The observatory should be open tonight

We plan on observing tonight at HJRO. Visitors are welcome but children should be accompanied by a parent.

DETAILS and more ramblings of a tired astronomer.

It's clear out today and many Faac astronomers are wisely sleeping and catching up on some missed sleep from last nights viewing.

We were open last night but I only announced it on the FAAC yahoo group last night and not my blog. If you drive by and see the dome and shutter open please feel free to stop by and visit. I don't always announce openings here, especially if we have group visiting or many people asking me if we will be open.

We will be open tonight and basically anyone is welcome. There are some little technical problems we've been having with the mount, which we will work around and have been working around.

We looked through the C14, Big Bertha a ten inch Schmidt Newtonian, a small Bushnell telescope and my vixen binoculars. We didn't look through the small Meade refractor at all last night.

We had about a dozen people attend viewing last night. They were able to look at Jupiter, the moon and other objects as well. We looked at the ring nebula and the dumbbell nebula. There were other objects they looked at, but part of the time as others were operating the telescope I was outside setting up other telescopes with and viewing M45 and Jupiter outside.

Early in the evening we had three visitors, the family of school worker last night and we had one of our members brought another youngster for observing. We also had a Faac member bring two college age guests. And then there was Tim, Art, Rick, and last but not least Brian all FAAC members there to observe, chat and generally have a good time. For most of the night Tim, Art and others ran the telescope and I was able to wander around and hopefully not distract others to much. Jennifer our FAAC newsletter editor (and president of the HFCC club) was there as well. She stopped by for a short visit and probably stayed for about an hour.

Seeing was at first was a little marginal, with some thin clouds early on. Visibility improved to "very good" as most of the clouds were gone by about 9:45pm. Seeing and transparency were very good and we could see a lot of detail when looking at Jupiter. We were able to get some pretty high powered pictures when Brian was there later in the evening.

Brian met some of us during a break at White Castle on Fort Street, and we returned to view with Brian from about 12:30am to 2am. After Brian left, Art and I looked briefly at M42 and then we closed up at 2:30am.

We expect to be open tonight. Parents can bring kids out or kids can bring their parents. This is a nice way of saying it's not a night where we have teachers out so children should be accompanied by parents.

-- To fix and adjust my big ten inch telescope, that "fell"
We will be doing some work, likely in the early evening perhaps with the mount and also perhaps optical aligning Big Bertha, my ten inch newtonian that is currently setup at the observatory.

I had a slight accident last night and that large telescope actually fell over with it's mount while I was moving it back into the observatory. The tube weighs 50 pounds and the entire rig weighs 200 lbs, so you can imagine my surprise as I tried to slow down the fall of this telescope as it started to tumble toward the ground. This happened while I was moving the telescope and happened because I was rushing a bit and in a hurry. One cardinal rule of astronomy should be take your time and be patient. That's a rule I broke, and I almost broke my telescope because of it.

This happened because I was rushing and didn't slowly keep and eye on the telescope and mount. I had a temporary mount adjustment I did. Believe it or not I had a towel that was locked into the mounting bracket and it was a large towel that can drag and hang down. This was a dumb adjustment fix, and it should have been removed.

This was temporarily fix using the towel as a bracket spacer to have the tube locked in more tightly in the mount. The mounting brackets foam is old and I was using the towel to act as a shim to allow the tube to be in the bracket more securely, but that towel was to large.

When I was pulling the telescope and mount (on wheels) into the observatory, one of the wheels of the mount caught the towel that had fallen down and was dragging on the ground. I didn't notice this. When the wheel caught on the towel the entire telescope and mount tipped and started falling.

Fortunately I was in front if it and basically partially slowed the fall as it fell partially down on my leg and ankle. This slowed its fall enough to prevent the telescope from a major break. Had the front corrector plate broke, it would have been a total loss of that telescope which was built in 1962 and has had thousands of people look through it.

Fortunately it didn't break, but a scrape of blue paint is on the tube from it sliding partially against the door of the observatory on it's way down. That paint can likely be removed and buffed off, or remain as a battle scar.

So we may spend a bit of time adjusting the optics on that ten inch Schmidt newtonian telescope and I need to rework that mounting bracket removing that towel.

Tonight we will be observing Jupiter, the moon and other objects.

Last night near the end of the night we observed Jupiter through the C14 and saw a lot of detail, but we could not see additional detail with a 13mm eyepiece or most high powered eyepieces at the end of the night. This could have been due to sky conditions deteriorating as far as viewing. It could also have been due to heat thermals inside the observatory as we had a heater on for a short break between observing sessions and that added heat is something that can cause hot air to rise and ruin viewing. We typically turn on a heater at the end of a cold night to warm up but not during viewing.

It's very cold out so dress warm and in layers if you decide to come out, because it's easy to get chilled and cold. Remember clear skies allow the heat to radiate back into space quicker, so when its clear out the nights will often get cold quickly. So dress warm if you decide to go out and observe tonight or stop by to join us.

Some visitors stay for ten or fifteen minutes, look at a couple of items and then move on. Others stay for hours, but on cold nights they should be prepared and dress warm. One rule for astronomy is You cannot be dressed to warmly. Dress in layers, if your dressed to warmly you can always take off some extra item.

We have one coat we can loan people, but little else to help someone warm up if they are cold. Sometimes we take a break and send someone out for hot chocolate. Last night Tim brought a heating pad to sit on. The theory we are testing is we might be able to have a heating pad or two to sit on in chairs and warm the astronomer without effecting visual viewing much. But in reality any heat, even the heat from one human body standing in front of the telescope can cause thermals to rise up and disrupt imaging. Some die hard imagers who take astrophotographs, report that they can see thermals from deer who walk near their observatory and they will never even walk in front of the side of the telescope when they are imaging. They keep thermal heat currents down.

During late night imaging last night Brian noticed some images going out of focus. I opened and closed the door to change air currents as there was a slight temperature difference and it was colder outside with a slight breeze outside. My thought was different cold air rising through the shutter might cause the image to improve. The air likely rushed through the dome more as it was cold air and a slight breeze was felt in the open doorway. That didn't improve the image, but actually degraded it. So we shut the door.

We experiment a bit and learn each night. Probably for most visitors looking out they will not notice the difference in the view with their eyes on the eyepiece if we have some heat or even the IR heater on facing someone behind the telescope. We test this sometimes, especially when some visitors are feeling the cold.

It's a bit of a challenge sometimes. Some FAAC astronomer visitors dream about the day we might have a warming shack or building nearby, perhaps next to the observatory that can be heated for astronomers and guests. We might use that as a control room, to store extra chairs and perhaps as a presentation Av room. It would be nice to have a warming shack of course next to the observatory for guests and astronomers. We are of course dreaming and haven't made any serious proposal or decision to try to lobby for that yet. We might even bring a trailer and park it nearby to use as a control room near the observatory. Control rooms are more useful to astronomers who are doing more imaging. For an observatory where the public is visiting, it would likely be better to use some additional small building or trailer as a warm up shack most of the time, just a place to warm up, perhaps look at computer software and charts. It's difficult to say all the advantages we'd have from a second structure.

I can write more about this in another blog entry later.

As you can see I'm writing a long post this morning and probably need more sleep.






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