Category Archives: Astronomy

50by50: Re-start my astronomy hobby (#04)

Posted on by July 6, 2017  

When I set my goals for the year (Goals for 2017 – Nudging the needle), I had some astronomy goals in mind. Specifically, under my blue goals, I wanted:

Astronomy: Fixed battery supplies + 1 viewing…I want to attend the RASC annual meeting, do at least 1 viewing at Star Party+Luskville+cottage, but I’ll start with 1 viewing. And work on reading the new RASC guidebook for the year.

and under my yellow goals I had:

Astrophotography: One decent shot…Sure, I would like to do more. Level 2 would likely be a complete set of moon phases (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full). Level 3 and beyond could be constellations, planets, figuring out the laptop thingy, filters, etc. But I’ll start with the moon. And somewhere in there I have to sort my existing astro photos.

Since my new 50by50 goals kind of overtake the regular 2017 ones, I wanted to keep something in my new goals related to astronomy and I wanted to be realistic. So, in the end, I chose:

#4. Re-start my astronomy hobby

  1. Attend RASC annual meeting and/or monthly meetings;
  2. Attend a viewing Star Party at Carp;
  3. Solve my battery supply for the telescope;
  4. One decent moon shot; and,
  5. Upload my previous astronomy photos to my photo gallery;

I didn’t expect to meet all five of those in one week!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this last weekend was the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual General Meeting, and because it was Canada Day, the Ottawa Chapter (of which I am a member) had offered to host the meeting. About 150-200 attendees across the three days, I think. Including…dun dun dun…me!

Yes, I registered, and yes, I went. I confess readily that I suck at attending RASC meetings. The local chapter meets the first Friday of the month, and there is a mix of technical and non-technical presentations. But the meeting is way across town, you have to pay for parking, the items I usually care about are only part of the meeting, and the reason I joined RASC is not really what they do. I originally hoped for more “informal training”, as I generally don’t know what I’m doing. I had hoped, I guess, that there would be more offerings on set themes, kind of like groups going out one night at the start of the year where everyone gets to figure out how to work the scope better; then perhaps a night aimed at studying the moon; another aimed at planets, or constellations, or clusters. Not really how it works. And I thought the star parties would lead to more obvious bonding, but honestly, you’re in the dark and you can’t even really see the other person you’re talking to most of the time! Don’t get me wrong, some people find it great; I’m an analytical introvert, and mingling is not one of my big skills. All things being equal, I feel I might as well stay home and watch the YouTube feed. 🙂

But I join every year, I pay my dues, and this year, I decided I would go to the annual meeting. I know! Surprised me too!

I won’t cover everything, but I picked up my registration on day 1, including my extra swag, a nice t-shirt for the conference. I was already wearing my “You have a place in space” shirt from the US Planetary Society; if nothing else, I have the group swag. I checked ou the displays, spoke to a couple of people, and said hi to Tristan working the Focus Scientific desk (more on that later). And then I decided to attend a sesson on “50 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Algonquin Radio Observatory”. I know, right, how could I pass up such a stimulating topic? Dr. Brendan Quine was presenting, and I had heard good things about him, but seriously, why would I care about the topic? Cuz it was a title that did not do the presentation justice. He was fun, engaging, and talked about not only the basics of VLBI and it’s foundational work to create GPS, but also the transfer of the ARO from the government to the private sector and what his company (Thoth) was doing these days. Including workable ideas for space elevators. Not a dry technical presentation at all, although some in the room could have likely handled that detail too, and highly entertaining. Plus I found out that the ARO rents rooms out to guests who want to come and hang out i.e. a place where I could do a weekend’s worth of observing in Algonquin Park where the observing + sleeping is the same location, not a hotel somewhere nearby. With reasonable rates. Colour me intrigued, and I might book something for this fall (when the bugs are gone!).

I even attended the BBQ the first night. I normally eschew the social aspects by nature, but if I want to meet people, I kind of have to do it, right? So I did. And ended up sitting at the same table as our local rock star, Gary Boyle. Okay, so there is nothing remotely “rock star” like about Gary, but he is regularly interviewed by CBC, his name is recognizable to anyone in the Canadian astronomy community plus lots of people internationally, and not for nothing, he just had an asteroid named after him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/astroid-named-after-gary-boyle-1.4075015 Plus I actually managed to talk to someone I had never met before, Heather from Calgary, who helps out with the Executive and is on several sub-committee/task teams. Practically being a social butterfly by my normal standards. And checking off part (a) above…meeting attended!

I left the BBQ and headed to pick up my son Jacob and wife Andrea, then a friend Mike, and we headed out to the star party in Carp. The weather wasn’t looking awesome but it was still a “go”. We arrived just around 8:30 as the sun was still setting, and Ingrid (wife of Attila, owners of the giant scopes) showed us sun spots on her small 4″ scope. We had a lovely sunset, and then we got to see the Moon, and then Jupiter along with four moons eventually as the night got a bit darker. This was the only the second star party I have been at without my own scope, and the first Ottawa one for Mike, Andrea and Jacob. We all walked up and down the row looking through all the different types, seeing the different setups and viewing options. Later, someone had Saturn in their scopes, so we had to look at them all again for that. Easy to see the rings, all good. Then the fireflies arrived. The field next to the viewing area was dancing. And all of that was in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. By which time the clouds were threatening and the bug stuff we were using was NOT working well enough to stay. Great evening, and tick off part (b) of my goal…star party attended!

On Canada Day, I quite enjoyed the presentation on the solar system and current geological controversies from a retired NRCan scientist, highly enjoyable, and again, a topic I normally wouldn’t have chosen to attend if it was part of the monthly series. I even chatted with some more people at lunch — Eriq La Salle, and his friend Taras, plus Mike M of course — and got some really good advice from Taras on viewing areas and my battery problem. I avoided the opportunity to go visit the Hill that night for Canada Day, and hung out at home with my family. Sunday was okay too, nothing big sticks out, although I skipped the actual AGM in the morning and the banquet at night (which apparently was quite good).

I mentioned above that I talked to Tristan, as well as Taras, and most of that conversation was about two things. First, I have a battery problem. I have two PowerTanks to power my telescope, but they are both standard batteries, which means if you over charge them or leave them on charge or let them go too low on charge, they die. Never to work again.

I killed a large PowerTank, I killed a small PowerTank. And the pain of figuring out what to do with them has been a bit paralysing. I sought other people’s opinions and options online, and found out I could try putting the PowerTanks on trickle or DC charge to see if it would help revive them, but reliability would always be an issue even if I get them to work. Or take them apart and replace the core batteries in them. Which has a bunch of labour involved, not very clear instructions, potentially a need for soldering (!), and no guarantees of success, plus the cost of the batteries, maybe $175+ to attempt to fix both? Or I could say screw it and buy one of the almost idiot-proof lithium ion phosphate ones that don’t die if you mess up the charging schedule. But they cost almost $200 and well, I already have these other ones, they just need fixing. Grrr…

I compared options, talked to some people, bit the bullet, and bought a new one at Focus Scientific. https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1104 Problem solved. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the old ones, maybe offer them to anyone who wants to try to repair them or for parts. In the meantime, I had power for my scope. You know, that scope I haven’t really used in over a year. Tick box (c) above…power issue solved!

The fourth item on my list was to have one decent shot of the moon. I have a range of options to do this, none of which I’ve figured out how to do reliably or consistently:

  1. Smartphone by itself, not very exciting;
  2. Point and shoot by itself, ditto;
  3. DSLR by itself, with a tripod, at least now I’m in the ballpark;
  4. Scope + smartphone over eyepiece — hard to get the phone centred above the eyepiece;
  5. Scope + point and shoot over eyepiece — similar to smartphone problem, but I have this little adapter thing, just never got it to work very well;
  6. Scope + NEXIMAGE 5 + laptop + software — I’ve done this before, even got some shots, but stability was definitely an issue, plus replicating the outcome from shot to shot.
  7. Scope + DSLR with adapter — sure, this is supposed to be easy, but I’ve struggled on anything other than the moon;
  8. Scope + DSLR with adapter + laptop + software — supposed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the previous option but I haven’t figured that one out yet;

Now, I have been treating these like a series of more and more complicated options and / or more reliable and sophisticated photos. Bear in mind that I am using a SCT-style scope on a basic alt-az base…this is NOT designed for sophisticated astrophotography, and honestly I don’t want it to do that…I just want some quick snaps of what I’m seeing, preferably all less than a second or two of elapsed time. I won’t get the beautiful colour shots of other people, but I’m okay with that. More souvenirs of what I saw, records of my viewing, than art.

And I can pretty much eliminate (a) and (b) above. I haven’t tried (c) yet for the DSLR just on a tripod, not consistently, although I do have a photo or two of the Milky Way and constellations. D-H are all increasingly complicated, as I said, and I wasn’t really into it.

Until I went to the conference and saw what Tristan was selling. A Meade smartphone adapter, one with a very simple setup, with good reviews online. For $30. Hell yeah.

It is a simple adapter that attaches itself to your smartphone and puts a little ring adapter over your camera so that you can “mount” it over an eyepiece i.e. the ring holds the top of the 1.25″ eyepiece (without the rubber cup around the EP) and thus allows you to almost centre it perfectly before you even put the EP into the scope. You can see the layout of it here at the FS store: https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1354

And I managed to get a few decent shots…they are not DSLR quality, nor will I be publishing them in an astro magazine, but as a fun addition to my hobby, I was pretty happy:

Then I tried to get a “little” fancy, and do some zooms.

I have moon maps, so I can go through some time and label some of the features. But for now, I’m happy with just getting the shots. Part (d) complete…a good shot of the moon.

Which has left me with one simple piece outstanding — to organize my astronomy photos over the last 4 years and upload them to my site. I had them semi-organized at one point when I had a Piwigo sub-site, but never got around to fixing the mess of how they are stored now that I’m with SmugMug. I hadn’t even uploaded them. So that’s fixed too: https://pandafamily.smugmug.com/Astronomy is the opening gallery. I have shots of the sun (1), moon (54), Venus (2), Mars (6), Jupiter (5), Saturn (19), Milky Way (8), Constellations (6) and my gear setup (1). Not all photos in those batches are created equal, but it’s the best I have so far. And with that, I’ve completed part (e)…upload astronomy photos to the gallery.

Which means one of the items that I didn’t think I would come close to completing before the fall is done. I’ve re-started my astronomy hobby. Feels good.


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A sky tour with my new setup

Posted on by July 2, 2017  

As I mentioned earlier, I have my Celestron NexStar 8SE setup finally working (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE). So last Friday, when the night was promising good seeing, I headed over to the local park that I frequently use for viewing. I’ll confess it isn’t a “great” location in terms of light pollution. It’s just off Knoxdale and you can see streelights about half a block away, plus I’m in the middle of a suburb. It’s darker than most areas, and I have decent horizons, but that is in comparison to most suburban areas, not against a true dark sky site. But it’s close and I wanted to test the setup.

I did my new routine — vibration suppression pads, wifi link, app on phone, 17.3mm regular + 12 mm illuminated cross-hair reticle for centreing and aligning, stars far apart. When it finished, and the alignment was successful, I started with simply telling the scope to show me the moon. It was disappearing behind a streetlight and a couple of houses, but it was a few blocks away before the horizon interfered, so it worked well enough to show me the waxing 4 or 5 day old moon.

I tried Venus next, and the computer told me “no”, claiming it was below the horizon. It wasn’t easy to see but it was NOT below the horizon. I moved manually, saw it briefly, pretty close to horizon so as to be practically gone, but not completely. Good slew settings to protect scope from going too low, no complaints here. Tried Jupiter next and it was pretty accurate. However, while there was supposed to be way above average seeing for the night, the haze before Jupiter was preventing seeing the bands clearly for more than a few seconds before they would waver. I name-checked Saturn just for fun, but then it was time to move on to a real test of the new setup.

Arcturus was my first stop. One of the top ten brightest stars, and 100+ times as bright as our own sun, it was easy to see why it is a popular stop for sky tours. A red giant, it did appear orange/red although the brightness hides some of it.

Next up was Vega. Blue / white? Yep, no problem. Very tall in the sky, not surprising the science geeks calculated it as the former North star. With Vega already located, I hopped quickly over to nearby Altair to check it out. Not quite as bright, but still easily found. I added Tarazed to the mix, but mostly just saw it as white, not the reported orange-ish colour.

But stars have always been relatively easy to find and see. Time to up the ante. I went for Messier 27, aka NGC-6853, the Dumbbell Nebula. I was pleasantly surprised to find it. It may be one of the brightest, but other than the Ring Nebula, I have never really found ANYTHING of note with my old setup. I was, however, a little stretched to consider the blob to have a dumbbell shape. Looked more like a bowtie to me and kind of blobby in the middle too. But I saw it, yay!

My new best friend, Messier 57 aka NGC-6720, the Ring Nebula was my next stop. My view certainly wasn’t as detailed as the NASA image 😛 but it was definitely a doughnut/ring shape.

Astronomy Photo of the Day, June 5, 2013, NASA.

Next I went for NGC869 and NGC884, a double cluster. Unfortunately, I only found one of the clusters, and I’m not sure which one. No matter, moving on! I slid over to M81, Bode’s Nebula. Wasn’t in a good position with some hazing, and a stupid tree (!), so thought I would jump a bit. One of my favorite stars in the sky is Antares, mostly because it constantly seems to be twinkling and almost changing shades of red, orange and yellow. It’s easy to spot, and right now is hanging out near Saturn. I haven’t been able to resolve the light blue star next to it (Antares B), but the haze and neighbourhood light pollution might have something to do with that (or I just don’t know what I’m doing!).

Messier 23 and Messier 18, both double clusters, were easy to see when I slewed to them, which is nice for a change. I’ll have to go back to look at them again — one definitely seemed to have swirls in the patterns, I think 23, but my notes weren’t as detailed as they should have been. The Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula were too low on the horizon and lost in ambient haze, but I thought I would try for Messier 17, the Omega Nebula to finish things off. I didn’t see much that looked like a nebula though, so those are going to take more work for me to figure out what I’m supposed to see. It’s supposed to be pretty bright, but can’t swear to it by me!

A highly enjoyable evening, although I need to do some better planning in the future with maybe 4-5 clear targets in mind to find and study. My app comes with info on all the objects, and some of the big ones have audio to listen to as well as a couple of screens of text. A great resource in lieu of taking a book with me.


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Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE

Posted on by July 2, 2017 2

I have a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope…for those not in the know, that’s an 8″ optical tube on a simple tripod. They call them one-armed bandits (like the slot machines) because there is a single arm that goes from the tripod mount that it rests on up to the tube. Simple, easy to work, but it isn’t very stable, at least not in astronomical viewing terms. It doesn’t allow for much in the way of astro photography due to its limited ability to track the sky over time, thus limiting the photography options of long-exposures. However, there is one feature where the 8SE shines — it’s ease of use.

This was a key ingredient for me in buying a scope, based on knowledge of who I am and the patience I have. If a scope takes 30 minutes to setup, I’m not likely to use it. I need something relatively simple, and the 8SE requires you to basically setup the tripod, attach the scope to the arm, add some power and eyepieces, and you’re good to go. More or less.

The second feature that was a huge selling feature for me is what they call the “go to” feature. You run a simple alignment procedure on the scope, the computer on the mount figures out what stars you are looking at, and after that, it knows where all the other stars and planets should be. So, in theory, you do the alignment, and then after that, you look at a menu, tell it you want to see Saturn, and Bob’s your uncle, the computer will slew your scope around to Saturn. Tell it to show you the Ring Nebula, and bam, there it is.

Except my scope didn’t seem to do that. Sure, it found the moon and planets pretty well, not always dead centre, but certainly within the eyepiece. But beyond that, I have never really seen much. I’ve had the scope just over two years, and while large periods of time in there were “down time”, I have used it a fair number of times. Almost always on my own though, and never with another scope right beside me to show me what I “should” be seeing. Or not seeing, as the case may be. Even in the dark skies near my inlaw’s cottage, I saw interesting things, but no nebulae, no galaxies. Variable stars, definitely planets, but no real deep sky objects (DSOs). It has been rather frustrating, and I was never quite sure what the problem was. A couple of times I felt like almost pitching the hobby, since I didn’t see much more than planets. Cool, sure, but long term without photography? I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I was determined to find it before giving up the hobby.

A few weeks ago, I was at a star party organized by the RASC Ottawa Centre out in Carp (just west of Ottawa in a dark parking lot). After most of the lookie-loos had left, I was talking to a guy next to me who was showing the Ring Nebula, so I popped over, looked through his scope and there it was, clear as day. I went back to my scope, pulled up the Ring Nebula from my menu, slewed to it, and nothing. Nothing even close to it in my scope. His scope was different from mine (a Dobsonian), but not any more powerful, so I said, “Shouldn’t I be able to resolve it too?”. He said of course, came over, looked through the scope and said, “Hey, your alignment is off”. And with those five words, my random series of possible problems collapsed to a range around one. He adjusted my scope, I looked, and sure enough, there it was, easy peasy lemon squeezy. I didn’t know whether to laugh in relief that my scope could resolve it or cry because I’d wasted 2 years trying to figure out how to work it properly.

The larger range of possibilities

I had been wondering if the problem was amongst a bunch of possibilities. First and foremost, it was possible my eyes were just not good enough to see the faint objects. I am getting older, turned 47 recently, and as you get older, fainter objects are harder and harder to see. But when the other guy put my scope on the Ring Nebula, that possibility was clearly eliminated.

Second, I wondered if my scope wasn’t good enough. I had bought one of the higher-end entry level scopes, but wondered if maybe I’d chosen wrong (sacrificing viewing too much) or just got a lemon with bad optics. But the Ring Nebula was visible, so not optics. Neither the scope nor of eyepieces either.

Third, I had been wondering if maybe it was the suburban skies — perhaps they were just too light polluted for me to see these things, as most of my viewing happens in city parks, etc. While this was a darkened parking lot, it is by no means a dark site, so no problem there.

Last, I had considered it might be an alignment issue, but planets were always aligned, and most large stars like Antares, Polaris, etc. But with this guy’s five minutes of help, all the possibilities collapsed to this one…my alignment was off.

Fixing alignment

As with the larger range above, there are lots of reasons why the scope could be misaligned. With the help of some people online who have the same scope, and the people at the store who sold me the scope, I compiled a list of things to try.

The first thing I had to check was the physical setup. My scope was always pretty level early on, so I had stopped fussing about it too much. Never seemed to make much difference, the computer knew where the stars were, so I was golden, or so I thought. I’ve added a bubble level app to my phone and now use that to try to get my mount as level as possible, still using the vibration pads to limit shake.

Next, I looked at the initial computer setup. Normally, I keep it set for Ottawa and just have to put in the time and location. That has always seemed a bit general to my mind, but since the computer always seemed to figure it out, I went with it before. This time, I upgraded to a wifi connector that ties directly to my phone — which gives it my precise GPS location as well as local time down to the second. Can’t get much more precise than that.

Third, I have been really inconsistent with my choice of stars. I would say generally I was choosing stars in a 90-120 degree section of the sky most of the time. In some cases it was simply because that was the part of the sky I could see, other times it just happened to be where the first few bright stars were located. Other times, when I was particularly impatient, I’d even used planets as one of the three stars in the three-star alignment process. The computer let me do it, and I’d read instructions online that said you could do it — I didn’t realize they were saying you could do it, not that you should do it. Using a planet apparently adds in a lot of variability to the calculations, as does using stars close together. So, I changed my setup — I now use stars as far apart as possible, and try to cover as much of the sky as I can in my setup with three stars far from each other. Almost like an equilateral triangle in the sky.

Finally, I have always had a question about which eyepieces to use when I’m aligning. The scope comes with a 25mm plossl, but I also have a really nice 17.3mm Televue, a 10mm Televue Delos, and an 8mm Televue plossl. I was never sure how zoomed in I should be to say it was centred in the scope but I tended to use the 17mm lens. Both the online community, the help pages for the scope and the store had the same recommendation for change — buy a 12 mm red-lighted reticle eyepiece and use that to ensure it is centred. If that sounds confusing, it is basically a higher powered eyepiece than the one I was using before, and the red light reticle is an illuminated cross-hairs design…put the star in the centre of the crosshairs and tell the computer it is aligned. No guessing if it is in the “centre” of the eyepiece — it’s dead centre when it’s in the cross-hairs.

I had four other possibilities to try messing with if these four didn’t fix the problem … it could have been the mount itself (I had problems with gears meshing last year, but this problem predated that issue); my scope could have been out of alignment on the optics (had already checked that a few months ago, still perfectly aligned); my diagonal coul d have been out of whack (which could be checked at the store); or my firmware on the mount could have been out of date. They were on my list of possibilities affecting my alignment, but the others were easier to check first against “normal” setup.

The results

Apparently, I’ve just been a complete idiot for two years. If the guy at the star party hadn’t told me that my alignment was off, I’d still have been struggling to find the problem. I did the four steps above (physical leveling, wifi with coordinates, better star choices, and a illuminated reticle eyepiece).

Got it all setup, but had a lot of trouble with focusing on stars the night I tried due to haze (just bad seeing), took me more than an hour to align. And then as I was just about done, my wifi connector dropped the signal and I lost my setup. So I took a fifteen minute break, let some clouds pass by, and then tried again. Five minutes and I was done.

First test was a planet, but that was too easy. So I chose the Ring Nebula. And BAM! There it was. Easily seen from my light polluted park. It was awesome. I wandered around the sky on the app just trying out a bunch of things. I still have not seen the big galaxies, not quite sure why those are not resolving but could have been time of day. Clusters are perfect. Double stars. Variable stars. Everything shows up. It isn’t quite centred each time, but it’s within the field of view, so the margin of error is manageable. Over time, I hope that will improve as I improve my alignment procedures.

Overall though, I’m back on track. As I said earlier, I can’t decide between being happy everything is working the way it should or that it didn’t work for the last two years because I didn’t know what I was doing.

I’m sure there are lots of people reading this and laughing because they think anyone who uses a go to scope is an idiot anyway. Feel free to do so, but it just means you missed the upfront side of things. I do know how to star hop, and I can find things, but it’s not how I’m wired…when I’ve done it, I can find stars, but nothing else. Now I can use the GoTo scope to at least let me see what it is I’m supposed to find, and then learn to starhop between things better with some expectation of success. It’s also a bit of the reason why I’ve struggled on my own for 2 years — there are a lot of nobs out there who basically turn into technique snobs and rather than help someone who is learning to do it one way, they instead say “Oh that way is stupid, here’s the only way to do it.” Different strokes for different folks.

But one guy who helped for five minutes with no attitude or judgement altered my entire experience. I’m back “in” for the hobby, and I never even caught his name!


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A newbie’s guide to the RASC Observer’s Handbook 2015

Posted on by July 2, 2017 2

I’m relatively new to astronomy, have been involved for just over 18 months, and am still pretty limited in my knowledge. One of my learning resources is being a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), Ottawa Chapter, and by being a member, I get the annual Observer’s Handbook.

The Handbook is a great resource. But I confess that as a newbie, it can be quite daunting. For example, page 23 of the 2015 handbook has a table entitled, “Heliocentric Osculating Orbital Elements for 2015: Referred to the Mean Ecliptic and Equinox of J2000.0”. Umm, sure. I’ll get right on reading that immediately. As soon as I finish grouting the tub at a friend’s house. And this is listed in a section called “Basic data”.

If you know what that table is about, congratulations! However, this means that this blog entry is not for you. It’s for the people who have the handbook and want to be able to use it without an advanced degree in astrophysics or spending 3 hours with a dictionary and going down internet wormholes looking things up on websites.

Getting Started

One might think that the Handbook would start with an overview of telescope options, but it doesn’t. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of places on the Internet that will cover the various options, and there are just too many to include every year in the Handbook. It does, however, note that you don’t even need a telescope if you want to just start with binoculars (page 60).

Most newbies assume that they should immediately jump to planets and deep-sky objects. In reality, you can go pretty far checking out the moon first. As such, the Handbook includes a moon map (page 148) and helpful tips on lunar observing (page 158). The obvious mistake many make is to think the full moon is the best viewing option, but in actual fact, any of the other days is actually better (outside of new moon when it isn’t visible at all), because the light coming from the side will illuminate mountains and show 3D relief along the edge of dark and light. It’s a great starting point, you don’t need a powerful telescope to see stuff, it’s easy to find the moon (don’t laugh! finding stuff is hard at first!), and some nights, it’s the only thing up there you can see from a bright location (like a city).

Once you’re done with the Moon, or rather, once you’re ready to expand your horizons (none of us are ever done with the moon), there are four parts to the guide that are your lifeblood as a newbie.

First and foremost, observing is mostly limited to the night time – if the sun is up, it’s too bright to see much. So, there is a list of sunrise and sunset times on page 205.

Second, there is a map of the night sky by month (page 339). If you have a planetisphere, or any of a dozen astronomy programs/applications, this may be redundant, but it gives you an overview of where various things are going to be in the night sky — which gives you an idea of looking west or east, for example.

Third, there is a month-by-month guide to the sky (page 94). It is a little dense in places, but each month you can read it and have a pretty good idea of what you might consider looking for when you’re out. Maybe you’ll ignore something you’ve seen before, maybe you’ll only do one big “highlight” per month. But it is the first start in planning what you are going to see each month. It is also similar to what you’ll get in an astronomy calendar or each month from various online “guides” to what’s coming up to see.

Fourth, supplementing the month-by-month guide, there is also a guide to the planets (page 211). It gives you basic info about the planet, but more importantly it tells you when in the year you should plan to see it and what the likely pros/cons of different times of the year will be (i.e. when you might see it next to another planet, called a “conjunction”, when it will be high in the sky or low in the sky, etc.).

If you can master the moon (and some of its features), and then see a bunch of the planets, you’ve got the basics down pat. The best part for those two groups is that they are almost always quite bright, and thus easier to see. Sometimes you can even see the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye.

The last piece of the puzzle for newbies is being able to look at a constellation. Once you can nail one constellation, you can pretty much find the rest. Don’t worry if a constellation doesn’t look like a fish or a bear to you, it doesn’t really look like that to most people. The trick is can you find a star or two in the constellation, and from that point, figure out or spot the other stars that make up the constellation. The Handbook starts with an easy one — their feature constellation is Ursa Major (page 272).

Observing Information

Once the basics are covered, the Handbook offers a decent set of spotlights on other night targets:

  • An overview of deep-sky observing hints (page 85) to help you find specific stars, galaxies, or nebulae;
  • Seeing comets (page 265);
  • List of the brightest stars (page 275), including the 50 brightest by magnitude (page 285); and,
  • A list of double and multiple stars (page 291) which are always exciting to see (imagine looking with your naked eye at what looks like a single star, but the telescope shows you that it is actually 2 or 3 close together in the sky).

The RASC group also provides certificates to people who log their observing of a list of Messier objects, NGC, and deepsky objects (these are essentially just unique lists of objects in the sky that people or groups have indexed before and you can find all of the ones on a list and get a certificate). The certificate list is on page 308, with further links to more info about each of the sub-groups in the pages that immediately follow. I thought there was one for observing the moon too, but I don’t see it listed here.

Expanding Your Comfort Zone

There are tons of extra pages in the Handbook that might overwhelm newbies, but if you’ve done the above, you’re no longer a newbie. Nevertheless, even advanced newbies might find detailed numerical tables daunting. You can however consider three other “tweaks” to your observing.

I’ll start first with filters (page 64). Essentially, they are exactly what they sound like — filters to filter out certain wavelengths of light. While generally speaking you want as much light as possible to reach the telescope, using certain filters can help the planets “pop” more vibrantly. Think of it as looking at a multi-coloured object with a green filter — the green shade changes what the shadows and colours look like; if you use a red filter, different too; a blue filter, different again. And so on. So the filters can just bring out some of the contrasts, particularly for planets (with different filters working better or worse for each planet).

Many people think the only time you look at the sun is when there’s an eclipse, but if you buy a special filter (a solar filter), you can look at the sun anytime you want (page 186). You have to take basic safety precautions, no different than looking at the sun directly with your naked eye in that sense, but with the safety options in place, your “night” scope is no longer limited to just the night time. Sun spots, solar flares, all are possible sights. Some people even buy pure solar scopes, which outperform the simple “filter” option dramatically.

My last item to flag in the handbook for pushing your comfort zone is digital astrophotography (outlined on page 91). This can range from simply putting your iPhone up to the eye piece and snapping a photo all the way to having an expensive webcam in your scope’s eyepiece while a computer records the video image the webcam can see. Numerous experienced astronomers tell newbies not to worry about photography for AT LEAST a year because it is not “simple”, it is often disappointing at the start, and it takes away from the time you need to be spending learning how to navigate the night sky an d working your telescope. By contrast, it is also a great way to feel connected to the hobby after you put your scope away.

Further Resources

I also like that the Handbook has a collection of web links to help you keep your learning going, with the handy list up front on page 15. Some of the better ones on the list for newbies are Astronomy magazine, the Clear Sky Chart (predicts if there will be clouds or particles in the air), Heavens Above (tracking satellites, also highlighted in more detail on page 38), and the Sky and Telescope magazine site.

Hope you enjoy your Handbook, and try not to let all the extra “pieces” scare you. It is for newbies as well as the technorati who have been observing for years.


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2015 – To the moon…

Posted on by July 2, 2017  

When I was doing my vaguebooking countdown, my third one on the list was “03. Three people who have inspired part of the announcement (Aliza, Vivian, and Stephan)”. Aliza was already tagged in the first one, since she was a part of helping me figure myself out during my Tadpole years (age 28/29 to 33/34). And thus was a key inspiration for goal #1 — PolyWogg 4.0.

I tagged Vivian too but didn’t explain why in the last post. She was the one who invited me to present on HR competitions to the young officers at CIDA in the early 2000s, and to appease HR, we had to name it a “completely unofficial guide”. It was my first formal presentation of my tips and tricks, which also meant I had to write something down. Eventually it became my deck, and I’ve used it almost countless times (actually I’ve presented to about 250 people so far on my way to presenting to 1000, and it’s zipped around the government email system an unknown number of times at different departments). Now I’m in the process of writing it as a book. So while lots of people have contributed to the development of my ideas over the years, Vivian was definitely a catalyst both for writing something down and the eventual name. And the related goals of 500,000 words this year plus finishing my HR guide.

Stephan, by contrast, is a more recent inspiration for a giant goal this year, and one I haven’t previously announced. When I was about 12 or 13, I think, I got a telescope. It was a hand-held thing, more a mono binocular than anything, and like most people who get the same style/design, my interest waned pretty fast. You think, “Wow, I’m going to see amazing things”, and then you look through the cheap scopes and think, “Meh.” It’s not much different from naked eye observing. And since I didn’t have a star party or anyone else around who was interested in the sky, I didn’t jump on board. Fast-forward about 25 years, and a couple of the planets were low on the eastern horizon, with enough conjunction (which basically just means they’re close together in the same part of the sky) that they made the news. Stephan had a telescope and offered to show it to me. So off we went, over by Dow’s Lake and the Agricultural museum. Wasn’t the best of observing sites, but it was darkish. I remember that I didn’t like the setup for his scope, too fiddlish for my taste, which sounds like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. I’m not, and Stephan knows this too, but the choice of type of mount and setup is about your own style of observing. I’m a grab and go type observer, not a “let’s spend a lot of time setting up and getting it perfect” observer. Stephan has an equatorial mount, which is more finicky than other types of mounts. But regardless, I saw a planet. Plus some other constellations. I didn’t swoon, but it did whet my appetite for more astronomy. We even went to a RASC presentation at the S&T museum to see photos from the Saturn probe. Cool stuff.

Fast-forward another five or six years, Stephan is pushing his astronomy park idea, I’m on the board and doing the website, and I bought my first telescope with money from my inheritance from my Mom. It is a much simpler mount than Stephan’s, different style scope, etc. If I’m just doing the scope, and setting up in the backyard, it’s 10 minutes tops from start to finish to get set up, and that includes alignment. It doesn’t include schlepping all the stuff from garage to backyard, setting up the table, etc., but those are all accessories.

Unfortunately, my interest in astronomy waned a bit last year. In early August, something futzed on my mount (there are three parts to a scope — the mount (i.e. tripod it sits on), the optical tube (i.e. the part that people think of as the real scope), and the eyepieces). The mount is what rotates the scope to look at the various parts of the sky, and mine comes with computerized controls and motorized movements. A fantastic beginner scope and suits my observing style perfectly (I borrowed five or six scopes from the RASC library last year, and still prefer mine the best). But the mount’s electronics and gears stopped working together, forcing me to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. It was gone two months, early August to mid-October, prime viewing time for astronomers in our time zone and latitude. I was so disheartened with the repair time, that I started to lose interest. I even stopped photographing the sky. It doesn’t help that the last three months have been exceedingly bad for night skies — only a double handful of good nights between mid-October and now to even do naked-eye observing. I haven’t even tried the scope since I got it back.

Which means that I need to re-kickstart and commit to astronomy. It’s all Stephan’s fault, of course, but in the meantime, I need to set my goals. And here they are.

First, I’m going to commit to moon fever. It is the easiest thing for astronomers to start with, and there are a lot of choices of targets on the moon’s surface. It is amazing to see the ridge detail in even a small scope, and mine is way overkill for such a close object, so it should be good. In practical terms, it means I’m going to blog about my experience, of course, as I complete the “Moon observer” certificate with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC). As part of that, I’m also going to learn at least twenty-five major landmarks on the moon. And, last but certainly not least, I’m going to image the heck out of the moon, including completing a full cycle of images (likely spread over several months, but day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. and publish / print it as a collage with the full moon in the centre). I’ll even try for the lunar eclipse on September 27th.

Second, it’s time to check out a planet or two again, and to use my collection of filters to see different types of detail. I have to order a couple to complete my set, but OPTTelescopes seems like a good choice, reasonably priced. For my schedule, I’ll concentrate on ones I haven’t seen much before or combinations / conjunctions such as:

  • Mercury in the first week of May (or early morning on October 23rd);
  • Venus in the first week of June (or early morning on December 7th, including a daytime occultation);
  • Jupiter with Venus on June 30th;
  • Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Mercury in the dawn light of October 8th or Moon+Mars+Venus+Jupiter in the dawn light of November 7th.

Heck, even this month I have a shot at Venus and Mercury (Jan 9th at dusk), Mercury alone (14th at dusk), Mars and Neptune (Jan 19th at dusk), Venus and Mars (Feb 20-21), and Jupiter’s moons occulting with a triple transit (Jan 23/24). I’ll also check out the Perseid shower on August 12-13 and Geminids on Dec 13-14. For my first astro imaging of stars, I’m going for Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Andromeda, Orion, and the Perseus Double Cluster. 

Third, I’m giving serious thought to attending StarFest this year in August, but at the very least I’m going to make it out to Nirvana near Denbigh or head to some areas in Quebec that I’ve heard about. At the outside edge of possibilities, I’ll think about a trip to one of the big dark sky sites for Ontario.

Finally, I need to tie myself to the community. That mainly means RASC and the continued involvement in AstroPontiac, but I will also do more engagement with the online community, including blogging about newbie experiences.

Stay tuned for photos. And remember, it’s all Stephan’s fault. Or moon fever. One of the two.


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