A visitor, Harold takes a safe look at the sun using safe solar filter methods.

Photo of Harold at HJRO. Harold is a Faac astronomer who has been in astronomy as a hobby since he was six years old. He is over 70 years old, so he's been observing for over 65 years through telescopes. I think it's safe to say, Harold is the Faac club member with the most astronomy observing experience.





Harold is known by some as "the telescope man", he spent about twenty years setting up in front of the Dearborn police station or library. For a dozen of those years he used a telescope called Big Bertha, which is a large ten inch Newtonian telescope.

Harold sold Big Bertha in 2009 to it's third owner(me).

Harold drove up with his wife in a convertible.

I set up my Vixen telescope in the parking lot to show Harold the new mount setup.

Important info - Safe solar viewing:

I have safe solar filters using Baader planetarium astrozap solar film. We only view the sun using safe methods. Baader film, thousand oaks solar filters, Lunt or Coronado solar telescopes are examples of safe solar equipment.

Beware of unsafe methods, even welder glass.

Just this week a visitor mentioned he used number 12 welding goggles to view the Venus transit. We found out this other visitor was not using safe welding glasses. Number 12 welder glasses are not safe.

You can only use number 14 green glass or number 14 with gold coating welder glasses to safely view the sun.

No other number welder glass are safe; numbers 1 through 13 are NOT safe and even some of the number 14 rated welder's glass are not safe.

You are better off using safe and proven solar products available from an Astronomy equipment dealer. Special filters which always fit in front of the telescope are used to safely view the sun. All other methods except solar projection are not safe

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A busy week

We opened the observatory yesterday during the middle school open house.

We had about 30 visitors.

This was the forth evening in a row that I opened up HJRO.

A pattern seems to emerge when you have a large group of daytime or early evening visitors. Some will ask, "will you be open later tonight?". I often say, yes and stay late. They say, we will try to make it back out, but they usually are busy with the normal household chores of going to bed or watching tv. Probably thinking, we have to get up in the morning for work, etc. And we were already there. So they end up never returning the same evening. It's perfectly understandable. I end up observing wIth no more visitors that night.

After four days opening up, I'm a bit tired out at being at HJRO, so tonight, I won't be there, even if the skies are perfect.

There is a full moon, second one this month which is called a blue moon. It won't be any more blue than normal. It's just a second full moon in the month.

A full moon makes the sky bright. Any moon above the horizon makes the sky bright. That makes it difficult to view dim objects from added sky glow. So many astronomers prefer to view other objects when the moon has set or isn't out as well. So a full moon doesn't mean it's a good time to observe the sky. Observing a full moon is more of a chore as well, you will want to use filters to cut down on the brightness when looking through a telescope and there is no shadow relief from a sun angled at the face of the moon we'd be observing.

In heard from visitors that two people in Lincoln Park came down with West Nile virus from mosquito bites recently. It's a good idea to use bug spray before observing.




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A quick photo of the moon at about 400x, actually part of the moon.

Here is a photo of the moon, using my iPhone. Handheld with 40mm eyepiece. Aimed iPhone through the eyepiece at a part of the moon. That 40mm eyepiece was mounted in a Celestron C14 at 3911mm focal length. So the effective power with about a 4.5 power zoom into the eyepiece was roughly 400x.

The moon actually looked better than this when we looked at it though the telescope. Usually a quick photo, looks at least four times worse than what we'd see at the eyepiece, maybe even worse depending on the photo and techniques used. I sharpened this a bit and removed a bit of red glow from the observatory lights which I inadvertently left on while taking this quick photo.





Below is the sharpen mask I painted in to sharpen most of the photo.

I also used a negative curve on some of the red to remove a red glow, not shown below.



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There was a FAAC meeting at HFCC

The general meetings for the FAAC club are in the UAW conference center which is the building in front of the campus, closest to the street. This building is on the southern side. It's not the cafeteria building, which is also close to the street.

Sometimes after a general meeting we open up the observatory. We have the installation situation of the bleachers and lighting completed enough to start using the observatory again, but I had some errands to help a friend with car trouble. None of the other FAAC core group that would be at the observatory and help run it was available tonight, so I didn't open up the observatory at all.

I had a good time observing when I could away from the observatory. I even wrote a highly speculative piece on observing what appeared to be a 3d like effect in viewing the double cluster. There is a strange optical effect that is repeatable, at least with my eyes, that shows stars in small groups that appear to be fixed and moving in front of other stars, while I move my eyes behind the binoculars. This for the Vixen binocular telescope. It's a visual thing that appears to be happening. I haven't verified that others have seen this, up to this point I have witnessed this effect. I had one FAAC member look briefly at the double cluster and he saw the entire field of view shit, but no stars staying fixed within the field of view. I don't have perfect eyesight and some of this might be due to some kind of optical defect in my eyes. There are other possible explanations, the most common ones the few club members I've talked to have come up with was not the theory I put forth in the newsletter article. I put out a kind of strange explanation that this could be happening due to the construction of the eyes themselves, that perhaps curved parts of the retina are causing a difference in speed at times for different parts of the field of view.

Some others have said that this could be "field curvature" in the optics of the telescope. At least two members think that could be what I was seeing. There are also other optical effects such as Pseudo 3d effects when viewing small groups that have been mentioned by some. There is also some interesting reports on optical effects that different people have seen. One person I talked to on the phone reported seeing a "moving stars in front of background effect, when walking and looking up naked eye without optics at the Milky Way galaxy in a very dark sky site. He said stars moved in front of the Milky way, and seemed to move that way when he was walking and moving. He said this was some kind of optical effect that he mentioned and others at that time didn't believe he was seeing that effect and thought he was joking.

Another member of the club said, he has seen an effect while flying where a star would appear to move in relation to others because after staring at it for some time, the eyes, without a frame of reference will start to move on their own and cause the star to move.

Another member of the club listened to me on the phone and we chatted for some time and he ventured to say that something optically could be happening, perhaps something to do with the different response that one might get from the central part of the eye, verses the side, because we have more cones in one part and more rods in the other. That was an interesting explanation as well. Some of these have agreed at least in some brief discussions that some of the movement I've seen if it's happening would not happen from misaligned optics in the binocular. Something else is going on.

The next step would be to see if others can see this effect. I'd be out tonight especially if I could get other viewers out there to look through the binoculars at the double cluster and survey if they see this effect with their viewing.

I'm hoping to get detailed viewing reports from some club members at next Saturday's beginner's night which will be at the FAAC picnic at Island Lake Spring Mill pond.

I don't know also if some of this is due to specific details in my eyes that may not be common and causing this optical effect. The effect can be altered a bit, certain stars concentrated on and targeted in an optical manner, that may not be apparent at first and these may seem to jump out in front and be "fixed" during this viewing process.

Basically the effect that I'm seeing is some stars remain fixed in the field of view while others seem to move in a field of stars behind those. I'm saying behind because that is what it looks like. It looks like the fixed stars are floating at fixed points in space in front of the other stars that make a blurring like move and change their position. This visual effect can be altered some, that is targeted on certain stars, based on what I cast my vision on, meaning central target of focus in the field of view.

I had one member who has done extensive visual viewing mention that this could be an optical effect from the eyepieces, agreeing with me and mentioning strange side effects of a wide field Televue eyepiece. When I told him that I was using Plossl eyepieces, he felt that the Televue eyepiece of that type would not cause a drastic effect that would resemble what one might see on a wide field Televue. So he kind of hedged his thoughts, it could be field curvature of the lens system and then again it might not be. Another interesting view that sometimes one can see with wide field telescopes is an alignment ring pattern around stars when colimnating a telescope. The stars may have a "dot pattern" inside a ring which should be centered. It may be when you are completely aligned and inside the center of the exit pupil cone of light and the star is in the center of the field of view. In cases where the star drifts to the edge of the screen, the center spot in the star test image, may drift to one side especially if you are near the edge of the optic, and this is more visible with wide field Newtonians. If that is the case, perhaps this would point to field curvature kind of 3d effects that are presenting themselves in the eyepieces as I look at the double cluster and do the "move of my eyes" behind the eyepiece in a horizontal manner.

It's interesting to guess at what might be the cause and try to design some kind of test or set of questions to help explain what this is that I am witnessing. I'm literally seeing some stars remained fixed while others move in the Field of View. And this can be repeatedly viewed (at least by me) and done instantly by relative movement of my eyes to the fixed movement of the telescope and eyepieces on a target. This means I'm varying the parts of the light cone that are entering the eyes. This brings a 3d like (video game like) effect on viewing of the double cluster. The effect is greatly diminished for some open clusters like M45 in comparison. The effect happens in both horizontal and vertical movements. The stars are not moving at all when the eyes are fixed in one spot, and there appears to be no heat or seeing effects that make the stars vary in their position, through boiling atmospheric condition. So the effect is wholly dependent on the activity at the eyepieces.

Binocular vision brings out the effect perhaps 10 times more than you would see without both eyes. Also the edge of the field of view, more toward the periphery of the field of view, seems to move more than stars closer to the center which remain fixed.

The fixed stars in some cases may be fixed, but also move a bit in relation to other fixed stars, distorting somewhat at least their angles, in relation to other stars. This is another perhaps secondary visual thing I've seen when experiencing this for at least one wide field of "fixed stars" that were a little wider apart than some tight and non-moving groups of stars.

The stars that don't move are clearly seen and seem fixed. So other stars look to "move behind them" but I have not seen one star move from one side of a fixed star to another with this effect, which of course proves that this is not a real parallax effect. It's a kind of optical illusion that creates a parallax like view of the "live movement" of the stars.

As this is an optical effect from visual astronomy, it's unlikely and kind of photograph can be taken to prove or disprove various theories or show this "as a recorded thing that happened."

That is enough of a post for now. I'd like to test viewing the double cluster tonight from my brighter sky location, but I'm to tired and it's too late to check on that. I need to get some sleep and rest up for an early morning errand tommorrow.

Had a fun time observing at a dark sky site.

Was out at my friends house in Dexter Michigan yesterday. I arrived there at about 12:30PM and my friend and everyone there had already went to bed. I ended up looking at different objects with my Vixen Binocular Telescope. There are so many more stars and it's great to be under the Milky Way and actually see it with naked eye observing.

I spent a lot of my time with the 25mm TV Plossl eyepieces giving the telescope 36 power.

I spent most of my time scanning the sky without a chart actually. But looked at a few identified objects and used a charting application on the ipad or iphone from time to time. I think I used the iphone for most of the chart lookups last night.

Dew became a problem and my front objectives were foggy. I took the Vixen into the car and dried it out with the heater then returned.

I spent a lot of time looking at the double cluster. It was fascinating. I decided to try to figure out why it looks so 3d in the binocular telescope compared to a normal telescope with one eyepiece. I discovered that some of the stars seem to shift in the field of view, like Parallax shift, not moving much, while others shift more considerably as if in the background. This happens in "real time" while viewing through the eyepiece. How is this happening? I'm thinking that this may be due to some kind of selective almost pincushion like distortion, perhaps with my eyesight, but I think others would see it as well. The way to see this is to set the eyepieces apart far enough to see while looking through both eyepieces. Not to far apart, but a normal distance. This allows a little bit of space to exist for your nose and you can actually move your eyes from one side to the other changing your relative position for both eyes looking through a more Right side alignment but still with both eyes and then with the left side being more closer to your nose. This shifting causes "some" of the stars to move and they appear to be in a background plain, while others end up staying in the same relative position in the foreground. It's an eye popping 3d effect which I think anyone would see with this setup.

Rather than just try to describe this I tried to draw and identify the "foreground" stars that appear to be "in front" of the other more shifting stars in the background. This meant I didn't need to draw all the stars of the double cluster. I didn't have a blank sheet of paper and pencil handy, so I used the iPad with a drawing app. This proved to be a little bit challenging, because the ipad is fairly bright and I spent a lot more time trying to tweak the drawings. My thought at first was I would draw over a photograph of the double cluster in the background of the drawing app, but I couldn't easily locate that photo on my iPad, so I just tried to draw the main foreground stars as best as I could. I ran into a problem of using a scale and not zooming in enough to draw the top cluster and have the second cluster fit on the screen. So I drew a couple of stars that appear like they are foreground stars in between the two on the first drawing and then drew them again on a second one. Figuring I could merge them or use those two "in between" stars as a guide to merge the two drawings later. Unfortunately my scales didn't match, so I may have to scale them to match and perhaps rotate one of them a bit.

They provide a good overview as to which stars would be in the foreground which I could redraw over a photo of the double cluster. I think our photos were taken with normal telescopes which means they are upside down, but my Vixen binoculars show a true perspective.

I don't have a chart or drawing ready to post here. But I looked at the double cluster for a long time and looked around that area experimenting and focusing on different star groups or patterns inside the cluster. Also looking at the cluster from a number of different framings to see how the stars or parts of the cluster would react in relation to their placement in the field of view. It seemed that if I focused mentally on a different small sub-pattern, that that group of stars many times would jump out and not move in the field of view relative to the others. So I could almost depending on the position of the stars and what I was mentally focusing, cause sub patterns of the cluster to appear to be in the foreground. Could it be that by focusing on some kind of pattern I was somehow locking mentally a part of the image in my mind and causing that pattern to mentally shift or be stabilized in a way that it didn't move. This was a very interesting experiment in (at least my) human vision. It's something that I think anyone would have fun viewing to note their reaction and to perhaps see which stars appear to be in the foreground. It could be some kind of pattern matching psychological effect that our vision can flip into.

From a scientific point of view it would seem that optically this would happen more with stars in the middle of the field of view as an optical change in the overall view, that is something like astimatism might occur in the optics. I don't have perfect eyesight so it could be in my eyes optics as well. It might be interesting to see if there was a way to photographically test this, but that would require a different setup and rig than I have as the Vixen is not suited for photography.

There are other reasons I thought in the past that I felt there was a 3d effect, but this is the most significant in my mind and something easy to demonstrate and repeat.

I also looked at M2, , the ring nebula, M45, and finally Jupiter. There was a glow, almost like northern lights that appeared in the wide field photographs but was barely detectable with my vision. These almost looked like northern lights, but also looked a lot like a cloud pattern or vapor trails from jets. I saw a couple jets flying high leave vapor trails during the nights viewing.

Here is a wide angle photo of the stars and clouds which look a bit like Northern lights. In the early morning hours as the sun was rising, it was clear that the clouds were appearing in the photo, not northern lights.


(looking at M45 with clouds obscuring some of the sky)

HJRO will be closed for some time.

There is a lot of construction going on at the football field. So we will probably not be opening until more of that work is completed.

From time to time embers of Faac might go out and do impromptu viewing at some nearby location. I may announce that if I'm out at some sidewalk astronomy event around here. Tonight it will be clear out but there is a lot of humidity and I'm pretty tired from some late night editing and interruptions to my sleep patterns. So I don't think I'll be doing any sidewalk astronomy tonight.




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