October 9, 2008 on 7:24 am | In Astrophotography | No Comments
In my little 4 1/2″ and 8″ telescopes, I can see anywhere from three to five stripes on Jupiter on a good night. A friend said he saw the big red spot when he was over the other night, but either he has way better vision than I do or he was full of it. Either way, nothing I could ever see from my telescopes would even come close to what the 8.2 meter telescope in Chile was able to capture! I find it amazing that they could get a picture like this, but that the resolution is high enough that can see objects as small as 180 miles across. It’s hard for me to imagine 180 miles as being ‘high resolution’, but I guess when you’re several light-minutes from the object you’re observing, that really is a sharp image.
October 7, 2008 on 11:14 am | In Astronomy | No Comments
I’ve been blogging for years and one of the functions of my blog is as a backup memory for web sites. Why should I try to remember something when I can easily post it to the blog and have it available any time I want? Plus it saves my memory for the important stuff, like remembering the next piece of hardware I want to buy.
My friend Micheal knows I have taken up astronomy and sent me this page, 15+ Sites for Backyard Astronomers. I’ve checked out a few of the sites mentioned, but most of them were new to me. I’m a little surprised that Google Earth’s Sky made it into the list but Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope didn’t. I’ve used both and I’ll honestly say I’m a bit more impressed with WWT then Sky.
September 29, 2008 on 7:01 am | In What I saw tonight | No Comments
I went to the SFAA monthly star party on the top of Mt. Tamalpias this weekend with my friend Mike. Mt. Tam is about 20 miles north of San Francisco and at about 2500 feet above sea level, with good protection from light pollution, except for a little from SF to the south. Most of the people who’d been there before said it was one of the best night’s they’d had in years; the skies were absolutely georgeous and I saw more Messier objects then I’d ever seen in my life. Unluckily I didn’t find any of them in my scope, I had other people point them out to me or I saw them in the binoculars.
Mike took some beautiful pictures I hope to post here when I get a chance. I don’t think his Jupiter pictures turned out, but he got some really good star field and nebulae pictures. One of the other attendees had a tracking drive for his camera and they experimented with it most of the night.
May 21, 2008 on 8:00 am | In Astronomy | No Comments
This weekend I picked up a Celestron C8N telescope on a Meade LDX300 tripod. Both the telescope and the tripod are older models, probably manufactured in the late 90’s, but that doesn’t make them any less of a bargain for me, since it’s more light gathering power than I could have afforded otherwise; $500 out the door from
Scope City in San Francisco. I also picked up a collimation tool and a
Parks 8-24 eyepiece at the same time, both purchases I felt were worth the money.
I spent over an hour on Sunday collimating the Celestron and my Meade 4502 then took some time that night to compare the two. Unluckily the fog and clouds had other ideas and all I was able to do was get a couple glimpses of the moon and Arcturus. But that was enough to make me glad I’d gotten the Celestron. The difference between the light gathering capabilities of the two scopes is immense; the Meade has an aperture of F/8, while the Celestron’s is F/5. Even when the two are at approximately the same magnification, the Celestron makes it possible to see stars that I never could with the Meade. The Parks eyepiece is pretty good, it’s nice to be able to zoom in on a star without having to change eyepieces, but it doesn’t perform the zoom to 8mm without having to refocus slightly. My next purchase will be a decent Barlow, to extend the capabilities of the scope even farther.
Last night was the first night I was able to use the telescope properly and it made me realize how much I have to learn about the sky and the stars out there. I was able to not only pick up Saturn but see one of it’s moons, even if it was just as a little tiny dot. I also got to see my first Messier object, which I think was M64, near Coma Berenices, but I’m not 100% certain. I’m glad I’d read a little about observing nebula/galaxies and knew enough not to expect much more than a slight smudge of light in the eyepiece when viewing from a light polluted place like my backyard.
The mount has an attachment point for a camera, and I’ll probably put a small camera on it from time to time. Without a goto mount or motor of some sort it’s not worth trying to do any serious astrophotography right now. Maybe once my wife has gotten over this purchase I’ll start looking into a motor, say in six months or so.
May 6, 2008 on 5:14 am | In What I saw tonight | No Comments
I like my Meade 4502 4.5″ reflector, but this weekend I discovered some of the limitations of the scope. With an aperture of F/8 and a 12.5mm eyepiece, the light collecting ability of the telescope is extremely limited, something that hadn’t bothered me when looking at the stars in town, but became a huge issue this weekend when I had an opportunity for some star viewing far (very far) from any city or road lights.
Let me take a step back for a moment; every year on the first weekend of May,me, my father, my brother and about 30 other guys go on what’s called the Indian Valley Reservoir Fishing Trip. Very little fishing goes on during the trip, but a lot of other things happen, primarily drinking. We all go to the same camp site fifteen or more miles from the nearest town and more than ten miles from the nearest paved road. There’s a lot of local light pollution as the bonfire’s built up and from lights in people’s camps, but a little judicious spacing and a tent between me and the light source takes care of a lot of the problem.
I took my Meade on the trip with great expectations, but I was sorely disappointed. The first night, a lot of the problem wasn’t the telescope, it was a light cloud cover that mostly disappeared at sunset, but not completely. The Milky Way was visible and I could see a lot more than I can at home, but it still wasn’t the stunning visual I’d hoped for. Saturday night was a bit better, but still disappointing. I wish there’d been a better sky, but there’s nothing I could have done about that.
The frustrating part was scanning the skies with my binoculars, finding the stars I wanted to look at, then not being able to find them with the telescope. I would mark stars in my mind, point the telescope in the right direction, then not be able to see the stars I had marked as my guides. At first I thought my sighting scope was out of alignment, until I realized that the real problem was the stars weren’t bright enough for me to see with the telescope. My binoculars have a better aperture than my telescope and stars that were a cinch to see in the binoculars weren’t even bright enough to see at all in the telescope!
Part of the problem might have been solved if I’d brought the 25mm eyepiece, but I didn’t. The real solution will be to wait a little while until I can afford a better telescope and pay attention to what’s really important in a telescope, the aperture. It’s great to be able to magnify an object 100x, but if it’s too faint to see, you’ll walk away frustrated.
The good news is, I got to show about half a dozen rednecks Saturn. Of all the objects in the sky, that’s the one that was easiest to show them that they could recognize easily. Of course, rednecks, beer and telescopes don’t always mix, but we managed to get away without any injuries this time.
April 26, 2008 on 6:46 am | In Astronomy, Hardware | No Comments
I got to see the stripes on Jupiter for the first time this morning. I was up at 5:50 this morning and decided to venture into the backyard. The sky was clear but lightening already, so the only two objects still visible in the sky were the Moon and Jupiter, about 5 degrees apart in the southern sky. It only took a couple of minutes to get everything set up; my Meade 4502 sits under a covered porch in the backyard and was acclimatized. With my medium eyepiece in I was able to see four of the moons and barely see three distinct stripes on Jupiter. I tried viewing with my 4mm eyepiece, but it had been inside the house and fogged up just as I was getting Jupiter in focus.
On a side note, I put the telescope together with the garage sale mount on the Meade legs. The garage sale mount works better for small adjustments since I don’t have the motors for the Meade mount. The Meade tripod is a lot better than the wooden legs the garage sale mount came with, so it all works out for the best. I’ll post some pictures in a week or two.
April 25, 2008 on 8:20 am | In Astronomy | No Comments
Took the family to the Chabot Space and Science Center last weekend. We had a lot of fun and the kids want to go back again, but at six and eight, the boys are near the limit of what’s really the target audience for Chabot. My guess would be that any kid over the age of ten is probably going to be bored by Chabot fairly quick. There are a few things that will keep older kids interested, but I don’t think it’s enough for more than an hour of entertainment.
The boys favorite part was the Ask Jeeves Planetarium. We watched a show called Beyond Blastoff: Surviving in Space. We, meaning the wife and I, had decided to become members at Chabot, since the difference between a membership and day use for a family of four was less than it would cost for two visits and gave us reduced entry costs to a number of other museums. Membership also comes with a separate line for the theater, so we were the first one’s allowed in. We chose seats as close to the center of the theater as possible, but the truth be told, I don’t think there were any really bad seats in the whole place. The boy’s favorite part of the whole movie was an animated sequence where a scientist subjected astronaut ‘Chad’ and his clones to all of the hazards of space one by one. They particularly liked the part where cosmic radiation turned Chad into a living DNA molecule. My wife’s favorite part was listening to Ewen McGregor narrate.
For adults, the majority of the Center get’s boring pretty quickly, but it is definitely set up with a lot of photo ops in mind. There’s a mock up of a Mercury lander (or is it a shuttle, I forget) for the kids to sit in. There’s a series of interactive exhibits that are very similar to what you can find at the Exporitorium, each of which are designed to show a particular aspect of space. There was even a real meteorite that one of guides was letting the children (and adults) hold.
The draw for me was the telescopes; Chabot is home to the largest refractor (20″) in the world that’s still open to the public. They also have a 36″ reflector. Both telescopes are open to the public Friday nights. I don’t know when, but I’ll make the time to get there soon! Hidden in one corner of the observatory was a cache of 10 or so smaller telescopes, some of which are models I’ve been looking at purchasing when I have a few (hundred) dollars to spare. Later in the afternoon they had a scope set up for viewing the sun, but I didn’t get to see any of the sun spots they said might be visible.
If you have young children and an afternoon to spare, Chabot is well worth the visit. If nothing else the drive up is beautiful and it’s worth taking a look down on Oakland. Both of my boys want to go back, though my youngest says he prefers the Exploritorium. Given that we’ve been there half a dozen times in the last two years, I’m ready for something different, a role Chabot fills well.
April 16, 2008 on 3:41 pm | In Astrophotography | No Comments
I’ve put my personal attempts at astrophotography on hold for a while. My new telescope uses .965″ eyepieces, meaning the adapter I have for the Canon Rebel XTI won’t work. But I’m still playing with some of the online observatories I found last month. I’ve been a little surprised by the Bradford Robotic Telescope; I was under the impression that they had such a big backlog that it could take up to 6 months to get a picture, but I’ve gotten my first two in under a month. The first, a picture of the Orion Nebula, was overexposed to the point of being useless. I figure it was probably taken close to sunset given the time of year and low altitude of Orion in the sky right now. I’ve requested another picture with a shorter exposure time, but I’m figuring it’ll run into similar problems.
On the other hand, my second request turned out pretty well. It’s also overexposed, but not to same degree. You can take a look at it here. There’s a hair or a scratch on the lens which would probably annoy the heck out of me if I was actually paying for this. I’m giving this photo another try with a shorter exposure time and a neutral filter, so I’ll hope for the best and post it in the WPG2 folder when it comes in. Some time in May.
April 13, 2008 on 7:40 am | In Hardware | 1 Comment
Thursday night I found a telescope for sale on Craigslist, a Meade
4504 4.5″. I knew from the price and make of the telescope that this
wouldn’t be the final telescope I ever wanted, but given the budgetary
constraints my wife has put me under, I figured it’d be ‘good enough
for now’. Several phone calls and a 20 minute drive later I was at the
owner’s house for a look at the telescope. The 4504 is shipped with a
Goto system which is notoriously questionable, but this one had been
lost and in any case I was more interested in the telescope itself than
the electronic starfinder. The owner had bought it used, but it was
obvious he had kept it clean and that it’d been well taken care of. 30
minutes and a little haggling later and I went home with my new tube.
Earlier in the day I had found a tripod and mount with hand driven mechanisms,
but I decided to give the Meade it’s first try with the tripod it came
with. Shortly before sunset I set it up in my backyard and left it out
there while I played some tabletop games with friends (St. Petersburg,
if anyone plays). After a couple of hours, shortly after 10 pm PDT, we
went out and started playing with the telescope. The first few stars
were very clear and bright, but otherwise unimpressive to the guys.
Then we found Saturn.
It’s hard to explain the thrill of seeing the rings around Saturn for the first time through your own scope; a
little fiddling and suddenly the rings came in with enough clarity to
take my breath away. Here was this tiny telescope in my own backyard
with enough resolution to be able to tell beyond a shadow of a doubt
that it was Saturn we were looking at. For nearly an hour we all took
turns at the scope looking at the little dot with a ring around it.
There were a number of accidental bumps and I had to resight each time,
but it was well worth looking at Saturn with the three different 1″
eyepieces that came with it. I’m 6′4″ and I’d set the scope at a
comfortable height for me, which made viewing extremely difficult for
anyone else. We finished up the night looking at the craters on the
moon, which turned out to be a good thing, since the brightness of the
moon all but ruined our night vision.
I’m an early riser and this morning was no exception, with a
dream waking me up at 5:45. Since the sun hadn’t really started to
lighten the sky yet, I decided it’d be a good time to take a look at
the stars again. I was half awake and just picked the brightest object
I could see in the southern sky. Imagine my surprise when it turned
out to be Jupiter and I could see four of it’s moons without even
trying. I tried to view it under higher magnification, but my
hamhandedness prior to coffee made all but the widest angle lens
unusable. Still, seeing one moon to the right and three to the left
was an impressive way to start the morning.
I like the Meade 4504, and for $60 it was a steal. If I really do decide I want to
continue with astronomy I’ll definitely need something better in the
long run. But as a first time telescope on a limited budget, it’s more
than met my expectations. I never suspected I’d be able to see as much
as I can with it. I’m going to place it on my garage sale tripod
tonight and play with it some more. The Meade tripod is touchy as all
get out, and I hope the other tripod will be a little easier to deal
with. I don’t like the fact that the eye pieces aren’t a standard
size, but I’ll figure out a way to deal with that sooner rather than
later. In the mean time, I’m readjusting the height of the tripod and
setting it up so the kids can view Saturn for themselves tonight.
April 5, 2008 on 10:36 am | In Astronomy | No Comments
Every month the Ferguson Observatory at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park has a open house where folks from all around the area can come out and take a look at the stars. The kids and I went last month but the sky was unluckily partially obscured most of the night. We’ve got clear skies right now, so if it continues we’ll take a trip out there again. Unluckily the site doesn’t open until 9:00 pm, so I may not be able to take the kids; their bed time is 7:30 and they’re usually asleep by 8:00. Still, even if I have to go alone, it’ll be worth the drive out there.
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