Monday, April 16, 2018 - Brief AM Notes

Monday, April 16, 2018 - Early AM -

  It's 3:00 AM on a Monday morning. It's been a very long time since I added any entries to this blog. I wrote a lot of drafts last year without publishing them. And I have done little to no amateur astronomy for the last several months. No Meteor Observing, no Variable Star work (visual or PEP), not even much Lunar Observing. I believe that this will be changing soon.

  This was a pretty bad winter in a lot of respects, compared to the last three winters. The worst characteristic of it, however, is that it has lingered on far too long! We had our worst snow events in late March, and have had accumulating snow into April. In fact, after a very spring-like spell of weather settled in late last week and Saturday, we're going through a brief spell of cold weather again tonight and tomorrow. Snow showers are in the forecast for later today! (Fortunately, it's supposed to be non-accumulating snow.)

  But there are some interesting things in the works, and I wanted to briefly describe them here:

  (1) I got in contact with Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society late last November, and I became a paying member of the AMS soon afterward. Mike has designed, tested, and built a system of six cameras mounted together to keep an eye on the skies, and wants to create a network of such cameras around the country for fireball detection. They should also be able to detect meteors to +2 magnitude, so they will record the brighter sporadics and shower members each clear night. I have been messaging him frequently on Facebook for the last few days, and it looks like I may be able to purchase one from him in the near-future and set it up out in the back yard. I'm very excited about this possibility!

  (2) I am still planning to try once again to start PEP variable star observing, and hopefully I'll get a clear (and not so cold) morning or evening soon to try to determine the Epsilon-V Coefficient for my SSP-3. I tried last summer a couple of times, but, the issue seemed to be the tracking of the mount for my 8" Meade scope. I was using a 9v battery for power then. I purchased an AC adapter for this telescope last fall, and I intend to try it out with this soon.

  (3) It has occurred to me that my visual observing problems with my telescopes may not lie in the scopes themselves, but with my astigmatism in my own eyes, which has been getting worse over the last few years. This sounds like an obvious thing, but I haven't tried it yet ... I need to get out and try observing with my glasses on instead of off! I'm, again, waiting for a decent clear night with a decent temperature to get outside and give this a try.

  That's all for this morning. I'm going to try to keep regular blog entries from this point on.

Sunday, October 30, 2016 - Developments Over the Last Two Weeks

  Sometimes, a lot can happen with a hobby in a very short span of time. That's how the last couple of weeks have gone for me. I think that I'm about to start a new and exciting chapter with my amateur astronomy, and that I'm going to get back to variable star observing in a big way, and possibly get back into lunar and planetary work again.

  Years ago, I was interested in the posts on the AAVSO website that dealt with the PEP (Photoelectric Photometry) Group, and I posted a comment about how I'd be interested in joining them someday if I could get the right equipment. I forgot about that post, and then, early in April 2015, I was contacted by AAVSO member Tom Calderwood through email. He'd noticed my post and asked if I was still interested, and wanted to know what type of telescope I had. He also wanted to know if I'd ever acquired a photometer, and mentioned that he and Jim Kay (PEP Section Leader) were trying to stir up more interest to this small group and that another observer would be welcome.

  Although I was interested, after some further correspondence with Tom, I found out that what I had at home was inadequate. The 10" LXD55 was the wrong type of telescope (Newtonian type), and it's mount hadn't been able to track the sky for years for whatever reason. The scope had to have a clock drive that worked well.

  Since the 10" scope, with all of its problems, was all I had to work with, I dropped the idea of joining the PEP Group soon after that first email, though I corresponded with Tom off and on over the next few months. For example, I saw an ad on the local Craig's List website last summer that showed a Celestron 8" scope for sale, and I thought that it might be a good instrument for photometry. However, Tom wrote back that he was concerned that it wouldn't be stable enough for the weight of an SSP device because it had the one-arm mount design. So, with his advice, I scrapped that idea and kept looking online.

  I liked the idea of Photoelectric Photometry for a lot of reasons. First of all, it can be done without ideal dark sky conditions, and I rarely get these in the Indianapolis suburbs! Light pollution isn't much of a hindrance, since the variable stars that are observed are fairly bright (7th magnitude or brighter). Good data can be acquired even with moonlight around. Secondly, if performed carefully, the data can actually be more accurate than what most CCD observers obtain. Also, I have been aware that for the last decade or more, there are a lot of automatic all-sky surveys that image big parts of the sky every few nights. These surveys, however, don't cover the stars that PEP observers look at, so this seems to make the PEP data even more valuable. And, finally, there's an even more personal reason that I'm interested in starting with this branch of variable star work. I've been nearsighted since early childhood, but almost four years ago, I was also diagnosed with astigmatism. My eyes seem to have gotten a lot worse in the last five years, and I'm not sure if I really trust the visual estimates that I've been making for the AAVSO. (Of course, part of the problem may have also been that the optics on my 10" telescope have been exposed enough to need recoating.) PEP work could allow me to make very accurate brightness estimates whether my eyes get worse or not.

  So, a couple of weekends ago, I decided to at least check out the eBay website to see if any Optec SSP-3 Photometers were being auctioned. Interestingly, I saw three of them for sale. One was selling for over $400 and one for over $300, but one was being offered for just $85. When I'd gone to the Optec website in the past to price brand-new SSP-3 instruments, I hadn't seen one for less than $1000! I couldn't believe that they were so much cheaper on eBay, even though these were all pre-owned and used ones. I consulted Tom again by email to see if he thought there might be an issue with such a cheap SSP-3. He wrote back that he'd bought several of them through eBay and that he hadn't had any really bad experiences. He also advised me not to bid more than $200 on it, telling me that he knew he could find me one for about that price elsewhere.

  I thought about it a little more, and then on Monday, October 17, I "took the plunge." I opened an account on eBay late that morning and officially placed my bid on the $85 photometer by noon. The auction was set to end on Tuesday afternoon the next day, and I felt like if I didn't do something then, I'd miss out on a great chance. No one else bid on it, so I received word on Tuesday, October 18 that I "won." I paid for it online on the morning of Wednesday the 19th, it was sent the following day, and it actually arrived early in the afternoon on Saturday, October 22, through USPS. In other words, less than a week after seeing this instrument on eBay, it was at my house. (The photo that I included in this entry isn't the actual photometer that I now own, but it's from the web and it's the very same model.)

  I looked the SSP-3 over after it arrived. Tom had advised me to check out the filters that came with it (two of them, in this case), to see if they looked cloudy, They didn't seem to be. He also wrote that maybe I should try using it with my 10" scope on a target like Polaris, since that star wouldn't drift much even without a the scope's tracking system working. I thought about doing that, but there weren't many clear nights for the next week and I never got around to trying.

  I looked over a lot of telescopes on eBay after making the purchase of the photometer, seeing if there was anything that I could afford. I was looking at Meade and Celestron Cassegrain types that were 8" or larger and that weren't mounted on the one arm, but mounted with fork type mounts or german type equatorial mounts. Even on eBay, anything larger than 8" was out of my price range (I didn't want to charge more than $1000 on my credit card). I went back and forth a lot in my mind, telling myself to go ahead and get a new scope (since I hadn't bought one since November, 2002), and then talking myself out of it. A couple of ads, however, stuck in my mind. And then, this weekend, I "took the plunge" again.

  The photo at left is of a Meade LX10 8" telescope, and, after a lot of consideration, I bought one through eBay on Saturday afternoon, October 29 (yesterday). The telescope was advertised as "never been used" and the seller wrote that he was getting rid of it because he had to move, It should have a working drive, plus slow motion controls (I believe) and a 50mm finder (as opposed to the awful 30mm finders that I usually see installed on such telescopes). It isn't a GOTO scope, but I didn't really want one with GOTO capability. It has an equatorial wedge. I've read that these telescopes are extremely portable. There are always doubts in my mind, naturally, but I believe that this will be a good telescope to use in conjunction with the SSP-3 that I now own. Additionally, the f/10 focal length should be good for Lunar and Planetary work, and I've been eager to get back to doing more of this. It may not be a shabby telescope to continue to do visual variable star astronomy with, also.




  The seller of this telescope is currently on vacation, but he emailed me late on Saturday afternoon to let me know that he could ship it on Tuesday (November 1), so it may be here by next weekend. To be honest, I'm excited about this, even though I'm feeling a bit guilty about spending the money.

  It seems like big changes have always come to my hobby in November, and that month is almost upon us again!

  36 years ago, in November 1980, I first started to learn the constellations and use a pair of 7x35 binoculars to explore the night sky. Then, by Christmas 1980, I had my first telescope ever, a 50mm refractor (which still sits in my shed in the back yard attached to my second telescope).

  34 years ago, in November 1982, I had my 6" f/10 home-built reflector all put together, and I first started using it for lunar, planetary, and then variable star work. This was my telescope that I used for the AAVSO when I officially joined it in June, 1984, and kept using on and off for the next 20 years; reporting about 400 variable star estimates with it during that time.

  Then, 14 years ago, in November 2002, I had my 10" f/4 telescope. I used it to report about 1,600 more variable star estimates to the AAVSO, along with using it to take lunar photographs and make sketches of the Moon, make some planetary observations, see some comets, and even track down some high-altitude rocket bodies orbiting the Earth. That 10" scope had a good run, and I still haven't given up on it. I think that with some further work, it can be restored back to usefulness.

  Now, in November 2016, I'm about to get my fourth telescope ever. I think it will be very useful for photometry and many other things. I'll see how it goes, and I'll document it on these pages.

Sunday, October 30, 2016 - A Few Notes for October

  A little catching up since my first entry in this blog made a little over a month ago...

  I haven't done much amateur astronomy in October, except for a couple of Meteor Watching sessions early in the month from home.

  On Sunday evening, October 2, I sat in the lawn chair out in the back yard, just southeast of the shed, and looked high to the south for members of the October Capricornid (OCC) Shower. In his weekly column for the American Meteor Society website, Robert Lunsford mentioned that it was possible that this normally weak shower could produce an enhanced number of meteors this year. The parent comet of that shower, D/1978 R1 Haneda-Campos, is considered a "lost comet," but if it still exists, it is expected to reach perihelion in November this year. Lunsford asked experienced observers to be on the lookout for any activity, and noted that even negative observations of OCC meteors could be important. I was outside between 10:15 PM - 11:30 PM (2:15 - 3:30 UT October 3) and skies were mostly clear, although there was a high haze or fog in the air. It was 58F with 78% Humidity and the Wind was from the Northwest at 3 mph. New Moon had occurred the day before, so there was no moonlight interference. My Effective Time was 1.2 Hours, the Center of my Field of View was 22h 20m +20 (just west of the Great Square of Pegasus), and my Limiting Magnitude was only about 4.7, so conditions were far from ideal. In the end, I saw No Meteors at all; not even Sporadics. The October Capricornids would have been extremely slow speed and would have originated just a few degrees northwest of the star Alpha 2 Capricorni, far off to my right. I emailed the MeteorObs List, anyway, reporting this negative observation. Robert Lunsford himself emailed me back on Sunday with the message "Thanks for your efforts!" I thought that was very neat.

  The following weekend, on Saturday evening, October 8, I went out to that same location to do another meteor watch; this time to try to spot members of the annual Draconid (GIA) Shower. I watched between 10:55 PM - Midnight (2:55 - 4:00 UT October 9). Skies were mostly clear again with some haze or high cloud, and it was chilly. This time, the biggest issue was moonlight, since the Moon was at First Quarter and it was low in the West-Southwest, but bright enough to make my Limiting Magnitude about 4.8. I looked high to the West-Northwest this time, trying to keep that moonlight out of my direct vision. By midnight, the Moon had sunk to tree level and the sky was darker, but the radiant for the Draconid Shower was also low by that time. I saw no Draconids but during this time I did see one Southern Taurid and one Sporadic, so it was an entirely useless session.

  October itself has been a milder than normal month (like September was) and slightly

drier than normal as far as rainfall (unlike September, which had above normal rainfall). The Latest Record First Frost for Indianapolis has already been broken this year, according to one local meteorologist that I watch. That record was October 28, but as of today (October 30) we still haven't had that first frost, and there are no frosty nights predicted for the coming week. This weekend, the nights have been so mild that I am still hearing plenty of Crickets and other singing insects, including a few Katydids! There's still plenty of life around that, normally, has been killed off or sent into hiding by frosts and freezes.

  I took these photos (above) of the Red Maple Tree in our back yard yesterday, on Saturday, October 29. This tree is starting to show dramatic changes in foliage in just the last couple of days.

  I looked over the photos of it that I took last year, and it's clear to see that the foliage change has been delayed in 2016 compared to 2015. In 2015, this tree was at this stage around October 20. By October 24-25 it was at it's showiest red color, and by October 29 it was nearly bare of leaves.

  Another local meteorologist that I watch mentioned, a little over a week ago, that the peak autumn foliage has been delayed this year by the warmer and wetter than normal conditions that we've experienced over the last two months.

Sat. September 24, 2016 - Brief Summary of Astronomy So Far This Year

  I'm thinking of this as the "sequel" to the amateur astronomy blog that I started a few years ago, but which contained sporadic posts. This time, I'm planning to make this my "main information" place and I hope to post all of the observations that I make on these pages instead of scattering them around between the blog and other documents and handwritten notes. I hate to admit it, but writing things down by hand on paper is starting to get more difficult for me now that I've turned 50 (arthritis?). Typing on the computer is much easier and faster. Also, since these notes are stored "in the cloud," they shouldn't be lost. Unless, of course, the service gets discontinued! I'll also make sure to print these out regularly for my own use.
 
  I've had a real "lull" in doing amateur astronomy this year, for a number of reasons. It's mainly been due to issues that I've had with my (now 14 year old) 10" telescope and mount, but another factor has been my observing site here at home. I've, unfortunately, become the victim of suburban light pollution. Weather has also gotten in the way, especially over the past summer. I'm going to elaborate a little more about these events here, and I might write some longer entries about these later.

  Let me start with light pollution. Although I've had to contend with far-off background light pollution during the sixteen years that my wife and I have lived in this house, especially to the north and west (since we live in far southeast Indianapolis), this particular neighborhood was still a decent place to observe from until recently. My 10" scope used to allow me to see stars as dim as 14.0 - 14.2 magnitude on the most transparent nights. There are hardly any street lights around, and, as long as I used the back yard, I've usually been able to avoid any nearby outdoor lights, since most of my neighbors only illuminated the front of their properties. I've also been lucky that even though our home is in the Indianapolis Metro Area, it's located in a very low crime area of the city.

  My luck changed for the worse this year, and I think that social media is partly to blame. A couple of years ago, my neighborhood (Muirfield) started a web page that served a little like Facebook. It was a place where people could register to share information about yard sales and create classified ads, report lost or found pets, and so on. It was also a place where crimes could be reported; usually petty thefts or break-ins. Nearby neighborhood pages could also be accessed. I believe that the theft reports started to alarm residents, even though these incidents were few and far between compared to other parts of Indy. Last year, neighbors started to post about the lack of street lights in Muirfield and they were encouraging each other to install more outdoor security lighting. Within a few months, bright back yard flood lights started to appear at the homes that surround me. Some of these have been left burning all night, and some of this excessive lighting has spread to my back yard! Although the patio where I've done most of my observing in past years is still (usually) dark, the tops of the trees in my yard reflect the light that comes over the roof of my house. It's really affected what I can see in the night sky. I've been discouraged, and it looks like more and more homes are installing these cursed, constant night lights. Looking at deep sky objects and faint variable stars was already challenging here, but it may already have become impossible due to crime paranoia. It's a real shame.

  Then there is my old Meade LXD55 Schmidt-Newtonian 10" f/4 telescope. I wrote in some detail last autumn about how the motors on the mount, which had always given me problems (and stopped tracking the sky a few years ago) finally started to have enough issues to make them useless. I basically packed the telescope away in the spare bedroom last September and didn't use it at all through winter into spring. I made no AAVSO estimates for the new Fiscal Year (October 2015 - September 2016). (Although I did salvage the Fiscal Year by making a few naked eye and binocular estimates early in September.)

  In November 2015, I started to make modifications to the 10" f/4. I ordered a new, larger finder scope (an Antares 7x50mm scope to replace the 30mm one that it came with). Then, in February this year, I finally made good on a plan that had been forming in my mind since last summer, and I ordered a custom made wooden Dobsonian Mount. This mount arrived in March. In late March I was able to attach the new finder scope to my 10" scope (after carefully taking off the main scope's front end), and by April 4 I was able to get my telescope onto the new mount. The whole telescope was now manual but easier to transport and use. It looked like I was on my way to making regular variable star estimates again.

  Alas, a new issue turned up as soon as I tried it out under the night sky. The view through the 10" scope was disappointing. Things seemed murky. Stars seemed to be fogged up, and even the Moon and Jupiter didn't seem as pristine as they used to. I tried it on a few nights in the spring and once again in midsummer. I tried to make sure the optics were collimated, but the view never seemed to show any improvement. 10th magnitude stars were difficult to see. Bright stars just never seemed to come into sharp focus.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this problem had been creeping up on my for the last few years, and maybe I'd shrugged it off and blamed sky transparency, since I hadn't used the telescope quite as often in the past three or four years compared to how much I'd used it a decade ago. I believe that the source of the problem is the optics and their coatings. When I'd taken the front end of the telescope off in March, the secondary mirror seemed to have a green-rusty hue to it, and it's possible that the main mirror has also suffered. Re-coating might be in my near future to get the telescope back to how it used to perform. But the only way I'll ever know for sure is to take the 10" f/4 apart again and really get a good look at those mirrors.

  This is something that I'll try to tackle soon. In the meantime, naked eye and binocular astronomy will be my only techniques for now.

  There was a possible very positive development this summer, that I should mention along with all of the negative paragraphs that I've typed out so far. Meteor Observing has become a prime interest for me again, since my telescope is practically useless for now. I've always wanted to find a site somewhere away from Indianapolis and all of its light pollution from which to start regular meteor watches, both for the major showers and the in-between times. And thanks to some email correspondence and some online searching, I think I finally found one. There is a public access site for the Flatrock River in far southeast Shelby County, that's just slightly out of my way between work and home. I located it using my Maps App and then made some nighttime visits to it. It's got dark skies (compared to home), seems to be little used during the predawn hours, and there are no artificial lights anywhere around.

  I planned to start regular meteor watching from the Flat Rock Site in late July, but this is where weather started to become a problem. In general, July and August, and even September so far, have been hotter and wetter than normal in this area. I haven't had a lot of really clear, transparent nights. On most days, when the moonlight wasn't a factor, I've had to deal with clouds, high and low fog, rain and thunderstorms, or all of them combined! I still haven't done a meteor session out there, but this might change soon during the last week of September into October. We shall see, If it works out, I may even brave the winter cold out there just because it's such a good site for viewing the night sky compared to my back yard.

  I've done a little meteor watching this summer and early fall, from my yard. I've also managed a few variable star estimates this month. I'll write some catch-up entries about these soon, and we'll see where we go from here.