ASV 2014 Messier Star Party

This past weekend I was able to take a day off of work, and head on out to the Astronomical Society of Victoria's (ASV) Messier Star Party.  This is an event held around the first new moon in March, at the Leonard Mow Dark Sky Site.  The LMDSS is an observing enclave maintained by the Society for the benefit of it's members... and a wonderful benefit it is!

As it so happens, about one year ago was my first visit to the LMDSS, also for the Messier Star Party.  It's been an eventful year, but I've still been able to make the trip five times or so in the intervening months.  Every time I have the chance to go out and combine two of my favorite things, camping and stargazing, it's a huge plus for me and really helps my state of mind.  Sometimes, when I'm lucky, my partner will even indulge me and come along, despite her troubles with insects.

Several times a year the ASV opens the LMDSS to the public.  This particular event, as the name implies, is ostensibly about running a Messier Marathon, although I did not meet one person that was trying one :-)  Mostly, it's a good time to catch up with members, enjoy some local wine and food from invited vendors, and take in a good night of observing.  I wanted to extend the single Star Party night into two nights of observing, so I left Melbourne around 15:00 on Friday to head up.

Friday Night

It's a very scenic two hour drive from Melbourne, but the Friday traffic extended it to three and made it a but less pleasant.  I arrived around 17:00 and was surprised to find a half dozen groups there already.  Some people had even arrived as early as Thursday!  There was still plenty of good places to camp, and the large observing field had plenty of space, so it did not take long to get everything unloaded and arranged.

The LMDSS is separated from the Melbourne basin by a bit of a hilly/mountainous feature and is quite inland, so the weather is very different.  I've been fortunate that every time I've made the trip, no matter what the weather was in the city, or when I arrived at the site, by nightfall the clouds have rolled away and left the sky clear.  Transparency will vary with humidity, and potentially bush fires, but the sky has always been clear...

Sadly, my lucky streak did not hold out, and the clouds never really left.  They would slack a bit, and open up sucker holes, then close in just when I got the scope pointed somewhere.  Shortly after dark lighting started far away from the North and lit up the clouds very consistently for several hours.  Since there was no observing to do, I setup the camera to take some shots of the beautiful, but pesky, clouds.

Lightning and Stars at the LMDSS

Once I got over the disappointment of a missed night of observing, the sky was almost hypnotic to watch and I had a chance to chat with the other sullen observers on the field.  As we were chatting, the sky opened up enough to see the Large Magellanic Cloud, so I setup a quick timelapse to capture it and the clouds.

Not the night I had hoped for, but fun and better than a day at work and a night back at the apartment!

Saturday

Saturday started wonderfully, there was enough cloud cover to keep things cool so I could sleep in, and I had a great view of some ravens as I made and ate my breakfast.  

A couple of Ravens mucking about

The rest of the day passed somewhat slowly, I spent a lot of time pouring over and annotating a Souther Sky Messier Marathon list from the (Grupo de Astrónomos Mendocinos Aficionados).  While not an Australian club, they share roughly the same latitude as Melbourne and thus the same sky.  Since some of the Messier objects are simply not viewable from the southern hemisphere, and many are very difficult, this modified list was a big help.  

My plan was to run the marathon on Friday night, sleep in on Saturday to catch up, and then have an early night of observing on Saturday to make sure I was in good shape for work on Monday.  This would have worked out perfectly, as Saturday was the public night and it's tough to power though a long and dense observing list and do outreach at the same time.  Since my Friday plans were thwarted, I decided to work my way though the list focusing on things I may not have seen before, but not try to run an actual marathon.

As night fell, the sky opened up and it turned out to be a good night for observing.  Not perfect, the humidity in the air limited transparency a bit, but still pretty darn good as the image below shows.  This is the area to the north of Crux, the Southern Cross, and rich portion of the Milky Way which includes the Eta Carina nebula.

Milky Way - Eta Carinae Nebula

After checking with some folks around me, I setup the camera for what I hoped would be a nice timelapse of the same basic region.  The movie below starts in the same basic region as above, and ends up with Crux in the top-left quadrant of frame.

I did manage to log some actual observing, although I did not make it very far through the list.  Items in bold are new objects for me:

NGC	Messier	Other	Notes
		SMC	Small Magellanic Cloud - Irregular Galaxy
0362			Globular Cluster in Tucana
0104			Globular Cluster(47 Tuc) in Tucana
1316			Radiogalaxy in Fornax
	045		Pleiades
2168	035		Open Cluster in Gemini
7078	001		Crab Nebula
2068	078		Bright Nebula in Orion
1976	042		Orion Nebula
1982	043		Orion Nebula
1904	079		Globular Cluster in Lepus
1851			Globular Cluster in Columba
		LMC	Large Magellanic Cloud
		30 Doradus	Tarantula Nebula
2632	044		Beehive Cluster

It was a great night, and I ended up splitting my time between observing and socializing with the public and other club members setup around me.  Sometimes I enjoy the solitude of a night of observing, and I used to get this when I would observe from my cabin in Joshua Tree, California. Sometimes it's nice to share the experience with others, and this is what most of my experiences at the LMDSS have been like.  Each one is a mini star-party, and there are always other people observing and sharing the sky.

Done! : 490 days, One Scope, Few Posts, and First Light

490 Days, One Scope

For those of you who may have joined us recently, this blog is called One Year One Scope because that was my plan.  You can read all the details here, but the short of it is I wanted to buy/build/find a new telescope in one year.  Well, here it is 490 days (1.34246 years) later and I have something like the better scope I set out to build.

So I missed my one year goal, but considering I moved to Australia in the interim, I'm actually pretty pleased.   It took a while to ship the parts to Australia once I realized I was here long term, building the scope in my apartment was challenging, and works has been a bit crazy.  Progress was definitely slow....But the telescope is done, and after using it for one night, I think it's pretty darn good, with the potential to be a lot better.


Few Posts

Looking back I've not posted anything for eight months.  Terrible, terrible.  Some of that time I had little to report, the scope parts were sitting on a boat, or sitting in a corner and I was otherwise occupied with life.  However, I've been actively building the scope for just about four months.  I could have posted a bunch of work in progress stuff, but my propensity for order held me back...

I had this orderly, and seemingly wonderful, plan for this blog when I started.  Every post would be an organized signpost along the journey, and it started off well.  I figured out what I wanted, listed requirements, figured out a budget, decided to build, worked out some details of the design. You can check it all out on the right hand side there.  It was nice and tidy.

Then things sort of got messy.  I did research, made decisions and  found opportunities to get specific parts before I could write posts detailing the process.  Each time I wanted to post about some new milestone, I thought about all the other stuff I should post about first, so that everything would be a nice, tidy narritive; 'Well, I can't really post about buying the secondary mirror before I post about secondary mirror sizing...'.  So I ended up writing very little.

Now that It's done there are definitely things I am going to share, but if I could have gotten over my desire for orderliness, I could have probably documented a lot more of the process, as it happened, for myself and anyone else who was interested.  Hopefully, I've learned my lesson; A somewhat temporally disorganized post that actually gets posted, is better than the perfectly ordered post that never does

First Light

It's with this lesson in mind, that I'm posting about my first impressions of the telescope even before I've covered what I bought for all the parts, and how I built it.  I will follow up with all that for anyone who's going to start a similar journey (and I really think you should!) but if I keep waiting to get it perfect, it will never come.

That's me and the Telescope

Last night I went out to the yearly ASV Star-Be-Cue party at their dark sky site about 150km north of Melbourne.  I was racing all week to finish the scope up, and I did not complete the assembly until Saturday morning.  The final details took longer than I hoped and I was on the road a bit late, but I arrived by 5:30 and had plenty of time to setup the telescope and wait for darkness.  It was a great night of observing, and I'll definitely post more about it, but here are my first impressions.

The View is AWESOME: There is a lot of fine tuning to do, but the views really blew me away.  The Orion and Tarantula nebulas were incredible, with lots of fine detail visible.  I came back to them several times and I spent a good part of the night just taking them in.  47 Tucanae with the 13mm Nagler was resolved to the core with pinpoint stars.  It was really breathtaking.

The motion is good, but could use work: It moves well, but it takes more force than I would like and it's not balanced in the altitude axis.  Like most scopes, this one will take some tuning.  The design is solid, and I think with some balancing, a couple of minor position changes of the teflon pads and a bit of wax, it will be smoooooth and easy.

The scope is large, but manageable: I opted for the 'Easy Transport' option when I ordered the kit from DobStuff and I'm glad I did.  Since I don't own a car, I use a car share service and this time there were no larger cars available.  Breaking the scope down I was able to pretty easily fit it into the Hyundai i30 hatchback I had reserved.  This is along with my camping gear, food, and my C6 with a surveyor tripod.  The optical tube, even when shortened, can be a bit unwieldy due to the weight of the mirror, but it's actually easier than I had imagined.

Assembly and setup and collimation is pretty easy: It takes maybe 15 minutes to unload and setup the scope.  There are no tools required and almost everything is captive.  There are three bolts that are loose which I'll need to figure out a good way to keep track of, but everything else is large assemblies.  I sprung for a laser collimator since I knew I'd have to do it every time I setup, and it made the job relatively painless.

I'm going to be busy: On the way home I thought of a half dozen changes I want to make right away.  Most are minor and not a reflection on the kit, but rather my build of it or my personal preferences.  I think I can make it through a large portion of them before the next new moon when I hope to take the scope out again.  Visually, It already performs like a champ, but I think these few things will really improve my comfort using the scope.


I'm really looking forward to the first weekend in January when I can take the scope out again.  Until then, Clear Skies to everyone!

ASV Messier 100 Party Observing Report

Welcome Back

After a very long hiatus, I finally had a chance to get back under the stars this past weekend.  I've been in Melbourne Australia for just about four months now, and I had not been observing for at least a month before I left California. All together it has been almost half a year.  Being under the stars, a new set of stars for sure, felt wonderfully familiar and exciting.

I'd been hoping to get out and do some observing for some time, but a variety of circumstances from work to brush fire warnings had kept me locked under the light dome of Melbourne.  Over the long labor day weekend my opportunity finally came in the form of the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV) Messier 100 Party. 

Welcome to the ASV Messier 100 Star Party

The Messier 100 party (I'm assuming only 100 are visible from in one night from this far south, but I'd like to check on this) is a yearly public event hosted by the ASV at their Leon Mow Dark Sky Site (LMDSS).  It's located roughly 150km (93m) north of Melbourne in some kind of natural preserve area, and is easily darker than my usual observing site in Joshua Tree 240km (150m) east of Los Angeles.  For me and my partner it was a short and scenic two hour drive in a rented car.  This was our first time driving in Australia, but after riding a bike here for several months it was not too unnerving to take to the (opposite side of the) road in a car.

Memorial / Dedication marker for the LMDSS

We arrived a bit before dusk and the camping area was already fairly full as the site was open to the public on this night.  It took a while to find a spot and setup camp, but it's a beautiful area that is pretty well laid out.  There is a clubhouse with some bunks and a kitchen along with toilets and showers.  I was itching to get out to the observing field and setup my kit before dark.  Sadly, I was in such a hurry to setup camp and get my gear unpacked that I forgot to get any pictures that evening.  Every picture in this post is from the following morning and things had already thinned out a bit.

180 Degree panorama of our campsite

When I went home for Christmas I brought back my C6 Travel Kit and this is what I packed with me for this outing.  It's a nice scope; In it's travel configuration it's a bit under mounted, but still rather functional.  I grabbed the bag and headed for the observing field. 

Road to the Visual Observing Field

There were already roughly 20 scopes on the field, with a large section in the center reserved for the club's 25" Obsession which had yet to be setup.  The horizon was not perfect, there are several large trees surrounding the site that are being preserved as part of a nature reserve, so I tried to pick my spot carefully.  If you are not at one side or another of the field visibility is good above 15 degrees, so all in all it's a nice spot.

360 Degree panorama of the Visual Observing Field

I picked what seemed like a good spot and setup my kit.  It went pretty quickly and the telescope was in reasonable shape for having travelled almost 13,000km in the belly of a plane.  The travel kit fits in a carry-on suitcase, and I've flown with it before, but there are weight restrictions for carry on bags that have never caught me before.  On my last flight they weighed all the carry-ons and I ended up needing to check my bag.  I was pretty happy when I retrieved it from the baggage carousel and it was all in one piece.

As you can see from the picture below it's mounted on a robust photo tripod, but it's still not the normal surveyors sticks I use at home.  I don't extend the legs to help with the shaking, but it makes for a very low setup.  The foldable stool works well for most angles, but observing near the zenith can be a real pain.  Once I was all setup I went back to camp to have some dinner and await the darkness.

My observing setup

Brand spanking new australia made camp chairs

The Sky at Night

Right as we were finishing dinner we could hear someone at the clubhouse announcing that the Sky At Night talk would being in a few minutes.  We walked over and gathered around a group of perhaps 50 people for a tour of the night sky.  The weather had been cloudy all day, and there were still patchy clouds around as the night darkened, but the presenter (Perry Vlahos, I believe)  managed to work around them and point out some of the key constellations of the southern sky.

After a few minutes my eyes adapted a bit and the dusk faded enough for me to get my first look at the large and small Magellanic clouds.  There were both obvious and easily visible with direct vision.  The large cloud is almost as bright as parts of the Northern Milky Way, and in binoculars it's easy to see some brighter and darker regions.  The small cloud seemed to me like an elongated spiral galaxy viewed through a telescope, but it was right there in the sky.  The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest object I can compare it with, but Andromeda is much smaller and dimmer in the sky.  I was really pleased to be out observing again.

Once Perry had oriented us, he pointed out a few nice binocular objects, mainly open clusters, but also one or two globulars thrown in.  They went fast, and I was more interested in looking than logging so I'm not entirely sure what I observed in that first hour or so.  One think I could see is that the Southern Milky Way is rich with wonder indeed!  I'm not sure if it's just that there is so many NEW things to see, or if there are just more of them, but scanning the plane of our galaxy with binoculars seemed to reveal a train of open clusters, rich star fields, and faint nebula.

As the tour was wrapping up the clouds cleared from the western horizon and Perry took the opportunity to point out Comet Lemmon low in the sky.  I could not find it with the naked eye, but it was easily visible in Binoculars.  It had a distinct and visible tail along with a tight nucleus and I tried to note it's location in the sky so I could return to it later with the telescope.

After the tour I returned to my scope and decided to run down a list I had hastily cribbed from the Astro League Southern Sky Binocular Program.  While cooking dinner I had scrawled down most of the globulars, galaxies and nebula on the list.  I was really not as prepared as I would have liked to be, particularly considering how little I knew of the sky, so this list seemed like a fair place to start.


My First Southern Observing Run

First on the list was 47 Tucanae (NGC 104), a big and bright globular cluster.  This one is nestled close to the SMC and is actually pretty easy with the naked eye.  It appears definitively non-stellar and I was surprised at how bright and obvious it was.  It gave a great view through the scope, with a nicely condensed core and good resolution of the edges with my 13.5mm.

I moved on next to Omega Centauri (NGC 5139), one of my favorite, but usually very elusive, globulars.  From just about everywhere I've observed, this one is low on the horizon in the murk, but still looks beautiful.  Even though it was early, and would climb much higher later in the evening, it was already close to 40 degrees above the horizon and very visible.  In the scope it resolved almost completely into a riot of stars.  It is pretty massive by globular standards, and is not strongly condensed so it gives a really nice view.  Seeing this somewhat familiar object in a whole new way really made me feel like I had a lot of wonderful experiences ahead of me observing from the southern hemisphere.

Clouds were starting to be a bit of a problem, and I had a hard time orienting myself under the unfamiliar sky with only partial views.  I decided to go grab a peek through the club's big gun, the 25" Obsession.  They had it pointed at the Orion Nebula and I thought it would be a kick to compare the view with my C6.  I climbed the ladder and looked through the eyepiece.  They had a good bit of magnification right on the Trapezium.  All five main stars were easily visible, and a nice bit of dark nebulosity carving out the edge of field.  My 7mm eyepiece was still back home, so I could not muster as much magnification on my C6, but it was still very nice view.  I actually enjoyed the extra context and the nebulosity is bright enough to be beautiful in any scope.

Since it seemed like an easy catch, I turned my attention to the Tarantula Nebula, an HII region in the LMC.  It's easily identifiable in either binoculars or a finder scope as a knot of increased brightness embedded in the diffuse glow.  Through the scope it showed a nice bright nebulosity that showed some nice variation and subtle detail with continued viewing.  I'm looking forward to visiting this again with a wider variety of eyepieces and maybe a filter.  Certainly I'd love to have a long look with a larger scope!

As the clouds continue to occlude various parts of the sky, I tracked down two more globular clusters, NGC 362 and 419 in Tucana.  I was searching for 362 specifically, but ran across 419 as a nice surprise.  They were both quite nice, with 419 much dimmer than 362 but still easily identifiable as a globular.

By this time most of the sky was clouded over, but through a small opening to the east I could see Saturn had risen, so I decided to end my night with my favorite planet.  The view was not fantastic, the combination of thin clouds and low altitude presented a low-contrast and roiling view, but it was still very satisfying.

The total tally was four globulars, two galaxies (LMC/SMC), two nebula one planet, seven meteors and one flyover of the ISS.  All in all a really wonderful first night and more than I hoped for considering the weather and my inexperience with this new starscape.


Packing Up

I decided to leave the scope on the field and pack it the next morning.  It's a little finicky to get everything back in the suitcase and I felt secure at the club site.  I walked back to bed and had a pretty good sleep in my new tent, with new sleeping bag, new pad... basically new everything as I did not bring any of my camp gear from the US.

The next morning I woke up pretty early and went out to retrieve my scope.  As I was so excited to get some observing in the previous night, I took this opportunity to grab some pictures and really get a good look around.  The LMDSS is a great site, and I'm really looking forward to getting my membership so I can use it on a regular basis.

The LMDSS is situated amongst some beautiful bushland

There are actually three fields, one for visual, one for astrophotography and there is an additional section for radio astronomy.  I did not have a chance to get a good look at the radio astronomy gear, but I wandered out to the photographic field to see how it differed from the visual field.

Wide view of the Photographic Field 

Four of the dozen or so piers in the Photographic Field

It's set further away from the clubhouse, to avoid any light contamination, and has a good number of piers for mounting rigs.  There is also a dome which houses the clubs permanent astro-imaging setup.  Next time I'm definitely bringing my DSLR for some wide field astrophotography.

I wandered around a bit more and finally decided it was time to pack up my kit.  It was quick work in the daylight but I was glad I did not attempt it at night.  I have to really take everything apart and its important to make sure everything is packed well to avoid any damage.  In the picture below you can see the scope with the mount below it in frame and the tripod above.  The blue bag is for my 8x50 finder and the green fingerless gloved to the lower-right hold and cushion the star diagonal.  The whole thing is topped off with some bubble wrap tucked between all the metal parts and it's zipped and strapped shut.

The C6 travel kit, all packed up

My C6 travel kit is airline carry-on friendly, except for the weight

Let's do it again

After such a long time it was so refreshing to be observing again.  It made me crave another outing as soon as I can muster it.  I've applied as a member to the ASV and I expect to get my membership approved shortly which will allow me access to the site almost any time.  If my work, finances, and the weather cooperate I could observe once or twice a month around the new moon and I'm really looking forward to it.

Anyone have any suggestions for what should be on my next observing list?  Here's hoping for clear skies for all the observers out there.

The Geminids and The Astronomical Society of Victoria

So yeah, hmmm.... it's been a while since I posted.  Looks like it's been almost a month since my last post, and that was just a quick note about moving to Australia for a while.  If you discount that, it's been almost two months.  It's been a busy time, but I'm finally feeling settled into the new city and the job duties are smoothing out, so I'm hoping to write a bit more.

I've certainly not stopped dreaming about astronomy, or my future telescope, but dreaming is about all I've really been able to do.  I'm under a whole new section of sky, with so many and varied wonders to be seen, and I've not been able to take advantage of it... yet.  A few things have been lacking so far, Time, Equipment, and Knowledge.


Time and the Geminids

I think the time issue will  only get better from this point, at least for a while.  The new studio I'm here to setup is really coming together; I'm now usually free on the weekends and I'm not working very late in the evenings.  In fact, last Tuesday, the sky was very clear, the moon was gone, and I took my new Southern Skies edition of the Night Sky out on a walk.

I did not get anywhere very dark, mostly just around my hotel, ducking into shadows to avoid street lights.  There is a park nearby I've got my eyes on, it's walking distance, and is large enough to at least offer some relief from local light sources... maybe next time.  On my short excursion I was at least able to look at the sky and try to orient myself.  Even fairly close to the center of Melbourne, there are still significantly more stars visibile than in Los Angeles.  I'm going to chalk it up to less particulate in the air, and about half the population density.

There are some familiar sights here, I spotted Orion almost immediately, but it took me a minute or two to realize what should have been obvious.  He's upside down.  At least from the way I'm used to seeing him.  The constellation was low on the North/East hoizon, and his sword was hanging 'upwards' towards the zenith pointing the way to a whole area of sky completely unfamiliar to me.  It was strange to think that the rest of the sky I'm familiar with is down below the horizon in the direction of his, now upside down, head.  

My attempts at finding constellations were not all that successful, this first time out.  I'm hoping to spend some more time studying the sky next week if the weather cooperates.  Even though it was a short observing session, from a terrible location, I was rewarded with one gem.  A very bright, and fairly long lived, Geminid!

At least it seemed like a Geminid.  It was several days before the peak of the shower, but it seemed to be going the right direction, in the correct area of sky, so I'm pretty confident.  It was surprising to me considering I was a few days early, it was pretty early in the evening, and I was under light polluted skies.  Under a dark sky, I imagine it would have been awesome.


Equipment

I have several potential solutions to this one.  First, as I came to realize by taking the time to actually go outside and look up, eyes are pretty good on their own.  There is a lot for me to observe with the standard issue equipment.  There are whole new constellations and wide starscapes to learn and appreciate

Second, I found an optics shop that has what looks to be a decent pair of binos at a resonable price.  I've not found many reviews, but the few I have found are positive.  New binoculars have been on my list for a while, and I'd love to get under a dark sky here and try them out!

Third, when I return to Los Angeles for the holidays in about a week, I'm going to come back with my C6 travel kit.  At 6" (152mm) in diameter the scope is smaller than my workhorse XT8, and much smaller than the 16" (406mm) I'm working on building.  I'll also have to travel light, with the collapsable photo tripod and a limited set of eyepieces and accessories, but it will still be a heck of a lot more kit than I observed with for years.  I expect great things from that little scope!


Knowledge - Enter the ASV

To tackle the last item I'm going to join the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV), which is the local astro club here in Melbourne.  The way things stand right now I'll be here for 4 months or so after the new year.  That's maybe 8 weekends of good dark sky observing when the moon won't be an issue.  Weather might cut into that number even more, so it's important I know where to go to observe, and what the "Can't Miss" objects are.  I need to meet people who know the geography and the sky.  Also, maybe they can give me a ride... driving on the left is a little intimidating.

Joining an astronomy club has been on my todo list for a long time.  In Los Angeles, my work schedule and lack of automobile always seemed to interfere with getting to any of the local club meetings to check them out.  By a wonderfully strange set of coincidences, here in Melbourne, I'm staying a block or two away from the regular meeting place of the ASV, and my work runs from 8-6, rather than 9-7.

I missed the meeting in November due to work and ignorance of the location, but I was able to attend the December meeting last Wednesday.  Right before the meeting was scheduled to start I found the room in the National Herbarium and rushed in.  There were something like 50 people in attendance and the meeting started promptly at 8:00pm.

The president of the club started with some announcements about committee memberships, meeting schedule changes and information about the yearly Star-Be-Cue they hold at their dark sky site during the new moon in December.  He then went on to describe the building of a wooden hybrid tripid/dobsonian mount he built for his 6" refractor.  It was a very interesting presentation and hearing about it made me yearn for the chance to get started on my 16" scope.

Being the last meeting of the year, the majority of the time was dedicated to slideshows and videos from the last year's events.  I could not have picked a better time for my first visit!  It was a fun and fascinating to hear about the events the ASV has sponsored including monthly star parties, a viewing of the transit of Venus, and the total solar eclipse visible from the northern tip of Australia.

A few of the recaps included wide field, time lapse photography of the sky from their dark sky site.  It's only about 1.5 hours from the city, but judging from the video, it's got much better skies than my normal dark sky site 3 hours from Los Angeles.  Even though Melbourne is not all that far south, at 37 degrees latitude, they had a strong Aurora during one of the most recent star parties.  Sadly, this is very uncommon, so I'm not likely to see anything like it while I'm here.  Still, it was beautiful, even on the time lapse.

When the meeting was breaking up I had a chance to introduce myself to the club president and speak to him for a few minutes.  He, like everyone I met, was very friendly and enthusiastic about both their club and the night sky.  Before attending the meeting I was somewhat apprehensive, but it was a wonderful experience to be around so many people with a common interest.  I look forward to attending again in January.

When I get back into Melbourne after my holiday trip home, joining the ASV is first on my todo list.  For a $70AU membership fee, I'll have access to their dark sky site and, more importantly, a group of very knowledgable people to help me make the best of my observing time here in Melbourne.  I'll probably end up renting a car for the trips, but it will be nice knowing that I have a dark and friendly place to head to.

Attending the meeting also showed me what I am probably missing by not making the effort to make it to one of the local Los Angeles clubs.  When I get back I'm definitely going to find some way to make it work for me.  If you have not at least explored one of your local astronomy clubs, I really suggest you do.  You might enjoy it as much as I did.

My next post will definitely return to my telescope build, I've got some exciting new via email to share!

GSSP 2012 Observing Report

The Golden State Star Party is a yearly event held under very dark skies near Adin, in Northern California.  How dark?  Well, here it is on the fantastic Dark Sky Finder right on the edge of a black zone.  You can look all over California on the map and find only a handful of black sky sites, and most are tiny islands.  True, this is on the edge of a grey zone, but compared to my normal semi-dark observing location, Joshua Tree, CA, on a blue/green border it’s a wonderful sky.  Definitely worth the 11 hour drive from Los Angeles for four nights.

Heading Up
I split the trip into two parts, leaving Tuesday and staying overnight in Sacramento.  This was a nice opportunity for me to visit some friends and family, and it allowed me to get to the location fairly early on Wednesday without having to leave at some insane hour in the morning.  Arriving somewhat early is important since setup takes a while and, like most star parties, the use of white light after dark is prohibited.  

The drive is actually pretty beautiful after Reno, NV. The elevation starts to build and the landscape is rolling hills with light tree cover.  Not long after I crossed back into California I passed this tree, full of shoes. I'm not entirely sure what the story is here... actually I'm not even a little sure. I had to turn around and take some pictures.

The Shoe Tree.....

Forever a piece of me in California

The rest of the drive was uneventful.  The weather looked great as I was heading north and I stopped several times to take photos since I had plenty of time. 

The Road to Adin, CA

I arrived around 3:00pm after a leisurely drive through the very scenic countryside, giving me plenty of time to setup my camp and telescopes.


Wednesday

Unfortunately, my early setup did me no good.  By the time I arrived it was cloudy, and the weather reports indicated it would stay that way through the night.  As the afternoon progressed, more and more anxious astronomers arrived, unpacked, and watched the sky.  A few folks did not even bother to setup their scopes predicting the cloudy night to come.

There ended up being a few gaps in the clouds after dark, just enough to keep me awake and hopeful until almost midnight, but not enough to actually observe anything.  Total bust on that count, but I met some nice people camping around me and got a chance to check out some of the equipment being setup.

Thursday

I woke up late in the morning and the sky was still grey, if anything it looked even worse than the day before. My apprehension for the evening was building, but I had a whole day ahead of me to walk around and talk to some folks about their equipment. Attending a star party is a great way to learn about, and potentially try out, a host of equipment. I love walking around and seeing what people have brought. Since everyone is there for the same purpose, it's easy to strike up conversation. There is always something to talk about, even if it's just our common desire for clear skies.

As I started to walk and talk, one of the first camps I stopped at had two scopes built from DobStuff.com kits. I was already starting to think about my next telescope and building a kit scope like this was high on my list. I'm kicking myself for not getting any pictures, but the scopes were beautiful! They were 12" and 18" inches with similar caramel color stains. I've seen pictures on the website, but the scopes look even better in person. The two owners had nothing but good things to say about the kits and Dennis Steele who makes them. I had a chance to try moving them a bit, and the motion was smooth and the whole assembly seemed rock solid. Part of this was probably the skill of assembly, but it was very promising and really inspired me to get going on my new scope.

I spent several hours walking around until the rain started. There was rain off and on for the rest of the day, and I had to move my scopes under the pop-up shade structure I brought, but it was a nice time overall. By evening the rain had stopped, but it was still cloudy. I hoped for the best, but had a sinking feeling I would be turning in early again tonight.

Each night there is a speaker who gives a presentation. Thursday's speaker was Mel Bartels speaking about "The Nature of Telescope Design". It was a wonderful presentation covering some of his past and current telescope designs along with a bit of engineering and philosophy. When the talk was over everyone shuffled out of the tent into a cloudy night... but it did seem LESS cloudy than before the talk.

Almost magically over the next hour or so as the twilight turned to actual darkness the clouds completely disappeared! It was fantastic; by the time I would have started observing anyway the sky was clear and looked magnificent. Checking back in my log I gave it a 7 for seeing and an 8 for transparency (out of ten). For my highly objective rating system this is pretty darn good.

My plan for the night was to try for every Messier and bright NGC globular cluster I could in Sagittarius. I started with the humble globular cluster NGC 6440 and logged it at around 10:30pm

"Very small and dim. Took a lot of searching and high magnification to identify as G.C. Unresolved even at 200x. Round, with tight core and uniform gradation out to edges"

The night was very warm and I spent the next three hours making my way through Sagittarius logging 13 globulars and two bonus objects; NGC 6822 Barnards Galaxy and NGC 6818 the Little Gem planetary nebula:

"A mini ring nebular! Very small and beautiful. Non stellar circular glow in 13.5mm, shows dim center and ringlike appearance with 6mm. Seems to have blue-green coloring"

It was an incredible night.  Tracking down a lot of smaller, dimmer NGC globs was a real treat.  

Friday 

The day started out pretty warm and I was woken up early by the morning sun.  I decided to go out and explore the countryside and surrounding towns.  The closest is Adin, CA, and the GSSP is an event around those parts.

Adin is a very small town with a few shops and homes. It's got a nice general store where you can pickup any supplies you might need. There were signs in the window advertising the GSSP public night that very evening.

I returned to the star party and walked around a bit. The sky was cloudy, but I had hopes it would clear up. My intention was to do some wide angle astrophotography with my Canon T3i. Nothing fancy, just the camera on a non-tracking tripod with a 24mm lens. I had recently purchased an intervalometer (timed shutter release controller) and was hoping to use it for some time-lapse series. To test everything out I took this time lapse during the day. You can see the clouds drifting over the observing field.

Fortunately the sky cleared up before dark and it looked like another wonderful night. The Public Night started around 9:00 and lots of folks from the surrounding towns came to visit. After showing a few people Saturn through the scope, I started observing in earnest a bit after 10:00. I rated the seeing a 6 and the transparency an 8 again. Before I dove into my evenings observing plan, I setup the camera facing south to catch Sagittarius and the milky way passing by. I started the intervalometer and went to work.

My plan for the night was to get all the M objects in Scorpius, and a couple of NGC's that I thought I might be able to see with my scope, then move over to Ursa Major to view a few Messiers I have missed to date and revisit some old favorites. I ended up observing 25 objects in about 4 hours, which has to be some record for me. I'd never seen many of them before, and most I'd never seen so well. One of my favorite of the night was the Lagoon Nebula, which I was observing for the first time through a new OIII filter I picked up at one of the vendors just that day!

"OIII Makes a great contrast difference. Helps show full extent of nebulosity with dark lanes much more visible. Split easily into several lobes. Fills 3/4 of 13.5mm ( 0.9 deg) field"

I also checked out the Trifid and Veil nebula, both of which looked great with the OIII.  It made for a much nicer view than my narrowband nebula filter.  Before I packed it in, I retrieved the camera and took some images to stitch together a panorama of the milky way

Several images stiched together, ISO 3200 f/2.8 30seconds each

I got a little off center towards the north end of the milky way, but I think it's one of the best I've taken so far.  The time lapse turned out pretty nice as well.  You can see a few little clouds sneak in right towards the end, but I don't think they bothered anyone.  Just look at how dark they are, with no light from the ground to reflect back, they are like huge dark nebula.

Saturday

Saturday was very sunny and hot. It also featured two of my favorite parts of the GSSP; the Swap Meet and Telescope Walkabout. The swap meet is free for anyone to grab a table and display their wares. It ranged from people with one or two items, to folks who brought bin after bin of odds and ends. I was sorely tempted by several items, including a used Williams Optic refractor, but held off knowing that I had a bigger goal in mind; namely my new big dob.  

Anyone who has an interesting telescope and wants to share can sign up for the Walkabout. It's basically a bunch of folks walking from scope to scope on the list, hearing a brief speech by the owner, and then asking questions and discussing.... and it's great. There were home-made bino-scopes, ATM projects of all sorts, a few high-end commercial pieces and this interesting re-build of a Meade Lightbridge:

Rebuild of a Meade Lightbridge 16"... into a BBQ

Yes, that really is a 16" Lightbridge. Well, at least the primary, secondary and focuser from one! It features a 24" webber BBQ, bamboo truss poles, and a bike rim upper cage. It's dead simple, the whole thing sits in a milk crate and it actually has pretty good motion; sort of like an oversized Astroscan. The owner said it sets up really quick, although he admitted it does not hold collimation well. I'm not sure this is the way I want to go, but it did show how simple and inexpensive a telescope could be... minus the mirrors!


One of my favorite scopes I saw as I walked around was not on the tour, and there was nothing particularly innovative. It was just large. Very, Very Large. Sadly, I did not get to speak to the owner or catch a glimpse through it at night, but it was impressive to behold.

28" Ultralight Dob. Notice how it dwarfs the 10' shade structure

The ultralight, relatively small, mirror box made this seem much more reasonable than the 20"+ Obsession type scopes, but it's still probably more than I would want to handle on a regular basis. Besides, I'm completely decided that I want a flat foot scope. I've been up ladders in the dark, and the views are great, but I feel it would really interrupt my observing flow to climb up and down, reposition the ladder, and such. Besides, some computerization would be required to make the scope usable as you would not want to be actually looking for objects on a ladder, just observing objects.

It stayed clear all day and the night seemed even better than the one before. As the sun set I spent some time with Mars and Saturn waiting for the darkness to settle in. I was somewhat surprised by how steady the air seemed, and I judged the seeing a 7 tonight with 9 transparency... almost as good as this location can be!

Since I had a long drive the next day, I only spent about three hours observing and logged 12 objects. If the total seems low, it was. My targets were a little tougher and I did not find everything I was looking for.  My favorite observation of the night was also the last of my GSSP experience: NGC 6369 Little Ghost Nebula. This small planetary is magnitude 11 according to my list, and was tough to find low on the horizon. It was very satisfying to find, and created a yearning in me to go seek out other difficult planetary nebula.

"Not much more than a dim, bloated star. OIII helped in finding and identifying, but the view is better without. Need to try again when higher in the sky"

Sharing the View and the Impromptu Eyepiece Shootout

I also spent a fair amount of time that last night with some of my neighbors checking out the views through their scopes. One was a standard 15" Obsession, with servos and the whole kit. The view was great, and it was interesting to use a tracking dob. The second was a home built 16" newt on a split ring equatorial. It was a beast! 700 pounds! He transported it in a custom trailer and got it in and out with a winch system.

Towards the end of the evening we had a little eyepiece shootout. The representative from TeleVue was loaning out eyepieces and they had each checked one out during the day. There was a 17mm Ethos (~$800) vs. the 20mm Nagler (~$500) providing roughly the same true field of view (TFOV). Viewing the Veil Nebula both eyepieces gave fantastic views. To me, the higher magnification of the Ethos produced a slightly darker background, but it also had a strange sort of pincushion effect near the edges. It was not objectionable, but a few people commented on it. The Nagler produced a better corrected image as far as I could tell. For kicks we also compared my 32mm TeleView plossl. It has a slightly smaller TFOV and lower magnification. I really enjoy using that eyepiece, it's fantastic and not too expensive, but after the wider field Nagler and Ethos the 58 degree apparent field of view (AFOV) did seem a little tight.

The Nagler and Ethos were both fantastic, but for it's slightly cleaner view and the price difference, I think I'd choose the Nagler, hands down. Heck, you could almost get TWO Naglers for the price of the Ethos and an 82 degree apparent field is no slouch! Spending some time sharing the view through a telescope, and talking about the hobby we all love, is one of my favorite aspects of going to star parties. I'm glad I took it easy the last night and just took the time to enjoy the company, it was a great way to wind down.


Heading Home

I woke up early on Sunday to beat the heat tearing down my camp, but still I ended up sweating in the heat by the time I was done. It's always sad to say goodbye to people I got to know over a few days, and to leave the observing field. I stopped to snap this last picture as I drove out of the gate to head home.

The Entrance, or in this case, Exit, to the Golden State Star Party

If you've never been to any Star Party, I suggest you try to attend one locally. There are several near Southern California, check my yearly events links to the right, and if you feel like making the drive, I hope to see you at GSSP 2013.

My Current Scopes

Now that I have thought about what I want from a new telescope, and before I start to dive into the design and what I might need to buy, it seems like a good time to take inventory of what I have currently and how I got here. Since I want to be frugal about my new scope, allowing me to get the most function I can for the least money, I might end up re-using some pieces I already have. I've also been considering selling a scope to make room and free up budget for a new scope. So here is the current state of things....

Me with my kit at the GSSP 2012, it's sunset, but my face is pretty red from four days of sun

• Orion XT 8 - My workhorse telescope
• 8" f5.9 Dob with crayford focuser
• Telrad
• 9x50 RACI Finder
• Flocked and upgraded with ebony star and teflon azimuth bearing

• Celestron C6 XL - My travel scope
• 6" f10 Schmidt Cassegrain OTA
• Red Dot Finder
• 9x50 RACI Finder
• Astro-Tech 99% di-electric diagonal
• Desert Sky Astro DSV-1 alt/az mount on surveyor tripod

Each scope has a story behind it, why I decided to buy it and what I hoped to accomplish. Owning and using both will help inform my decisions as I go forward designing my new telescope. If you enjoy long rambling stories of telescope purchases and use, then read on!


Orion XT 8

This scope is what got me back into astronomy. Since I was a kid, until eight or so years ago, I owned a 4.5" newtonian on an un-driven german equatorial mount. It was second hand when I got it, and looking back, I'm sure it could have used a new coating on the mirror. However, it was my reference point, and when I wanted to get back into astronomy I knew I wanted something bigger. Then, as now, I had a limited budget and a dobsonian seemed like a good, cheap way to jump back in. At around $350, the XT8 seemed to fit the bill. It had almost four times the aperture of my 4.5" scope, came with everything I would need to start, and had good reviews. I knew it would not be a top-notch scope, but it would be solid and reliable.

It's a basic 8" Synta dob... It's got optics that don't have any obvious defects, the mount is solid with an interesting spring tension system on the altitude bearings, and a fairly nice Crayford style focuser. It came with a 25mm plossl eyepiece and a red dot finder. After I unpacked it and set it up, it was ready to go. It's proven to be a solid performer and is small enough to handle easily, getting it into and out of the car is a not too difficult, and it's got a good amount of aperture. I'd recommend it as a great scope for anyone looking to get into astronomy.

After observing with it for a couple of months, I found a few things that I thought could be better. The first addition was an Orion 9x50 RACI finder. It was a wonderful addition, and really helped when observing from less than perfect locations. It's got a nice wide field, about 5 degrees, and enough light gathering to actually see some of the brighter deep sky objects.  

About the same time I got the new finder, I purchased some Protostar flocking material. I went with the Flockboard light trap sheets which are a thin plastic sheet with the flocking material on one side. It's not adhesive, you just use the natural tendency of the plastic sheet to flatten out to hold it against the side of the tube. It installed easily and I held it in place by running the spider bolts through it. This keeps it in place and it is certainly much better than the somewhat black paint that was inside to start with.

To round things out, I added a nice knob on the bottom of the scope to make it a bit easier to push around the sky. I observed with this scope for over two years, just like that. I purchased some eyepieces and other accessories not directly attached to the scope, but only recently did I feel the need to change anything.

Before the Golden State Star Party 2012 (GSSP) I decided to upgrade the azimuth motion with an ebony star kit from Scope Stuff and to purchase a Telrad. These were both great decisions.  I had a Telrad on my first scope, and the red dot finder is just no substitute. If you have a scope big enough to support it, get one. They are inexpensive and a joy to use. I can't believe I held out for two years. The ebony star kit comes with a precut circle of ebony star laminate and three new virgin teflon pads. Installation was pretty easy, I used spray contact adhesive and should have been a bit more careful, but it worked wonderfully. The amount of force to move in altitude and azimuth is now roughly equal and the scope is much nicer to use for extended periods, especially at high power.

Celestron C6 XLT

A little over two years ago I had an opportunity to travel to Hawaii with my company, Maui to be precise. I read stories of the incredible skies and lack of light pollution on Haleakala and I decided I needed a travel scope. A lot of people would have decided on some sort of short tube refractor, and they would have been very wise. I, however, decided I wanted as much aperture as I could fit on a carry on.

Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes are somewhat light-weight, compact, and have generally good optics. I did some checking, and figured I could JUST fit a 6" SCT in a carry-on suitcase with enough room for a mount and tripod. High Point Scientific was having a great sale on Celestron C6's and I jumped right in. I did not have a mount picked out, or a tripod, but I wanted it. I convinced myself I needed that scope.

I did a bit more research and decided on a Bogen #3047 tripod head, flipped over on it's side, to mount the scope in an alt-az configuration. I found one on eBay for $30 and I purchased it. To keep the whole arrangement off the ground, I bought a Benro A2190T tripod. It's a nice tripod and it has a unique design which allows it to fold flat for more space in my bag. It seemed like I was all set for my trip.

The first time I took the scope out under the stars it was painfully obvious it was under-mounted. The tripod was passable, but the photographic head was outmatched and focusing was a nightmare, even at low power. The entire field would shake for 10 or more seconds any time I touched the scope. On top of this, the clamps had to be so tight to support the weight of the scope that pointing it was an ordeal.  I only used it this way once, for maybe half an hour. It became pretty clear why small, light refractors are generally favored for travel scopes.

I was determined to make the C6 work as a travel scope, so I started searching for a new mount. The Desert Sky Astro DSV-1 seemed to be a good choice. It was not super-expensive, it seemed solid, and was not the absolute heaviest mount. I like alt-az mounts in general, so it was a good choice. Ordering was simple, and the mount arrived quickly. It was great! Solid, simple, with good motion. If I did not expand the tripod legs all the way and used the scope sitting down it was pretty stable. I tried it out a few nights before the trip, figured out how to pack everything away in a single carry-on and I was ready to go!

There was a surprising lack of interest in the telescope/mount/tripod bag as I travelled though security, and before I knew it I was in Hawaii. I only had one night for actual observing... my total stay was short and the drive up to the volcano is long. When the evening arrived I drove the rental car up the mountain with my C6 travel kit. I got up to the top before sunset and watched the sun set as I was above the clouds; Pretty incredible. The sky was clear and it seemed perfect.  

As the sun set the temperature dropped and I started to setup the scope in a parking lot near the top of the mountain. I waited anxiously for the remaining tour buses to leave or turn out their headlights so I could have some darkness. After a frustrating hour or so the parking lot cleared out and I could start observing. Before I could even get fully dark adapted some unusual high-altitude clouds rolled in, completely obscuring the sky. My one night in one of the best places to observe in the world was at an end before it even started. Who knows what wonders I could have seen! Before the clouds rolled in it was incredible... transparent skies and oh, so dark. Since Hawaii is further south than my normal observing locations, and I was at the top of a volcano, I could easily see Omega Centauri, one of the best globular clusters in the sky. When I say easily, I mean easily with my naked eye; Direct vision easy. Right there, like any other star. I managed to get the scope on it before the clouds covered it and was rewarded with a wonderful explosion of stars, but as soon as it started my first observing outside of California was at an end.
Despite the clouds, the C6 performed wonderfully! I ended up buying another 9x50 RACI finder for it and upgrading the tripod to a beefier surveyors tripod from Desert Sky Asto. It won't fit on an airplane, but I can use it extended enough to stand up and observe comfortably with very little shake or vibration. The scope performs so well I ended up leaving the big scope at my observing site in Joshua Tree and I use the C6 anytime I do observing around the Los Angeles area, short trips to Malibu, camping, etc. I hope one day to take it back to Hawaii, or to Australia to see the wonders of the southern sky.

Odds, Ends and the Future

I've accumulated a variety of other things, chairs, eyepieces, charts and the like. I'm sure I can use just about all of these with the new scope, and I'll inventory them in a future post. I'm not sure which scope I might sell, but at this point I expect it would be the XT8. It's a great scope, but it will end up in a strange middle spot. Not my most portable scope, but not my largest either. Why truck it around when I can go for something with 2x the aperture for only a little more effort? I'll be sad to see it go, but if it finds another good home it's got years of service ahead of it!