A lesson in context and framing

Lesson for me, that is, so I can better represent the universe to 8-year-olds. If you were wondering – ok, I know you weren’t – that’s what I was doing at 4 am this morning either huddled in the observatory, or standing in the yard, my feet in a few inches of snow. Not exactly cozy, but still amazingly peaceful and satisfying.

The most important thing I learned was the significance of framing for young folks – and perhaps all newbies. Let me back-up to last week when I had nine Cub Scouts and their parents out here for viewing a variety of things and as a grand finale I had them line up and each Scout take a good long look at the Orion Nebula through the 15-inch. When they looked in the eyepiece they saw something like this:

Well, tt was really more spectacular than that. Photos usually show a lot of color that we don’t see at the telescope, but what we do see is a lot of detail that the photos drown out through over-exposure. For example, in this case the photo has drowned out a little jewelbox of stars known as “the trapezium” that are burie right in the middle of the cloud. Well, actually, they are so hot they’ve blown a hole in the cloud so you can see them. Suffice it to say, most adults – and certainly any amateur astronomer – would be thrilled with this view of a region of our galaxy where stars are being born. But the Scouts simply did not see it. As Each sat down at the scope and drank in the view I asked them what they could see. There would be a pause, then invariably they would say “three stars in a row.” And several asked if that was Orion’s Belt because they had learned earlier how to find Orion with the naked eye.

You can’t see those three stars in the photo above , as I said, because they are drowned out by the over-exposed nebulosity around them. But here’s roughly how the Scouts saw the the three, plus the Trapezium:

The fact that they confused the three stars with Orion’s Belt said to me they had no concept of looking in the telescope yet. I try to provide this by including naked eye exercises, binocular viewing, and viewing with small telescopes in each program. But my first goof here was not providing that sort of build up specifically to this view in the 15-inch.

I should have had them find the faint fuzzy patch with their naked eye. I should have had them look at it in binoculars, and then maybe the telescope view would have made sense to them. They at least would have understood that those three little stars in a line were not Orion’s Belt, though they certainly look like the same stars. Of course, they are three much dimmer stars, not even visible as individual stars to the naked eye. If I continued to question the Scouts, they could also find the four stars of the Trapezium.

This would have been a better framing of the subject, i think:

But no matter what my prompting they did not see – they did not report seeing – the great cloud of gas and dust that filled the eyepiece and was the real reason for looking at this part of the sky. Why? I think it was the lack of context – not only in not building up to this scene with naked eye and binocular views, but in framing the final view too tightly.

At 4 am today I was looking at objects that are in the fall skies when Scouts are visiting at 7 pm and in particular, I took a look at M27, the Dumbell Nebula, and I recalled that this showpiece did not strike any fire with Scouts or their parents when I showed it to a different group last fall. Oh, they voiced amazement when I explain what these things are – but the amazement doesn’t come from what they see – it is from what they can’t see. There’s a huge disconnect between words – our knowledge of an object – and what we see in the telescope simply because the object is so far away and so completely beyond our common experience.

But that’s when I realized the significance of framing. I really wasn’t thinking abut the Scouts at that moment. I was just trying to look for myself and I had started with a 15mm Plossl – about 133X in the 8-inch LX90 and a relatively small field of view. What got interesting was when I switched to the 2-inch ClearVue 30mm eyepiece with a huge field of view. I had a 1.5X Barlow in the loop as well, so this gave me about 100X, but a much larger field of view then with the 15mm. The result is something like this:

I’m not sure if the photo does it justice, All I can tell you is that the cloud that is M27 really stands out when you look at it this way in the telescope, perhaps because it is so obviously different from anything else in the field of view. When you zoom in on it – and from a personal perspective the magnification shows far more detail – you lose context. Beginners need context. Maybe we all do. So next fall I hope I remember to show Scouts – any newcomer – M27 framed as you see it above.

My other lessons for the night were relatively minor ones.

What, I asked myself, looks really good in 80x20 binoculars. The answer was the Coathanger (no surprise) and M13 – something of a surprise. I at least think that looking at M13 first in 20X80 binoculars would be a good contextual step to viewing it in a telescope.

The 10X50 binos also did a nice job with the Coathanger, as well as Coma Bernice.

More difficult objects with the 20X80 – but satisfying if you’ve had some experience, are Albireo and M81/82, with M27 a possibility – again, as a context provider leading up to a view in a scope.

Generally speaking, though, I am not at all sure you can present faint fuzzies to beg8nners with much meaningful success. Yes, tell them what they are looking at and you’ll get amazed responses, but there are things I simply don’t think they see. For example, I was thrilled with my view this morning of M101 – but even for me everything but it’s core is ghostly. M51 was not ghostly at all – just plain thrilling – and maybe when directly overhead on a good night, it is good starting point for introducing people to distant galaxies. M104 – the famous “Sombreoro Galaxy” – is a tribute to the imagination of amateur astronomers. Ok, I can see the black lane running through it’s length. But honestly, I don’t look at this and say “oh – a sombrero!” and I doubt very much that a newbie would pick up on the dark lane at all – at least under my skies which this morning were a very nice 5.5, thank you.

Oh, and while on the subject of fantastic names, I keep trying to get M12 to live up to its name of the “Gumball Globular” because of the unusual range of colors in its stars. For the life of me I can’t see it that way, though I see color elsewhere in stars. I just see it as the ghost globular because when you go from M3, with its brilliant core to M12, you wonder if it has a core at all.

Words to remember – context and framing – I suspect they’re a key to helping people see the universe.

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