What did you see tonight?

[PeterW]

Lovely pile of noctilucent clouds from my “noctilucent spot” (well the same place I saw them from the only time I saw them before…). Been a bit annoyed at the reports from earlier in the week, but not any more.

 

Peter

[Jim L]

I again awoke at 0400, unplanned, wide awake. Must be that I missed a libation to Apollo or some other such god who now insists I pay homage to the celestial objects in preference to Hypnos who, under my roof at least, has fallen into serious disfavor. There’s no resisting  the will of the Olympians so out again with the Galileoscope for a look at that grumpy old “child eater”, Saturn.

Conditions had improved since my last morning out and the west wind puffed at a mere 25 mph gusting to 30, whereas on the other morning it was 35 mph gusting to 40. The diminished wind brought along with it a host of mosquitoes who nibbled at my ankles. I was in shorts and barefoot, not having found more protective garments close at hand in the dark at 0400, but no matter, I’ll enjoy scratching their perforated presents later in the day. There are few activities more pleasurable than vigorously scratching a mosquito bite on a soft and sensitive area of tender flesh, and the several small scabs I accumulated the other morning foreshadow my enjoyment to come.

Dawn approaching there weren’t any stars out to speak of, and so to the south and to the right of the waning crescent moon was Saturn, pretty much by itself. The Galileoscope doesn’t have a common finder, optical or otherwise. That would be contrary to the spirit of things. Instead it has a gun sight molded as a part of the ABS plastic optical tube and blacker than a Bortle 1 sky. It’s all but invisible much past sunset but I fixed that small inconvenience by affixing a bit of photo-luminescent tape to them. A quick blast from my UV pen-light charges them and has them glowing at magnitude -6.0, or just a bit less than the nearby moon.

 

Lest you wonder what is with this Galileoscope Jim is so fond of, and why it was ever made and by whom, the short story is that it was the brainchild of a volunteer group of astronomers, educators, and optical engineers back in 2007 or so who decided to design, manufacture, and distribute a very inexpensive but still capable telescope to young students throughout the world during the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. It was to be assembled by students of ten years age or so, plus or minus eight years, and with no tools and minimal supervision. It would demonstrate to them the principles of optics and then be used by them to observe the night sky. It was to show the craters of the moon, easy, and the rings of Saturn, less easy. It was to sell for $10, but there they fell short. It came out at $15. It was sold and donated by the hundreds of thousands across the globe and I believe a half million or more have been distributed. But I digress.

Lined up in the phosphorescent glow of the sights Saturn likewise appeared in the eyepiece. I forced the sliding draw tube to my will, though it fought me hard, and I achieved a semblance of focus. Did I mention that the Galileoscope has a sliding ABS plastic draw tube focuser sliding within and in a vice tight embrace with the ABS optical tube? The design was carefully contrived to demonstrate the mechanical engineering principal of sliding friction verses stiction in a manner so unambiguous that no aspiring mechanic could ever forget the lesson, and in that it was entirely successful. You grab the visual back and pull or push as you think best, and it moves a couple of centimeters further in either direction than you’d intended. One does learn to sneak up on it and by misdirection and incantation jiggle it into a reasonably accommodating position. It helps that the scope’s an f/10 and so inherently somewhat forgiving so long as you’re amenable to meet it half way by straining your eye a bit. I’ve learned another trick to help tame the recalcitrant focuser, but this isn’t the time or place for details on the scope, and so onward.

 

And there’s Saturn. Not so silkworm cocoonish as the other morning, but not so far from it either. It was off-putting and I was put off, but not so much so that I was going to beat a retreat, at least not yet. I needed a comparative reference. Not an Astro Physics Stowaway or Takahashi FC-100DC reference. That might have been judged unreasonable. Unfair even. Uncharitable at a minimum. And besides, they were sleeping soundly upstairs and I was feeling too lazy to climb stairs. I instead chose my downstairs and ever-ready 102mm f/6.5 Celestron as the benchmark. It’s a work horse, a Clydesdale. The Celestron’s a bit of a ringer, though, because it has a Baader Semi-Apo filter threaded into its dielectric mirror diagonal, but it’s still a crown and flint achromat and so it checks that box at least.

At 30x magnification the view through the Celestron wasn’t that different than through the Galileoscope at 50x. Better, but not markedly so. I suspected my astigmatism might be a factor so I twisted the fitted 7-21mm zoom from its longest to its shortest focal length. That’s better. I observed a small sharpish yellow-white disk with distinct white line segments extending out either opposite side with a fine black line in between bisecting the disk. That black line, I reasoned, was the shadow of the ring projected upon the disk. No other details could be ascertained, and no moons, and in its present attitude the Cassini Division is going to be a challenge, but those challenges are for another time when Saturn’s closer and under steadier skies. I think with practiced squinting I’ll be able to see them later, or at least I hope to. 

So it’s power it wants and I can accommodate. I replaced the 32mm Plössl in the Galileoscope with the 7-21 zoom from the Celestron and twisted in the magnification. A big round disk greeted my eye and so there was no escaping refocusing. An f/10 scope isn’t quite as forgiving at 200x magnification as it is at 50x, and I’m not ashamed to admit the sliding focuser gave me fits, not to mention that 200x was an unreasonable magnification for a 50mm cemented doublet. Focus always ended up a half centimeter either side of optimum and I hadn’t the patience to improve upon that so I dialed the magnification back to a more reasonable 100x.

The detail I saw was astonishing! Every speck, every ripple, every variation of viscosity of the fluid in my eye was revealed. Floaters were continents flitting at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour across the view. I’d learned to swivel my eyes straight up for a moment before placing them to the eyepiece to open a temporarily useful window of respectable vision and with this palliative applied the view coalesced to one not dissimilar to that through the Celestron. There was the disk and the protruding white lines; only the black shadow ring was missing. Not bad for half the objective diameter and a quarter of the light gathering of the Celestron.

One observer through a Galileoscope, alias Sketcher, observed that, “The C-ring left a subtle line across the southern part of the planet. The shadow of the planet on the rings was noted again. The “Cassini Effect” was again noted as (double) arcs along the ring extremities. Titan was again observed…”.  Sketcher is a very experienced and accomplished observer and lives under excellent skies. I don’t expect to see what Sketcher sees, but I think there’s more to be gotten from the little scope.

Edited yesterday at 03:09 by Jim L

[ST_Steve]

Loved your report @Jim L and I now have a smile to face whatever the day may bring.

Edited yesterday at 08:33 by ST_Steve

[SwiMatt]

Out for some short solar activity between the clouds...

(yeah the net is not ideal but I'm sharing the balcony with my cats.. it doesn't seem to affect the views though)

[maw lod qan]

First thing at 5:15 am while coffee was making I took the garbage out. Tuesday is one of our days!

Seeing the crescent moon with Earth glow I stepped out from under the trees to get a better look at it.

The timing was perfect! I've finally, after all this time got to see a starlink train.

Eleven total moving SW to NE about 5 degrees apart.

If they had been green, I would have just assumed it was another Klingon firing it's torpedos.