Date: December 31, 2010
Title: So You Got a Telescope? Part 1
Podcaster: Jeff Gortatowsky
Description: More telescope tips for observational astronomers.
Bio: Jeff lives in Redondo Beach California with his wife Kim and six felines. When not feeding cats Jeff enjoys Astronomy, building and flying Radio Control Sailplanes, building and launching model rockets, and generally reliving his youth of the space age. His most memorable night was the night he spent on an amateur owned 48 inch telescope in southwest Texas. His favorite deep sky objects are galaxy trios and other galaxy groups.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Wayne Robertson, who encourages you to join him in supporting this great podcast.
Transcript:
Hello. My name is Jeff Gortatowsky a Software Architect with eHarmony by day and an avid amateur astronomer by night living in Southern California in the United States of America. Many thanks to Nancy Atkinson and her crew for their hard work on the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Folks if I can do a podcast, so can you. So please get to it!
My podcast today is set of astronomy tips I feel are worthwhile for any observational amateur astronomer. By that I mean useful to someone who observes the night sky through a telescope. I don’t know if these tips apply to people who image through a telescope. I’ve dabbled with some webcam astronomy, and its ok, but frankly it is just not for me. I prefer to place my mark one eyeball to the eyepiece.
Some of these tips are controversial. By that I mean not every amateur you talk with will agree with me. These are my observations over 14 years now as an active amateur and another 25 more years as an on again and off again amateur astronomer.
1) Learn the sky
Nothing, but nothing will increase your enjoyment of a telescope or binoculars more than knowing where things are in the sky. So each night, stop. Look up and see the bright stars. Use a planisphere to identify the constellations. Or use the plethora of tools on the web to print out nightly or seasonal naked eye charts.
Learning the sky has its own rewards. Heck it is its own reward just like like any goal! But for me, a non computerized telescope owner, nothing is more rewarding than being able to point my telescope to the best area of the sky, know exactly what constellation is showing there, and ad-libbing my observing session in that part of the sky. And nothing is more important if I am to maximize my time under dark skies. After all dodging clouds is a way of life in some areas of the globe.
If Saggita is showing, I know it. If Cetus is showing, I know it. Bootes is well placed, I know exactly where to go. I know the sky well enough that I can point my telescopes using low power wide field of view eyepiece and find most of the brightest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere and I am proud of it.
Under light polluted skies, knowing the sky is just as important if not more so. I have to know that bright star their is Spica, so that thing over there is Saturn. You can see where I am going.
2) Use it!
There are many many axioms in amateur astronomy. One of them is aperture rules. This is true. The bigger your scope the more it will show you. Bigger gathers more light, bigger has more resolution. This is physics and all the money thrown at any telescope, no matter how exquisite the scope, won’t change that. As we like to say, an exquisite 100mm telescope is still a 100mm telescope It can’t operate like a 200mm telescope no matter how much money one spent or wishes it to be so.
So listen carefully, there is another axiom. “The telescope you see the most with is the telescope you use the most!” No truer words were spoken. If you have a large telescope in a permanent observatory that you use every clear night, congratulations! You are indeed a lucky person! But that is not reality for me. It’s not reality for many of the listeners of the podcast.
Reality is I have neither the time nor the energy to haul out my 45cm f/4.5 truss tube newtonian every night after a 14 hour work day. I can not leave it setup as I have no location to do so. And it takes that 45cm mirror an hour to cool down even with assistance from a fan. I don’t have an hour to wait. So what do I do? I have a 10cm telescope that sets up in 5 minutes and is ready to observe with 10 minutes later.
There are plenty large aperture telescopes that have never seen the entire Messier catalog, never watched a complete shadow transit of a Jovian moons, nor seen even a fraction of the bright NGC catalog objects. Yet there are plenty of smaller telescopes that have because they get used at every convenient opportunity.
Do not discount your modest telescope. Get out and use it. The more you do, the more you’ll see!
3) Dark skies win but
Dark skies are like aperture. The darker the better. And yes, even smaller telescope perform better under dark skies. However once again there are a lucky set of people for which dark skies are a reality. And then there are those, like myself, where dark skies are reserved for a once a month sojourn a few hours travel away.
So what to do when all you can see is the moon, the planets, and maybe a few bright stars?
Well of course the moon is packed with detail. Get an atlas and start exploring. Make a goal. 100 craters observed and logged. 50 rilles. 50 mountains. You can go from there. After a while the moon and it’s endless detail and changing shadow angles will become a old friend.
The planets… Jupiter is ever changing. There are shadow transits of the moons. Making out detail on Jupiter will make you a better observer. Saturn is even harder to make out detail on and will make you an even better observer. Mars at favorable oppositions will hone you skills even further. And honing your skills will make your observing under dark skies that much better as you’ll see detail in your scope others might completely miss even with larger scopes.
Double stars and variable stars. If you can see a few brighter stars, find a chart and see what is around them. If you can center Vega for example in a finder scope, odds are you can star hop a few degrees in any direction through the main telescope – not a finder, but through the main telescope. My point is within a few degrees of these bright landmark stars you can see even under light polluted skies, double stars and variable stars. They punch through the light pollution where deep sky objects can not. Observing variables can be used in real citizen science projects like those conducted by the AAVSO.
Point is, yes dark skies are amazing. And objects that are not, or are barely visible under light polluted skies are spectacular under dark skies. But you can do very rewarding observing under light polluted skies. Its not all or nothing. And every night you become better and better at using your telescope and as an observer.
4) Use a laptop
This is is going to raise a few eyebrows. I have used paper star charts extensively in the past with some success. And I’ve used printed star charts that I made with a computer. Again with some success. However in my opinion there is a better way.
I have always had far more success finding objects, especially in dense star fields like the Milky Way, using a competent star charting program, live, on my table or tailgate, at night while observing. Before everyone goes crazy yelling about how it will ruin your night vision, or the cost, read what I have to day.
I bought a cheap laptop on eBay. Used it came with 3 good batteries. I’ve had this type of laptop before. I knew it gets great battery life. I only installed the charting program and the obligatory anti-virus software. Nothing else.
I set the star charting program to display red on black. I dim the screen all the way down, then I tape a three layer sandwich of a red plastic film called Rubylith, to screen. When you combine my program setting, with my display settings, with my red filter, the screen is so dim I need a tiny red dimmed USB light to just see the keyboard. There is not enough light from the screen to type by. That is how dim I keep the computer.
Yet you will hear purists tell you that you are compromising your night vision. I assure you however, that in my experience you are doing no such thing. I have seen the very same people who complain that any laptop is too bright for use a night, use at far brighter touch (flashlight to some) to read their charts.
I know, no I am certain, using a properly filtered laptop with a good star charting program like SkyMap Pro, MegaStar, or The Sky version 10 is far superior to any print star chart ever produced. You can customize the displayed star field in innumerable ways. This lets you see, on your screen, exactly what you should see or are seeing in your telescope for the magnification you are using. You can match the field of view, and the orientation of that field of view. You can add stars, take stars away, rotate the field to the exact orientation for your mount type be it equatorial or altitude and azimuth. You can mirror reverse the field; Zoom or widen the field. None of that is easy with a decent printed star atlas. Armed with my 45cm truss tube newtonian and my laptop running SkyMap Pro or MegaStar, I’ve hunted down nearly 15th magnitude galaxies and planetary nebulae. If that is ruining my night vision, you know, I guess I’ll suffer. By the way, when I say 15th magnitude, I mean visual magnitude not the Blue-Violet magnitude like many catalogs use. By those standards the magnitudes I am mentioning is more like the upper 15th magnitudes.
I am not going to convince those that want to use printed star charts. They look at a laptop and think of imagers, whom often do have the screens too bright because they are not interested in their dark adaptation. And many distain laptops because they have a love of the printed low tech atlas. Heck so do I. I collect printed star atlas’! But I know the superior tool is the laptop because nothing makes it easier to see (or confirm you did not see) an object than when you match the exact field of view in the eyepiece with the field of view shown on the screen. Often half the battle of star hopping is knowing you are exactly where you think you are. I can not tell you the number of times I know I saw a very faint object because I could match 13th or 14th magnitude stars in the eyepiece to ones I see on the computer screen and therefore zero in on the precise spot and stare. No printed chart goes that deep.
Yes I keep a print set of charts like Uranomatria 2000 2nd edition in my car just in case the laptop dies. But as long as I have kept the laptop running continuously and had a box to cover it from the dew, I’ve not been let down even in dewing conditions and freezing dewing conditions.
So my suggestion is use a laptop. But if you observe in a group remember to keep that screen dim and filtered. If need be put it in a box and point the screen towards you so that no one can see the screen. Because some people will not been convinced a properly filtered and dimmer laptop will not harm their dark adaption, you need to be accommodating.
5) Mine the net
My final tip for this pod cast is Mine the Net; If you are an observational amateur astronomer looking to grow beyond what I call the Messier Merry-go-round, then I have a few web sites I’d like to bring to your attention if you are not already aware of them. By the way, the Messier Merry-Go-Round is the name I give to the activity I have observed in many amateurs where they basically observe the same bright Messier objects ever year, each season, over and over again. There is nothing wrong that, it’s their choice. However I believe there are 1000s of objects to see with my own eyes and life is too short to observe the same few objects night after night. Sure I love looking at show piece objects. However the deep sky is far more diverse and amazing the further off the Messier path you get. The URLS for these sites are in this podcast’s transcript.
The first site I’d like to bring to your attention is Adventures in Deep Space (http://astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/). Just search and you’ll find it in any search engine. Adventure in Deep Space has dozens and dozens of wonderful observing programs from easy to hard and for all seasons. The articles there could keep you going for quite some time.
The next web site I think is an invaluable resource to the observational amateur astronomer is the NGC/IC Project. Here you’ll find an amazing accounting of the NGC/IC catalogs including historical background and corrections. But the treasured mother load here is the observational logs of deep sky luminaries like Steve Gottlieb done with 35cm and 40cm aperture telescopes. These logs are worth seeking out and can help you confirm your own observations. http://www.ngcicproject.org/
The next site is perhaps not as well known as it should be. I belong to group that calls itself The Astronomy Connection. Call it TAC for short. TAC is a loose association of some of the most amazing visual observers in the United States and in the world. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and with members all along the United States western coast, TAC has a motherlode, a treasure trove, a gold mine of observation reports online stretching back some 15 years. Have a look at at the site and enjoy http://observers.org/reports/.
Finally, Amastro is a yahoo group. As such you’ll have to register and have a Yahoo! account to read the group. Amastro is a Yahoo! group whose members are amongst the most advanced and talented observational amateurs in the world. Reading the archives of this group is a complete masters degree in what is advanced observational astronomy. A word of warning however. The group was form by and for advanced observational amateur astronomers. Not for beginners, not for intermediate observers. I read this group. I virtually never ever post a message. There are plenty of beginner and intermediate amateur astronomy forums, like those on CloudyNights.com (http://www.cloudynights.com/). Amastro is not one of them. However the information in the archives could keep an observation amateur astronomer busy for years to come.
So thats my tips. I hope you found in them something useful. I know some of these tips are opinionated. I wanted to create a podcast that went beyond the basics. Something for those who want to move ahead in amateur astronomy.
For me, the night sky is a personal journey into the wonder and beauty of science and the natural universe science reveals to us. Paraphrasing Carl Sagan a bit, The night sky holds all we know, all we can see, and even holds where we are going. Everyone, everywhere, is connected by that sky. Everyone, everywhere came from that sky and they will return to that sky. For me, there is no need for any other magic, majesty, or high place or cause. That sky IS magic. It’s all right there for you and I to see. I hope this podcast helps you explore that sky.
From Southern California this is Jeff Gortatowsky wishing you clear skies, good transparency, and good seeing.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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