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.