Neighborly Outreach: New Astronomers Created (I hope)! 29th August 2022

[Captain Scarlet]

Out here in the West Cork coastal countryside, I have over the past couple of years become good friends with a neighbour who’s Swiss/German and spends 4-5 months of the year over here. He, and particularly his (Irish) wife have on several occasions mentioned in passing that if I were to happen to do a shared session they would be keen to attend. They love the night skies here - most Easters I can get 22.0 on my SQM-L when the MW is down - and she even mentioned that a semi-tutored tour of these skies was one of her “bucket-list” items. Crikey, no pressure then.

It's been stubbornly cloudy and quite windy since the latest Moon-down half-month started, but from a week ago, the forecast for Monday 29th had stayed clear, and so it proved. Monday it was, and I asked them to arrive around 2130 while there was still a vestige of twilight left. As it happened there were four of them: they had their daughter and her husband with them, and as it turned out the daughter was the most impressed by everything she saw. Definitely a future Astro-convert.

They arrived as I was still aligning. I had two scopes out, my 300mm OO/Helmerichs Newt on AZ-EQ6, controlled by the standard SynScan handset; and my 105/650 LZOS refractor on an Ayo2. The newt I’d pre-installed with an Ethos 13 giving 141x, and the LZOS was given my Nagler 31 for 21x and 4 degrees FoV. I’d attached my Nexus DSC to the Ayo2 but in the end it was used purely manually, as they arrived before I had a chance to align it, and I can appreciate watching someone else align is rather tedious! I set up behind the house, facing South to East to get some planets in.

I told them I’d give them a tour of the best example I could find of each of the main types of objects we visual astronomers like to observe: planets (obviously), double stars, globular clusters, galaxies, open clusters. In the end I forgot planetary nebulae: next time!

Being still twilight, I pointed the 300mm to Saturn. The seeing seemed quite good, and there were quite a few moons on show. Cue gasps of wonder, one after another as they took turns at the eyepiece. “It doesn’t look real, it looks like a cartoon”.

Next, I explained a little about double stars, how beautiful they can be and how most are not just pretty patterns, but actually gravitationally-bound systems. So I showed them Cygnus, pointed to its head and said that star, Albireo, is also known as “The Jewel of the Sky”. They were amazed at the vividness of the colours, and appreciated the trick of de-focusing to get the colours even more clearly. I let it pass that in fact Albireo is not a gravitationally-bound double, merely a pretty alignment.

None of them had ever heard of the term “globular cluster”, so I drew their attention to the central “keystone” asterism of Hercules, and both the younger pairs of eyes could see M13 naked eye. It was on the very edge of detection for me, helped by knowing exactly where to look. Again, at the eyepiece, sounds of OMG! And Wow! As they looked at M13 at 141x.

Our next object-type was “galaxy”. We were going to look at M31, of course, and for this I put in the Nagler 31 to give us 59x and 1.4 degrees. By now the Milky Way was prominent, SQM-L showing 21.5, so I quickly described that looking at the Andromeda Galaxy they’d be looking at a “Milky Way type” galaxy, but from a long way off. That the bright streaks of the Milky Way were more or less the same thing as the view of M31 initially confused them, but suddenly clicked when I said that everyone knows what a tree looks like, but it looks quite different when you’re sitting on one of the branches. I’d warned them that the thing about looking at a galaxy through a scope was not the incredible view, merely a fuzz, but the thought of what you were looking at. M31 was duly appreciated.

Jupiter was just about high enough to be worth a look, and despite some atmospheric CA some detail was on show, and of course all four moons. Similar reactions to Saturn, partly at being able to see any sort of detail on a planet, but also its sheer size took everybody by surprise.

Open Cluster was next, and my example of choice was the Double Cluster. Having ascertained where it was naked eye, they appreciated the beauty of the myriad pinpoints against black and the variety of colours and brightnesses.

Finally, after a quick return to more gasps at Saturn, I suggested we try for Neptune. I warned them that it wasn’t going to be spectacular, but it would just about be a disc, and just about appear blueish. Just to be able to say they’d seen it. It was found easily enough. And throughout the session there was a steady stream of meteors, lovely!

I must say, a most rewarding session, even though I forgot any PNs. I wanted to show them the Double-Double too but that was nearly vertically up, and one of the party would not quite have reached the eyepiece even with my steps. I think I’ve definitely caused the acquisition of at least one scope, and when I get around to founding a local Astronomy Society, they’re definitely in.

Thanks for reading, Magnus.

[josefk]

spot on!

[Kon]

A very inspiring read!

[Epick Crom]

Nice work bringing in more people to our incredible passion ( err hobby!) 👍👍

[wookie1965]

Brilliant Magnus really enjoyable read.