Stargazing by looking up - what a strange idea ;-)

Did you ever lie on your back in the warm grass of summer, or perhaps on the face of a dune, or maybe on the rock slab of a mountain, and look at the stars in wonder and amazement? Were you ever a child? of course you have. Such moments not only reflect our childhood as individuals, but also our childhood as a species, as the mythological figures that dot the sky silently testify.

My fondest memories are of nights filled with moments of innocent awe – and I think I've found a way to bring them back and extend them. The key is to use a refractor the way few people do today – straight through. That means no daigonal, so you point your eyes at the sky, not the ground. But there's more to it than that. I should hasten to add this isn’t new to me. I got on this track about a year ago – then got sidetracked – and only now am coming back. I spent about four hours out of the past 48 experimenting with this approach – two hours in 10 degree temperatures with wind chills I don’t want to calculate and I loved every minute of it – and a couple more hours in the balmy 25-degree – and no wind – temperatures we had last night.

But let me explain the essential equipment involved, because as I said, there's a lot more to making this work than simply discarding your diagonal mirror. I'm using:

(Click picture for larger image in separate window.)

An Orion ShortTube 80 - which is an F5 80mm refractor , and an Orion 80 ED - and F7.5 80mm refractor .

I remove the diagonal and replace it with an extension tube, otherwise no eyepiece will reach focus.

Power is kept low – 16X–to-80X – certainly higher than with binoculars, but lower than with a traditional mount, primarily because that's all the mount I'm using can handle.

The mount is a nice quality parallelogram mount with six degrees of motion. (This one was made for me by Charles Funk (lilc01f@peoplepc.com), but I aso really like the p-mounts made at Universal Astronomics.

The p-mount is on a permanent pier on my observing deck.

The final piece of equipment – and I regard all this as essential – is a revolving beach chair with a reclining back that I got from Universal Astromics. ( Called the "Star Tracker" chair, the last time I checked they had "temporarily discontinued" these. Too bad. I love 'em.)

This is not a cheap set-up. In fact, the least expensive item is the ShortTube 80 which you should be able to pick up used for around $100. The p-mount is about $250. The pier's another 100, and the beach chair is about $150. So my total package is about $600 - closer to $1000 if you use the 80 ED instead.

Ok – what do I like about this? When I look at the stars I want to look up. It's natural. It's intuitive, and it begins the process of freeing your mind from various earthly muck. I think it's kind of ironic that most of our scopes have us look either down (into a diagonal) or sideways, to see the sky.

Second, I like being comfortable. Not just lazy. Being comfortable is part of being focused and being focused is the key to letting your brain see the sky as well as your eye. So for me this all fits a pattern of more intensive observing – more deeply aware observing.

Third, your brain is an amazing thing. My left eye can be taking in Orion, Taurus, and environs at no magnification while my right eye has moved 40X closer and is taking in the many stars of M35, shining from a few thousand light years away, What astounds me is the way the brain can handle both images at once and make some sense out of them. Not complete sense. To see what really belongs to one eye or the other, you need to shut one while leaving the other open.

Finally, there is a natural sense of place. Right now I'm not using any finder. I'm tempted to add a laser – but I want to give it some time. I found that at low power I could easily find objects such as M81, 82 and M3 and even M51, Pointing, from this position, is both comfortable an intuitive and there a direct link between the "real" 1X sky and the magnified one. Using a finder form this position isn't that easy, either - though I think a red dot or Telrad might work OK, I'll experiment some more first.

Why not use binoculars – which is what these mounts are intended for?

First, consider points three and four above . . .

But on a less subjective basis, the scope is more versatile - and can deliver better images – than the typical binocular. (Yes, if money is no object you can get high quality binoculars that allow for changing eyepieces.) With the 80ED I not only can use several different powers, but I can use 2-inch eyepieces. The view with a 2-inch, 30-mm ClearVue (80 degree AFOV) is breath-taking, You're looking through a huge piece of glass and you’re taking in 3-degrees at 20X! I'm thinking of getting more 2-inch eyepieces, plus maybe a Barlow. (BTW – ClearVue has sadly gone out of business, but I believe this same eyepiece – or something very similar – is available from several sources,, including Agena Astro Products. )

What scopes are best for this approach? Short-focus refractors of the best quality you can afford. Why short focus?

Two reasons – First, they need to be light enough for the p-mount to support and short focus means shorter tube. Second, unless someone makes a really sturdy p-mount, you’re not going to use high power this way. I see this good from about 14X to 80X tops. I've used 120X, but it takes several seconds to settle down after each small adjustment and the image , of course, drifts out of the FOV pretty quickly. So 80X is a more realistic limit and in practical terms something like 20X, 40X, 60X is good.

So – in practical terms I've used the ShortTube 80. Images are acceptable and the weight is under four pounds – easy for the mount to handle. The ED 80 is significantly heavier at 5 pounds 11 ounces – and that's before a two-inch extension and eyepiece –quite heavy. But I found it worked. I attached it with a special adaptor for rings that Charles Funk made me. And boy,. it i animprovement.

What's in the future. I have bought a used 4-inch. It's a Clestron 102 F5 that weighs in at five pounds. Since I can handle the 80 ED I'm sure I can handle this. But . . . what will the optical quality be – ah, there's the rub. It's an achromatic and F5, so Im not expecting miracles – but I can hope.

If that doesn't work I have my eye on a similar scope – it's the OTA for the Celestron 102 SLT. At F6.3 I suspect it to be better, optically, than an F5 – how much better I don’t know and the trade off is it will weigh more. How much more? Don’t know. But I suspect it to come out near, at, or above the limit fo the mount.

My ideal scope? If the mount (and my wallet) could handle it I would put the 100 or 120 Orion ED on this with 2-inch eyepieces. But now we're talking 10 pounds 3 oz and 7 pounds - before eyepieces - and significant tube length that could be another factor on this mount used this way.

All a matter of trial and error at this point – and much fun it is.

When I put all this together – when I recline in my beach chair and pick a target. When I gently swing the scope my way until it meets my eye - well this all adds up to a replay of those halcyon childhood days and opens the door to a renewal of awe which for me is the holy grail of amateur astronomy.

Comments? (Send to gstone@umassd.edu)

On March 12, 2007 Tom Mote wrote:

g,

I have just now gone back and skimmed your "Stargazing by looking up - what a strange idea ;-)" Rapt in Awe paper. Before I read it in detail I have to comment on your adapter at the top of your pier. In the early eighties I had a dark site cabin and a Home Dome with a concrete pier. I really hate polar mounts but that was the only way I could mount my LX200. Gil Machin, an observer I have seen at TSP every year since 1985, and I discussed my problem and he put me in touch with a friend of his in the Kansas City metro area who he said could design and fabricate just about anything. After a short series of e-mail exchanges, a beautifully machined unit, quite similar to the one on your photo, came and I think the total cost, shipping and all, was less than $100. It sounds like you and I have even more in common than we had thought. :-D Also, your "Star Tracker" chair has a competitor in the "Couch Potato" chair which has become quite popular in the past several years. the Couch Potato is a Daisy Susan platform with a "pantograph" binocular rig mounted on it. You sit in a folding beach chair under/inside the pantograph and walk your chair around in azimuth while hand adjusting the binoculars in elevation. Works like a charm. Finally, my fondest memories of my childhood are those of my parents, my brothers and me lying on quilts in our back yard and looking at the stars. Back then, in the '30s and only 29 miles from Dallas, TX, you could see the Milky Way and a sky chock full of stars! Now, you can't see more than a dozen or so stars at one time within 40 or 50 miles of any metro area like Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, etc! Every year at TSP I hear a lot of swearing when newbies from various metro areas begin to notice the "clouds" drifting in from the east over the Davis Mountains! Of course, those "clouds" are the Milky Way and the newbies have never seen it before. I don't know whether to close with a " :'( ," " :-D " or a " >:o !"

Tom

On March 12, 2007 I responded:

Thanks for the comments Tom - I've just started adding comments to the Web site and it certainly makes it richer.

I came by my pier in much the same way - a friend, mark Gibson, built it for me 0 completely his idea - or his that he got elsewhere - I'm not sure. But not my idea. Makes it very adjustable - easy to level and easy to adapt to different scopes.

Interesting - is the "coach Potato" the one they're selling for about $2,000? (Recently written up in S&T?) If it is, I was fascinated until I saw the price - then I saw they recommended Canon IS binoculars which could add another $1,000! (I have Canon 15X45IS and love them, but . . . ) If it's something different I'd like to see more.

BTW - as near as I can tell from the added photos in the new addition, Leslie Peltier never heard of a diagonal and the roots of my arrangement are deep in the Merry-Go-Round observatory which always seemed an ideal set-up to m, but beyond my mechanical skills.

Additional comment on March 12 from Tom Mote:

Greg,

It doesn't look like I'll ever finish reading your "Stargazing by Looking Up" since I keep finding things like ". . .Third, your brain is an amazing thing. My left eye can be taking in Orion, Taurus, and environs at no magnification while my right eye has moved 40X closer and is taking in the many stars of M35, shining from a few thousand light years away, What astounds me is the way the brain can handle both images at once and make some sense out of them. Not complete sense. To see what really belongs to one eye or the other, you need to shut one while leaving the other open." to which I feel a need to respond. A former TSP attendee, Clyde Bone, was a very inventive observer and built a really exotic refractor telescope which used a Televue Genesis 100 mm APO refractor as a compound eyepiece. The really strange thing about his "kludge" was that it acted as its own finder in the sense that the center of the field was the low power view of the Genesis. The rest of the field was a much higher power image of whatever he was aimed at. I was never able to enjoy looking through his scope because [a] the two fields, i.e., high and low power, rotated in opposite directions and [b] my brain was not able to "handle both images at once and make some sense out of them."

Now, that having been said, I'll go back and try to finish reading your paper(s). . .
:-)
Tom

Hmmmm... and I responded:

Wouldn't have a clue how that could be done - I'm amazed it can be done at all. But I don't think it's the same thing as I'm doing because both images are being fed to one eye through the scope as I understand your description.. My left eye is taking in the normal field of view - including the telescope tube and mount - my right eye somewhat super imposes the view through the telescope on that. But after your initial shock, it isn't so bad - and it has the added advantage of being relaxing - that is, you're not straining your facial muscles closing one eye. And, of course, you could wear a patch. Haven't tried that yet with this arrangement.

Posted by Greg Stone at March 10, 2007 09:56 AM Comments? Please email me: gstone@umassd.edu