One Great Outreach

[Skylook123]

Last Saturday, four of us from Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (Stephen Ferris, Chuck Hendricks, Bernie Stinger, and myself) supported Pima County Natural Resources Parks and Recreation Department with their periodic night under the stars in Tucson Mountain Park's Ironwood Picnic Area.  PCNR has increased the frequency of these events, and when the weather cooperates, they become active, productive sessions of educational inquiry and exploration of the night sky.  This was one of them.  It was also a personal highlight for several reasons I'll detail.

 

Since the moon, 2 days from full, would rise an hour prior to sunset, I arrived very early since I wanted to do some trial runs with various focal reduction configurations.  If you don't like techie stuff, skip this paragraph.  For public events, I use a 10" Meade SCT mounted on an Orion Atlas EQ-G equatorial mount and tripod, with a Mallincam Xterminator live video camera feeding into a 19" QFX monitor.  The camera performs as an equivalent 8mm Plossl eyepiece with 50 degrees apparent field of view.  If I operated the SCT at its native f/10, the magnification would be too high, field of view too tight, and exit pupil not optimum for Deep Sky Objects.  I needed to reduce the focal ratio to under f/5 for best performance.  Usually I've been using a 2" 50% focal reducer, but while the resulting 1270mm effective focal length works well with some deep sky objects, for the sun, moon, and most open clusters and emission/reflection nebulae the image is larger than the monitor.  My early pre-sunset goal was to try to mix and match a Celestron f/6.3 reducer with either my 1 1/4" or 2" 50% reducers without inducing coma or vignetting.  My experience was that with the f/6.3 reducer/field flattener installed, the 2" 50% reducer greatly shrunk the field of view, but I did not have enough focuser travel to achieve focus.  However, with a 2" to 1 1/4" adapter and the 1 1/4" reducer, the shorter nose piece allowed focus although with a larger image that just fit on the monitor.

 

When I got the right combination of focal reducers, it turned out that the nearly full moon was far too bright for the system; even at 1/12000 second shutter speed and gamma adjustments, the majority of the moon was a bright blur.  I was able to add a polarizing filter at 40% to the optical train and it got a great view of Luna. 

 

The first thing that made this a great outreach was that, in the first group of visitors to arrive, I got a chance to meet Anne Wilson, a National Park Service Ranger at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska.  Next year, for the Great American Eclipse, my wife Susan and I will be supporting public activities at Agate.  Anne was in town with one of her sons, visiting a friend from high school, and she came to the event with her son, her friend, and her friend's mother.  It was great to meet Anne and the rest of the gang.  We went over the lunar history, the various cultural artifacts like the Lunar Poodle, the Chinese Lunar Rabbit and their lunar calendar, Lady in the Moon, and other various topics.  As soon as it was dark enough to get Polaris, I did a quick polar alignment and started hunting objects.  More visitors had arrived, and I aligned on Schedar in Cassiopeia and started with The Owl Cluster, NGC457.  With the extra focal reduction it easily fit on the monitor.  Visitors generally like this object, and it's a good one to introduce stellar formation and evolution  Since many of the stars are very large, they are young but will reach the end of their lives soon.  With too long an integration time (I started at the maximum SENSE UP, about 2.1 seconds), so many stars are shown that it is hard to see the Owl in the rest of the star field.  I eventually reduced the integration and the Owl jumps out.  Back to the longer integration, I could point out a few of the red giants in the mix; although the cluster is only about 22 million years old, a lot of the stars have already progressed to end stage development.  Lots of teaching can go on with this cluster.

 

I then hopped over to the Double Cluster, NGC869 and NGC884.  Each cluster filled the monitor by itself, so we could point out a lot of features.  Even in an eyepiece, the colorful stars are notable, but with the video, there is a higher intensity to the colors.  While we were in the area, we talked about Persius and the Cassiopeia/Andromeda story along with Persius' prize; he went off to slay the Medusa, and he has brought the head back.  This is a fairly short period variable star, and the fact that the variability is notable over about a 3 day period caused Semitic peoples to name it Satan, the Devil, or the spectre of a ghost, The Ghoul, or Al Ghoul, later becoming Algol.

 

In among the cluster show, we also explored some other cultural stories regarding elements of the Milky Way (Via Galacticos, leading to now calling all stellar island universes Galaxies), how the Zodiac came about, Cygnus versus Niska the Goose, and more.

 

I learned a bit of the effect of atmosphere conditions on the camera image.  We had scattered cirrus around, and moisture at altitude that was just below cloud formation.  But the moisture and clouds have an effect on urban lights, with the red component being reflected from these layers such that there is a strong red highlight to the image needing a blocking filter like IR or Ultrablock to knock down the interference.  I got surprised by the effect of the moon.  There was a constant red splotchy nature on the monitor when not pointed at the moon due to the lunar light's red and longer wavelengths maintaining their presence while the shorter wavelengths being scattered.  The moon, when off-axis, was also providing a lighted circle brightening to the side of the center.  I was able to remove the light and atmospheric effects by altering the brightness and contrast settings on the monitor, although I should have used a blocking filter.

 

We had a group of seven or eight deaf young folks with a signing interpreter visit, and were really enjoying the clusters.  I tried to modify my usual ramblings to make the discussion easier to follow.  It was extremely enjoyable to work with the group, and another element that made this a great outreach.

 

At the end of our cluster show and tell, Anne and her party headed out, while I went for more eye candy.  I shifted over to The Ring Nebula, M57.  With the new reducer configuration shrinking the exit pupil, the image was a bit smaller than I usually get (a nickel instead of a quarter) but the colors were more intense and brighter.  Lots of excitement over the double white dwarf artifact and the cosmic diamonds.  Then I shifted over to M27, the Dumbbell, and although a bit smaller than earlier times, it was still over a quarter of the screen with a diaphanous blue-green central element and bright red caps at the ends .  The integration times on both nebulae were significantly shorter than without the double focal reducers.  I was able to discuss the stellar evolution process again, this time with two examples of our sun's likely demise. 

 

All good things come to an end, and the visitors and we left Ironwood after an enjoyable evening.

 

[Peter Drew]

Well Done. We also do this sort of outreach each Saturday night if clear. We enjoy it as much as the visitors!   

[John]

Excellent report !

I'm finding that outreach sessions are rapidly becoming my most enjoyable observing experiences. Sharing the views seems to enable me to re-discover the magic of observing all over again through the reactions of those seeing these wonderful sights for the 1st time.

 

[Skylook123]

Thank you, Peter and John.  As well as being enjoyable, there is a real, measurable, health benefit to the astronomer working with the adults and kids at these events.  I had five coronary artery bypasses five months ago.  As part of my cardiac rehabilitation, they taught a free course in biofeedback stress relief.   As part of the course, they put you on a pulse/electrical activity detector that measures electrical activity in rest periods between heartbeats.  One of the drills they had me do was to close my eyes and think about sharing activities with others and getting gratitude in return.  I thought about doing the outreach.  Within 1 minute, the electrical rest level dropped by 2/3.  Practicing this feedback during my physical therapy in rehab I was able to reduce my blood pressure during high level physical activity by about 10 counts in both systolic and diastolic pressure.  Just thinking about prior giving of your attention to others, and receiving the appreciation in return, is a very significant stress reliever.  And that's why all of us with something to share of ourselves and our knowledge should get out there now and then; it's a healthy thing to do! 

The best galaxy observer and teacher I've ever met, Paul, is my age, pushing 70.  When he was a high school student in Chicago in the 1960s, he was rather aimless in life but was interested in astronomy, even ground his own 6" mirror, but couldn't afford the rest of the telescope.  One night a local astronomer invited the high school's science students to join him for a star party at a local park.  Paul says that when he looked into the eyepiece for the first time he heard music!  He is now a concert pianist and music teacher when not doing outreach and his own observing.  He learned machining and built his own, massive, equatorial mount and several telescopes.  All due to one look in an eyepiece offered by an astronomer.  Paul encourages outreach with the statement "You' never know what one life you'll touch."  I would add,, "Or might touch you."

[alan potts]

As always a top quality report from you Jim from another fantasic site.

Alan

[Skylook123]

9 hours ago, alan potts said:

As always a top quality report from you Jim from another fantasic site.

Alan

Thank you, Alan.  I was born with the gift of Attention Deficit Disorder and don't often build memories, nor can I sketch no matter how much I try, so the reports are word pictures of the events so that I can revisit and relive the happenings in the future.

[alan potts]

Jim, I guess I should say sorry to hear that though it would appear that you have come to terms with it in a very positive way. I was saying on my facebook page only yesterday about my memory as again I forgot my wedding anniversary, I have no problem recalling things I did at school over 40 years back but can't remember where i put the tape-rule only 10 minute beforehand.

Look forward to the next report, I have a few to write myself when I get more time.

alan

[Dave In Vermont]

Thank you, Jim! A wonderful write-up!

I never could/can understand how it came to be that people who use different mental-processing skills can find themselves written-off as having some sort of abberation! My guess is they're just jealous - so they feel a need to denigrate someone for being able to do things that is lost on many others. Tyranny of the majority?

Your great piece - above - is making me feel anxious to proceed in my planned 'outreach' projects all the more. I love teaching - in a sneaky fashion as younger folks tend to equate pain & suffering with going to school, and roll 'learning' as being part & parcel of this something that causes pain. I don't know how this compares to the educational systems in other nations, but it seems to be a commonality with the people over here - so I'm sneaky!

The memory-storage you use - getting a mental-image - is hardly rare. Or considered unusual in many other cultures. The Native people's of this land use words that are really pictograms. Word-pictures. Similar to Chinese or Tibetan. A part of the Mohawk Nation, close by me, is called 'Akwasasne.' It means a place where, in the early morning sunlight reflecting through the tall reed-grass, you will see the multi-coloured plumage of the feathers on the Pheasants as they fly into the air.

Congratulations on your 'gift.' and your excellent 'outreach' project!

Thank you,

Dave

[Skylook123]

Alan, time is always available in the past tense.  Looking forward to reading your observing narratives.

Very profound observations, Dave.  Thank you for providing some cogent thoughts to ponder.

It turns out that while profound ADD has many unfortunate features, like living in the "now" moment and not fully developed understanding of life facts that others have naturally, it also has the benefit that learning a concept requires disassembling down to the first principles of the concept and building the knowledge from the ground up.  Although it makes one seem like a slow learner, the issue is really the chaos in the mind and the trick needs to be learned how to manage the condition.  If the effort is put in, then the knowledge is more completely and thoroughly internalized, facilitating the ability to teach complex ideas in a basic form, easier to learn.  I wear it proudly, because I've learned to manipulate these insights.  However, sixty years ago the nature of this gift was not understood by the rest of society, so I spent most of my first seven years in schools being isolated in a front corner of the room.  That became a strong driver for later success.  I have to study three times longer than most people to learn a concept, but then I own it and can teach it better than anyone around.  It's always very rewarding to convince kids and young adults that it is possible to learn concepts that seem beyond understanding by converting the concept basis to one's own terms and building, as well as the fact that any knowledge one gains is their own, even an edge in life.

Word pictures do help "see" and remember the events., but more importantly to me, knowing I want to remember the occurrence for later archiving makes me more conscious of treating each visitor as a unique, special encounter, and that makes for better outreach results.  And concentrating on the unique encounter and sharing the wonder and joy of the astronomy is returned by the gratitude of the visitor to the contact and information exchange.  SO much fun!

[rockystar]

sounds amazing. I'm going to come to one of your outreach events one day - you're only 5000 miles away

 

[Skylook123]

4 hours ago, rockystar said:

sounds amazing. I'm going to come to one of your outreach events one day - you're only 5000 miles away

 

Remember to enjoy the trip as well as the destination!

Since it would be significant effort to travel and return, plan to come to more than one outreach.  The best would be the Grand Canyon Star Party, eight consecutive nights of 50 or more telescopes and 1400 or more fellow visitors, but since I do about 10 each month (with three to 10 other volunteer astronomers), attending more than one is possible.  But once you experience our skies, you might delay your departure.