 8-inch
• M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) - 15-inch vs binoculars
• LX90 tracking for 6 hours
• Çolor in NGC2158?
• Saturn, Interbeing and deep awareness

Did I mention I barked at the Dog Star? It was only half in jest – half one of those involuntary, primitive utterances that can only come after a night alone with the universe – and yet, I learned something from it. You see, suddenly, I had a new vision of why coyotes – and others – howl at the moon. I think people have heard this as an expression of loneliness, of mourning – at least I’ve always assume that’s what it was – or more scientifically as a signal to others, or territorial claim. But I don’t think I was doing any of those things when I barked at Sirius, low in the southwest just peeking above my trees. I think I was saying “welcome back. It’s been a while since you’ve invaded my brain. Feels good to see you again. “

Sirius – brilliant, dazzling, Sirius is one of many familiar companions in the night and at bottom, I think my bark was a deep-felt expression, not of loneliness, but of belonging. A sense that this universe – whether wrapped in myths and all the humanity we can project on it, or existing in raw energy tickling our brain and tripping electro-chemical reactions – this is ours. And as I thought these thoughts my eyes swung to Saturn and I nearly winced in pain as photons rained down on me, reflected off this gigantic mirror – photons, outward bound from the sun that was now perhaps 10 degrees below the horizon to the east, were colliding with Saturn, high over my head, and coming back. And although they were traveling at the incredible speed of 186,200 miles a second, they were still taking nearly three hours to make this journey!

Beach chair/Star chair

Awe – rapt in awe – that’s what it’s all about. The rest of the night? All prelude to these magical moments with Sirius and Saturn – moments in my low-tech – and perhaps, best single astronomical purchase, my rotating beach chair. (Universal Astronomics sells this as “the Star Tracker Chair.” Ok – that’s good marketing lingo. It’s really a traditional aluminum, canvas and wood beach chair on a rotating base, that has three tilt positions. Bottom line, I’ve built my own rotating chairs and struggled with various alternative ideas of this sort – the Universal Astronomics product is the best solution by far that I’ve found and when I get a little extra cash I’m going to buy a second one just in case they stop selling them. It is simple, effective, and well made and I use it just about every observing session!) Here’s where I retreated with a warm cup of tea, a blanker – it was 36 degees – and tried a little canine caroling. (No – I didn’t howl – to hear any noise in that immense quiet was overwhelming, though, and my single, comic-book “ruff!” was more than enough.)

ArgoNavis geek talk

So about the prelude . . .

It began inauspiciously – well, extremely frustratingly. Hmmmm… another reason why I like the star chair – simple. What I began with was the complexity of both the Obsession 15 – the ArgoNavis, really – and the most poorly designed feature of the Meade LX90, the red dot finder. Mine was broken. But more on that in a minute. When you first turn on the ArgoNavis computer you are supposed to aim the scope straight up. Then you dial up the procedure called “fix alt ref.” (Yeah, the ArgoNavis language is super geeky, but you can get past that. It’s a good product.) I’m used to doing this, punching “enter,” getting an “ok” and moving on. The problem is when I did this, followed by careful alignment on two known stars, things simply didn’t work. In fact, the alignment on the second star would give me a readout that told me things were not going to work. And I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong. I got so desperate, I came in and read the instructions. Duh!

The computer display is supposed to read: “Alt Ref=90•” and I was sure mine was reading “Alt Ref=0•” – yep. Changed that and all was well. But mind you, I wrestled unsuccessfully for 30 minutes with this same problem the night before. It had appeared magically, so I was hoping it would go away in the same manner. No such luck. I had to actually think and work it through! Ah well.

My goal tonight was simple. Make sure everything that I have planned for the visit of my first group – seven New Bedford Webelo Scouts and their parents - to Driftway Observatory is going to work. One of my concerns is possibly overloading the single circuit that goes out to the backyard. I am running six strings of red Christmas lights (they form the boundaries to make sure kids don’t wander off in the dark yard), a red light in the domed observatory, and the telescope in the domed observatory. I honestly don’t have a clue how much current all this draws, so I wanted to see if it would blow a fuse – it didn’t.

Seeing red - dots

Then, of course, there was the business of checking out the plan to leave the 15-inch on M57 – the Ring Nebula – and the 8-inch on M27, a much larger planetary nebula. So having gotten the 15-inch working I went to do a two-star alignment on the LX90. Except for the irritatingly long automatic level procedure – you sit there and watch it work - this is simple. Well – it’s simple if you can find the two-stars. I was relying entirely on the red dot finder Meade had put on these scopes. I hate this device because it involves a large chunk of Plexiglas projecting from the top of the scope in such a way that it begs to be broken. I broke mine within the first week or so. I know someone else who broke theirs and ordered five replacements because they knew they were going to make a habit of breaking it! (This is one of those design features that looks cool in the ads, but is really stupid. I predict Meade will get tired of replacing them and we won’t see it on future scopes.)

In any event, I could not find my alignment stars, even with the 42mm wide field eyepiece in place in the scope. The automatic procedure puts you in the general vicinity of these stars, then you’re supposed to use the red dot finder to locate them, then center them in the eyepiece. Sounds complicated, but it really only takes a minute if things are working correctly. The problem is the red dot finder could not be made to bear any relationship to what was seen in the eyepiece. Then I discovered that the replacement plexiglas window Meade had sent was moving around at will – it’s will. Why? Because when I broke it the first time I apparently also broke the part that holds it steady. So I went scrounging around for an optical finder and ended up taking one from the LX200, a very similar scope. With that in place I finally got the LX90 lined up and working properly – but a three minute procedure had taken over an hour! That’s how I define frustrating.

Mars

However, this put me on track to do all the testing in preparation for the and everything went fine. By 10 pm I had had a good evening of observing concluding with a close look at Mars. On the 15-inch I used a high contrast filter. On the 8-inch I used a red filter. Frankly, Mars looked better, if anything, in the 8-inch. Maybe it was the filter. More likely, it was the seeing, which was poor-to-average. Still, the view was satisfying, though it boggles my mind that planetary observers can make out the details they write about and show in their sketches. I can’t. Steady air would help.

Andromeda Galaxy et al

Oh – before I went in I did have nice tour of M31, M33, M32 and M110 with the 15-inch. I then tried it in cyclops mode with both the 21mm Denk and the 42mm GSO SuperView on the Pleiades, M45. Bottom line – the Pleiades looks good in anything, but the 21mm would only show about half and the 42mm about two-thirds.

I then retreated to my beach chair and the 10X50 binoculars and guess what - I had the most satisfying views of the evening, leaning back in that chair and looking at the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. I just can’t get excited about this magnificent galaxy when seen in any large scope. But in the 10X50 binoculars, with it swimming directly overhead, I had a wonderful sense of its true size and shape.

In any event, I felt good as I went to bed and I felt good when I got up at 3:45 am. I took my time making a cup of tea, grabbed my field notebook, a couple of red flashlights, and headed out.

Right on track!

I had left the LX90 tracking Mars and amazingly, six hours later, it still had Mars well within the narrow field of a 10mm eyepiece. That’s good performance in my book. (I had turned off the 15-inch and put the computers away, so rather than set it up again, I used the LX90.

No color

I had a good half-hour meditation while swimming in the multiple starlight from my favorite open cluster, M35. Near the end of that meditation I swung over to NGC2158. But it was hard to see (first signs of twilight perhaps?) and I really wonder if it is at all possible to see color in this distant cluster. (Sue French, I believe, reports seeing it as yellow. Yeah – I see it as yellow now too, but maybe only because that’s what I think I should see. It’s so faint in the 8-inch I doubt I am seeing any color.)

It was now about 5 am and I decided to use the 15-inch in manual mode – that would take just two minutes to set up. I got a good look at Saturn (could see Cassini’s division, but not well – of course, I still had the high contrast filter in place, so that probably wasn’t a good idea. I took a quick look at M35, confirming that while it is wonderful in the 8-inch, it is spectacular in the 15. but too much twilight to do any serious viewing.

Saturn aware

And that lead me to the beach chair, a warm blanker, and my still warm cup of tea. And once more I got that wonderful feeling of waking up, having camped out under the stars. There is nothing in my experience that can compare with the deep sense of well being and belonging I get as I simply lie back and watch familiar constellations and stars slowly get gobbled up as we turn to greet our own star. And that’s when I saw Sirius and barked – and laughed at myself – and thought, more profoundly, that maybe there’s something to this barking business – a primitive feeling of connectiveness – interbeing - swept over me and continued as my eyes drifted to Saturn. That’s when I winced. This is more difficult to explain than the barking. But suddenly I understood just what I was looking at.

I could see the light from our star – still below the horizon – reaching for Saturn and I could see a small portion of that energy bouncing off the ringed planet and coming back to earth and connecting with my eyes and brain. Oh, I could say or write this anytime. The mechanics are obvious to anyone with a little knowledge of astronomy. But I mean I understood it – understood it deeply – and this is my real goal, the real reason I look at the stars at all. Astronomy isn’t what’s important. What’s important is awareness – and I live for these rare moments of deep awareness. Now if I can only find a way to share them. . . and well meaning as you may be, please don’t tell me I’m doing it here. I know I’m not coming close.