Category Archives: Astronomy

AstroBlog 2019, outing #24 – Star Party at CASM

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The nights are longer, and colder, but yesterday (October 5th) was International Astronomy Day so we set up for a night at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. It’s not quite as good as Carp as we can’t turn the parking lot lights up, but we set up a little farther away on the grass (I had thought we would setup on the pavement as we did one other time, but we were all on the grass and a clear patch of gravel). I was initially worried about dew, but had no issues for the night.

One of the best parts of events at CASM is I don’t have to be the event marshal. 🙂 I just go and observe. I helped out on the social media side for announcements and promotion, but that was all. Chris in our group is the lead for liaison with the Museum and did solar observing during the day. But at noon, he had to make the call for GO/NO GO, and I emailed him with my views for what they were worth, but I was glad it was him making the call and not me. At noon, the forecasts showed clear for early in the night, but I was doubtful after 9:30. If we had been going for Carp, earlier in the year with later setup, I would have said NO GO, but there was a promising window. The problem with those windows is they can expand and be great, or collapse and miss everything.

At 6:15 when I was heading out, it looked like the window would close. All the way from my place to the museum, it was getting cloudier and cloudier. Sigh. When I got there, there were about 10-12 scopes set up, and crowds were starting to form. I gave it another 20 minutes and was undecided if it was worth it. But ultimately I was worried about the crowds. Lineups were starting to be 15 deep at the scopes! While there were still pockets to see through the clouds, and we could see the moon, Saturn and Jupiter, there was also an open gap coming towards us that looked promising for viewing to be decent for awhile. Okay, I would set up.

10 minutes later I was done, turned around, and I already had 15 people in line waiting! Holy snooker doodles! The night was INTENSE. In the end, there were 18 scopes overall, and somewhere between 500 and 750 people. The parking lot was jammed. Even with the clouds up there — did nobody LOOK UP before they came? Or perhaps part of it was the fact I posted the GO messages and noted earlier would be better than later as the clouds could roll in at 9:30 (which as an aside, was DEAD ON for timing!). Whatever. But at some points, the lines were as many as 30 deep for scopes, with 400-500 people wandering around. People were WAITING for parking spots to open. Craziness.

And we were ONLY able to show the Moon consistently, with Jupiter and Saturn playing peekaboo with the clouds. Near the end of the night, I kept my scope going the longest, hoping for the moon to reappear. It did a bit, but only the hard cores were still there to see it. One guy came right at the end, and was so excited just to see ONE STAR low on the Eastern horizon. He wanted to know which it was, but there was no way to know, it was just one star in an opening in the sky, and not terribly impressive either! Yet he was happy to see SOMETHING. Earlier in the night, one woman was REALLY confused. She was looking at the moon, and looking in the EP, looking at the moon, and looking in the EP. And they didn’t match. Because my scope does a horizontal flip of the image PLUS I had the diagonal rotated for lower height viewing out the side. So it was flipped AND rotated. So while the moon was looking like it had a vertical terminator line, the moon in the EP had a horizontal terminator line. It was totally throwing off my perspective too for identifying which craters were which!

On my way home, I saw the moon peek out a few more times, but we didn’t miss anything by packing up. I felt bad as a couple of people arrived around 10:00 when we were done, so when I got a chance, I tweeted an update to say the clouds had rolled in.

A fun night, and with the crowds, another “different” experience than the normal experience at Carp where I have maybe 6-7 people waiting at most. I’m glad I set up, even if in part I was guilted into it that the lines were so long and I wasn’t sharing the observing load.

Chris also does a different role than me when he’s marshaling — he doesn’t set up a scope, he just wanders around and talks to people. He mentioned that one of the guys who had messaged the page on FB was asking about accessibility in terms of seeing through the scopes. He mentioned that he couldn’t look through an eyepiece, but that isn’t always accurate. What they often mean is that they can’t stand up to do it. So I had mentioned that if scopes are set up lower, or a Dobsonian style, wheelchairs often can get closer to the scope than with a standard large tripod like mine. Or sometimes people have cams setup to broadcast to a tablet for people to look at, but that is often hit or miss. I also mentioned that if people mention they’re coming, we can remind people to set up lower. But he said he wouldn’t be coming, so I didn’t fuss about it. And he showed up with more severe impairment than I expected. Oops. I thought it might have been a disaster with the lines and the scopes we had, but Chris said another member was just setting up, so set it lower for him, did the config to make it more accessible, and the guy got to see the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter, so went away super happy. Awesome!

As an aside, I also found the crowds more grateful last night. Or at least more effusive. Numerous times I had people commenting how awesome it was for us amateur volunteers to come out and share this, and it was all free. I suspect the difference was because the crowds at CASM often were first-timers (looking through a scope), unlike the Carp crowds that are often repeat visitors. It’s not a big deal, I just noticed how many times people were not only asking and commenting on it, but then doing longer thank yous than normal before heading to the next scope.

A bit intense for a 2 hour viewing, but it was a blast for the night.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #23 – Star Party in Carp

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I had my doubts about the star party scheduled for September 21 in Carp, including the fact that I’m a bit tired of organizing them. I don’t mind GOING, but I’d much prefer to go with Jacob, set up his scope too, and then just be able to leave when we want to, even if only there for an hour or so. If I go as an event marshal, I have to stay all night. I had no other marshals seemingly available for this one, so I went without the cub. However, when I got there, one of the other marshals had shown up and already had all the cones set out, etc. Awesome!

I set up in a different spot than normal, and parked in the upper bowl just in case I decided to bail early. However, I was surprised that the location of setup changed the experience for the night. The area I was in was a bit more social, plus I was close to the long line for the big scope at the events. So lots of people wandered over while someone else was holding their spot in line. And I got a lot of “extras” coming by just after leaving the big scope. I found it oddly more social than normal, people were more chatty and less “look and go”.

Jupiter and Saturn were up, and I did the Albireo colour question (i.e. “what colours do YOU see?”), although that wasn’t the conversation starter it had been previously. A couple of people came by that I knew, but timing was off for most of them as I didn’t have time to chat — they came by when people were lined up at the scope and I was doing adjustments and explaining. Usually it is less “busy” and I can chat when they’re looking or while others are looking.

At the end of the night, I snagged the Pleiades before we packed up, and I held off wrapping up until a couple of imagers had grabbed their last frames. We were still there about 12:30 a.m., but it was just the hard cores like me who still had the scope running for the one or two public stragglers who were wandering. Except for the imagers, I was one of the last to pack up! Yet I had wondered earlier if I was going to stay!

Good night, ran about 175 people for the night and I counted 24 scopes.

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Reading Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” – Chapter 07 – Connecting a PC, Mac, Tablet or Smartphone to Your Tablet

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For reviewing purposes, I skipped over the short Chapter 6, focused on Sky Portal operations, as I’ll do that chapter after I have a chance to connect to my tablet and test some of the operations. I thought of doing the same for Chapter 07, Connecting a PC, Mac, Tablet or Smartphone to Your Tablet, but it’s a short chapter, and easily dispensed with here.

Some of the highlights:

P.165 – Wired Connections for RS-232 Hand Controls…I knew that most of the wired connections used an USB to Serial adapter, and plugs in to the RJ-22 Jack (I thought it was an RJ-45, but apparently not!). However, one “new” thing in the guide is that there is a way to do a wired connection to a tablet or smartphone using SkyWire + Sky Safari with an iOS device. I had no idea there was an option for a physical wire connection. I might have skipped the dongle wifi if I had known that earlier, as there can be challenges maintaining connections.

P.165 – Wireless connections…As with the wired one, I didn’t know people had attempted doing it with BlueTooth but it sounds way more exciting than the wifi connection. Out of my abilities, most likely, but I’d be willing to buy one if it is ever perfected. I’ll stick with my wifi connection (SkyPortal module) although good to see the range of other options available.

P.168 – Software to Control Celestron Telescopes…I don’t have a lot of interest in this aspect, to be honest, and I have a copy of NexRemote that came with my scope back in the day. However, what I found incredibly useful was the suggestion that when any software asks you for your type of scope, if it doesn’t offer you an option for your specific model, it suggests using NexStar GPS or CPC…very useful to know! I also like the multiple refs to more materials on the author’s website.

P.169 – Troubleshooting Serial and USB Connection Problems…I have had problems with my wifi connection in the past, but I read the other connection section anyway. Interesting that NexStar Observer List software (NSOL) is only able to connect through the ports on the bottom of the hand-controller, not the extra ports on the mount. Under the Troubleshooting WiFi Connection Problems section (P.171), I was intrigued to see that when connecting to Android, it may note that internet is not available (yes, I’ve had this!). It says you have to say “YES” and “DON’T ASK AGAIN” or Android will block everything. Nice. I also didn’t know that I could connect both my phone and the telescope through my router at home (if I was in the backyard) and that connection works better. While that would be helpful at home, I’m curious if that method (called Access Point mode) would work with my iPhone set as a hotspot. Something to keep in mind for the future.

A good short reference chapter. Hopefully I won’t need the trouble-shooting part as much.

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Reading Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” – Chapter 05 – NexStar and StarSense Hand Control Operations

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Chapter 5 (of Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II”) is entitled NexStar and StarSense Hand Control Operations and you would be right if you assumed this was going to more like a software manual than a telescope manual. It is a highly specific reference manual for the use of the hand controller and reading it page by page is for the hard-core geek only. But it is full of fantastic info that I didn’t know enough about, even though I’ve worked with the hand controller for years. These are the highlights for me:

Pg. 128 – Adjusting slew rates…I knew how to manually adjust the slew rate (MOTOR SPEED then press 1-9 where 9 was the fastest). I really only use 3, 6, and 9 for rates though. 9 if I’m going a great distance, 6 if I’m adjusting for centreing, and 3 if I need very fine adjustments while doing astrophotography and looking at centreing something on the screen. However, I didn’t know that if you were slewing in one direction (say left) and also held down the opposite button (i.e., right), it would temporarily speed up to rate 9. I have no idea when I would ever use that, but it’s good to have. I suppose if I knew I was going from rate 6 to something that was farther away and wanted 9 temporarily and then back to 6, I could do the temporary speed boost.

P. 130 – SAO stars…I knew the list was there, I didn’t know that you could type in a few digits and that served as a “filter” so that 0004 would give you a list of 000400, 000401, 000402, etc. with only the visible ones at that time showing up in the list. Not sure I would ever use it much though.

P.130-131 – Sky Tour…I use the sky tour regularly, and have always wondered about the methodology it uses. While there isn’t much detail on that in the manual, it does note that it is the same Sky Tour in my son’s 4SE as well as my own 8SE, with no adjustment to the software to recognize that some objects might not be suitable for that particular scope.

P.132-133 – Anti-Backlash/Backlash Compensation…The previous chapter already covered this from a physical setup perspective, this gives you the walk-through for the software side. Still need to do this.

P.135 – Slew Limits…I have had an occasional problem with my slew limits, and I didn’t really understand how they were working. The Slew Limit tells you when something is too far up or down for your scope to see, perhaps because of what you have attached to the scope (like a camera) or could be for permanent horizon. I set my scope up so that nothing CAN hit the base any more and I almost NEVER go to zenith anyway. But I occasionally get slew limits for something that is too low. What I didn’t realize is that my setup is throwing off my limits. I physically install my tube with the mount vertical and pointing up; my son does his vertically, but with the mount pointing down. We install the tube, turn on the scope, and go to horizontal. I didn’t realize that the scope THINKS you start horizontal. So, we need to make it horizontal, and then restart the system to reset the counter to horizontal. We haven’t had any problems, but there were a few objects here and there that I thought we should be able to see and the scope said “Nope”. Might be why. Need to adjust that as part of my setup technique.

The Filter Limits (P.136) is the temporary version of slew limits, in a sense, and is usually related to horizon. I wish it would allow you to just point to your horizon and say “Use this as your lower horizon limit” and to allow you to do it in multiple directions. I have zero viewing sites that have all 4 directions with the same horizon. My backyard is great to the South, maybe 15 degrees. East and West are more like 60 degrees with houses. North is perhaps 45 degrees. If I set it by the limits East and West, the highest, I’ll miss out on a ton of objects to the South and North. At the Carp site, great views to the West, but North and East has a hill and South has some trees. Not huge problem, they would work okay there. The FLO site has trees to the East and North, but better views to South and West. AstroPontiac is fantastic in almost 225 degrees, but the Gatineau Hills right behind it for the other 135 degrees is another story. And at the in-laws’ cottage, West and South are awesome, while East and North are about 85 degrees straight up for trees. I know some of the software options for tablets and planetariums will sometimes allow you greater flexibility for simulating your view, not sure it changes much for scope control though.

P.137-138 – GoTo Approach…This was covered for the physical side in Chapter 4 on alignment, and notes the default settings for back-heavy and front-heavy scopes, with the recommended settings over the defaults. I want to try this soon too.

P.140-141 – User Defined Objects…I had seen this in the menus but really had no idea what it was about, nor did I understand the sub-menus much. I loved the explanation on these two pages to know there are basically 99 memory spots to remember UDOs. If I choose my own object in the sky, and pick SAVE SKY OBJECT, the computer will add that location’s coordinates to memory, but unfortunately with no option to edit the name. SAVE DATABASE OBJECT does the same but for objects already in the main database, and so it retains the name too.  Interestingly, you could program your night’s viewing ahead of time using this method as the scope doesn’t need to be aligned. You would essentially be creating your own personalized star tour. ENTER RA AND DEC would do the same, albeit without a name. When you want to use the list, pull up UDOs and choose GOTO SKY OBJECT. I’m curious to see if I can pre-program those with software, but I guess if I’m using the apps, I don’t even need to use that as they allow custom lists / catalogs anyway.

P.141 – Display settings…I need to check to see if I have LCD Contrast and Bold Font set for my hand controller, I sometimes have trouble reading it. And I can do the same for my son’s.

P.142 – Cord Wrap Prevention…It sounds strange to say, but I hate the Cord Wrap Prevention. Why would I hate it? Because while I like the general premise of stopping the scope from getting all tangled up and pulling on the power wires, my Sky Tour starts near M110 and the Andromeda Galaxy. Then, as I go along, and as I get close to due North, the scope can get a bit confused…it hits the cord wrap limit (North), and then to get to the next object (across the limit line), it goes ALL the way back around, as it’s supposed to do. I would much prefer if that limit line was close to M110 so that for a sky tour, I could do almost all of it before running into that problem. Particularly as a couple of elements shift a bit in the order, and one will be past the limit (all the way back around) and then an object or two later, will be back across the limit (so all the way back around again). If I could adjust it closer to the right (East/South) of M110, I would be able to do almost the whole tour without that problem. And since I am rarely in that section of the sky in most of my sites, it would be a good limit anyway. Except the only setting seems to be ON or OFF. Sigh. I’ll check with the author to see if there is any way to edit this.

** Update: I heard back from the author, who was very polite considering I missed something he had already explained in the book. I just mis-read it, as I was looking for something that says “here’s how to edit”, and that isn’t quite how it works. Apparently, the default setting is due north (I thought was “near North”, but no, it is actually North) and since I always leave it on, I’ve never see an option to change it. But if I turn cordwrap OFF, and then turn it back on, it will then ask me to point to the exact opposite point of where I want cordwrap to be. At present, the default of SOUTH means the mount thinks my cable starts to the south, so when it gets half-way around to NORTH, it activates the cord-wrap. So, if I want to activate cordwrap “east of M110” which has RA of 0h, I need to toggle CORDWARP and then point the scope to an RA of 12h (directly opposite M110). That initially seemed ludicrous to me, but the author further explained that it is asking you to point to the centre of the available range of motion. Ah-hah! That makes sense! Except then I found out that if I’m using Sky Portal, I can’t change the setting, it’s always due South. Sigh. Cuz I want to start using that! **

P.147 – Direction Buttons…I already mentioned this in the physical setup / alignment section as it messed me up. I had inverted controls set ON by default, and it meant that my UP and RIGHT should have been DOWN and RIGHT, so my alignment process always included altitude slippage. FOR FIVE YEARS. Arghh!

P.147/148 – Hibernate…I have wanted to try to see some planets during the day for a long time, just to see what you could see. But it’s impossible to do an alignment, right? Well, in addition to the option to do a solar system alignment (even on the moon or sun), you can also align during the night, and then put your scope in “hibernation” mode like a laptop. Then, when you want to use it during the day, you can wake it up, don’t MOVE anything, tell it the current time, and voila, you’re back in business. It already knows your location, and where it is in relation to the stars a few hours before when you did the first alignment, now it just needs to know how long it was sleeping. If you do ANYTHING else before entering the new time, the alignment is lost. I really want to try this, except for one little thing. Well, two things. First, dew would be a pain. Second, it would work best with a great alignment in the wee hours before dawn…yet I am NOT a morning astronomer. I even struggle to stay up much past 1:00 a.m. But I do want to try it sometime.

P.150 – Version…I figured SOMEWHERE in the handset there must be some indication of what version of firmware is running, so I will have to look that up, now that I know how!

As I said at the beginning, this is the hard-core manual side of the software. Most people would likely use it as a reference guide, “How do I….”, but it was fascinating to read the whole thing at once and see other settings that I might use. Great chapter.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #22 – Outing to the AstroPontiac Observatory

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I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that while I’m a member of the board of the AstroPontiac Observatory, last Saturday was my first outing for the year to the site. Observing nights are frequently high-demand days for me, given my role as the local RASC centre’s Star Party Coordinator, and just other commitments. But Jacob wanted to go, and Andrea was willing to go too with a hope for a small picnic and time to hike the opening of the Luskville Falls trail, so we set off.

We stopped at the Subway near us to get some grub for the picnic and by the time we were at Luskville and finished our meal, it was already starting to darken a bit. Andrea and Jacob did a quick walk down the first part of the trail, but it wasn’t inviting at that time, and they came back. 

Our leader, Stephan, showed up a bit later, and we drove out onto the field to get setup. Another volunteer, Michel, was there to operate the big outside scope, Stephan could operate the inside scope, and Jacob and I would set up our two scopes too. There were a few visitors, but mostly we were left to our own devices.

I’d love to say it was perfect, but we struggled a bit in the night with dew. And Jacob wasn’t dressed anywhere near warm enough, so ended up back in the car and cold. We saw a few things through the various scopes, taught each other some stuff about various constellations, and I did a bit of a sky tour. Jacob was not only cold, he didn’t know what he should be looking at, so we are going to have to come up with some “goals” for his learning each night I think. He really likes double stars, so we may start with those.

Andrea and I did get to see the E.T. Cluster (NGC 457) which was neat, but harder to picture in my scope. I played with some filters, but wasn’t having much luck, and so we packed up just after 10:00 and headed home. It was just too wet out there, and clouds were starting to come in too. Hopefully we’ll have some good options for the joint RASC and AstroPontiac night on the 28th. But I think Jacob, like me, is going to be a mainly fair-weather astronomer in the summer. Yet he managed to do almost all of his setup and alignment himself. Very happy with his progress so far.

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Reading Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” – Chapter 04 – Alignment

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Chapter 4 of Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” is entitled Alignment and is the chapter that made me want to buy the book and read it cover to cover. Readers of the blog know that I struggled with alignment for my NexStar 8SE (Solving alignment problems with the Celestron NexStar 8SE) and Michael’s online resources were helpful in resolving some of them, or at least narrowing the problem. I even held off buying the book because he said Guide II was coming and I should wait over Guide I. Then I managed to solve most of the alignment issues, and so when his book arrived, I didn’t devour the whole book right away. I just cruised through the Alignment chapter. Then this past summer, I went back and re-read everything in order.

Here are some highlights from Chapter 4:

Backlash compensation (P.87): A great element for those of us with slightly older scopes whose mounts are no longer “factory fresh”. My son’s new 4SE? Dead tight regardless of the direction I’m slewing. My 8SE? There’s a bit of a lag. I tried adjusting this 3 years ago and just got confused. The new guide has it very clearly laid out, and I’ll be attempting a fix later this month.

GoTo Approach (P.88): Tied to the backlash compensation is a setting that depends on whether your scope is back-heavy or front-heavy. I have always felt that my scope was “front-heavy” the way I pushed it forward, but I reached out to the author to ask, and he confirmed that the SE series is still generally back-heavy given the weight of the mirrors, unless you are using a metal dew shield to make it more front-heavy. I need to change this too.

At the time of this writing, the default settings for the NexStar+ and the SkyPortal app are negative for altitude (up/down). The default settings for the NexStar version 4 and StarSense hand control are positive for altitude. When used in alt-az mode (no wedge), back-heavy scopes perform best with this set to positive, while front-heavy scopes should have it set to negative. This helps to minimize the effects of gear backlash on GoTo accuracy.

Accurately Center Alignment Stars (P.89): The end of the section outlines the doughnut method for doing alignment, i.e. defocusing a star until it is a large disc that makes it easier to see how well it is centred in the eyepiece/field of view, a great method.

Final Movements When Centreing Alignment Stars (P.89/90): Regardless of backlash compensation, or your GoTo Approach above, the scope is always going to have its drive tighter in two directions than the other two. In other words, for azimuth at least, going right is always going to be tighter than going left. When you go left, there will always be a bit of slippage. So you always want the “last” movements when centering to be to the right to keep the drive as tight as possible, no slippage. Any slippage will increase your margin of error with the alignment.

The PROBLEM comes with the up/down movements. And the source of multiple years of alignment problems that I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. All the online tips say that the final movement should be: Right and Up. In other words, the tightest last movement should be to the right (as above) and then up. In theory, this means that DOWN will have slight slippage, UP will be tight. And that’s what I was doing.

Except I wasn’t. Here’s the bombshell from the guide:

To help minimize the effect of gear backlash, your final movements when centering the alignment stars are essential. The default settings with the NexStar+ hand control and the SkyPortal app require you to center each star with final movements using only the right and up arrow buttons. The default settings with the NexStar version 4 hand control require you to center each star with final movements using only the right and down arrow buttons.

While the bolding is mine, I would like to THINK that if I had read that, I might have saved myself a few years of pain. My handset did indeed have the settings reversed — so I was doing “RIGHT AND UP”, but my handset was inverted, and I should have been doing “RIGHT AND DOWN”. Son of a biscuit. Which meant that while my azimuth settings were relatively fine (left and right were tight), my altitude was consistently off. Only when I was talking to the guy who programmed the hand controller one night and I mentioned that the setting was inverted did we together have a eureka moment. Every single site I found online, every reference, everything I saw said NexStars should go RIGHT and UP. It never occurred to me that my default settings were different. I have no idea if I had read that bolded section above if my brain would have sparked or not. It sparked when I was out with the programmer trying to solve my alignment issues. Alas, I read it in the guide almost three years later. Grrrr.

Cancelling a Slew (P.91): This is one of the most useful things I learned in the whole book, and it is so simple. Once you press enter on the hand control when selecting an object to view, the GOTO features take over and it starts slewing there. I’ve tried hitting BACK, a few other buttons, nothing seemed to stop it until it got to its destination. One time that was a zenith location and my diagonal was hanging down low, and yep, it smacked the mount base. It ground so hard, I needed Celestron to fix it and my mount was gone for 2 months. I got to this section, and literally I was like, “Are you kidding me? All I have to hit is one of the directional buttons? Really? How did I *not* figure that out before?”. Sheesh.

Various alignments (P.92-99): While I feel that I knew most of the details about Sky Align, Auto Two Star Align, and Two Star Align, mostly from reading various posts online (some by the same author), I knew very little about One Star Align or a Solar System Align. I’m itching to try the Solar System align to see if I can do some stuff during the day (with appropriate solar filter in place, just in case it passes the Sun). I confirmed with the author I can even do this on the Moon or the Sun. Woohoo! 🙂 Maybe I’ll try it the day of the Mercury transit this year (November 11th) as I’ll be outside anyway!

Using SkyPortal (P.99-103): I have the wifi dongle, and I have found the connection with the tablet or smartphone to be a bit finicky at times. Nevertheless, I am inspired to try it again, partly because I hadn’t realized you could add more stars to the alignment process — up to 10 in total to improve GoTo and tracking. I desperately want to try that. I’ve thought of buying a StarSense for improved alignment, but I am willing to try this first. Might want to upgrade firmware though.

I have always wondered what stars are in the database for possible use during alignment, and a DLable manual on the author’s website notes that

  • Two Star alignment has 247 possible objects [a somewhat eclectic list, as some go as faint as 5.4 (Polaris Australis) but even a full list of magnitude 4 would well surpass 250 objects];
  • Auto Two Star and One Star are limited to 56 possible objects (again, a bit odd since there are 88 constellations and you would think at least the brightest in each would be available); and,
  • Sky Align (the generic three star approach) has 82 possible objects.

And here’s the weird part…you would think it would be cascading / shrinking lists — 247 for 2-star, 82 of those for Sky Align, and 56 of those for Auto 2-star or 1-star. Except Albireo and Algenib are available for 2-star and 1-star but not the more general Sky Align. Albireo is a double-star, but there are other doubles in the list (Mizar, for example); I don’t know what’s unique about Algenib. Like I said, weird. I assume it has something to do with the math for Sky Align, some sort of conflict if you use those two.

Sync (P.123): I had learned how to do this, as well as Precise GoTo (P.124), when I was out observing with the hand controller programmer, but it was good to see how to use a semi-permanent “additional alignment star” for a series of viewings or a local star for a one-time alignment boost.

One thing I have never seen listed anywhere (and it’s not in the guide) is what to do when something happens and your alignment changes during the night. You can replace alignment stars, sure, but my question was more specific — what happens if you “kick” the tripod by accident (or more likely someone passing by kicks it) — do you reboot the scope and start over? There’s no menu option to start a new alignment from the beginning. I reached out to the author of the Guide II to ask. He confirmed that while you may have to do a reboot if the legs are moved considerably (i.e., the alignment may fail when you do the first replacement), you can always try just repeating the existing stars again rather than starting fresh or saving two new alignment stars. Good to know.

And this concludes Chapter 4. This chapter alone was worth the purchase price.

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Reading Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” – Chapter 03 – Overview of Celestron’s Alt-Az Computerized Telescopes

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I like to blog about non-fiction books as I read them, as it helps me both synthesize and retain the info. Chapter 3 is a general overview on all the computerized scopes in Celestron’s arsenal, and I found myself liberally highlighting as I read it. Here are some highlights:

  • P.57 — a great overview of the different processors in the mount, including some of what the processors in the mount do (drive the motors) and the hand control (determining the correct tracking rate)…I was initially confused about something in the manual, as it said the hand controller sends the update to the mount every thirty seconds. I wasn’t sure if this meant it sends a “movement” command every 30s (as that seemed too slow) or a rate adjustment every 30s (adjusting the existing tracking speed), and the author confirmed the latter. Now rereading it, it was already clear, I think I just confused myself;
  • P. 69 — I was surprised to see that there are CPC mounts that are actually quite well-designed for accurate tracking and thus support astrophotography. Maybe something to aspire too, instead of going Equatorial some day;
  • P.78 — Good overview of the various types of hand-controllers, …I think I have the NexStar+ serial (Celestron button + RJ45-like jacks). I updated when I first got it seven years ago, but nothing since. From the author’s website, I clicked over to the Celestron list of bug fixes and updates…the only bug fix that seems really significant to me are the GPS rollover ones this year (like a Y2K problem), but I should probably do those. Fingers crossed I don’t brick my mount (I’m always nervous updating firmware for anything!);

The volume of material in the chapter is huge, although more of a reference chapter when you need specific info about different scopes, in my view.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #21 – Outing to the Fred P. Lossing Observatory

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On Monday, August 26th, Jacob and I headed out to the Fred P. Lossing Observatory (FLO) in Almonte. The land is owned by the Mill of Kintail Conservation Area, but they let RASC Ottawa put an observatory there in slightly darker skies than we have in Ottawa. There is a gate with a lock, a warming room, and a couple of buildings with larger scopes in them. If you get trained on them, and pay a small fee each year, you can use the scopes. Otherwise, as just RASC Ottawa members, you can use the grounds to set up your own scope.

While Jacob and I wanted to do some observing, my main reason for going was another member in the club. He and his son (J1 and J2) had bought a new scope, a Celestron Powerseeker 127EQ, and were struggling to see much through it other than the basics. They had not yet managed a polar alignment, nor figured out starhopping, and were looking for an intro night from someone in the club. My first option of a would-be mentor didn’t work out for them, so I agreed to do it myself.

My willingness to take on this extra role for someone is driven by two things. First, I know what it is like to have a new scope and struggle with the opening setup. I did that for five years. And each time I had a break-through, it was because someone helped me in person. Astronomy can be a lonely hobby at times and while links and webpages and online videos (oh my!) are helpful, they often pale in comparison to someone taking five minutes in person to walk you through a learning curve that they mastered years ago but you would spend hours trying to figure out yourself.

Second, Jacob needs to learn some of the basic things too, and I can teach him. But since I’m a blogger, I’m often caught by a desire to turn that “learning/teaching” into a post that anyone else can read if it helps. For example, my posts about solving my alignment issues with the Celestron NexStar 8SE are among the highest hit counts I have, next to the HR posts. People have had the same issues as me, and they wind up on the site, looking for tips and tricks, or hoping for solutions to a problem they have. Which has led me to an idea for a new “guide” — the PolyWogg Guide to Astronomy.

However, unlike my HR guide which I’ve seen as a series of posts all going into a big book at some point, I’ve moved more towards a series of hand-out sheets. Simple one- and two-pagers that summarize the info concisely which someone can just download and print, if they’re interested. So figuring out how to teach it to J1 and J2, and to Jacob, has led me to having to figure out how to explain it to someone else in an organized fashion — a pseudo-curriculum, if you will — and writing some quick guides to the various topics. Eventually, I’ll launch a new page on which I’ll post the various links, but for now, I was just trying to teach them three things — aligning your finder tool to your scope, learning to star hop, and aligning your scope to the sky.

The finder tools we had were a TelRad on my 8SE, a Rigel Quickfinder on Jacob’s 4SE, and a red-dot finder on the 127EQ. Except the dang red dot didn’t seem to be working at first, We just couldn’t see the dot. So I showed them on my scope. Jacob already knows how to align for the finder scope, and managed to do it mostly on his own. Later we got the red dot working too.

For navigation, I started with a planisphere, one for Jacob and one for J1 and J2. Explained how it worked, and gave them a paper copy of my guide. But the sky wasn’t dark yet, so you couldn’t see them yet. I also showed them my starmap (the Orion 600 folding paper map).

Last, we did an alignment to the sky. I showed them how my 8SE aligns to the sky, and then we did a linear scales alignment for their EQ mount. Later, my buddy S showed up with his daughter M and was able to give a LOT more guidance on working an EQ mount. Whew. And J1 and J2 were able to see much more using their extra EPs that they had bought (they bought one of the Celestron kits). I think the training was helpful for them, but time will tell. They have a couple of things to still tweak to get fully going.

For Jacob, his alignment worked well, and we did a joint sky tour for the night. Considering I didn’t have the exact setup info for the observatory, i.e., the right GPS coordinates, and so I improvised them a bit, my and J’s alignments worked pretty dang well. At the end of the night, J did an awesome job helping me clean everything up together. Much better than my experience at the cottage, and I was really grateful for the combined effort. It made things go so much better.

For the night, we saw both Jupiter and Saturn, a bunch of clusters, including the Hercules Keystone and cluster, and S showed me the teapot below Saturn. When we first got there, the sky wasn’t looking great, but it turned out pretty well overall for the night. And we were gone by about 10:45 p.m. Another guy, R, who runs part of the Observatory site, was there with some friends doing a sky tour with one of the bigger scopes, and they seemed to have a good night too.

And it gave me an appreciation for how to teach certain topics that I didn’t have before…I’m calling that a win. Jacob had a good night too, but I think he was equally enamoured of the name Fred P. Lossing Observatory, or as he renamed it, the FLOSSING Observatory. So he flossed before we left…

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #20 – A star party in Carp and Good Samaritan duty?

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Saturday August 24th was the proposed date of our monthly star party, and I confess, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I might even confess to hoping we would get rained out. The dates were set way back in March, and revolve around the dates of New Moon. But while I am the star party coordinator, I had to make some changes this year so that I wasn’t automatically the default event marshal too…too much commitment, too many days. So we changed things so that we only book 2 days a month instead of 4, 1 for the Saturday before New Moon and 1 for the Friday after New Moon. A much softer load on the need for marshals, and for me. And up until this weekend, I have had marshals available to cover the events, even if I couldn’t make it.

But this weekend is the height of the summer, lots of people are on holidays, and more importantly, the date conflicted with the annual big StarFest up near Collingwood. So my normal marshals weren’t available, and this left me more or less on the hook for the event. Originally, I thought this would be no problem, but then I was up at the cottage and had no real desire to rush back. But if I didn’t marshal, there would have been no event (our insurance requires it). So I was kind of, sort of, totally hoping the weather wouldn’t cooperate. Nope, this time we had a completely clear forecast! We packed up Saturday morning at the cottage and headed back.

I would have liked to take Jacob too but I had to stay until it ended, and it would have been way past his bedtime, so I went out by myself. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to set up the 4″ or the 8″ scope, so I took everything with me. Got there about 10 minutes later than I wanted to, turned off the lights in the parking lot and on the nearby building, unlocked the portapotty, and set out the traffic cones. We had word that some people in wheel chairs were likely to be coming too, so we asked a bunch of people to set up their scopes at a lower level, and 3 or 4 had a good option for those in wheelchairs. Mine isn’t at all conducive, as you can’t get close enough to the eyepiece and the tripod legs, and the scope is short (i.e., doesn’t stick out very far). I decided to set up the big one for the night, and managed to get it all ready just as Jupiter was starting to shine through. And while I showed off Jupiter to a few people, I also managed to get the scope aligned fairly early using Saturn, Antares and Arcturus. Booyah!

Up until close to 10:00 p.m. or so, the big hits were Saturn and Jupiter. Standard views and responses, nothing particularly amazing. And then a family returned that I think is the same one I saw two years ago. If so, they were the group that gave me my favorite experience ever at a star party…the father had brought his family with wife, two kids and his mother. They were from Pakistan as I recall, recent immigrants, and he was happy to bring his family out to a free science event. His kids looked first, and they were excited. Then his wife looked, and I was watching him. He was super happy that SHE was happy. Then it was his mother’s turn. She kind of giggled and shuffled over to look, all fun and games, something silly to do, until she looked through the scope and saw Saturn. And her world got rocked. She grabbed her son’s arm and started chattering away excitedly. And then looked again. The experience blew her mind, seeing another planet so clearly. But for me, while it was great to see, it was again watching him that was so amazing. He was almost emotional because here he was with all three generations of his family, and each of them were happy and excited. They started to walk away, after thanking me, and I was like, “Don’t you want to look?”. And he was like, “Oh, I get to look too?”. Kind of an afterthought, because he was just happy to be the facilitator for them. And then he was amazed too. It was awesome to see.

As I said, I’m not sure it was the same family, but it looked like the same guy. They were now a totally assimilated family though, if it was. The young boys were now 9 and 11 or so, and much more aggressive and vocal about what they say. The younger one kept saying, “OMG, OMG, OMG”. Sure, he was milking it and putting on a performance, but it was interesting. Mom was dressed in Western-style clothes, and much more fluent and comfortable in English. She looked and was really happy again. Then it was Grandma’s turn. No shuffling, no traditional dress, no giggling, almost like a running back breaking through the line of scrimmage, she deked between her grandkids and strode right up to the eyepiece in jeans and a sweater. And she again had her world rocked. A little less “shocked”, and a little more “Oh, wow, oh, wow”. But rocked. And Dad wasn’t leaving until he got his view too. I like to think it was the same family. I have no real idea, it was two years ago and only a few minutes together, but it seemed like him. Either way, it was nice to see three generations enjoying the view.

I also met a couple who have the same scope, but who have had a bit of trouble getting used to the setup for the 8SE and she has also been disappointed with the quality of seeing so far. I tried to give them an overview of my experience, but it was very disjointed as there were lots of people coming through, and I kept adjusting the scope and thus having to start and stop some of the advice. I gave them my card and suggested we go out one night just one-on-one with the two scopes and I’d walk them through my setup.  Hopefully they’ll take me up on the option.

Then something unexpected happened in our viewing. A woman happened to ask about “that sparkly star below Jupiter”, which was Antares, and I offered to show it to her if she hadn’t seen it before. Which she hadn’t and I did. Then everyone else saw it. And were really impressed with it. In the past, I’ve stuck to the big ticket items like the planets, but they were interested in the star. So I gave them Arcturus too, which they all liked. So I went to Albireo, which turned out to be the hit of the night. Normally I tell people the history of Mizar (Roman guards, etc.), but letting people look at Albireo in a group, and each saying what colours THEY see for the two stars was illuminating (sorry, bad pun). It got THEM talking. I confess I don’t have a lot of experience with outreach, and this approach sounds obvious in retrospect, but we often all default to telling people what to look for, and they see it and say thank you. But they were far more engaged telling ME what THEY saw, then me telling them what they SHOULD see or look for in the eyepiece. That was a good lesson learned, and something I’ll try to include for the future.

A second development also showed up. Normally, my favorite eyepiece is the 17.3mm Televue Delos. It gives a nice big Field of View (FoV), isn’t too overpowering for power (118x) and good for planets and most objects. Plus everyone seems to enjoy it equally, or so I had thought. When I was choosing EPs for Jacob last month, I had him try all the different options. And he really liked the plossls; my larger FoVs didn’t work very well for him with his glasses on. That might be partly needing adjustment, but he works well with the plossls. So when a couple of people — old and young — this night had trouble seeing through the Delos, I swapped them out for a plossl. And each time, they nailed it on the first try. The plossl is just way more forgiving for them. I had the same experience with Andrea’s grandfather and friend the night before — the plossl worked well for them, the Delos did not. Another “trick” I need to remember in the future if someone is struggling to see through the particular EP I have in at that moment.

Finally, the inevitable happened…someone bumped the tripod in the dark. Which of course threw off my alignment, and I had to start my setup over. But it got me thinking about visibility of the legs again. Most of the time, when this happens, it’s newbies whose eyes are not yet dark-adapted. And even the night before, the grandfather and friend had trouble knowing where to step to avoid the tripod, after just having come out of the cottage to see Jupiter (which didn’t require dark adaptation). Interestingly though, as I was getting to wind down for the night, I noticed another guy was using those round glow sticks around the legs of his tripod. It might not go over well with the purists at a dark sky site, but for a public star party in a darkened parking lot, I thought it was a brilliant solution. Very clear where the legs were and easy to avoid them with your feet.

Despite my initial reluctance, the night was great. I had a really good time. And I did some other objects near the end of the night (mostly globulars, although I almost pulled in the Pleiades from behind some trees). Most of the public was gone by 11:30 p.m., but I let everyone else stay until closer to 12:25/30 before I turned the lights back on and locked up.

The night ended a bit oddly though. As I was driving out of the lot and back on to the Carp Road, a young woman seemed to be crossing the road about half a block away, but when she saw me, she went back and waited on the curb, kind of waving me through. But then as I got closer, she had her hand up waving me down. When I chatted with her, it was clear she was somewhat drunk, and was confused as to where she was. But then as I spoke with her a bit more, I also realized she was developmentally delayed cognitively too. She told me her full name and that she “lived at the post office”, which I recognized as a frequent training method people use to make sure they know how to self-identify, seek help, and get directions to home. I offered her a ride, as I was going right by the post office, and as we drove along, she was getting a bit agitated at herself. She had been out somewhere, and upon leaving, had turned the wrong way.

She had walked all the way to the end of town (Carp is pretty small), and couldn’t figured out what she had done wrong, just knew something wasn’t right because she couldn’t find the post office (it was in the other direction). As we drove, she recognized some landmarks as we went, and realized how far she had gone the wrong way, and I think that realization was also scaring her a bit by the way she talked about it. Anyway, she was hugely relieved when we got to the post office, and then she wanted to tell me her life story. Not really, but it seemed like it. She apparently used to work at the Stittsville Flea Market watering plants, with her dad. Now she lives in the building next to the post office (she pointed out her kitchen window), and that the building is now a heritage building as it used to house the old newspaper. Anyway, I made sure she got inside okay, and then headed off again. My Good Samaritan duty for the night, I guess, but I was disturbed more by what would have happened if I didn’t come along — would she have kept walking into the country? Would someone else have found her? It was almost 1:00 a.m. at that point, and the town was deserted. I didn’t see another car almost until I was nearing the 417, 10 minutes down the road.

Finally, though, as I was heading across the Carp Road to the highway, I ended up with another astro event. The waning crescent moon was rising over the fields to the East, and it was spectacular. Almost a yellowish colour in the low haze around the horizon, and it looked gigantic so close to the ground in altitude. I really should have stopped and taken some pictures, but it was now after 1:00 a.m., and I wanted to just get home and crash. Except I ended up getting home, unpacking the car, doing a few other things, and I never crashed until almost 3:00 a.m. Idiot that I am!

But a pretty great night, even if I didn’t get to stay longer at the cottage or get the picture.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #19 – A sky tour at the cottage

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A week or two ago, my wife’s grandfather (D) asked me about an object he had seen in the sky that had been unusually bright. Given the time, clarity, and brightness, I quickly confirmed it was Jupiter and its four moons, but it got me to thinking. Given his recent interest, had he ever had the experience of looking through a telescope? We’ve had the scopes up at the cottage repeatedly, and my mother-in-law’s family has looked numerous times, but I’ve never had it set up when my father-in-law’s side of the family has been around. So I suggested if we had a good night, maybe D could come for dinner and see Jupiter and Saturn.

Monday to Wednesday were out, and Thursday was uncertain, so we aimed for Friday. D brought his friend Z and the weather held. I would have loved to hear more about a friend of his who had passed away that week…97 years old, had served in a gun turret in a tank in WWII, and had driven it all over Europe. Lots of action, lots of experience. By all accounts, the type of man my father would have loved to have met and played cards with (cribbage or euchre, probably). Sigh. But the skies beckoned and Jacob and I started setting up our two scopes around 7:45 p.m. We have good views to the South + West from there, so Jupiter was clear. Saturn was not quite out yet, and behind clouds. We were good to go with enough darkness around 8:45 p.m. and we were able to show off Jupiter and Saturn.

While I was happy to show them both, two things were apparent that I had not realized enough before. My favorite eyepiece, the 17.3mm Televue Delos, is really not that forgiving for everyone. Jacob prefers plossls by a country mile, and D and Z both had much easier times with the stock 25mm Celestron plossl. Secondly, I made a note that the legs are VERY hard to see. We had to turn on the red flashlights quite bright so they could see where they were walking, and even white light wouldn’t have been inappropriate. What looks easy to me once my eyes adapt are not as easy for others. Both of these issues were relevant again the next night, so I’ll discuss them more then.

D and Z got to see both planets and then headed off home (about 30 minutes away). And Jacob, I and Andrea did a bit of a sky tour. Unlike the last time at the cottage, we were prepared with bug spray (always) and warmer clothes (last time we stayed in shorts and t-shirts, doh!). We cruised the sky, and looked at various clusters, etc. Andromeda was visible again, marking the second time I’ve seen it at the cottage, and I was a bit disappointed. Even with my 8″ scope, I wasn’t pulling in as much light as I hoped. I would have liked to take a pic, see if I got any more detail, but I didn’t feel like setting up anything else. Just visual.

I think the highlight of the night for me was Albireo. I love seeing the colours and getting people to say what THEY see…it is always different. I just need to learn more details for describing it. We pushed through to about 10:30/11:00 p.m. or so, and then packed up. Jacob was really tired, and had to crash after we put his EPs away, which left me taking down and putting away two scopes. Definitely not the fun part of the evening, but ultimately worth it. After I was done, I tried laying on the dock for a bit, but it was making me feel almost nauseated. I did get to see a few remaining meteors though.

Overall, another good night.

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