11-14-2017 Badweather's Observations on Telescope Wifi Technology

[Badweather]

Astronomical twilight ends 6:17pm

Transparency: 4/5 to 5/5 (above average to transparent)
Seeing: 1/5 (bad) to 2/5 (poor)

Location: Fort Collins, CO

Elevation: 4997 ft. (1523 m.)
Bortle 6 to 7 skies depending upon which direction you're looking.

Optics: Celestron Nexstar 8SE, Celestron Upclose G2 10x50 wide field binoculars, Eyepieces: Celestron kit 42° plössl: 32mm, 25mm, 17mm, 13mm, 8mm, 6mm, 2x Barlow | Svbony 62° aspheric: 23mm, 10mm Filters: Orion UltraBlock Narrowband Light Pollution Filter

On the ClearDarkSky.com website (so sorry, only useful to the North America’s brought to you by Allan Rahill, a Canadian!) Attilla Darko, script writer, whose website serves our North American astronomy weather needs, explains seeing thusly:

“Excellent seeing means at high magnification you will see fine detail on planets. In bad seeing, planets might look like they are under a layer of rippling water and show little detail at any magnification, but the view of galaxies is probably undiminished.”

http://www.cleardarksky.com/c/TrbTrTlCOkey.html?1

I questioned this at first but have since come to know the truth of this.

When I saw the predictions of 20 mile an hour winds, I relegated this occasionally perfectly transparent evening to binocular only stargazing. Normally when I’m planning on going out with the 8SE, I’m out acclimating by 1 hour prior to astronomical twilight. I start each evening by viewing things in Sgr, M8 is about to be dropping below the horizon for me in my backyard since there is a building and a tree blocking the view of the horizon in that direction.

So out I went with just the 10x50’s!

I started out by looking for Cassiopeia like usual and using it to find first Mirach, then Mu, then Nu, then M31. Having that star chart in memory, I have been swinging over to where I believe M33 should be. Opposite M31 slightly further from Mirach than M31 is. And this is roughly perpendicular to the line that Mirach makes with Almach and Delta Andromedae.

But I failed at finding M33 with 10x50’s this evening.

Following that failure, I looked for the Double Cluster which is easily found following the line made from Gamma Cas to Delta Cas about one third of the way to Mirfak in Perseus. The Double Cluster is certainly a favorite of mine. 10x50’s are nearly perfect for viewing these beautiful clusters.

Following that, I examine the area around Delta and Epsilon Cas for NGC 663. Looking at the starry night planetarium software I see I should be adding M103 to the Bino list, along with NGC 659 and 654.

I look for NGC 7789 but it is rather faint.

I find M45 and Aldebaran, and Hyades. They seem crystal clear.

It’s roughly 7:20 and I cast about in the west for Hercules. As I‘ve mentioned prior to this, I have a hard time looking towards the west on any night because the bike corral at my building has motion detector activated lights.

In the image above, you see the bicycle corral with the slanted roof. And the community area is off the back yard here as well is very brightly lit. Using one eye, and not having my glasses puts a pretty serious handicap on finding things with just your eyes/eye.

Using my eyepatch to keep my viewing eye in the dark makes it even more difficult to look for stars and make a mental map of the region. I’m a lot more familiar with the sections of sky that don’t automatically blow my dark adaptation in my viewing eye. So, using binoculars doesn’t happen in the middle of a telescope session. Just at the beginning and end. So a bino only session is nice and comfortable for my eyes, a nice change really.

Having lost my glasses about four weeks ago and not having the money to replace them makes things even more difficult. So, I need my binoculars to even look at the sky now.

Having found M92 last night without the help of my 8SE I wanted to see if I could find M13 without its help tonight.

I know the general vicinity and I know that M13 is between Eta and Zeta Herculis. Critically, I use the angle that I know and remember from my memory the previous evening and so I cast about for a fairly bright star with a fuzzball at the right angle and below it. Finding it, i follow the imaginary line down to Zeta. Then I do the same hop, back to M13, to Eta, then up to Iota and maybe 3/5ths of the way to Iota you can see another fuzzy ball of stars. M92, not as bright, but quite nice in the binocular view.

I failed to find any of the other objects I found the prior evening with the help of my 8SE but I’m not surprised. M13 and M92 were the only two I clearly marked the bright stars around them, noted in my memory the angles, and of course repeated this exercise a number of times to commit it to memory. The others I did not diligently create a mental map, aka, a star hop, and so cannot easily repeat without the assistance of my 8SE.

Once I had gone through my growing list of binocular objects, I felt pretty good, noted the wind speed wasn’t all that high, half what the predictions called for, and decided I’d bring the 8SE out with the thought that I’ll be able to view M1, M42, and M43 at much higher declination than I have on previous observing sessions. Besides, how many passable nights can one expect as we go into the middle of November? I pretty much convinced myself on this point alone. How many more nice nights can I possibly have this year?

So I set the 8SE up around 7:30 I believe I was all aligned by 7:39pm Mountain Standard Time (1:39am UTC).

Pretty sure I was able to catch a quick glimpse of M17 before it fell below my horizon. I poked around Hercules grabbing M13 and M92, then over to M15 (the long way around instead of slewing southwards, we went northwards around the entire compass.

I decided I’d force myself (one more evening of high tech disappointment) to continue slogging through the change over to the wifi module “sky portal” even though I’m not very happy with several buggy aspects of its use.

1. battery life for my android is a concern now and necessitates the bringing of my phone charger out to the site. Small pain, extra cord, minor cursing.

2. I lose (and miss) never having to take my eye off the eyepiece and feeling my way to the slew controls. (This is maybe the deal breaker?)

3. Having to use my dark adapted eye to look at the android which means it needs to be so dim only my dark adapted eye can see it. Alternatively I can drag the patch back over and use my non-dark adapted eye to watch the eyepiece while I center the object. Big pain here I think.

4. Dropping the connection to the telescope all the time. This is the largest pain and maybe I can solve it maybe I can’t. If not, I have to seriously admit this is no upgrade.

5. I’ve noticed that i might be viewing M13 and then decide I’m going for M15 and instead of slewing the small distance, the telescope control now says “go the long way” and heads off north around the compass.

6. I can see the screen now, but android keyboard entry becomes a thing you must do without depth perception. This will take some getting used to.

7. You lose gazing at the zenith. This is another big deal, in FOCO’s LP’d skies I need every advantage I can get and losing the zenith and gaining having to worry about how close to the zenith an object is, really might be number two most important deal breaker. Easy solution, find an extension cable so the profile of the wifi module is not blocking the star diagonal.

8. Slew control seems to go off into the wild blue more often then the one sticky button on the hand control. Periodically, when I press one of the telescope attitude control buttons I find it going off full blast and have to press the opposite control to stop it. Which really can't be that good for the gears.

9. Android must not be put into dark screen mode or placed on the charger until the telescope is done slewing to the target. I've noticed the scope just stopping mid journey because of this. Once you wake the phone up again, the slew continues and you end up at the object you selected. So, power sucking behavior for sure. If your android isn't fully charged prior to the evenings stargazing, you'll be fighting this all night.

10. You cannot use the HC while you're using the android for telescope control. using the HC scope control buttons tweaks its little mind and you will have to re-align.

Pros are:

1. I get to see all the stars I aligned with rather than just two of them the HC shows me. Not that big of a deal, I already knew I was using Capella, Fomalhaut, and Vega tonight.

2. I get a larger catalog of celestial objects than the HC if I purchase SkySafari Pro. This might be pretty cool. Probably the only reason I'm considering actually fighting this techno-monster. Besides the HC clearly needing an upgrade for the last decade or more, the slim catalog, or I have to start star hopping and using star charts.

3. Since I’ve made the leap to android instead of traditional paper star charts, perhaps note taking will improve? Only if talk to text works well. Cold weather means less notes for these arthritic hands.

So I’m not sure about this switch. I'm going to continue using it to delve into the possible pros, but there will have to be definite improvements to the quality of the experience. A number of the cons will need to simply cease to be in order for this to continue.

Losing the connection frequently significantly reduced the number of objects I was able to view this evening. I tried the wifi module in both modes, it works poorly in both with no discernible difference between either mode in regards to it dropping the connection every five minutes.

All that aside, I had quite a nice evening slewing through the usual suspects. Failing to see the Helix Nebula again. Seeing M1 more clearly than I've ever seen it before. I believe being higher in the sky, and the fact of extremely good transparency made m1 view-able this evening.

Of course, M42, and M43 are beyond words beautiful, spectacular, amazing, all fall somewhat short in describing this star-birthing region, this super nova factory, this life giving dusty nebula, this...

So, i was quite pleased with the evening, replaying most of the previous evenings object list, M35, M36, M37, M38, M39, M29, M57, M27, M55, M15, M2, M13, M92, M77, M31, M32 and so on.

I will see the Helix Nebula some day.

Not as sure I'll tackle this wifi / android monster.... And I spent 15 years in IT, and was the project manager of a software development team... I know this should be a better experience because of all my years of training in the field. That might give me enough of an edge to actually figure this out.

Anyone want to weigh in on the whole wifi skyportal connection problem I'd appreciate knowing how other people are getting along with it. my experience is fairly underwhelming so far.