franticsmurf

On Wednesday night I had arranged to take the scope over to a friend's house, deep in the beautiful, dark countryside so show her and her dad the night sky. Everything was packed up in boxes and off I went. Only to arrive 20 minutes later without the tripod and mount! Grrr! A swift journey home and back again ensued and while there was still some light int he sky, I managed to set up in the back garden, cerfully positioning the scope so the only streetlamp for miles around was obscured by a thick bush. (In any case, it's one of the thoughtful streetlamps that only shines downwards). I decided to line up on the moon and tour a few sights before ending on Saturn, which they had both expressed an interest in viewing. I was really pleased by the "wows" coming from the observers as they took their turns. I changed eyepieces to increase the magnification and the "wows" increased. Even the dog was impressed, although he wasn't quite sure what he was impressed about - it just felt right to him. We ended up looking at Saturn and Titan - with a clear view and no turbulence. Only a wisp of high altitude, thin cloud spoiled the end of the session. It felt great to be able to share the same sensation I felt when first looking through my telescope.

I was out having a look at the moon and stars this evening, trying to get a few images with my DSLR. I could hear a rustling in the bushes behind me but I was taking long exposures of M81 at the time and in any case, I'm used to the cat turning up unannounced. But the rustling got louder and closer and it definitely wasn't the cat. The head torch went on and I fully expected to be face to face with a rat. Instead, I got a friendly look from a hedgehog. It wasn't a bit concerned about me or the light. It didn't curl up in to a ball. It just sat there and watched me watching it. I grabbed the camera off the telescope and shot 300 subs @ 90 seconds each... er... no, wait. I took a few snaps with the onboard flash and then went indoors to google what I could give it to eat. I ended up handing over some dog food. The rustling stopped and I went back to observing the night sky. After some lovely views of M81, a couple of double stars and Saturn (with four moons), I checked once more on my hedgehog chum. It was happily feasting on the food.

My first ever view of an astronomical 'thing' through a telescope was Venus, way back in the mists of time (some time in the late 70s). Prompted by a little section in this month's Sky at Night programme, I went looking for Venus again in the evening sky. I was hoping to spot Mercury, too. I was intrigued by the statement on the programe that only 1% of the population had knowingly seen Mercury. For the last few nights I've been thwarted by low cloud in the West. My view of the Western horizon is obscured by several trees and a bungalow so the window of opportunity for observing Venus is limited. But last night, from the back bedrom window, there they were. I saw Venus straight away. I set the scope up in the bedroom, looking through double glazing, and managed to observe Venus and the fainter Mercury but inevitably, the image quality was very poor. I set the scope up in the garden where I could just spot Venus between the branches of the tree. Had there been leaves, I would have had no chance. Mercury had disappeared behind the bungalow. I was rewarded with a lovely view of the evening star with a hint of a phase. It took me straight back to those days as a kid when I was using my neighbour's telelscope to view it. Even down to the mad rush of the planet through the field of view (as I hadn't enabled the tracking on the scope). I may have to find a dark sky sight suitable for viewing them both with the telescope this weekend.

There ought to be a support group for us.

I've read a lot of posts where people mention their 'Dark Sky Site'. My garden is pretty good for a suburban location, but I'm hemmed in by trees, bushes and houses. Short of cutting a groove through the kitchen extension and house roof, I have to wait ages for Saturn to pop into view at the moment. So I thought I'd go and find my own Dark Sky Site. I had some ideas and visited them during the day to get some orientation, find a flat, dry spot, safe parking and to make sure it wasn't some fly tipping hotspot. Last night, I tried it out for the first time. I wanted to take some wide angle long exposure photos of the sky with my DSLR so I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to try out the practicalities of observing in a remote spot. This time, I didn't take the scope. I walked away from the car in the pitch dark with only a small head torch to see me safely across a road, ditch, mud pool, another ditch, some water pools - none of these had been there when I did my daylight reconnaissance. Eventually I got far enough away from the road that the car lights wouldn't disturb me and I wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb. With everything set up, I started taking photos. It felt weird. I'm used to walking in the dark (hiking off mountains after I've stayed a little too long) but this was different. Standing around, I became aware of every little sound. Distant sheep, owls, the sound of traffic crossing a cattle grid on a road I know to be at least a mile away. But what surprised me most of all was the amount of light pollution still visible. From my spot, there were two major glows in the sky from built up areas I know to be several miles distant. There was a thin layer of high cloud that made viewing conditions poor but when I checked the photos later on the PC I was amazed at how much they'd picked up the street light glow. I think my site would be ideal for observing with a narrow field of view, which would cut out most of the horizon glow. But my hopes of seeing objects near the horizon to the west have been scuppered. I'll have to try out alternative sites for photography.

Definitely. Somewhere. But not where I work! :)

You're right, of course. By day I'm a civil servant and I don't really need to be awake for that! :)

I’m enjoying my new hobby. The sense of awe I first experienced as a child hasn’t left me all these years later. I can look up into a clear sky on a cold spring night and try and imagine distances and scale. I can wonder at all the things I can see. As a student, I spent more time than I should sitting or lying on the ground with a few mates watching for meteors and satellites and discussing ‘infinity, man’. I find that when I’m looking through the telescope, I lose track of time, in a good way. I plan to spend five minutes here and five minutes there. I’ll allow a little longer for taking some snapshots. I always allow extra time for viewing the planets. I’ve even commandeered a kitchen stool (just the right height and shape) so I can sit and look instead of standing, stooped over, to reach the eyepiece. But all this means that after an hour’s observing, I head back indoors for a well-earned cup of strong tea only to find it’s actually been two hours since I started and I have to get up for work in 6 hours. Sleep is for wimps. And me.

I’m a photographer, born and bred. Well, almost. I took it up in school, dabbled with film making, got a degree in scientific photography and, after working in the field for a while moved on to training (where I spent a lot of time writing and directing training videos). So I know how to take a picture. Except I don’t any more. For the last few clear nights, the cat (she doesn’t have a name that I know) and I have been out trying to take photos of the things I’ve been looking at through the eyepiece. I’ve digiscoped before using a pair of binoculars and either a cheap webcam or a compact digital camera. So I thought it would be easy. Hold the camera to the eyepiece, focus on infinity and if I can see an image, snap away. I bracketed the exposures and banged off a load of snaps. The Pleiades, Orion’s nebula, (I didn’t hold out much hope for these as I knew they would be too feint), Mars and Saturn. After everything was packed away, I downloaded the files onto the PC and had a look. On most of them there was nothing. I found the Martian ones – little blobs of slightly pink fuzz. Saturn was slightly better but only because I could tell where the rings were but there was no question of it being shown to anyone. I was disappointed to say the least. The next night I went out and tried holding the camera in place with a second tripod to allow longer exposures, using the self-timer to trigger the shutter and minimise shake. Setting up the camera and tripod took almost as long as aligning the telescope. I took loads of shots of Mars and Saturn and this time, the Beehive Cluster (M44). On the PC, there was next to nothing for the stars and the usual fuzzy blobs (some with ears) for the planets. Now I was frustrated. Then a couple of nights ago, the moon was out. It would be the first time I’d observed the moon and I spent a long time with my eye to the eyepiece, marvelling at the contrasty image before me. Someone said on SGL that it was almost as if you could leave footprints in the lunar dust. It felt that clear and close. So I decided to try taking photos of it. I tried a few digiscope style pictures then I attached my digital SLR directly to the back of the telescope. I was pleased that I even remembered to adjust the balance of the telescope on the mount. I focussed using the live view function on the camera and snapped away. This time I was very pleased with the results on the PC. I also took some long exposure shots of the Pleiades, which came out really well, with no discernible smearing. The cat must have got bored sometime during my marathon photography session. She was no where to be seen when I packed up for the night.

Accessorise I’ve had my telescope about three weeks now and already I feel the need to accessorise. Is this a male techno-toy thing? Yes, probably. Does it appeal to the gadget gene found in most men? Yes, almost certainly. Is it an astronomical thing? Probably not as I’m also a photographer and have felt the accessorise bug strike before. It’s like the tool bag (or box) – you always need a new screwdriver/chisel/ hammer/drill bit. So what did I need? Well, technically, nothing. But that wasn’t good enough. I changed the question. What did I want? My list grew from ‘a red light torch’ to include a small screwdriver, spare batteries, a metal case for the kit, a lens cloth for the eyepieces, a pen and notebook, another red light torch (the one I had was a head torch), velcro to hold the battery pack and handset in place on the tripod... stop me, stop me! Then, one lunchtime in work, I was looking at the options for more eyepieces. Aargh! I felt I needed a shorter focal length one and a wider angle one to compliment the two that came with the telescope. I settled on a 7.5mm and 32mm which, with a 2x Barlow lens, would give me a nice range of magnifications from 47x to 400x. As I sit and write this, I’m contemplating a CCD camera, a big case to carry the OTA in, an equatorial mount for imaging, a set of filters for imaging, a solar filter, a foam insert for the accessories case, a binoviewer, a new OTA with a wider aperture… … and a win on the lottery.

I used to ‘believe’ in UFOs. I had loads of books. I lived within 2 hours of the ‘Welsh Triangle’ (off the Pembrokeshire Coast). I’d seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind – the original and the special edition. But over the years I grew to believe that people are easily influenced or quick to mistake one thing for another. My interest waned (although I am still convinced that in a universe so large, we can’t be the only ones here). So imagine my surprise when, while observing the Pleiades with a low power eyepiece, the Death Star flashed across my field of view. My boyhood dream had come true – Star Wars was real. I jumped. The cat jumped. Alas, the accompanying faint roar of four jet engines, the flashing anti-collision lights and the straight line movement I could see when I looked up from the telescope at the general patch of sky told me it was just another airliner heading back to Heathrow. After it had gone, the cat and I settled back for a pleasant hour’s observation. By now I’d started to amass a list of objects to view culled from discussions on SGL, books, magazines and my distant childhood memories. Okay, there weren’t many of the latter as it was a long time ago. I went in search of the two galaxies, M81 and M82. I managed to find both but they were extremely faint and to see them I used another technique learnt since I started stargazing – averted vision. The theory is (I think) that if you don’t look directly at something, it doesn’t think you can see it and it won’t hide. It worked for me and I caught my first glimpse of immensely distant and massive objects. What exactly is 10 million light years?

I have been very fortunate after my first clear sky to have a number of cloudless nights. Each one seems to have brought better viewing conditions than the last. Although this might be due to me ‘learning to see’. I was sceptical about the concept of learning to see. I’ve been practising seeing for, ahem, 21 years (and another 21 and a further 4) so I thought I was getting pretty good at it. Okay, I use glasses but the basic concept of ‘face the thing I want to see, open both eyes and look’ is simple enough and well within my capabilities. But reading through a couple of books, I soon discovered that the eye can learn to see detail over time. Another concept new to me was the effect of the earth’s atmosphere. As a photographer, I’m aware of heat haze and the effects of thin mist but on an apparently crystal clear night I was quite amazed at how much turbulence could be detected at higher magnifications. Mars seemed to be behind a small trickle of water. Saturn’s rings moved in a most un-Saturnine way. One tip I had picked up from SGL was to let the telescope cool down before observing. It never occurred to me that there would be thermal currents within the telescope, although once I read about it, it seemed obvious. I have a lot to learn but I think I’ll enjoy learning it.

I got my telescope one lunchtime, on a break from work. The shop was about 15 minutes up the road from the office and I’d spent ages doing all the research in magazines and on Stargazer’s Lounge. The staff were very helpful and although I knew what I wanted – a nice Skywatcher Skymax 127 Mak Cat f/11.8 Goto Alt Az – it was good to go through the options and confirm I’d made the right choice. At home, everything fitted together easily and suddenly, there was a proper telescope sitting in my living room. I read (and re-read and re-read again) the instruction book so I had a good idea how to align it. I peered into the top and bottom and quickly figured out which end to look through. I headed out to the garden and my chosen observing platform (the patio)and looked up to try and identify a decent star to start the alignment with and… no stars! They must have seen me coming! I was gutted. For the rest of the evening, I kept darting out every so often to see if they’d sneaked back but no, there was a light orange covering of cloud that kept them out of sight. The following night was a lot better. I was out about 8pm and aligned by about 8.10pm. And re-aligned by about 8.20 as I’d missed Polaris (my ‘second star’) and everything was out. Then I had to decide what to look at? I quickly drew up a short-list in my head – Orion Nebula, Pleiades, Mars and Saturn. I knew I’d have to wait for Saturn to show up over my house so I headed for the Orion Nebula first. To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed by it. I knew I wasn’t going to see the bright, colourful sight often seen in books but I did expect more than a faint fuzzy patch. In fact, at first I thought there was misting on the eyepiece and cleaned it. Then I thought I was looking in the wrong direction. But then with some averted vision, I realised this was it! I scanned along the sword and then the belt before selecting the Pleiades as my next target. With the 25mm eyepiece I could just about fit in the 7 main stars and after a moment I could make out the bluish nebulosity around them. The Pleiades are a favourite of mine as they were one of the first things I learnt to find when using binoculars as a child. They hadn’t lost any of their magic. I must have spent ages just feasting on them. I swapped eyepieces between the 10 and 25mm ones that came with the telescope. Eventually, I tore myself away and headed for my next target. I was glad of the Goto mount as I wasn’t familiar with the night sky. My knowledge of celestial navigation is limited to Orion, Ursa Minor and Major, Casseopia, Polaris and the Pleiades. But by using the Goto, I was able to identify Castor and Pollux (and so Gemini) and from them and Orion, spot Sirius, Procyon and Aldebaran (am I the only one who wants to call Aldebaran ‘Alderaan’ from Star Wars?) What a great teaching tool. At this point, I was joined by a little black and white cat, who started to brush along my legs. She’s a frequent visitor to my garden and very friendly. She seemed happy to have someone out at night to keep her company. Mars was a beautiful sight with the 25mm eyepiece. Clearly not a star, it had a disc and a lovely pinkish red hue. Using the 10mm, I had a recognisable planet (and on a subsequent observation, I started to make out the polar ice cap and a faint mark in the middle of the disc). I’d spent far longer than I realised staring through the eyepieces and Saturn had appeared over the house, so off the Goto slewed and the beep from the handset told me I was there. Using the 25mm I could clearly see a little disc with ears. A few adjustments centred the planet and brought it into sharp focus and I was looking at a tiny version of all those photos I’d seen as a child of the ringed planet. It was magical. At first it felt unreal, too. Almost too perfect. My head was full of a sense of scale, viewing something 1.3 billion miles away. After a few minutes taking all of this in, I swapped to the 10mm eyepiece and was rewarded with a bigger version of the ringed planet with four moons on a similar plane to the rings. Even more magical, if that is possible. I was hooked. I think the cat was, too.