Wish list for the observatory:

This is just a general wish list, some things we are looking to get solved. It's more of a private wish list than a public wish list. I'm not posting this to "ask for donations" for the observatory, but simply to put out a post of some things that I chat with and think about with other FAAC members and most of these things will be happening over time. It's more of a reminder list for me than a wish list for others.

The web it a pretty good place to store a list and check back on from anywhere. So here goes, and I'm sure this will change over time.

1. 25mm eyepiece. (Check we actually have this now.) This was on our list, but I ticked this off the list by leaving one of my eyepieces in the observatory. As far as I'm concerned it's now owned by the school system and a little donation. I bought another 25mm and I'm happy with the other one, so the Celestron 1.25 inch is now in the observatory.
2. Moon filter. Or polarizing filter. This was on my personal list as something to get for the observatory, but it's been checked off when I looked in the eyepiece box. I didn't realize we had a variable polarizing filter (with two filters) in the case. Probably part of the original order. It's a Celestron brand name for 1.25 eyepieces. I tried it last night on the C-14 after finding it. It works fine, and is especially cool to use when the moon is bright or on the C14 which is a very bright instrument. Having such a big mirror this telescope will show a very bright moon image. The filter goes between the eyepiece and the telescope fitting inside the holder first. It's a little short for some of the eyepieces. It has a rotating filter that varies the amount of light and you have to adjust it before putting it in the eyepiece holder.
3. Entry Rug. The one we have has its base shedding and it's messy if we move it around. Pieces of rubber all over the carpet.
4. Field Reducer Lens for the Telescope. Meade and Celestron both make these and they work for the C14. I've heard both are equal in quality and work well. They convert a Meade 12 inch SCT into a F6.3. The Celestron C14 has a longer focal length F11 and it's converted into a F7 with the field reducer. This will give us wider field views with the Big C-14. These run about $150 and I'm very tempted to pick one up when I visit a local Astronomy store like Rider's Hobby shop in Ypsilanti. The last time I was there and I asked if they had one, they were out of stock. I haven't ordered one yet, but will likely be ordering one of these soon.
5. A new door. We have a new lock, but we need a new door. We have a donor that will donate the door and costs to install it, but we still have to setup the time and figure out when this can be done. I have to talk to the installing company and schedule this. The current door works okay, but it's not exactly what we want. We want a better door. It's tough sometimes to co-ordinate this with the school because Leo and I both are working during the day of course.
6. FIxing a burnt out outlet. We had a short in the high outlet. We have to get this fixed. We don't power the high outlets. We need to fix this. The school will be notified Tuesday about this and hopefully they can get this fixed.
7. Shutter leak. I know where the leak is, we have to get the school or a local company to fix this, we need to get that fixed and schedule carefully the time it's fixed. We don't want a problem happening while the fix occurs and hopefully we'll have some kind of faac supervision or perhaps the supervision of the repair done by a trusted school oversight person.
8. Shelf unit. Some kind of design for more shelf space. Some of the core support members and Leo McMaster have talked about this a bit at times. It's difficult to get an agreement on the design and what type of unit to use. To tell you the truth as I use the observatory more and more with different groups and hear more feedback, I'm more certain what designs would be better and what would work better. We have one issue that could be a little bit of a problem for a HIGH SHELF unit, that is the shutter cable release. We have a cable release that hangs down to allow the bottom panel to be disconnected from the shutter. This can hit something high if we are rotating the shutter with the bottom panel down.

I have spent some time dreaming about different designs for something custom and perhaps more permanent, almost like a fine boat design, like fine furniture, something custom. I even talked to a neighbor about building something in his wood shop, but to be truthful I don't have a consensus or best design figured out. It would be good to have just a better shelf on one side that was affordable and would fit and allow us to have or stack most accessories in one spot. This would give us more floor space and less clutter. If we have two or three astronomers inside and they each bring a couple bags of items we can take up a lot of floor space and perhaps have bags on chairs. Ideally for a quick show, we'd have mostly standing room only and perhaps 3 or 4 visitors inside standing waiting to look at the telescope. It can get crowded. Depending on the use of the observatory, the floor space and shelf space can change. It's almost better to have a dynamic use of the space, configured with stuff brought in and taken out, than trying to put an item in the observatory for every possible use. At times I've wondered about having a couple of chairs, like big coolers that had internal storage, that we could use as a chair and location for items we bring into the observatory. Things like this might happen. I also at times wonder about a large "WORK BOX" permanently attached to the ground outside of the observatory away from the walls, that could be used as a lockable storage place for things like lawn chairs.

I thought at one time that a high shelf would be good around the upper edge of the wall, but this seems like a big problem. Because the lights inside would be blocked by such a shelf system. One of the members showed me a drawn prototype of a possible design, but when I look at the lights if we want the lights to work they'd be blocked by a high shelf, so that's probably not an ideal solution.

Anyway, there's some thoughts toward a wish list. We could probably talk about and think about other items as well. For example I was talking to Greg the other night and he mentioned that we might want a better setup for storage of eyepieces, maybe something like a tray that rotates on the column. I don't know if a good design would involve some kind of rotation of a lazy susan like tray for eyepieces. Maybe the inside of a ring with an edge that stays still would be best. Something perhaps as wide as the current mount plate that we set eyepieces on. The mounting column. A rotating tray may present problems with cables (my first thoughts). I've seen fixed trays that might work pretty well. If the tray isn't solid it might be bumped and fall completely off, so it's more of a permanent shelf. If it covered the mounting bolts it might provide a bigger flatter surface.

The ladder while usable might actually be improved, but there seems to be no good common ones on the market. Mostly step ladders. Sometimes I wish we had one that had almost a bicycle type handlebar on it, something perhaps with a soft handle like a bicycle that kids could grasp when they step up to peer in the eyepiece for the first time. People and especially little kids may want to grab the eyepiece or steady themselves with the scope. It would be nice to have something that is designed to be a "grab bar" for young kids or those not familiar with the telescope. These seem to be minor things and they are for the most part.

There are other more esoteric with items I think about that just don't exist yet. For example a device that is almost like a tent like hallway that would be put outside the observatory at night and form a light break to block light from the open door. This would keep stray light out of the inside when the door is opened up. This could be accomplished by a awning that arches over like a circular tent and is over the doorway. To block light from the 20 street lights in the parking lot. When you're inside and viewing after a while your eyes will be adjusted for the dark. It's a pain to have someone open the door and 20 lights mess up your low light night vision adjusted eyes.

Some things are also basic, for example we need to put dark tape over every light that glows inside when FAAC members and experienced astronomers are inside. All the little stray lights glowing are a distraction. The general visitor may not notice this much because they are looking at brighter objects and not used to trying to look with adjusted dark adapted eyes.

We need a cover over the switches that turn on the Losmandy Power supply. These switches are on the column and they can be hit by the controller cable if you wrap it around counterclockwise while viewing. This can turn off the mount power. This can be remedied with some kind of flip down clear plastic cover over the power switches.

TO GO COMPLETELY OUT OF A DOABLE ORBIT - toward more of a possible future dream.
Ideally we would eventually have a completely different setup in the future. I have a lot of dreams as well to expand the site, but this is more in a mode of a dream than a good wish list. Something like a multimedia room that has a telescope museum inside it, with perhaps 6 to 8 telescopes we could quickly wheel outside to use at night with large star parties. I can imagine the old 8 inch telescope being reworked and being one of these. And perhaps a few other interesting older telescopes as well. We'd need to have a lot more interest from students and a lot more interest from the public to have a need and start a real building project toward a building. I can even imagine it being a building that would use "natural building techniques" and have superinsulated walls and be almost stand alone and green off grid. There is a "straw bale cottage" in Kensington Metro park that is a large public building that was built using "natural green" materials. We could build a "Straw bale" multimedia telescope museum that would be off grid and a green building energy experiment. It might even involve teaching students in the High School green building technology. But that's another dream and not really part of a wish list that is doable at this time.

Earlier I thought about, but didn't post a thought of a roll off observatory observatory next to the current one that could double as a AV media platform for a video camera for the football field. Over time however being at the site and seeing how things work with the current observatory, it becomes clear that some ideas would not work out as well as you could first think they could and a roll off roof observatory would not be a good observatory for this site. (To much light pollution and to much cold in the winter time, a dome is better, or forgo the dome and just use telescopes around the site, perhaps store them in a "museum". I am partial to big thinking and dreaming big. I could imagine events being like star parties, and why not have some telescopes at the site for FAAC members, they could just arrive setup a bunch of scopes and have dozens of people looking through different telescopes. This lets people see more and experience different types of telescopes without "waiting and waiting". The biggest time killer to me, is having to wait in line, to get a brief glimpse through a telescope. If there are more people, it's good to be able to pull out more telescopes. This was the thinking behind building the 8 inch telescope back in 1976-77. When we had both scopes out, the club had twice the time to look through eyepieces. Looking is what visual astronomy is all about.

I. Just talked to a clerk at krogers

She looked through the old scope in 1969, I showed her some photos of the current setup.


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I'm heading outfit a while I'll rerun at 5 pm to meet a faac member

Closing up for a short time


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I just realized we are using an f6 Meade

Time to make corrections to the writing in the past. Maybe I forgot or misheard when the specs were given. This is an f6 not a f7 telescope. The f number refers to the multiplier used in relation to the objective lens or mirror.

80mm times 6 equals 480mm for the focal length of this telescope. And F7 would be 7 time 80 or 560mm in focal length.

Notice the sticker that is on it which shows a warning to "never look at the Sun". This is a good warning. People who are not buying a correct filter setup from a reputable Astronomy dealer and talking to Astronomers should never look at the sun. You should as a rule not look at the sun with any instrument. There are a few dealers who sell the correct accessories to safely look at the sun, but it's so dangerous if the equipment is not setup the threat is real and blindness permanent, so don't take chances. As a rule most people should not consider looking at the sun, unless an astronomer(s) can verify that they have safe equipment and a safe setup. Even a "safe setup" could have a strange mishap. For example the wind could blow a filter off a telescope, "Is that filter securely attached to the telescope?" should be a question you should ask? For the Meade, we have a special Solar "white light filter" for the Meade Telescope, but we don't use it for the public yet, because we have not setup the securing mechanism. We only use the Hydrogen Alpha scope currently for the public. As we get the filter setup squared away we will use the Meade in the future. (By the way the view is better through the Solar Scope Hydrogen Alpha setup anyway.

Never observe or look at the sun without a proper filter. When in doubt don't look at the sun.

I'm sitting in the shade inside under the dome as I write this. A small breeze flows through cooling off the place.

Looks like everyone is busy today, time to lock it up I suppose and head on out.

ALSO NOTE: while correcting this later, I want to add a FAAC member finally came out around 5PM and we looked at the sun for another hour through the special solar scope and tried to take some photos. Our photo setup isn't very good yet, so the photos look pretty bad. I'm not posting any in this message. There is so much more detail that can be seen in the eyepiece, it's amazing yesterday.

Greg



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Massive solar activity on the sun today

Just a quick post, I'll post a handheld shot through the eyepiece later.


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Open for solar observing until 3 pm

Please park in the high school parking lot, enter the track and walk to the observatory as the small gate is locked.

This is for adults, but kids can bring their parents. Sorry but without a perent no admission as this is a faac event and not a school event with a teacher present.




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A shot of one of our FAAC members looking at the beehive through the Meade

Here's a photo of one of the Faac members that were out at the observatory tonight.

To take this photo I laid on the floor and held the camera veery still and took a 10 second exposure. I know it might have been better with a tripod, but I was lazy and instead of getting a tripod I decided to try shooting this handheld.

Greg Knekleian




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Observatory was open to Faac members, tonight but some others visited

Here's a link to the stereo NASA site showing what's happening with the sun. For those who have safe solar scopes to look at the sun this can be a cool link. Consult with a knowledgable astronomer before attempting to look at the sun. This is not generally a safe thing to so without a proper solar scope.

The link:
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Here's a photo of the beehive cluster we quickly snapped through the telescope tonight. This was shot through the 80 'm Meade f7 80mm telescope on the back of the huge c14 that the FAAC club installed.

A simple exposure without any fancy processing which would improve it.

Greg





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I'm out very early or late today at the observatory

This was just for some testing and to hopefully see Jupiter in the early morning hours.

There was a lot of haze tonight and I only invited other FAAC members, telling them I was out to do some tests.

I wanted to test the "skifi" Box on the c-14 but it doesn't look like the cable setup will work as far as I can tell.

I also thought I might test the same device with my little Celestron telescope, but it's so bright outside I decided to wait and test that another day in the dome.

Since I'm alone in the dome I actually sat back and took a cat nap for a while waiting for some time to go by. Then after dozing for about an hour, I walked out to get a sweater, and decided to check out the mount accuracy in the sky software. The sky was off a bit. I synced a few objects in te sky software after finding them in the c14 with the 25mm eyepiece.

Then I put a Canon t1i on the c14 brought up m3 a globular cluster in the camera, focused the camera and took a few medium resolution jpeg photos of m3 as a test. Here's a 20 second exposure at 1600 iso.

M3, what facts can we see about that? I'll look them up and post more later or someone may wish to look them up and post a comment here.

I'm still waiting for Jupiter, but I might go home to bed before it's in position to view. Maybe I should lock up set my alarm and go home then come back out in the early morning hours before the sunrise.




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Faac members at the observatory

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Another shot of the moon, this thru the c14

I didn't spend a lot of time setting this up, it's just a fast shot at prime focus using the eos t1i.

A little dark perhaps, I have brighter shots as well from that night.



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Here's a quick photo of the moon from Monday night.

Taken with a canon eos t1i camera attached directly on the little Meade 80mm refractor.



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Thursday night at Henry Ford Community college FAAC meeting I'll be giving a tech talk

This is a 20 minute demonstration of the iPad for astronomy. This will happen at the end of the meeting. I may put an abbreviated version of this talk or other info on YouTube. It will be impossible to go over even several apps in 20 short minutes with any detail, so I'll highlight some apps more than others. Those of you who have had a glimpse of the iPad likely know what a great tool this is.


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I had only one visitor last night but conditions were pretty poor in the sky

We had a nice chat and looked at Venus, Mars and Saturn. It was too overcast to look at other objects while we were out there.

The visitor was an original club member from the last middle school club before Huff Jr High was torn down. The last big event the old club had was an observation of a eclipse. That club met in 1982. The observatory was in use by students in the old days in 1982. He also confirmed that Mike Manyak from Wyandotte Michigan used the observatory and was in it well into the late 1980s. He also remembered Bruce Coultas our old 8th grade principle. It was a great talking to a fellow member of the old club, although I wasn't actively involved when that club was running the observatory.

I can remember talking to Mike Manyak who stopped by, and this was likely after the Jr High club had dissolved. He was still curator of the observatory officially, but many students were likely not involved at all. I also talked to other visitors this week, some went to the school system and knew about the observatory, at least as a building being there, but never looked through the observatory or had even a tour.


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Open tonight but no minors without parents Tuesday at 9pm

Our teacher contact won't be at the observatory tonight. So this is not a kid night.

The observatory will be open to adults from facc and residents but children must be accompanied by their parent to enter or observe.

Btw about fifty kids observed the sun today through a special telescope designed especially for solar viewing. These kinds of telescopes are usually build with the designed purpose to view the sun.

Always consult with an experienced astronomer before viewing the sun, because some think you can use filters to view the sun with ,but choose filters that are unsafe. Even experienced astronomers have been known to make mistakes at times so it's a good thing to ask questions and be aware of how their setup works. For example they must have safe and undamaged filters designed for solar viewing. Some filters require two sets of filters, on on the front and others on the eyepiece assembly. All safe setups require a special filter on the large opening or front top end of the telescope. It's also important that the astronomer have a setup that holds the filters son the telescope firmly with tape, Velcro or in some cases a screwed on filter inside a special solar telescope. The old telescopes from 30 years ago had small filters on the eyepieces. These were not safe and should never be used. These old sun filters that were eyepiece only filters sold with some store bought telescopes should be destroyed and thrown away.

Also : Don't use welding glasses to look at the sun.

Last night a visitor mentioned using a type of filter which he thought would be safe, but he was wrong. Don't risk your eyesight to an unsafe or questionable setup. Better to be safe than sorry.

You best bet is to avoid looking at the sun and keep your eyesight.

There are some telescopes build for looking at the sun like Pst telescopes by Orion, or Lunt solar scopes. The observatory has a Lunt solar scope. There are some safe filters that can be bought as well. These are normally made by companies like bader or thousand oaks. Sometimes an old solar filter is damaged and unsafe. I bought a telescope that had a used solar filter that was supposed to be safe, but it had a lot of small pin hole flaws in it. To be safe I photographed the sun using a camera and didn't look directly at the sun with it. There were to many holes and it would. Seem to require to many patches for this White light solar filter to be considered safe. Rather than risk my eyes I decided to set it aside. The white light solar filters cost 70 to 120 dollars for a large filter to put on the objective, large end of the telescope. I'd rather spend the money to get a new white light solar filter than risk my eyes.

Hydrogen alpha solar scopes like the Lunt that we have show other features and are probably nicer to look through. These cost 500 dollars or more. You could spend thousands of dollars on a hydrogen alpha setup. If your into astronomy and want to look at the sun that's a nice but pricey investment. If your in the area you can save money and check out the sun by visiting us when we have e observatory open to the public for solar viewing. This would normally be on some weekend. We haven't had a solar viewing day yet this year, but will be having them soon.

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A shot of the moon tonight thru the c14

Great time only a few visitors tonight. The weather was perfect for a night out. But the sky was a bit humid with less than perfect seeing conditions. It was clear, somewhat breezy, and temps dropped a bit. Thermals kept the high powered seeing down. Mars, Venus and Saturn displayed some unsteadiness with higher power eyepieces like the 10mm and 9mm in the c 14 showing quit a bit of thermal jumping and not really sharp edges of Saturns rings for example. Lower powers provided a more stable and sharp images but still a few moments of unsteady viewing would appear; even with a 40mm eyepiece. The 2 inch 40mm looked a lot better than the 1.25 inch 40mm in the c14.

I took a few attempted photos of a faint comet temple that is in the 17.8 magnitude range. Sky lit pollution prevented very long exposures in that attempt. Still I may have picked it up a bit with a 1600 iso exposure of 30 seconds.

Below is a photo I took of the moon throughh the c14.


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The observatory will be open at 9pm tonight.

I may arrive earlier,but should be there by 9pm and likely will stay for a few hours.

We will likely have the observatory open Tuesday night as well.

Monday night we are NOT open to minors unless they bring along their parent. Faac members and adults from the area can show up.


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Sunday night I'll be at the observatory at 9;30pm

I dontplan on looking at much but will showothrs if some visitors show up. I'll be editing the newsletter if nobody shows up.

(No children allowed unless accompanied by a parent.)

I'll likely be opening itupand Monday or Tuesday as well.

It looks like a really nice night to be out, clear and warm.


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Here's a shot of some of the late night binocular bunch

Ken Anderson arrived late at Island Lake last night but brought three pairs of binoculars.

We had fun even after the others left with there telescopes.







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At island lake

I'm donating blood to flying insects at island lake.


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Jupiter, and the topic of a "dwarf Planet" (Pluto).

One of the visitors had a quick question about Jupiter. Being pretty busy and perhaps a bit lazy I didn't bother to study and refresh my mind with some basic astronomy facts that I should know and should study. I need to study these basic facts better. I just referenced the young man to George as the resident expert inside the observatory. I found that the easiest way to quickly get the answer at that time.

George replied that Jupiter was 80,000 miles in diameter, which is a good round number and gives you an idea of the size of Jupiter. Of course we can look up facts on the web or in a good reference book and finding the answers in books or on the internet can be fun as well. I didn't spend the time to show a really nice program on the iPad and iPhone that will listen to a question and provide a quick search to a question. This is called Dragon Search and is a popular App on the iphone and iPad devices. It's a free application as well. If I asked that question inside the Dragon Search application, it would listen to my question go out to a website interpret my question and type what I spoke into a search engine. Rather than do a search I just had George answer the question. Later at home I fired up my computer and did a google search and quickly found a website that has a lot of interesting answers and facts about astronomy:

http://www.universetoday.com/

This is an interesting site and for those of you on the internet reading this you can do a google search on "how big is Jupiter" and find many links, one of them to the above site.

http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/jupiter/how-big-is-jupiter/


So we can see Jupiter is about 88,000 miles in diameter.

There's a lot of good information about the other planets on the web as well. Let's talk a moment about our ninth planet or is it a ninth Planet? It depends on who you ask. To older folks, we often still think of this as the ninth planet, Pluto.

Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

Old timers like me and many other amateur astronomers want to cling to the old facts we've learned over the years and say there are nine planets and Pluto is the ninth one. Because Pluto was thought of as the ninth planet for many years and we are used to reading and hearing Pluto is the ninth planet. It's difficult to unlearn "a fact" we've all been hearing about for all these years. It would be like someone calling your big pet dog just another wild prairie dog, more like a rodent than a pet poodle.

Pluto was the ninth planet discovered. Most adults were taught that in school, so we are used to thinking of it as the ninth planet, because it was "a well known fact of Astronomy" for so many years.

I even have two solar system charting apps/programs that some of us looked at last night. I like the charting program that shows Pluto as a planet. The other charting program doesn't even show Pluto at all.

So one charting program shows it as a planet, the other doesn't.

Can we teach an old dog new tricks (or facts)? Many Amateur old timers don't want to hear that Pluto isn't a Planet and now is some kind of "dwarf" planet. I could probably start a debate at the FAAC club meeting and members could talk for perhaps hours debating why Pluto should be a planet. And most of the members at the club might say, "I think it's a planet, because I always heard it was a planet and learned to call it a planet, so for me it's a planet."

When you read the following link, you can see why Pluto is now considered by many astronomers to be a dwarf planet.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/10/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/


Maybe if we had some kind of new Pluto mascot or something, like an additional dwarf in a fairy tale named Pluto, we'd have a better feeling about calling it a "dwarf planet". Maybe we need a new Disney rendition of Snow White to add an eight dwarf and call him Pluto. What do you think?

Some think Pluto was named after the disney character Pluto, which is not really true.

How would Pluto look in the C-14 telescope?

(Hint: Most bigger telescopes have a "visual magnitude rating", which shows you what you should be able to see visually. . . but we often cannot see objects at that faint limit, because the sky conditions are not good enough and also many of us may not have as good a set of eyes as the manufacturers would list for visual viewing. Magnitude is a rating of faintness of a light source and stars or objects are often listed as being a certain "magnitude". If the telescope can't see at that magnitude visually, you won't be able to see that object in the telescope, and often you may not be able to see an object even close to the rating, especially in a bright city setting.)

If it was clear out it would be very difficult for us to see and realize where Pluto was, because it's very faint. It has a very faint appearance and that is referred to as a number which we call magnitude. A fainter star or planet has a larger magnitude number. A bigger telescope can see fainter stars. A telescope with a bigger diameter mirror or lens can see a fainter star. The large lens or primary mirror will bring in more light and that means in theory we can see fainter stars, up to a certain point. In "bright skies" it can be more difficult to see very faint stars, because the brightness and haze or pollution may cause conditions to be much poorer to view a faint object. If you look around and are older, you'll notice you cannot see as much in the bright cities as you could in the old days. Because in the old days many cities were much smaller and the towns and countryside were not lit up like they are today. That sky glow makes it more difficult to see faint objects. Sky glow and pollution can even affect what a large telescope can see. We might be able to see Pluto with the C-14 at a dark sky site under ideal conditions. But it would be very difficult for most of us to see it, because it's so faint. Pluto is often very faint and could be 15.1 magnitude in faintness which is very faint indeed. The C-14 can in theory see objects as faint as 15.3 which means in theory with the best eyes in the darkest skies someone might be able to see Pluto through a C-14. But in the Lincoln Park Observatory with all the bright lights and sky glow and often poor conditions due to dust, clouds, ice crystals and other stuff in the air, you're not going to be able to see down to the 15th magnitude. For faint fuzzy objects I've found we can rarely see below the 10th magnitude and observe Messier objects, but that was one night and conditions could vary a bit depending on sky conditions. So I can safely say it's very unlikely that anyone would ever see Pluto even as a star in the C-14 in Lincoln Park, Michigan.

CORRECTION: I'm learning a bit more about this as you can see, just because I help out at the observatory doesn't mean I'm immune to making mistakes. Okay here's a revision on the discussion of the ability of the telescope at the observatory. First we may have had a difficult time seeing 10th magnitude M objects, which are galaxies or faint fuzzy objects like nebula objects. The magnitude rating for these is the total brightness over the entire area. A star is a point of light. So a star could be magnitude 12 for example and be clearly seen because it's a point of light, where a 12th magnitude fuzzy object might be very faint at any one point of it's location that we are looking at, so it would register and seem to be much fainter, because it's less concentrated. With a larger light signature. So you may not be able to see a 10th magnitude faint fuzzy object on a given night with a given scope, but a star or far away planet would have a smaller area and brighter overall appearance, so it might register. George mentioned that the C-14 should be able to see 15.5 magnitude and Pluto may be at only 14 magnitude, so in theory we can see Pluto naked eye with a C-14, but there's a catch. . . it would still have to be a dark sky location with good seeing conditions. We actually don't have a good enough site to likely see Pluto at 14th magnitude. I'm mentioning this because some might think we cannot see stars that are more faint than 10th magnitude with the C-14, but we can. (Thanks George for the clarification.) Sometimes it's good to chat these over with more experienced observers, before posting stuff on a web blog.)

We should be able to register Pluto on a photograph, but this would likely depend on the sky conditions. (End of revision.)

If we looked at Pluto and saw it with a large telescope, we'd see a small faint dot that looked like a star. We wouldn't see a disk like planets that are closer to us. We'd see a star like image. We wouldn't see it look much different from other stars of the same brightness. (Back in 1930 a 13 inch telescope was used to photograph Pluto, so with the right conditions and a perfect site, it might be possible to photograph Pluto.)

Pluto would look like a small star if we had really good conditions and a really big telescope to look at it. It would look like a small star to us and we'd likely have to use a camera to see it, even with the big telescope we have at the observatory. To realize Pluto was not a star, we'd might need to look at different photographs we'd take of it and see it move over time from one photograph to the second one taken later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto_discovery_plates.png


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto_discovery_plates.png

Pluto often looks like another star and we know it's not just another fixed star, because it moves when we take different photographs of it from one day to the next or one week to the next. It would of course move more between one week to the next, because it would have more time to move against stars which would be much further away and in the background. They'd appear to be fixed in space and wouldn't look like they were moving to us at all. We'd see it move from one photograph to another and the other stars would appear to be fixed in the two photographs from one week to the next for example.

Any faint objects that move could be asteroids, a comet or some other object. George even has a good story about a UFO that looked like a star and can tell you this story if you ask him some time when you visit the observatory. It wasn't a star or an asteroid he was seeing in a photograph he took. What was it? You'll have to stop by and ask him to find out.

So the planets, asteroids and comets will move against the background of stars that are much further away and if they are moving a lot, they are probably a lot closer to our vantage point or earth's orbit. Sometimes asteroids come pretty close to earth. Jupiter actually stops some asteroids and comets, it's large gravity captures the object and the object will crash into Jupiter before it could get close to our orbit. I'd rather have a large asteroid or comet crash into Jupiter than earth, wouldn't you?

What a great time at the observatory tonight and it will get better in the future

Even though we had very poor viewing conditions, everyone seemed to have a great time. The only thing that was a distraction near the end of the night was a mass of mosquitos that were attacking us, it's that time of year and we should have some repellant available for future night viewing.

Here's a couple of rather long exposure photos of some of the visitors, of course it was pretty dark out and the long exposure has some blurring in it.

I hauled out a small tripod and telescope so we'd have another telescope to look through.










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The korody challenge beehive on the iPad

We were searching for the beehive. George mentioned later when only a few of us were in the observatory that he could find the beehive star cluster faster on his computer than I could on the iPad. I didn't have the app running to find the beehive and he found it first. I quickly found it however inside one of the star chart programs I have called Sky Voyager. Here's a screen shot from the iPad of the Beehive star cluster.




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Fun at the observatory

Here's a quick shot of some visitors at the observatory. I took this with the iphone which isn't good for low light, so it's a pretty faint picture. The lights are from the parking lot lighting which is sodium vapor lights. My other camera could take better low light photos, but I was showing how I can take a quick picture with my iPhone and then post it to this blog site using an application on the iphone called "BlogPress". Blog Press is a $3 app on the iphone. I like it, and can create fast updates, but I often will not type a lot of comments when I throw out a short post from the iPhone.




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Observatory will be open tonight

It's difficult to say how manny clouds will be out. This may be more of a tour than an observing night but we gave sceduled the opening of the observatory tonight for a boy scout troop and other students have been invited to drop by aa well.

My plan isto have one or two small telescopes available for display and use outside of the observatory. These aren't anything to special, we have better telescopes inside.

If you want to show up and bring your telescope or man on of mine during the event and your a faac club member your welcometo come out.

As the weather might be bad we will kind of play it by ear as far as setting up other scopes depending on how conditions and the event unfolds.

As conditions aren't entirely predictable it's difficult to state there is a set program tonight.

Faac members may stay longer after all the visitors have left if there are nice conditions.

As you can see conditions currently from a Detroit vantage point are far from ideal.

Greg


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Location:Detroit,United States

I'm heading out to the observatory

The sky cleared up so I'm heading out ti meet Brian and perhaps any other members who show up. Send an email to me or if you a fact member give me a call if your thinking about heading out tonight.

Sorry about the last minute post I didn't expect clear skies tonight but they are here.


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Chain on the shutter could catch on the light bulb cage.

A chain allows two levers to pull the lower section of the shutter up or leave it down. This section is a part of a two piece rolling shutter on the dome. The chain could catch on the light bulb cages that are high up on the walls.

So the chain caught on a light and popped a zip tie that kept part of the chain in a long string. To make things worse, I was tired and later showing some visitors the sky and had the lower section down. This allowed the chain which was then in a loop to catch on a light bulb, without my noticing it. As the dome rotated, it started to tear the light off the wall. We caught it in time before it completely tore the light off, but the light is partially out of position. To prevent future problems, I went to a local ACO storre and bought a short piece of hose. I pulled the chain through a piece of the hose and attached a hook on the end of the chain the will keep the chain inside the hose. Now the hose will harmlessly slide over lights in the future and it's a little nicer to handle as it provides a good grip and doesn't have any rust or dust which the chain had on it.

Chain with vinyl hose on it shown below.

Chatting about astronomy at island coney

Chatting with Ryan about astronomy


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Here's a photo I took from the c14 after tonights visitors left

Same target, different telescope.

No photo processing at all. If I had more time I might have used a live view eos utility on a laptop to get a sharper focus.




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Here's a photo from the mead 80mm refractor

From the observatory

Hercules globular star cluster.

Canon eos t1i




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Looking at a few objects

Joe and Al stopped by to check out the observatory we saw Saturn, Mars Hercules and the beehive cluster so far.


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I plan on going by the observatory tonight around 9pm

Weather looks like it will be good for some observing.

May look for some stars that have exoplanets orbiting around them if I'm bored, depending on who is out there. We won't see the planet of course since it's orbiting another star, but we would see the star corresponding to the planet.

The following is a screenshot with the weather forecast for tonight.

Likely to be out there until 11 pm or so if all goes as planned. We may of course look at other objects depending on what other club members and visitors feel like viewing. Saturn and Mars can have pretty views when conditions are good. Saturn is usually appreciated the most by visitors.

No underaged children are allowed in the observatory without their parent or a school teacher, etc. Faac members don't open up the observatory for minors unless it's a school activity, and normally that means Leo Mcmaster is there.

I may invite a friend and her kids to the observatory tonight, but she's the parent of her kids. This is how the rules work for our observatory.

Perhaps someday soon well have more teachers involved and have the observatory open for student events more often.






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New weather radar app provides insight for observing

This app is a nice application for the iPad and provides a view from various radars.

Obviously when is raining there's little hope for a good observing session.

Here's a screen shot example.




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Didn't make it to observatory during day will check key later

Gardening




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Location:6th St,Wyandotte,United States

Plan on going by the observatory sometime before 4 pm on mothers day.

Will likely take a peek through the solar scope and insure of course that the key works. We have a boy scout tour of the observatory on Tuesday night. The meeting may happen or may be cancelled depending on the sky conditions Tuesday.

Greg

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Showing ipad at tim horton

This being another test. I'm not going to put to many posts about the observatory up yet. Because I'm just getting back to being able to use and open it up with a new key.

Today is mothers day. I showed the iPad at Tim Hortons yesterday. A bunch of kids and three adults wanted to look at it and asked a lot of questions. I didn't go camera happy and take their photos to put them on the blog here. I just took a photo of the inside.

I'm going to test the key and open up and probably look at the sun using the solar scope today. I'm still not sure exactly when. Perhaps within the next hour or two by 4 pm

I'm going to put out another post when I get out there. My main reason for going is to test the key. I need to focus on writing a bit for the newsletter and studying and toying with some more astronomy applications. I'm writing a review of star voyager this month and giving a demo on the iPad and astronomy apps as a tech talk at the local faac astronomy club in about two weeks. So I have to focus a bit on getting those things ready and don't have a lot of time for long updates on this blog.






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Wings game tonight

Observatory closed



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Showing ipad at chilis

Showing ipad to others

Test entry on a cloudy day


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