It is of a fairly eminent astronomer (whom Patrick refused to name) who,
one clear dark night , found himself away from his state-of-the-art
instruments. Gazing up at the southern sky, he saw a star far brighter
than its companions. He rushed inside for a star atlas in order that he
could identify it and found that the bright object was not marked.
Eager to be the first to report this supernova, he dashed off the
appropriate telegram, only to find that he had made a completely
independent discovery of the planet Saturn.
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I bought my first telescope when comet Kohoutek (sp ?) was supposedly
visible. It was a 60mm Jason and had an equatorial mount. I did not
know how to set up the mount and following objects was hard. I was told
to look on the western horizon just after sunset to find the comet and
that it would have a reddish tail-- A couple of friends and I finally
found it, a long reddish tail, bright central core, plus it was moving !
Had to be the comet--- We had about five exciting minutes until we
saw other comets as well and realized we had been looking at a jet with
a long contrail.
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During this years total lunar eclipse, I set my 35mm camera up on a tripod
so that I could snap a few pictures of the moon. Although we didn't get to
see the whole eclipse (clouds moved in) I was happy to think that we would
at least have a small momento of the part we did get to see...
A couple of weeks later I decided to use up the rest of that film roll so
that I could get it developed and see how my moon pictures had turned out.
I went out into the yard and took pictures of the flowers, the garden and
my kids to 'burn up' the remaining film. It took a LOT of pictures - TOO
MANY PICTURES. "Rewinding" the film and opening up the camera to see what
the problem was, I found that I had forgotten to put film in! (I'm not
normally this stupid - I've had this camera for several years, and that was
the first time I had ever done that...but what bad timing!)
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I hereby nominate an unnamed fellow meteor observer, who watched the Leonid
peak this year, carefully tape recording his scientific observations so as not
to take his eyes off the sky.....
with the pause button depressed all night long.
Ouch
(My recorder doesn't have a pause button....pure dumb luck)
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Back in 1991, my wife and I were members of the Royal Astronomical
Society of Canada's "Great Solar Eclipse Expedition". For about $1400
(each), we were to engage in a whirlwind 46-hour excursion from Toronto,
Canada to Puerto Vallerta, Mexico and then on to the small town of
Santiago, which was very close to the centreline of totality, on the Baja
peninsula. This expedition had been planned and organised for over two
years, principally be two well known and respected members of the RASC.
About 180 people ended up participating.
The first part of the trip went smoothly and we arrived at Cabo San Lucas
airport, at the southern tip of Baja, on the morning of the big event.
The sky over the airport was clear, but looking towards the north (the
direction we were heading), there was a solid sheet of altocumulus
brooding. "Never fear", we were assured by our group leader, "the weather
forcast is calling for clear skies at Santiago." Our buses headed up the
road and after 90 minutes of motoring, we escaped from under the clouds
and were greeted by crystal clear skies once more!
Our observing area was the town's soccer field. Not a soccer field in the
traditional, grassy sense, though. This one more resembled a giant sand
box. As we set up our equipment under the blazing sun, temperatures rose
to nearly 40 degrees C. A great cheer went up when the first nibble was
taken out of the Sun's disk. Now there was *no* doubt in anyone's mind
that an eclipse was going to happen!
When the Sun was about half covered by the Moon, people started to notice
something a bit troubling: Clouds were spontaneously forming just to our
east and drifting sloooowly in our direction. Almost simultaneously, we
heard that something was amiss with our expedition co-leader. Mike (not
necessarily his real name) could be seen having a major tantrum nect to
his prized telescope system. The nice Astrophysics Apo and Meade 10" SCT
were sitting properly atop the massive A.P., Byer's-driven mounting, but
alas, the Byers drive had suffered a "major malfunction". Meanwhile, to
our continuing disbelief, the surrealistic clouds continued to form over
our heads and progressively blot out the shrinking solar crescent.
When totality arrived, the sky was virtually overcast and the only
"totality" visible was the extent of everyone's displeasure. The saving
grace of this eclipse, however, was it's great duration (nearly 7
minutes), so during that span of time we were able to get some
tantalizing glimpses of the event through thinnings in the overcast. When
totality ended, you guessed it, the clouds began to disipate as quickly
as they had originally formed. An hour later, the sky was crystal clear
blue once again. The planned "celebratory group photo" was scrubbed for
lack of a reason to celebrate. Finally, on the bus ride back to Cabo San
Lucas, *our* bus (one of the 6) broke down and left us stranded in the
Mexican desert for over an hour, but heck, that's another story...
p.s. Later that day, we learned that Randy's (the other expedition
co-leader) telescope drive had ALSO crapped out before totality began.
I think this was all a classic case on Montezuma's Revenge!!
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> Had to borrow a blooper from someone else. I was talking with
> a guy about buying his 12" SC, and he told me about the time
> he packed up the scope and headed up to Yosemite (6 hour drive)
> with friends. After hiking up to their intended observing site,
> he asked his buddy to unpack the eye piece case. His buddy said
> "I though YOU packed the eye piece case." Ouch!
We did that too. Secondary school astronomy club, summer observing
trip, first time trying out our new pride and joy, a Celectron C-8
mounted on a Goto equatorial mount. After a long train trip and
taxi ride up the mountain (ok, so we cheated) we finally get there
and start unpacking. Someone says "so who brought the counterweight
shaft?" Silence.
In the same club someone had a counterweight dropped on his toe and I
think he had to be taken to a hospital, but that was after I left.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: I was setting up a solar projection when I smelt burning nanoseconds
: before I was hit by a searing pain just above my left ear.
:
: Since then I have, in similar circumstances, tended to cap the finder.
And of course, as one friend of mine found out, one should cap the
_objective_ end of the finder and not just the eyepiece end, unless one
is planning to test the resistance of the cap material to focused solar
radiation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A pigeon got once lost into the 1.93 meter telescope tube at Haute Provence
Observatory. This stupid animal seeing stars both ways ( up and down in the
mirror ) decided several times to try its way out through the mirror which
became covered with feathers and pigeon crap. The mirror was cleaned the
following day. Beware of pigeons.
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At Lick Observatory (no names please):
1) At the 36in Crossley (Worlds Greatest Telescope) an observer once
dropped his finding chart down the tube. It wedged where he could not
reach it via the access panel at tube bottom so he pointed this closed
tube giant at the horizon, set the clamps, and crawled in ... as you can
guess, he ended up spreadeagled across the primary where he stayed until
a friend came to visit at midnight (it had clouded up tho the poor guy
didn't know
2) Same scope, PE observer on the platform had his chair tilted back,
feet up ... watching the chart recorder ... fell asleep, woke up hanging
by his hands from the edge of the platform in the dark ... question ...
was the drop 2 feet or 35 feet? Couldn't remember exactly where the
dome was rotated ... swing forward and hope ... drop was 6 inches
3) 36 in Clarke ... observer removed the 250 # camera so that the
spectrograph could be installed ... whoops, forgot the floor weights and
emergancy cable ... grab scope ... hang on ...
About an hour later, janitor Ollie was walking by outside having a smoke
... heard the wimpers from inside the dome ... intrepid observer found
hanging from the ring at the bottom end of the scope which had swung up
until it came to equilibrium with his toes just touching th floor ...
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More Lick Observatory (no names please):
Again at the Crossley (36in WGT)
(a) This English mounted scope was used solely at Prime focus when I
was at LO. Access to the instruments is from stairs attached to the
dome on either side of the slit ... When observing at the zenith the
observer "walks the plank" ... placing a 12 ' long board from one side
to the other and sliding out and leaning over to get to the scope ...
Its a LOOONG way down (but it's dark so not to worry
(b) It is possible to rotate the dome so that the floor end of one of
those slitside stairs is over the stairwell in the dome floor which
leads to the ground level (and the essential facilities ... observers
room with heater and bathroom. It is entirely possible to race to
the facilities (so as to maximize the effect of putting ones boots
directly on the heater grill in hopes of thawing frozen toes during a 5
minute deflection) while forgetting the location of the dome ... the
drop is only 8 feet but it still gets your attention. One LO astronomer
broke his ankle 5 days before his wedding that way.
(c) Of course, it is also possible for a visitor, arriving in total
darkness, to forget the possiblity that when they go charging UP the
stairwell, the platform will be overhead ... I'm told that there was
about 5 minutes between the "thump-bump" and the time that I regained my
senses (thats not a straight line
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well there was the time that I went to a star party 2 hours from
home. A friend and I hit monster thunder storms that were
blowing the tarp off the open pickup with my homemade
20 inch dobsonian back there. We said, "Press onward".
More storms but we felt that it would clear so we kept going.
We arrived and amid curious onlookers, I begin to act
obnoxious as I set up. "Oh yeh! This baby will show you sights
that you have never seen! Sure I built it myself. Back up son,
you'll put out your eye!" Then as the crowd looked on, the moment
transformed into a "Farside" cartoon that read like this:
"It was only after exciting the crowd to a feverish pitch that Lederman
realized he forgot all of his truss tubes".
Then there was the time that my brother in law, father in law and I were on
my back deck. We looked at Jupiter very low in the sky and it was time to
aim higher for some deep sky stuff. I removed the 1 1/4 inch adapter and
got a map out. While examining it with a red light, my brotherinlaw
stepped away and then reappeared. I said, "Here are some galaxies
worth looking". All of a sudden there was a crash and a glass on metal
sound. We turned to see that my truss tube's upper cage had hit the deck
and since I never use mirror clips, my almost new 20 inch enhnced mirror had
sommersaulted and smashed into the truss poles. My look was reminicent of
Oliver Hardy's slow burn look and so help me, my BIL looked like Stan Laurel.
A plug of glass did "pop" oot from the side but the optical surface was basically
uneffected. I quickly put a "stop" in the rocker box so this could never happen
agin. That was not a pretty sound but I never uttered a word in anger. I preferred
to develop an ulcer instead.........ARRRRRRGH!
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Steve used to protect his secondary mirror with a Glad Zip-Loc
baggie. He sat down to eat a sandwich at some point during the night,
and put that sandwich bag in his accessory box, to be later confused
with the one used to protect his mirror. The next morning, his
secondary has a mayonaise coating.
An Arizona amateur who will remain nameless was searching in
southwestern Arizona for the optimal site for a line of people to watch
a grazing occultation. He parks his new Mustang on the railroad tracks,
hears the train coming, tries to get back to his car to get it off the
tracks. Next thing he's 100 feet away from his car that the train
plowed into, the car and 10-inch scope inside are totalled. His biggest
astro-blooper, though, was actually showing up at the next meeting to
hear all sorts of jokes about grazing occultations with trains.
I once left a glove at the observing site on the last possible day of
observing for me for another couple weeks. It was a real nice glove,
but I had to debate making a 40-mile drive back up there on Sunday. I
got there Sunday at about Noon to truly the middle of nowhere, and there
were a couple good ol' boys hanging out at the site, several feet from
my sought after glove. By that point there was no turning back. I just
got out of my idling car, picked up my glove, and said, "Uh, my glove, I
left it here."
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I have a good friend with a 10" LX200 that was his pride and joy.
About a year ago, he had his sister and her brood of three kids come
up for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, Brad had to work while they
"rested" after the trip at home. While Brad's sister slept, His 12
Year old nephew got curious about the large scope in the utility room.
Brad got home, glanced in the utility room, only to see his pride and
joy in about 15 pieces.
They had to drag him off of the little brat...
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I was in my observatory one night taking some photos when the spotlights on the
house came on and I could see a shadow moving in my direction. I was somewhat
upset at my wife for turning on the lights and coming out to my sanctuary when
she could have called me on the intercom($29.95 at Radio Shack). Then this
large black bear moved into view. I thought Oh "oh s...", he looked at me
and I looked at him---and he ambled down the drive and left. There is also a
set of motion lights on the house and my wife was innocent. Nice bear!
That was last year - this year we have had several bear visits and I carry a
24 inch flashlight to and from the observatory. It makes for a good club, I hope!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About ten years ago we were observing with portable telescopes in front
of our Observatory late one summer night. My friend Bruce S. had a
home-built 10 inch dob that was his pride and joy, and he was using it
to rack up several hundred more galaxies that night. At one point I had
went inside to check out something in a book, and he to use the
facilities, and we both after a fashion returned to the great outdoors.
A short while later a strange scratching-type noise was heard eminating
from the area. We stopped and looked around for the source, but to no
avail. after several minutes and more noises, Bruce looked around his
telescope, and then lifted the tube from its base.
Underneath the telescope, sitting somewhat uncomfortably in the base,
was a huge raccoon. It looked up and hissed at us, and then Bruce kicked
over his scope base to get the coon out, which made it mad and it
started chasing us around the yard. We ran into the building and closed
the door, lest the monster gain entrance.
After a while it was quiet, and we ventured outside. The raccoon had
gone up into a tree about twnety feet away, and stayed there all night
hissing and cursing at us in typical raccoon fashion. That night has
become known as the Night of the Raccoon from Hell.
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One night about ten years back I was watching the shadows thrown across
Archimedes.
Suddenly a multi-legged creature appeared to walk across the face of the
moon. After jumping back about ten feet I looked in the eyepiece.
A teeny spider had taken up residence in the eyepiece.
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I was wondering why the my 8" reflector was starting to
move in declination while looking through the eyepiece. Did
I fail to clamp it hard enough? No, a cat had climbed from an
adjoining fence into the open end of the tube, causing a much
more serious obstruction than the worst diagonal ever could.
As you know, cats rub against your legs because they are
hungry. (And you thought it was love?) One of my neighbor's
cats first rubbed against my legs, then when she discovered
that I wouldn't give her food, she started rubbing against
my tripod's legs. What was she expecting? Little chunks of
glass?
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There is the tale of a science teacher who decided to test the benign
version of Sod's Law (the full version ends "...except when dropped for
the purpose of proving the law.") and got a class of 30 pupils to toss a
slice of buttered toast into the air. True to form, 29 slices landed
butter-side down. The 30th landed butter-side up...on the ceiling.
I presume that there are astronomical variations on this law. I am
aware of Waldeman's Laws, which I repost, and I note below that some
obvious astronomical variations on some of the better-known Laws of
Bloody-Mindedness of Inanimate Matter, but can anyone suggest others?
================================================== =====================
1st Law: The skies are never clear within 3 days of new moon, since
there is not enough solar energy reflected off the moon to
dissipate the clouds.
2nd Law: Rare astronomical events usually occur within 3 days of
full moon and/or within 30 apparent degrees from the sun
(gravitational interpretation of Murphy's law*).
3rd Law: When observing, the object you want to see will always be
below the horizon or less than 10 degrees from the horizon with the
most light pollution (since frustration is related to entropy, it
must always increase).
4th Law: Supernovae, comets, and asteroids are always discovered by
someone else (because no matter where you are, the sun will always
set earlier somewhere else, and therefore someone else will find it
first).
5th Law: 90 percent of meteors occur behind you when everyone else
is facing you (so they can all say, "ooh!... You missed a good
one!)
================================================== =====================
*Murphy's Law: "If it can go wrong, it will." (This is not to be
confused with Gumperson's Law: "The probability of any outcome is in
inverse square relationship to its desirability")
The Laws of Selective Gravitation certainly have astronomical
connotations. The first law ("Heavy objects land where they can do the
most damage") has obvious applications where an excellent, lovingly
figured, diffraction-limited primary is either the recipient of the
heavy object or, indeed, the object itself. The second law ("Small
objects land in the place from which they are most difficult to
retrieve") is well known to anyone who has inadvertently loosened
soemthing like an eyepiece-retaining screw too far, or attempted to
change eyepiece filters with either gloved or cold fingers.
This second law also seems to be related to Crighton's Law of Loss
("Lost items stay lost until either a replacement is obtained or the
item is no longer required"). Crighton's Law also explains why things
like spare batteries and cable-releases are found just as dawn twilight
extinguishes 2nd mag stars.
The Law of Inevitable Shrinkage is known to all ATMers who have had
truss-tubes (or any other tube, for that matter) cut to length. The
degree of shrinkage is, of course, in inverse relationship to the cost
of replacement. This ensures the temptation to waste an inordinate
amount of time in seeking a work-around.
Gumperson's Constant (also known as Flanagan's Finagling Factor: "The
factor by which you multiply the answer you got in order to obtain the
answer you should have got") is obviously employed by many mass-
producers of astronomical optics and one can't help wondering if this
was the true reason for the figure of the HST mirror.
Kahn's Axiom ("When all else fails, read the instructions") is
increasingly important as astronomical kit becomes more technologically
complicated.
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We name our cats after music pieces and composers, so one of our
favorite cats was named Brandenburg. One evening, after finishing a
figuring spell on my 24" in the kitchen, the mirror was sitting on its
grinding table face up, a few feet from the 'frig. The top of the 'frig
was one of Brandenburg's favorite haunts. Down he leaped, claws
outstretched, skidding across the mirror face without so much as the
slightly slowing, and toppled off the other end onto the floor.
Another time, I found Zeus starring intently into the 10" primary of my
fork mounted scope, angrily trying to scare off this cat that looked so
much like him. I had to tip the tube completely upside down to get him
to slide out ever so reluctantly.
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January 1985 ... installing SPOT (South Pole Optical Telescope) in its
shelter at the South Pole ... On the roof assembling the "periscope"
optical head ... removed some screws ... where to put them? Roof is
covered in thin blown snow ...
Yes of course ... between my lips ... Whoops ... -its -32C...
... ... ... sorry for the pause, it was about 5 minutes before I was
able to dump enuf heat into those little screws to unfreeze my lips.
(Boy was I glad it wasn't those carraige bolts
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One beautiful summer night I was quietly observing with the C-8
in the back yard when a bright yellow/orange light suddenly filled the
eyepiece. Startled, I jumped back from the telescope and scanned the
horizon to locate the source of the explosion, knowing that there was a
nuclear power plant located about 20 miles south of my location. All
seemed calm and I turned back to the 'scope with a heartbeat slowly coming
back to normal...
...to notice the lightning bug crawling across the corrector plate as he
gazed amorously at his reflection in the mirror below!
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I once was out observing alone at Grant Ranch (on the way to Mt. Hamilton).
The shadowy figures moving around in the nearby field revealed themselves
in my binocular to be wild pigs. More spooky were the coyotes. They were
howling from the hilltops in all directions around me. I could just
imagine how they might be calling each other's attention to the lone
unarmed human down there. Then I heard a gunshot that seemed to come from
a mile or so down the highway. Then another and another. I thought to
myself, "A rancher must have had enough of the coyotes." But then a voice
came from a megaphone in that direction, saying, "Police! Come out with
your hands up!" And shortly later, "All right, is that all of you?"
My big mistake was in relating the story to my wife the next day. She put
her foot down and wouldn't let me go out alone after that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wild Night...
I just got my first scope yesterday in the mail... an 8" Discovery EQ
and I LOVE it. After setting it up tonight I take it out on the patio
for first light with the moon. Got a great shot with my 25mm lens and
I'm fired up... this scope is beautiful.
Girlfriend comes out and checks out the view... she's impressed too.
Meanwhile our cat slinks out (it's not supposed to, an indoor kitty)...
and slides up with us to check out the stars.
Girlfriend goes back in as I slide, twist, and move the scope over to
Mars and Antares I think. Last thing I hear from her is "Watch the
cat... don't let him stray." I do the ol' "Uh-huh"... and keep looking
for one of the red dots in the sky. I finally line up Mars I think but
notice I need to twist the scope in the clamps to get a better angle
with the eyepiece.
That's when I notice there's no cat around.
I look left, I look right, and realize he's jumped up over the patio
wall and headed off into the darkness at our apartment complex.
Normally I wouldn't care if a cat goes awol.... but if we lose this cat
and I take the blame I'll be in deep trouble and have a hard time
explaining that it was a decent sacrifice for my scientific pursuits
among the stars.
So I yell for her to get out here... we need to go cat chasing.
I hop over the patio... and there's the little bandit hiding under a
bush... with another stray cat coming up about 25 yards out. Our cat is
WAY territorial... and has no front claws... so I do the brave thing.
I hop in there and grab the kitty to place him in safer pastures inside.
That's when I lose a chunk of my hand and feel a puncture wound from a
kitty fang dig deep into my tendons near my thumb.
Toss the kitty... yell.
She grabs a squirt gun and harrases it inside... while I go for the
light to inspect my new war wounds.
1 mintute later I go to close the patio door, and I gently brush the cat
to the side with my leg so I can accomplish the task.
Wrong.
It goes for my leg this time and leaves four fang marks that rival
dracula.
Now blood is welting from my right hand and my left leg... pride is hurt
but I'm thinking it's time to go back out and get some stargazing done.
Wrong.
Girlfriend begins to worry and decides I MUST go to the emergency room
to get this looked at.
I'm thinking band-aid and rubbing alcohol... little do I know that cat
bites are serious business in the medical realm.
I get scrubbed with some scrubber deal and iodine... giant gauzes and
gels slapped on... and a 30 minute anti-bacterial IV drip. Plus the
customary 2 hour wait in a waiting room with terrible magazines.
I never knew Astronomy was so dangerous... maybe Mars being the god of
War has something to do with my first light experience with this
multi-hundred dollar toy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where I'm from got me in trouble...
My son and I were en route to a music store called MARS, the
musicians resource. It's a huge discount store selling guitars and amps
and stuff. We were on 71 North when I saw something that looked like an
airplane coming down in flames. Then I realized it wasn't coming down.
It continued across the sky from the west to the east, throwing off
flaming debris in green, red, and yellow colors, and seemed to move
rather slowly across the sky.
Traffic on the freeway literally stopped. People pulled over and
climbed out of their cars to stare at it in amazement. When we finally
got to MARS, I immediately called the local television station and asked
if they had been getting reports about a fireball.
The woman who answered said that they were swamped with calls.
I told her that I was an amateur astronomer and could probably give her
a fairly objective description of the fireball.
"That's great!" she said. "Exactly where were you when you saw it?"
"We were on our way to MARS," I said.
She hung up on me.
True story in Cinci.
