Rapt in Awe

Saturn through a 66AT

The above image of Saturn - complete with Cassini Division (a difficult target now) and the shadow of the planet on the rings, was taken by Steen Weichel and sent to me today with the following note. I think it's a great illustration of what you can do with this little scope. (Use the search box on the right of this page to search on "66" and you'll find several reference to my own observation with the Astro-Tech 66.)

Hi,

Thanks for posting the review, very interesting. I got myself an AT66 at the NEAF in New York this year and thought I would share an image of Saturn I made with it. Notice that cassini is visible, i think its a very good little scope :).

Its stacks from a toucam processed with registax.

Best regards,

Steen Weichel

Ethos vs Hyperion

Well, I've had a couple of reasonably clear mornings to begin to appreciate the Ethos. My conclusion:

Put me on a lonely island with a dozen telescopes and one eyepiece and I want that eyepiece to be the 13mm Televue Ethos.

But give me five eyepieces, and I would choose 24, 13, 8, 5, and 3.5mm Hyperions from Baader Planetarium.

My point - the Ethos is wonderful and I will reach for it first in almost every situation. But the Hyperions are great and I could buy five of them for about the same - or at sale prices, less - than the $620 price tag of the Ethos.

I compared the 13mm Ethos with it's 100 degree apparent field of view and the 13mm Hyperion with its 68-degree apparent field of view in three different scopes - an 8-inch SCT (Meade LX90) , a 15-inch Obsession, and a 4-inch Orion 100ED. In each case the Ethos was better in contrast, edge-to-edge sharpness, and - of course - providing a sense of context with that large field. But did I actually see more detail with the Ethos? Maybe. The three objects that gave me this feeling were M11 ( Wild Duck Cluster), M27 (Dumbell) and the Double Double in Lyra.

In the Wild Duck Cluster I felt I could see a tight grouping of faint stars near its core better in the Ethos. But when it came down to actually trying to count them, I wasn't so sure that the Ethos was doing better. With M27 in the 8-inch i was sure I could make out the brightness difference of the two halves better with the Ethos. And with the Double Double - on two different mornings - I found it just on the edge being cleanly split with a 13mm eyepiece - one morning using the 8-inch and the next the 15-inch. Ibn both cases I could get a clean split on at least one of the pairs with the Ethos and I could not do this with the Hyperion - close, but no black sky! (In the 15-inch this morning both pairs split inthe Ethos - niether inthe Hyperion. )

But in all cases I had to look hard to see these differences.

Bottom line: I would purchase a set of Hyperions before buying the Ethos. (Actually, i think my choices would be the 24, 13, 5 and the 8-24 zoom.)

I certainly don't regret purchasing the Ethos. There's something to be said for going with the best and this is the best. I still need to see how well it does in the Barlow, but even without that as a fall back, it is a great, all-purpose, any-scope, eyepiece. But I could live without it. The Hyperions are nice, reasonably priced, alternatives and they've been my main eyepieces for the past year.

One complaint - the Ethps os heavy and with small scopes requires rebalancing when I switch to other eyepieces, such as the Hyperions - and the Hyperions are not exactly light weights.

The most important story of our life time . . . maybe

What's going on this month on Mars may, IMHO, prove to be the most important story of our lifetime. It's not getting the hype it deserves from the press, but that's no surprise. I've written about this before, but what got me started this time around was a wonderful story Don sent me on Percival Lowell, the man who a century ago was convinced there was intelligent life on Mars - and even got the staid Wall Street Journal agreeing with him. In fact, they thought there was "human" life there. They were a tad over-enthusiastic and about a century ahead of their time. ;-)

Anyway, the story Don was talking about can be read here. That story inspired Dom to respond from Australia:

Pity he shifted his observatory to Flagstaff -- that monster telescope, if still around, would be a magnificent sight. Of course, it real terms of viewing the universe, Driftway Observatory is a thousand times better.

And I responded:

Ahhhh . . .how I wish it were. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but Lowell has me beat. The 25-inch Clark is alive and well and is not only in use, but as with Driftway Observatory, Lowell's main function today is public outreach and they do far, far more than I have ever dreamed. The only advantage I have is mine is here and I can be using it on five minute's notice ;-) . In fact, for a mere $150 you can reserve Lowell Observatory for an hour and a half. See:
http://www.lowell.edu/outreach/hours.php

A 25-inch refractor will put anything I own to shame, and Arizona skies are darker and clearer, though I suspect civilization has encroached on this observatory and they may have a problem with light pollution.

But Lowell is one of the most fascinating of characters. This was an excellent account and I'm glad they tied it to the current mission which I think is not getting the attention it deserves. This really could be the breakthrough as far as discovering life elsewhere is concerned and if they do, this will be the most important event of our lives, for I think this question of life elsewhere is getting stickier and stickier. It used to be such a sure thing - with all those stars there must be life. But the more we learn the less sure it has become. We assumed such a discovery - in fact, an encounter of the third kid - was just a matter of time - but there is more and more evidence that life is rare and intelligent life exceedingly rare - all of that, however, could change with what happens on Mars in the coming weeks. They won't find intelligent life, of course, but hard evidence of any sort of life would be a major find. You can follow the mission at this Web site:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

Now that said, I was surprised that there was no mention in this article of Lowell's 1907 mission to Chile. Lowell didn't go personally, but he sponsored the mission by an Amherst astronomer who took an 18-inch (several tons) refractor there and set it up in the high dessert and came back with 13,000 photographs of Mars that were the talk of the day. The whole objective was to take advantage of an especially close approach of Mars from an ideal location. (no rain - the telescope was set up for months in the open - and very clear, very steady skies with Mars almost directly overhead. As perfect as you can get on earth.) We get to observe Mars closely for only a few months every two years and some approaches are much closer than others. Lowell sponsored this because he was sure the photographs would prove his visual observations were true and the Wall Street Journal, among others, felt he had succeeded. In 1907 that distinguished paper wrote that this was the most important story of the year 1907 - not the current financial panic, but " . . . the proof afforded by astronomical observations . . . conscious, intelligent, human life exists upon Mars." Visual observations from Chile, telegraphed to Lowell, had everyone in the expedition seeing the canals clearly and poor Lowell was chomping at th ebit for the photographs and in absolute ecstasy at these reports.

Today is you look at the tiny images - Mars measures just 5mm across on them - seeing evidence of life is like reading tea leaves. Those who thought the canals were real, such as Lowell, felt the photographs proved it. Others, with less-prejudiced eyes, could see no such evidence. (I've seen the images reproduced and they are wonderful, especially for the technology of the day, but I certainly can NOT see any sign of canals. )

This whole expedition was a sad cap to Lowell's Mars efforts. He battled with Todd, the leader of the expedition, over who owned the photographs which were actually taken by another person. After this effort Lowell shifted his emphasis to finding Planet X - Pluto - and after his death Pluto was indeed found by Lowell Observatory,as this article notes. I'm afraid, however, that it really does deserve it's demotion - it is real two bodies and they are two of many and Pluto isn't even the largest of such objects discovered. Still, it's interesting to note the emotional attachment people have for "lonely, little Pluto" as the ninth planet.

If you'll permit me a minor technical side note - Lowell came into this at the end of the age of giant refracting telescopes. The truth is, any refractor bigger than about 15-inches in diameter starts to seriously work against itself. The object of any telescope is to gather light - but as you make lenses larger and larger, you also have to make them thicker, or they can't hold their shape - and as you make them thicker, they absorb more and more of the light that passes through them. The largest ever built was 40-inches, but a reflector of the same size would significantly out perform it since the light doesn't pass through a reflector. My 15-inch is a reflector - add the video camera to it, and put it side-by-side with the Lowell 25-inch and I suspect my "little" scope would give the 25-inch monster a run for the money. But . . I love the idea of looking through that telescope. Just sitting behind something like that and looking up at the sky . . . well, it's almost exciting enough to get me to travel to Arizona ;-)

Building an eyepiece strategy on exit pupil and 'Ethos'

Well, not just exit pupil, but of the various numbers associated with eyepieces the exit pupil is a good way to set one limit. My new 'Ethos' arrived - the most expensive eyepiece I ever dreamed of purchasing - and that's what really got me to thinking about how to best use it in various scopes and developing a whole new strategy both for telescope use and mixing and matching eyepieces.

What I want in an eyepiece - and I suspect most of us want - is the widest field obtainable at the highest powers usable without sacrificing quality and that's where the Televue 'Ethos' comes in - it's a 13mm eyepiece with a 100-degree apparent field of view - unheard of in any eyepiece until it came out last year - and if the reviewers are correct, it maintains quality to the edges of this field and also provides great contrast. I can't wait to try it on the 15-inch Obsession and M51 is going to be my first target - just as soon as we get through the required week of rain and clouds ;-)

But I'm not complaining. The clouds have set me to reviewing my whole eyepiece situation and that has led me to evolving a sort of best strategy for using the various scopes I have, most of which were bought with public sessions in mind - but right now I'm in selfish mode. How can I use all these neat toys to my best advantage? Seriously - what I use frequently depends on mood, time available, my energy, seeing conditions at the moment, intended target and did I mention whim? Well - that's closely related to mood.

But as I started down the "best" eyepiece route I kept wandering off related side streets. Here's how it went.

First, having invested $620 in the 'Ethos,' how do I get the most out of it? Well, it will work on each of the scopes and here's what it delivers in terms of power and true field of view as approximated by the power divided into the apparent field of view.

Scope | power | true FOV
15-inch F4.5 | 130X | 46'
8-inch F10 | 154X | 39'
120mm F5 | 46X | 2�10'
100mm F9 | 69X | 1�27'
80mm F7.5 | 46X | 2�10'
66mm F6 } 31X | 3�14'

Next issue - how to double the power - and my solution is the 2X Televue 1.25-inch Barlow I already own. According to the instructions with the Ethos that will not vignette the fov - pleasant surprize there. I had assumed I needed to purchase a 2-inch "Big Barlow" for $200, or a PowerMate for $300. Not anxious to do either, so. . . again, according to the instructions with the 'Ethos' - this is the first eyepiece I ever owned that came with two pages of instructions - but according to these, this 2X Barlow will actually increase the power by a factor of 2.17X. So, my table of powers and fields now looks like this:

Scope | power | true FOV
15-inch F4.5 | 282X | 26'
8-inch F10 | 334X | 18'
120mm F5 | 100X | 1�
100mm F9 | 150X | 40'
80mm F7.5 | 100X | 1�
66mm F6 } 53X | 1�53'

Isn't this fun? But this is only the start. We haven't even touched the exit pupil business yet because it really isn't critical with the 13mm. The exit pupil there is well within bounds. It's with the wider field, low power eyepieces that I get concerned about it. What it boils down to is this. My old eyes can't handle any more than 5mm of exit pupil, I'm pretty sure, if they can handle that. This means for each scope you can calculate an extreme eyepiece size simply by working backwards from what delivers a 5mm exit pupil. Simply divide 5 into the objective diameter of the scope. So, for example, with the 15-inch scope you divide 5 into 375mm which gives you 75X - which is the lowest power I can use. What focal length eyepiece yields that power? Simply divide 75 into 1687, the focal length of the scope. The answer 22.5mm.

So the longest practical focal length in this case is a 22mm Nagler or if I want to stick with lower priced, existing eyepieces, a 21mm Hyperion. Should the 22mm Nagler be high on my list of potential purchases? They sell for $480. On the 15-inch that would yield 77X and a true field of 1�4'. Hmmm... is the extra fov worth the price? The trade offs here are the Nagler gives a 46' fov at 130X, vs 18' more at 77X. On this scope the prime targets are deep sky and the extra power is frequently important, so let's see what the comparative fields look like on a typical object, such as M35.

Aha! What's clear from this is the 22mm Nagler is worth it. Why? Because I not only like how the extra field frames M35, giving you a sense of context, but more importantly it brings NGC 2158 into the picture and I love being able to point out these two simultaneously to people because they are both open clusters of roughly the same size, but NGC 2158 is about five times further away. And what does this say about the Hyperion 21? Well, it's only a slight improvement on the Ethos in terms of field, but the Ethos will deliver almost the same field with significantly higher power, so the 21mm may end up on Astromart.

Now, having jumped to that conclusion, I would not dream of buying the 22mm Nagler without first trying the 21mm Hyperion and the Ethos together because what the Starry Nights simulation does not show you is the difference in power. The Ethos will deliver almost the same fov at 130X as the 21mm Hyperion gives at 80X. i think that's going to be a significant difference that will have to be weighed against the still larger fov - but at 77X - of the 22mm Nagler. And yes, the 22mm Nagler will include NGC 2158 when M35 is in the center of the field of view - but, the 13mm can capture both at once at higher power if you move M35 over to one edge. Bottom line - this is the sort of thing you need to play with - and, of course, i wouldn't make a decision on a single example. But I think it's a good illustration of the pros and cons and complexities of the eyepiece choices.

But to see where exit pupil really makes a difference we need to consider a second example - how this all plays out in the 8-inch SCT. Setting a maximum exit pupil of 5mm on this scope looks quite different. At 200mm a 5mm exit pupil results from a power of 40X. With a focal length of 2000 mm that sets an upper limit for the focal length of a low-power eyepiece of 50mm. Balancing this against apparent field of view of the various eyepiece designs - and price - I came up with a 35mm Panoptic as the best solution. My big assumption here is that Televue deserves its reputation for quality and that others can't match it. But I'm not entirely sure about this. I have an inexpensive ClearVue 30mm eyepiece with an 80 degree apparent field of view.

Oh this is interesting! The 30mm ClearVue (which I think I paid $80 for and is quite nice) gives me the same fov for all practical purposes - and at a higher power (67X vs. 57X) - than the 35mm Panoptic which sells for $380! Of course, I could get a significantly larger field - but at still lower power (49X)- by using a 41mm Panoptic. Of course the 41mm Panoptic is almost in the same cost category ($510) as the Ethos! Hey, I think I'm saving myself some money here! (Wonder if there is an inexpensive - but good - 22mm eyepiece with an 80-degree afov? )

OK - so where we stand now is that the Ethos with 2X Barlow makes a great eyepiece for the 15-inch and 8-inch. That it may be worth it to get the 22mm Nagler, particularly for the 15-inch, but that the 30mm ClearVue is a fine low-power/wide field choice for the 8-inch SCT. Why not use the 30mm ClearVue on the 15-inch? I do sometimes when desperate - but this runs right up against the exit pupil problem. This combination yields an exit pupil close to 7mm and that is wasted on my eye. (Should work for a healthier, much younger person, however.)

It was at this point I began to wonder that if I was heading in the wrong direction entirely by looking at more eyepieces as the solution to nice, low-power view. I got hooked on this idea of wide fields of view decades ago, but now that they are within my reach (financially) and there are several excellent new technical solutions as well - well, I'm not at all sure the super wide fields - at low power - are nearly as desirable as I once thought. What's more, they're easily within reach by piggy-backing small refractors onto the larger scopes. So. . .

Part of the new strategy is to put the 66mm ED (AstroTech) on the LX90 Meade. This works as long as I don't put large eyepieces in both scopes at once - do that and it's hard to balance. But the 66mm would make a wonderful, richest field and finder combination on the LX90. Using it strictly as a finder, a 40mm Plossl would give me a 5-degree fov. With the 12.8 mm lighted reticle it still gives 31X and a 1�36' fov. And if I want a super view of something like the Pleiades or the Double Cluster in Perseus, why then I'll put the 13mm 'Ethos' in it - that yields 31X and a 3�14' fov! Think of using that on the Double Cluster, then zooming in by switching the 'Ethos' to the 8-inch and getting 154X and a 39' fov. Makes me drool! Go away clouds!

What about the 15-inch? I'm sure the same combo would work fine. But I may be able to buck up the piggy back scope to the 80 ED. I'll check on the Obsession online forum to see if someone has tried that - not sure the 15-inch can handle it, though I'm sure it's no problem for the ServoCat. If the 80 ED doesn't work there I think it has been driven to AstroMart by the less expensive 120mm ST achromatic. The reason is the greater light grasp of the 120mm - and I still have the 100mm ED as a great solution for planets and double stars.

In fact this last pair - the 120mm and the 100mm should make perfect mates on the Desert Sky Astro Products dual mount I've ordered. On one side you have the 120mm yielding a 4� fov at 20X with the 30mm ClearVue, and on the other you can have a 9mm TMB Planetary giving 100X in a 36' fov. The 120mm is great for richest field work, but doesn't do well on the planets and moon. But that's just where's the 100mm excels, and both could do a fine job on most doubles.

Hmmm. . . now what's the best way to get high power out of the 100mm ED? Well, since it is on a "push-to" mount all the time - not unlike a Dobsonian - then the wider the fov, the better. That says use the 'Ethos.' At 13mm you get 69X in a 1�27' fov. Put in the 2X Barlow and you have 150X and a 40' fov. To give you an idea what that means, a 6mm TMB would give 150X as well - but a fov of 24' . What's that mean when you're viewing Saturn, for example? Well with the 13mm Barlowed to 150X it will take Saturn about 2.5 minutes - real time - to cross the fov. It would be less than a minute and half for it to pass across the 6mm TMB fov. Bottom line - you will get a much better look before you have to move - and thus jiggle - the scope if you're using the 'Ethos' with a Barlow.

Can you go higher? How about a 3X Barlow? Televue makes one and these don't break the bank - just $110. So - the 3X with the 'Ethos' actually yields 3.25X, reducing the 13mm 'Ethos' to the equivalent of a 4mm. That's 225X and a 27' fov. Not too shabby. But you would need a really good night to benefit from it. On most nights the highest power you could use in the 100mm is 200X, (50X per inch). So would 3X Barlow be worth the $110 investment? maybe. In the 120mm it would give just 150X, well within it's maximum and useful on double stars and such, More importantly, on the 15-inch it would yield 422X and that would be worth trying on an exceptional night. But that's the key. To get the most out of the 3X Barlow I would need an exceptional night.

Oh - and Televue has just announced an 8mm 'Ethos." Is that in my future? I doubt it. What might be in my future is another 13mm Ethos. I mean think of using them both in the Denkmeir binoviewer with the Power Switch that gives me three different powers? Wow! Let's see . . .

(Note to newbies - it wasn't always this way. I've been observing half a century and a good deal of that time my largest scope was a 6-inch Criterion Dynascope and I had three eyepieces - two achromatic Ramsdens and one pricey ($12, I think) orthoscopic. They had apparent fields of roughly 40 degrees , little eye relief, and gave the general feeling that you were looking into a straw. But I did eventually get one fancy, low-power, wide-field eyepiece - a 40mm Kellner.)

Comments

What you didn't mention is the increased contrast you get with higher
magnification while maintaining the equivalent fov. This is perhaps the
biggest factor of all.

Pete

Seeing Red! UX Draco

May 1,2008 - 4 am - T5, S3 8-inch LX90

Take your average nuclear explosion, mix in a lot of carbon to absorb the blue light, and what you get is one unequivocally red star.

The one I was looking at this morning is called UX Draco and it's a rarity as stars go. Oh, there are several well known stars that are described as "red." Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, and Antares all come quickly to mind. But if we're honest about what we see when we look at these, we should describe them as "orange," ot maybe "reddish," and we shouldn't say that they were "colored" orange, we would say they have an orange "tint."

Truth is, this business of star color can be quite frustrating, especially for beginners - but I know veteran observers - very good, veteran observers - who say they just don't see the colors that others report. And even when I show people a very "colorful" close pair, such as Iota Cancri, and ask them the color of the two stars without any prejudicial advice in advance, perhaps one in three, will report the stars by their textbook description as "blue and yellow." What's more, read any reports of the observations of double stars by veteran observers and you will get all sorts of colorful descriptions of the same two or three stars - descriptions that frequently do not agree with one another.

In my early days of observing I simply could not see the color in stars, except when confronted with an exceptional pair, such as the popular "blue and gold" Albireo. In those days I was a pretty careful observer, sending in variable star reports to the AAVSO where I had estimated the brightness of a long-period variable to within one tenth of a magnitude. Such stars are almost always "red," but I seldom saw them that way. Generally, I just took star colors as wildly imaginative.

Now I feel differently. Now I can't look at Arcturis in the scope without thinking immediately of how beautifully orange it is, and to my naked eye Spica always jumps out as the iciest of blue. Interesting choice of adjectives, I know, since it's rich blue color reveals it as an exceptionally hot star - not icy. But hey, I'm human and in my human experience I think of blue as being cold. But then, in my role as a somewhat normal human I think of stars as tiny little lights - not as roaring, tumultuous, hydrogen bombs in continuous explosion, though that's what they are.

The difference isn't accidental. I didn't suddenly go from being color blind to color sensitive. Nothing to do with age, or equipment, or seeing conditions, though all these play a role, I'm sure, in how we see color. What it has to do with is about five years ago I simply made up my mind I was going to study examples of bright, colored stars - both naked eye and in the telescope. That's when I started to understand that "color" really isn't the proper word to describe what I saw - :"tint" was. The problem is, color differences are indeed subtle and can be exaggerated, or otherwise compromised, when two stars are very close together, such as a telescopic double. But once you become accustomed to noting color differences, you find it hard to believe others don't see them. To me, every time I look at bright, colored stars, their colors now scream at me. Arcturus is Orange - Antares I think I would call red, but just. Betelegeuse and Aldebaran are more orange than red. Rigel is blue and Sirius blue/white, while Capella has an unmistakeable yellow tint. Vega is more blue than white, but certainly not as blue as Spica. Feel free to disagree, of course, but I'm just telling you how I see these now and how I can understand when people give them brilliant color labels that are exagerated - in the end they are tints to me and if I were to paint them I would use pastels or water colors - and with great restraint.

Hmmm. . . come to think of it, maybe that's the difference between my perception of star color in my early days of observing and my perception now. In the interim i had taken up painting and most of my painting was done with pastels and when you have a case of a couple hundred pastels you begin to appreciate the subtleties of different tints. To do the stars I would choose one yellow, one blue, one red - all from among the palest of the groups.

Except when I was trying to capture a carbon star - then I would take deep red, going towards brown but with bits of orange sparks flying from it.

UX Draco and, I suspect, similar "carbon" stars are the exception to the "tint" rule., They are red, not simply to my subjective view, but to the the more objective view of the spectroscope and camera. But don't take my word for it, try it for yourself - and if you do, I'd love to hear your report and I'll add it to this posting. Just email me at gstone@umassd.edu.

There are other carbon stars such as UX Draco, but what I like about this one is it's only 13 degrees from Polaris, so most people should be able to see it year-round. There is a wildcard in this otherwise stacked deck, however - UX is also a variable, changing magnitude from 5.9 - 7.1 over about six months. Does it also change in redness? Apparently. How much, I don't know, nor do I know whether it's redder when at its brigtest or faintest. What I can tell you is when I looked at it about 4 am today I instantly knew which star it was, even though my field of view was quite large and there were several stars in it. UX simply jumped out as the one odd ball in the group. Everything else was distinctly blue or white - it was -well, red.

It was the "Celestial Sampler" of Sue French that got me started on UX Draconis. She featured it in her article on Draco, and that's where I got its color index and variability range.

Here's a couple of finder charts from Starry Nights. Since it's circumpolar, just twirl the large-scale chart around until the Little Dipper matches the orientation of the moment. That circle is 5-degrees, a good binocular field. (Hmm... have to look for this with binoculars.) The second chart has a much smaller circle - about one degree - and I did it in black and white so as not to indicate too strongly which one is UX. When I first saw it, it was not near the center of my field, but it did leap out as different. See if that happens with you.

BTW - want more objective indicator of color?. Consider the "color index" that astronomers use for stars. It goes roughly like this:

-0.33 O5 Blue
-0.17 B5 Blue-white
0.15 A5 White with bluish tinge
0.44 F5 Yellow-White
0.68 G5 Yellow
1.15 K5 Orange
1.64 M5 Red

The middle letter/number is spectral type. Our Sun is yellow with a color index of 0.65. Spica is off the blue end of the above chart with a color index of -0.13. Antares goes off the chart on the red end with an index of 1.8. And UX is really out there on the red side with an index of 2.7.

So if you're seeing red when you look at UX Draconis, it's not your imagination - this one really is red.

Silence under the Stars: Connecting with the Universe

"Silence under the Stars:Connecting with the Universe" is a new program of free, public observing at Driftway Observatory introduces two changes in the way we approach the universe. First, we will start each observing period with a period of silent meditation. Second, as we observe and learn about objects, we will strive to understand how these objects we observe relate to our past, present, and future.

Who is this for? Anyone wishing to learn more about the night sky. (An adult must accompany each child.)
What will we do? Observe the stars and other objects in the night sky using our eyes, binoculars, and the various telescopes at Driftway Observatory, including the 15-inch Obsession. Typical session will last from one-to-two hours.
Where will this be? Driftway Observatory is a private, backyard observatory, located at 41:33:16 N, 71:04:15 W, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Virgo Super Cluster, this Universe (On some occasions we will observe from Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary � which except for slightly different coordinates, has the same address.)
When: On most clear nights beginning as soon after sunset as practical � usually about one hour.
How do we learn of these sessions: Observing is dependent on weather and email notifications go out about 12 hours in advance of a session. So your first step is to join our email notification list by sending email to gstone@umassd.edu requesting to be put on the �Silence under the Stars� notification list. When invited by email to an observing session that night, reply ASAP indicating your intention to attend. Attendance will be limited to a first-come, first-served basis. Specific directions will follow by email.
How often can I join these sessions? � As frequently as you like. There is an inexhaustible supply of universe to discover ;-)

I call these programs �silence under the stars� because each program will begin with all participants sitting under the stars in meditative silence for 10 minutes. What follows will include observing where the subject matter will be driven simply by what�s available on that particular night and at that particular time. This will be something more than a guided tour, however, for the universe isn't something simply "out there." It is something intimately related to the formation of life on earth and we will examine these objects with those connections in mind. While this will be something less than a systematic observing class, if participants strive to make one program each month, at the end of a year they should be well-versed in the night sky. The observing at the telescopes will not be silent. But, a portion of the Observing Green will be set aside as a silent sanctuary - an area where participants can retreat to if they would like to resume the silent, meditative approach.

During each program we will observe a variety of astronomical objects, near and far. But what is critical is the frame of mind in which we approach these observing opportunities. That�s the reason for beginning in meditative silence. That's the reason for exploring the connection of these objects to us.

The silence begins by everyone taking a seat on the Observing Green. Our objective is simple: Quiet our �monkey brain� � which means for each of us to pause and let all the normal cares of the day from political to personal � seep away, and focus on the cosmos � the universe above and around us.

If this feels a little bit like going to church, so be it. But my aim is not to promote any particular religious ideas. It's merely for us to be focused so we can see the story that nature tells. I take my cue from one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Albert Einstein, who said so eloquently: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

I want to be alive, with eyes wide open, when I go to the telescope � and I want live people with eyes wide open sharing the telescopes with me, and that means we all must be able to �pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe.� That is what this opening 10 minutes of silence is about. It is a time to tune ourselves - to prepare ourselves to experience the mysterious. And while on one level what we will experience � the planets, the stars, nebulae and galaxies � is no longer mysterious, on a much deeper level it remains well beyond our common reach. Yet, here we are, connecting directly with it. Look at the tiniest speck of light in the sky � the dimmest of stars � and you are directly experiencing forces that defy our wildest imagination � incredible nuclear explosions, contained by the gentle, yet all pervasive force of gravity. And those forces are essential to our very existence.

You also are stepping back in time, looking not merely at dots of lights, but at a distant timescape where each dot represents a different point in history, for those very real photons � that energy from those continuous nuclear explosions � has been traveling our way for years, sometimes centuries � and some of the things we can see, even with simple backyard telescopes, sent their light on its journey to us at a time when dinosaurs walked on the very spot where we now sit.

We cannot begin to understand all that, except in the most superficial way. But we can talk about it, we can observe it, and we can experience it. It is this last � the actual, real-time experience � that these observing programs at Driftway Observatory are all about. This is why I do them, this is why I invite you to participate, and this is why I ask that we all do our best to approach them in silence and in awe � awe for the universe itself where all of us can connect. We all are made of star dust � the stars above us, still reaching out to us with their photons, are also our heritage. In these skies, in stars such as these, every atom that fills our body and makes us so special, so different from anything else we know in the universe - was forged.

Like gravity, the weakest of the four fundamental forces of nature, as individuals we are very weak. But like gravity, in our collective wisdom spread over time, we may well be one of the most significant forces in the universe, for we are the universe becoming aware of itself � we are the conscious universe.

So please � when you come here at night � make a special effort to reconnect with your most distant ancestors, your birthright, and your future � the stars. And please, begin that effort in meditative silence, bringing your mind and entire being to a sharper focus.

While I have half a century experience of looking at the stars and so can serve as a sort of guide and coach, I am not an astronomer. Vincent van Gogh summed up my feelings when he said:

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream."

Greg Stone
Driftway Observatory
Julian Day: 2454650.58358

More observations with 120ST and "Contellation View"

April 3, 2008 - 3:15 am - 5:30 am - T4-5, S3

This was a wonderful, refreshing session, though cold got to my hands once ina while. What I did most of the time was play with the Orion 120ST and compare it, once in a while, with the 100ED. No shocks. Bottom line is this: The 120ST is a nice scope and lots of fun to use on galaxies, nebulae, open clusters and the like. It starts to break down when it comes to challenging doubles, and there's no doubt it puts a purple halo around bright stars and the so-called "fringe killer" can maybe cut this in half, but won't eliminate it. The 100 ED excels, as expected, on double stars, planets, and the moon. Hardly a hint of a purple halo on Vega.

I also did some more testing of the "Constellation View " binoculars. Conclusions: They do, indeed, show me how others see the Milky Way under clear skies with no light pollution. They also help put things into perspective. For example, they capture the entire region from Albireo to Altair, so you can see the relationships among these two stars, Saggita, the Coathanger, and M27 - though I could not detect M27. In a funny way, it makes that whole area seem smaller!

BUT. . . the 5X25 Xtra wides from Bushnell do almost as well. They capture the area from Albireo to Saggita and DO show the Coathanger easily - had to work to see it in 2.3X40s - and I felt I could see - detect - M27. Bottom line - the 2.3X40s are fun, but I would most likely reach for the 5X25 when on a "scouting mission" to, for example, get clearly in mind the location of M11.

More specifics:

M84-86 - When I started this session the Virgo Cluster was still reasonably high in the west. I could find M84 easily, but had trouble when I changed eyepieces. Took me a while to figure out that the balance was off and the scope on the Voyager count was front heavy so that when I removed an eyepiece, the objective end fell slowly, changing the pointing. Put in another eyepiece and I was completely lost.

Balancing corrected I found it wasy to locate M84/86, the eyes (NGC4435 and NGC 4438), and two more galaxies in Markarian's Chain. I suspect these last two were NGC 4473 and 4477, judging from positon and brightness. Not bad for a 120mm operating at 25X and 46X - especiallys ince at thi spoint they were only about 37 degrees high. (If I had caught them near midnight they would have beenc lose to 61 degrees high, a significant difference.

Winter wear

Notes to myself -

At 32 and below I need chemical toe warmers and handwarmers to be comfortable, plus silk glove libers and heated vest. I need hat on top of balaclava plus scarf

At 32 - 50 - Silk glove liners are enough - heated vest is optional, but a hoodie plus winter coat can do the trick. wool hat alone works. Scarf optional.

First impressions - Orion Short Tube 120 refractor

April 2, 2008 - 4:20 am - 6:35 am - 43 degrees, very windy, transparency excellent, seeing average

Good.

I don't dare say a lot more, except in terms of specific observations and general principles, simply because I've come not to trust my first impressions. But let's look first at the goal.

The question I'm trying to answer for myself - and, perhaps, others - is which would be a better choice - inexpensive, huge binoculars? Or a short-focus refractor? For example, Garrett Optical sells a 28X110 - their largest offering at this time - for $650. If it's anything like other binoculars in this price range it does a credible job at the low power it is using - but, of course, it would be far from being an apochromatic.

I suspect it's performance is rougly comparable to that of a short focus achromatic refractor. To that end, I purchased an Orion 120mm ST F5 refractor. So what am I giving up by going this route?

1. Binocular vision.

* more light grasp with two eyes - I woulod say that 110mm is at least the equal of the 120mm in light grasp and probably a bit better.

* The relaxation and just plain naturalness that comes from using two eyes instead of one. We were designed this way.

It's this last that is the key. For some people there is no subsitute for bninocular vision. I thought that for amany months - maybe more than a year. But I slowly slipped away from it and I don't miss it. There are some substantive arguments for binocular vision and I appreciate them, but there is also a huge subjective one that comes down to personal choice.

So monocular vs binocular vision aside, what advantage do you get by going the refractor route?

1. Less expensive. A 120ST with good quality diagonal, and a single, quality eyepiece costs less than $500. A good mount and tripod costs about $300. With the binocular the cost is $650 plus, conservatively, $500 for mount and tripod.

2. Magnification. Low power views are great. The 28X110 gets an advertised field of 2.3 degrees. Using a 24mm Hyperion with a 68 AFOV, the 120 ST should give 25X and a 2.7 degree field of view. (I need to check the fov - my memory fromt his morning says it is not that large, but I didn't evaluate this aspect carefully.) Given the lower power of the 120ST, I'd say that's roughly even. BUT. . . with the 120ST I can crank up the power. This morning I used 46x, 75x, 120x, and 171X.

So essentially you're trading off the advantage of binocular vision against the advantage of using any eyepiece and a wide range of powers. I think the 171X is probably the top end. seeing was not great this morning in high wind, but I still was able to split the Double Double at 120X and it still looked good at 171X. I didn't try the low end. I have a 30mm ClearVue with an 80 degree AFOV. That should yield 20X and a four degree field of view - huge. But it also means an exit pupil of 6mm and while not unreasonable, that's a bit much for my old eyes - I suspect when dark adapted I have a 5mm exit pupil and so this would effectively become an 100mm refractor - or less - at that power.

Of course, I could also use a binoviewer with it - but that too cuts the light grasp. Trade-offs, trade-offs, trade-offs!

What it all boils down to is the advantage of using two eyes rather than one, versus, the advantage of using multiple eyespieces and powers. (Yes, you can now purchase large binoculars with interchangeable eyepieces, but then you're spending money on two eyepieces for each power instead of one - the bottom financial line gets way out of balance with this approach. But if money is no object, it's certainly worth considering.

Having used several excellent binocular mounts with large - but not huge - binoculars, I have to say the refractor approach is simpler, lighter, and more likely to get used by me for those reasons. Part of me loves leaning back and looking up through binoculars - but another part of me doesn't like the lugging around of the binocular mount and tripod, plus the adjustments that have to be made when you look elsehwhere in the sky. Even with the excellent 15X70 Astro Physics binoculars I'm now using, I would grab the 120 ST for a quick look long before I would grab the binocular set up. Again - some objective factors involved, plus a healthy dose of personal choice.
subjective

OK - was the 120ST performance up to that of a decent, high-powered binoculars? Yes. But I need to do a lot more observing and comparing before I say it can, for all practical purposes, replace my APO refractors of 80mm and 100mm - though it might. See - that's also part of my agenda. I could sell my APO refractors, plus binoculars and mount, for around $1400-1500. That would finance this the 120ST, plus a 12-inch Orion DOB. Now that's an interesting trade-off ;-)

Anyway, here's what I saw in a quick hour-plus of observing this morning.

1. Albireo. Nice clean split. Charming at 28X. (Hmmm.. forgot. I started with the 21mm Hyperion rather than the 24mm. The 21mm is a good match for the binoculars mentioned. It would be interesting to do a head-to-head comparison because that would be 28X against 28X and almost the same field of view.

2. M27. As with Albireo I was getting a strange, 3D feeling here I can't explain. Maybe it was all the pinpoint Milky Way stars in the background. At 120X I could see one of the stars near the edge of M27, but nothing embedded in the nebula.

3. M5. Easily found. Took magnification nicely. At 120X the outer areas were granulated.

4. M51. This I really liked. Even at 28X the spiral nature and interaction of the two galaxies was apparent. I didn't have time to study it at multiple powers, though, because I wanted to see how the scope would perform on M81-82, targets for the Prime Time group.

5. M81/82 - These were low in a light-polluted north-west quadrant, but still very easily picked up at 25X and took magnification well, at least up to 75X.

6. M13 - a backbreaker - nearly at the zenith. Showed nicely at 25X and I didn't try anything else. Problem here is the Voyager mount simply isn't tall enough. Need to check to see if they're selling the extension yet. It's needed.

7. M57 - Unimpressive - but by then I noticed twilight was quite bright. Need to wait for dark skies to check it out.

8.Double Double - I was surprised this split at all, but I did get a clean split at 120X. The wind must be gusting around 25 mph - maybe higher.

I tried Vega and saw an expected purple fringe around it. I had left the fringe-killing filter in the house. Maybe I'll give that a try tonight.

Jupiter was lost in the trees, as was the crescent moon, so with the increasing twilight I put the scope away.

One last note - I could carry the scope - mounted - and my eyepiece box with 8 eyepieces, note pad, red light, etc. all in a single trip to and from the house. That's nice.

From Earth to the Virgo Cluster

March 26, 2008 - 8-11:30 pm - T3-4/S3

In the space of a few hours, Jim, Donna, and I went from observing one of our closest space objects - the International Space Station and its cargo vessel, Jules Verne - to what is described as "the most remote cosmic objects with a physical connection to our own small group of galaxies,"

It was the kind of journey that leaves your head spinning, as you tackle the relatively minor challenge of seeing something - even when that something is billions of stars - that is 60 million light years away. It's not unreasonable to assume that when that light started it's journey to us there were still some dinosaurs on this planet, though they were on their way out. (For one thing, these distances are more educated guestimate than solid fact, so no need to treat it with too much precision - just a good ballpark figure.)

But as I say - tackling this challenge is difficult - but even beginning to grasp the huge implications of what you are seeing? That's the stuff of meditation and dreams for weeks - maybe years - to come.

We also played with some new space googles - actually, they're called "Constellation Viewers" - binoculars that have the totally weird specs of 2.3X40, but allow you to take in an entire constellation, such as Orion, in one gulp. I'll have much more to say about these in another post. For now, let me simply say that they are not toys. These are serious binoculars, well designed and well built.

Bren joined us to observe the pass of the ISS and Jules Verne. This was a particularly well-placed pass. The Jules Verne came first, rising from near the feet of Orion where Jim was the first in our group to spot it. Shining at about magnitude 2, there was no problem following it as it climbed to near 60 degrees in the general vicinity of Mars, then dove into Leo, passing saturn on the way and as it headed for the tail of the Lion it quickly faded, going out of sight in the Earth's shadow while still quite high. It didn't just vanish though, as I thought it might. It went out more like the slow dimming of a light in what seemed something like 15-20 seconds, remain visible in binocualrs a but longer.

The ISS followed the same track - but was much brighter - brighter than Sirius or anything else in the sky and in binoculars looking like a double star. This was a fun way to start the night and made the process of early dark adaption more exciting. Bren had another agenda this evening, but Donna and Jim began the March observing assignments which focus on galaxy hunting in the Virgo cluster, but begin with easier targets.

First on the list was M81/82 and while Jim observed this pair behind the Bear's ear with the 15X70 Astro-Physics binoculars on a p-mount, Donna used the 80 ED which was on the pier and the UniStar alt-az mount. As I think of it, these two objects are a nice object to start to become comfortable with the mounts being used. They are so close to the pole that whiole they appear to move with the spinning Earth, the movement is very slow, so you only have to make occasional adjustments. I started the 80ED with the 30mm ClearVue. That gave it 20X, so it was very similar to what Jim was seeing in binoculars.

From that we moved to the 15-inch and progressed from the 30mm to the 21 and 13mm Hyperions. The level of detail here gave a good feel for what galaxies look like when they're "nearby" - 12 million light years away. From there we moved to the Leo Triplet and there I goofed - I stayed witht he view in the 80mm ED and never did put the 15-inch on it as I had intended. Somehow I got off track and dove into the center (M84) of the Virgo Cluster with the 15-inch.

In this case I stuck with the 30mm and Jim and Donna sketched the fields they saw so they could later compare their experience with photos and charts.

Somewhere late in the mix we took a side tour to Kemble's Cascade and I explained the star-hop to it using the 6X30 finder on the 80 ED - handy for this purpose, but I miss the red dot finder for other purposes. The Cascade was hardly at its best - low in the north with lots of light pollution in that direction. after examing the cluster at the end at highpower, we switched to Saturn in the 15-inch - wow!

What a change it is to be straining to see faint fuzzies, then have Saturn suddenly come jumping intot he field of view like a neon sign! We could easily pick out four moons. (Jim found the one closest to the rings. ) Whether we saw more depends on where Titan was and whether or not we were confusing it with a star.

Hmmm. . . just checked. The faint moon very near the rings was Titan! What we missed was Enceladus which was near the rings on the other side.

(Work in progress)

Jupiter in the branches of a fast-moving tree

March 23/24 pm/am moonless/moonlight t4/3 s3

Jupiter, Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto - all playing a confused game of tag, tangled in the branches of a fast-moving tree - that was my main memory from two excellent observing sessions.

What I liked was the weather, the moon, the scopes, and the binoculars all cooperated.

What I didn't like - my monkey brain gets as tangled in the technology as Jupiter and his entourage in those tree branches. Most of the time I am not observing. I am playing with - or thinking about - the tools. Hopefully, this is coming to an end. I am making choices - settling in on what I like. And things are working - especially as I abandon some of my bunny brain ideas and return to the tried and true.

(Defnitions: Monkey brain - one that won't quiet down and focus. Bunny brain - one that has crazy ideas. Sometimes called hare-brained ;-)

So, for example, last night I found myself casting aside a red dot finder in favor of the simpler, older 6x30mm finder scope. This is a stock item and I have far too many around. They used to make them only one way - straight through with images flipped left-to-right. Now that's silly. We put diagonals on refractors and SCTs so we can avoid the contortions needed to try to look straight through them. Why go through all that uncomfortable neck-craning to use a finder? Newer models at last offer a right angle (90 degree diagonal) viewing with correct image.

Duh! You're trying to find stuff. OK - the older type probably have their adherents because the view matches what you see in the scope. I would argue that it's more important for the finder to match what you see with the naked eye - just go a little deeper. And I wish they would make them super wide. I don't need the power. I don't need the light grasp. In fact, extra light grasp can just add to the confusion by showing you more stars than you want - or need - to see. Hey, if we can do fine with Telrads and other one-power sights, why do we need large finders?

What got me started on this kick was the 5X25 wide-field binos (Bushnell) I got on AstroMart. They give very decent views in about a 12-degree field. That's cool. I can fit the entire cup of the Big Dipper in that field, or half of Orion. Makes it easy to march from the cup of the Dipper to M81/82, for example - just one step, really. Then moving from that to the 6X30 is a small jump. But the fov on the 6X30 is significantly smaller and there's no reason, as far as I can see, why that should be, or why someone thinks that's a good idea. I think they're just in a rut.

But until someone corrects this approach I'll use the binos for scouting missions, then go to the 6x30 (or 9x50) correct image finders.

So last night I was doing that and using just the 80ED on the pier with Voyager head, and the 15X70 Astro-Physics binos on a p-mount. (The p-mount was on the Meade field tripod and I think that's heavier than I need. I'd like to be able to carry this around easier. Probably could use a lighter counter-balancing weight and extend it more - that wouold also ease the burden of lugging this thing around. )

Highlights - the Astro-Physics glasses are really nice - I used them on M81/82, the Leo Triplet (well, that really meant the brighter of the three), Coma cluster, and Kemble's Cascade, which filled them comfortabvly, but left me a little breathing room. Oh - and the Pleiades, M35, 37,36 and 38 - and I could just glimpse M51 low in the east and got a real nice look at M3. Yes! These are nice glasses. All my previous trials with them have been with horrendous observing conditions. I really liked how they revealed the different character of each open cluster - M35, 37, 36, and 38 - whiloe not being able to show you any detail.

And the 80ED? Very nice. After you get excited by the bino view of M81/82, you then switch to the 80ED and realize that power is significant. It really works to crank up the power on this pair to the vicinity of 100X - even with just 80mm of light grasping surface. With a 120ST - on order - I may go higher. On the other hand, M65, 66 were more challenging in both the binos and the 80 ED and did not respond to added power nearly as well. I suspect the 120ST (F5) is going to give me low power, wide field and just enough light grasp to make galaxy hunting a satisfying activity.

The question remains, though, if an F5 achro can do well under 100X - well enough to make me sell the 80ED? That would leave me the 66ED for highly portable work, the 100ED for planets, Moon, and double stars, The 120ST would become the workhorse for richest field viewing and presumably - with a fringe-killer filter - be acceptable for Moon and planets.

That said, this morning I confined my playing to the 66ED and once more felt that if this was all I had, I could spend years without exhausting it. But then, that assumes I apply it to the kind of mediatetive observing I talk about, but do too little of.

I started my morning session (4:30 am) with the Gang of Four on the waning Moon, low in the southwest. This settled me a little. I then switched to the Engagement Ring which looked fine in the moonlight, but I still felt like I wanted to push the two stars that are out of place into line - then we would have a true engagement ring - now it's just an imaginative stretch.

Albireo had me first thinking of a King and Queen with a court of lesser lights - but it soon had me singing "Jodi and the Kid" under my breath as the bright gold primary, wandered across the field of view, the little blue secondary in tow.

I'd pay her no attention as she tagged along beside me,
Trying hard to copy ev'rything I did;
But I couldn't keep from smiling when I'd hear somebody saying:
"Look a-yonder; there goes Jody and the kid."

For some reason, though, the diffraction rings appeared on the trailing side only, making the pair look a bit like little space ships rocketing across my field of view. Also made me start wondering about the telescope and whether it was laligned properly and . . . which is the kind of distraction I don't need.

Then I spotted old Jupiter, rising in the southeast with his own gang of four - Ganymede, Io, and Europa to his west, Callisto on his east.. The woods to my south made observing impractical, but there was a small gap, so I turned the scope that way and got a nice surprise - boy, does this make the Earth move! I was using about 45X and looking through a tangle of tree branches. And as the tree moved - and it moved very quickly - the moons dodged in and out of the branches. Way cool. This really drove home the point that the tree was indeed moving. But it was fun just to watch the view change. So much in astronomy happens in slow motion with minute changes over eons, that from our perspective everything is standing still. Of course it doing nothing of the sort - motion is the rule, not the exception. The thrill comes from seeing one such motion clearly.

Birds in flight - right through the Engagement Ring!

There was a full moon rising over my right shoulder, but I wanted to see if the 100ED could actually work on the parallelogram mount and in straight-through mode.

It can. I had put the 30mm ClearVue in, so I had just 30X and a field of view of about three degrees. With Polaris in the center of the field, it looked a bit like this chart from Starry Night. The "Engagement Ring" is that broken circlet of stars to the right - more stars would be visible normally, but remember, there's a full moon rising. But the "Engagement Ring" is one of those asterisms that us kinda a stretch. Still, it' sfun, especially when . . .

. . . a flock of birds - geese? ducks? cormorants? - flies right through your field of view! Now that's a shocker? I saw the head of a "V" and perhaps 4-6 birds. It all happened gast - about the same speed it take a distant jet to go through your field, which has also happened, before, but very rarely. Now it's a well-known fact that birds migrate at night. They pick them up on radar and many have reported seeing them against the full moon. If I wasn't half deaf I probablyw ould have heard these - assuming they were geese.

What was curious to me, however, was these were flying north-to-south which doesn't fit a migratory pattern at this time of year, so I assume this was the sort of local hope I see in daylight from time to time. I just never expected to see it in my telescope with it's tiny field of view - satellites, yes. They're common. Meteors -yep, seen them quite often as well. Airplanes - rarely. Birds - never until last night.

I suspect the key was the moon. Being out on a full moon is relatively rare for me, unless I have a planet I want to see, or some double stars. Last night it was very windy, so seeing was poor, so I wasn't unting double stars or planets. I was really just testing the scope on this mount. But that full rising over my shoulder is what provided the bright light that the birds reflected and my scope picked up.

It added a spark of fun to what is already a pretty heady experience - something I had been working on ages ago and have just rediscovered. How neat it is to sit back in the rotating beach chair, and look straight up the telescope tube - no diagonal! And how much neater it is to do this with BOTH eyes open. I'm becoming convinced that this beats observing with large binoculars. I know all the arguments for two eyes, but I have two problems with binoculars -

1. They tend to give sloppy views - not the pristine ones you get from a high quality refractor. Hey., they're cheap and very short focus instruments - with few exceptions. And besides, even if they are long focus, I worry about them getting out of optical alignment fairly easy, assuming they;r ein alignment when you get them.

2. You use both eyes.

Now, of course that second point is the whole point. It's perfectly natural to use both eyes, isn't it? But who says they both have to be looking THROUGH a telescope. What if you use both eyes and only one is looking through the telescope - and that, a very nice refractor like the ED 100? (I explored this in depth - with some picture simulations - almost exactly a year ago - in this post. )

Well, for me the results are fascinating. One eye sees the telescope tube, the finder, the mount, trees, fence - all my surroundings. Very natural - but very dark, of course. The other lays over that familiar scene the universe. I found this especially mind-catching when my subject was the Orion Nebula, or the Pleiades. Wow! It's a kind of a weird, 3D effect.

Sure you can get this looking down through a diagonal - but then you're looking down. You're not taking in the sky in these two dimensions. And when you look down you're not really getting the context of what you're looking at with the scope. But look up and you can see, for example, Sirius to the left as your right eye focuses on the clsoe-up view of M42.

Oh, I'll stop trying to explain it. The effect may where off - may just be a novelty. And sometimes, of course, you want to close that other eye so you can focus purely on what the scope is delivering. But I still see this as one side benefit to looking straight through. The other benefit - the real reasonf or doing it - is even harder to explain. I just like looking up. It seems like that's what you should be doing with a telescope - not looking down, as you do when using a diagonal, and not looking into the side of a tube as you do with a reflector. Both those views tend to isolate you from your context. Of course looking up is a pain-in-the-neck - literally - unless you do it the way I do it - sprawled in a supportive beach chair.

All ingredients here are key - a decent refractor, relatively low power (under 100) , a sturdy tripod or pier, a comfortable beach chair, a good parallelogram mount, and looking straight through. As i say - I wrote about this before. But I got sidetracked. I'm coming back to it. And I'm finding that the real key to enjoying it is to use the Hyperion 24-8mm zoom so you don't have to fumble with eyepieces which can be a pain when the scope is pointing up and critically balanced. (I explored using a zoom this way last year, as well - but that was with the Vixen zoom - I like the Hyperion a bit better. )I tried the zoom last night as well - but only the 80ED in this position. Got me thinking - boy, this could be pretty nice with an F5 scope. Only I can't afford an APO F5 - wonder how that Orion ST120 would be? Good reviews. And I don' really want this for the moon and planets . . . hmmm. . . . now if I sell . . .

Yes, it was at this time last year I was last exploring this. Maybe I just get these hare-brained ideas around Easter?

Addendum: I tried the business of using both eyes in daylight - again. The problem is, while the brain allows you to see both images at once, they are not both in focus at once - you have to choose one other. I think this more obvious in daylight because at night you are getting relatively weak visual signals - and the one from the telescope may be particularly sparse when it comes to its information content. So it's easier to see them both at once - or feel like you;re seeing the m both at once.

Rules are made to be broken, right?

The old saw is that "rules are made to be broken" and last night I enjoyed myself with a little piece of observing that broke every rule in the book. I report it here, simply because rules can become such a mantra with us, that we cheat ourselves of perfectly legitimate observing experiences.

What I did was observe the moon with binoculars for about 20 minutes, entertaining myself by trying to see just how much of its surface I could identify using only my old and failing memory. That's fun and games, but here are the rules I broke to do it.

1. I observed from inside my house, at one point enjoying the comfort of a couch. Yes, i was in a "sun room" - at that moment a "moon room" so I could look up, but:

- the room was comfortably heated and outside it was near freezing and there was a nasty wind making it feel a lot colder. Observing from a heated room is a no-no because the different air temperatures deteriorate the image

- I was looking through thick panels of insulating glass, set at an angle, and none too celan. There were reflections off some of them from lights on in nearby rooms. You never observe through any glass except optical glass made for the purpose. If you could do this, we would observe every winter in comfort. For that matter, observing for glass would also avoid the summer bugs and dew on a telescope lens or mirror.

2. I always advise people not to bother with observing the full moon because the lighting is flat and so it's not nearly as interesting as when the lighting is coming from an angle and the mountains and craters cast huge shadows giving hints of how tall or deep they are. Last night the moon was less than a day from full - for all practical purposes it was full.

3. Finally, while my session had started with binoculars, my curiosity was raised and later used a small telescope on an alt-az mount, increasing the power I used to 44X. Although I have long since abandoned this "rule," when starting out as an amateur astronomer I was taught to turn up my nose at alt-az mounts. They were for terrestrial viewing, Real amateur astronomers used an equatorial mount.

OK - the easy rule that was first torn to shred by the wonderfully simple and useful Dobsonian mount - an alt-az mount of wood with teflon bearing surfaces - it has over the past decades become the dominant mount in amateur astronomy. First, as noted,t he Dobsonian replaced it for large reflector use, though Some people now put such Dobsonian scopes onto special equatorial platforms, tilted ta an angle and motorized to make it each for them to track stars. Then in the 1990s the uniquitous, squat, SCT-style telescopes began to dominate the market, not only providing tracking on alt-az mounts (without tilting them) , but also provided computer-driven "go to" accessibility - meaning you didn't have to learn the night sky, you could let the computer find stuff for you. And finally, more and more beautifully, smooth, alt-az mounts are available and primarily used with small refractors as what are dubbed "grab-and-go" scopes - and that's exactly what I was using last night, a 66mm refractor on a Vixen Mini-Porta mount that was designed for grab and go, but I had grabbed and gone only five feet fro my living room to the "moon room."

What did I see and identify on a full moon sprawled comfortably on my couch , my head propped by a pillow, my 12X36IS Canon binoculars at my eyes? Plenty. All the major "maria" - the seas - of course. The Latin name sof some of the smaller ones still escape my memory, and although I've toured it many times, I can't seem to recall the "Sea of Vapors." But another favorite haunt, "the Marsh of Sleep" near Mare Crisium stood out wonderfully, with it beautifully bright "spotlight" creater, - hmmm, what is that called? The crater was easily identifiable to me, but my mind had misplaced its name.

But other things you can notice at full moon is the different reflectivity - what astronomers call the "albedo" - of different seas, as well as the extremely bright example sof locations such as Aristarchus, sometimes call the "lighthouse of the moon." Then there are, of course, the terrific ray systems of Tycho, which always makes the moon look like an unpealed orange to me - , and "Copernicus" - when I see it I want to "shout" bulls eye to complement whichever god was throwing the rocks that day, and the smaller, but still beautiful, Kepler. Other dark spots like Plato and Grimaldi, also jumped out at you, and many areas that are less well known = familiar to me from observations under more dramatic lighting, but without convenient name tags. ( I proved to myself that my memory is nothing to brag about ;-)

None of this felt like you were looking through the bottom of a Coke bottle. It was a bit soft, of course, but I found it quite enjoyable observing - especially since I wasn't battling the wind and cold.

When I got up to 44X on the 66mm scope the view was softer still and started to fall apart more frequently - after all, outside under those conditions the astronomical seeing was horrendous that night.

All I'm saying is I broke several cardinal observing rules and enjoyed myself despite it. Does the mean I'll always observe from the comfort of the sun room? Of course not. Beeing outside gives significantly better view and allows much higher powers. All i'm saying, is that we should automatically assume that because the rule say not to observe this way, observing through ordinary glass windows si hopeless. It usn't. As matter of fact, just the other monring, wanting to test things before going out, I was able to split the familiar double star Albireo with my 12X36 IS glasses while holding them against - but at an angle - the sliding glass doors to the deck.

I guess what it comes down to is rules need not be broken, but they sure as heck should be relaxed. Breathe thought your nose, as my old mentor Don Walker used to say, and enjoy what's offered.

Before our time. .. yet bright enough to see

A gamma ray burst coming from the direction of the constellation of Bootes started on its way to us some 7 bllion years ago and reached here a few nights ago in a suddens surge of light bright enough to be seen by the naked eye - if anyone had known where to look. (By naked eye standards it was just on the edge of visibility, so it's doubtful anyone noticed it, even if they did see it. Still, the idea that you could see something with your naked eye that started 7 billion light years away is incredible. You can routinely pick out the Andromeda Galaxy with your naked eye, but that's a mere 2.5 million light years from us and at that, what we are seeing is the combined glow of several hundred billion stars. Reporting this today, the New York Times notes:

The visible glow from this burst, said Neil Gehrels of NASA�s Goddard Space Flight Center, was 10 million times as bright as a supernova at that same distance. The universe is some 14 billion years old, which means that the news of this cataclysm has been on its way to us for half the age of the universe. Whatever stars went to their grave then have been dead since before the Sun and Earth were born.

The Cosmic Connection � selected excerpts

From: The Cosmic Connection, a brief talk by Greg Stone, Dartmouth, MA, March 20, 2008.

I want to teach astronomy. Or maybe I should say preach astronomy � for the night sky, the dome of stars overhead, has become both a personal and public temple to me. . . .

Astronomy has the potential to lead us to what I call �deep awareness� � a significant sense of reality - of the cosmos and how we are intimately connected with it. We are, afterall, star dust. . . .

�What are you doing,� she asked, kindly playing the game. �I�m waiting for that tree to move so I can see the moon,� I said, motioning towards a huge, old hickory that was blocking the view of a waxing, 12-day-old moon. �Oh,� she said, not wanting to be impolite and question my sanity. And then a pause. �Oh,� she said much louder, and she smiled. . . .

On one level we remain a society incredibly ignorant of scientific truths, many of which, like this one, are counter-intuitive. On another level, even when we are aware of such truths, we have not integrated them into our routine thought patterns. Yet they do eventually have a huge impact on us in ways that are not always perceived. . .

People are woefully unaware of the basics � have, in fact, shut out the stars by surrounding themselves with a cone of artificial light any time they step out in the night � and most sadly, they have not experienced �the intellectual pleasure that accompanies a knowledge of the stars.� . . .

Yet this is not only an extraordinary time for the backyard star gazer . . . but we are in the midst of another astronomical revolution that is shaking the foundations once more � it is an observational revolution, much on a par with the one that happened in 1610 when Gallileo first pointed a spyglass at the Moon, the Sun, the planets, and the stars. . . .

We are now in the midst of similar discoveries every bit as earth-shaking. Let me speak of two � first, 96 percent of the entire universe consists of stuff that is simply a big �X� for us � dark matter and dark energy. . . .

So here�s the current composition of our universe:

� Atoms and matter we would recognize � 4 percent
� Mysterious dark matter � 23 percent
� Equally puzzling dark energy � 73 percent
. . .
I don�t think this idea has begun to sink in. I think we�re inside a revolution and from the inside, revolutions such as this are difficult to see. . . .

And yet that is not all there is to the revolution. The other sea change that is cresting and about to break upon us, is the discovery of extra terrestrial life. . . .

No � I doubt an encounter with intelligent life forms is just around the corner. But what is certain is that we are discovering a multitude of other solar systems. . . . But the Phoenix Mars Mission, due to land on the Martian north polar cap this May, could give us the evidence that life has developed on another planet. . . .

Don�t you feel insignificant? How depressing. We seem like just a random occurrence on an insignificant planet in a vast, uncaring and nearly endless universe. . . .

Whether there are other examples of life or not, whether there is other intelligent life or not, we are absolutely incredible. We are rare gems. That is scientific fact. And we are central to the scheme of the universe, at least as I read it.

My personal perspective � and this grows out of what science has revealed to us � is that we are nothing less than the universe becoming aware of itself.

That is an awesome thing and an incredible responsibility. That is why I love life and feel blessed to be living in this particular time. That is why I look around me and see miracles everywhere in every flower and hop toad and star � and in every human face. I am not only amazed that there is something rather than nothing � I am amazed that you and I are here and aware of it. . . .

Our Sun consists of 92 percent hydrogen and 8 percent helium. The other elements on the periodic table are there as well � but all together they make up a fraction of one percent.

Yet it is these elements that are relatively common to this Earth. It is these elements that are found in huge quantities in each of us. No �we are special, very special � and I only hope we can live up to � take full advantage of � our special role in this incredible universe. . .

I recognize that astronomy is a difficult topic to teach in schools. It doesn�t lend itself to the kind of laboratory experience that we can provide with physics, chemistry, and biology. Most of astronomy has to be done at a distance and done at night and under the whimsical demands of the weather. That can be a crushing handicap.

But there are ways around it. I absolutely believe that astronomy must be experiential. It must be taught in a hands-on, eyes-on fashion.

For specific suggestions on what you can do, please visit http://giveyoujoy.net/awe and click on �teacher resources.�

Breaking news - March 20 = New York Times

Stuff of Life (but Not Life Itself) Is Detected on a Distant Planet