I'd like to be efficient and be able to put out a great report and update about astronomy. Unfortunately there isn't much to talk about regarding HJRO from the past few months. I haven't even written an update for our Ford Astronomy Club newsletter. There isn't much to write about, I've been staying away from the large snow banks that blocked access to HJRO's gate most of the winter.
A lot of snow and ice have hindered the opening of the observatory. I've been very busy with ice and snow removal and also working on a hobby video project during the cold winter months. Been dealing with a bit of illness in the family and extra chores due to that as well. So I have not had a lot of free time to go and shovel my way into the gate and shovel a path through the snow to try to open up the observatory. I've done that in the past often with few people showing up after a lot of digging through snow drifts.
I tried to open up early January one afternoon to access the condition at the observatory, and I actually could not open up the door because it was frozen solid with ice. I had to wait for a thaw and melting to pry the door open with a big tug. The weather was poor and more snow followed so I didn't even observe from HJRO.
So basically other distractions and my lack of wanting to observe digging through snow drifts prevented a lot of observing time.
Sometimes the sky was clear and cold nights looked promising. I tried to observe only briefly at home a few nights this winter, but this was unconventional observing. Because I was tired of the cold, and feeling sick a bit some of the time I didn't do any long outdoor observing sessions and decided to try something completely different, which is observing from a warm room looking out into the cold night sky through an open window.
This is a challenge of course with a lot of drawbacks. There are a lot of people that tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't do this. A lot of those reasons are sound and good, because they point out heat and thermal temperature differences will hurt the image quality. Warm air and positive air flow will cause mirage like effects to flow out with the warm air rushing out of you window. These will of course chill your room and ruin the view especially from a telescope. A lot of these objections to observing from inside are true and there are a lot of drawbacks.
To observe n perfect conditions you need less atmospheric disturbance, less thermals, less humidity, less wind. Basically you need to remove the weather altogether. You ideally need no air, and need to be floating in dark space to get great observing. But of course this is impossible. It's a no pain, no gain situation. You need very sparse and rare weather conditions most of the time to get great visual observing. If it's cold out, the air is thin and it's dry, like on a high mountain range in south America, you will get great viewing. Because the air is dry, no moisture and little heat interfere with air currents. There's no clouds, and great views from a mountain top in thin air. But thats a harsh and uncomfortable place to live in. Astronomers sacrifice comfort and spend a great deal of money to find a great astronomy view. We often sacrifice comfort, sleep and dress up for cold weather to get great views.
And of course when your older and want quality views you will perhaps spend more money on a bigger telescope and better optics.
But when your young your learning, maybe using marginal equipment, with optics that are not that good, but passible. You observe when you can and have the joy of just observing and being out, When I was young and probably more resilient I could take the cold better and might not mind the cold as much. When we get older the cold might start to cause our bones to ache more. We want a warm dry retirement. So a cold michigan snowy night doesn't appeal to older observers as much and some dream of retirement to a dry Arizona desert away from city lights for astronomy.
If we want to spend money and have the extra cash we might travel to a warm vacation and observe with our telescope or binoculars that we take along on vacation. There was a winter star party in the Florida Keys last month and some Ford Astronomers spent a week down there observing.
I couldn't go down there. I didn't have the time to do that or the excess money. So I decided to bring Florida to my house. I decided to try to observe a bit from my house. I did a few short observing experiments and tried this a few times. I'm going to report how this went in a short presentation to the Ford Astronomy club at our next meeting.
- Observing through an open window in the winter.
One can observe from inside but there are drawbacks and work arounds that exist. The observing won't be as high a quality as you'd get from moving your gear outside and bundling up.
We sacrifice the quality of the view, for comfort and speed in setting up and tearing down the telescope.
To give a quick summary the seeing quality is quite bad most of the time, with this technique but one can get brief glimpses of good views for a short time, in the middle of much distorted viewing. To reduce distortions I use low power and just look at an object longer waiting for a nice quick view which is brief and fleeting. I can look at the object longer because I'm more comfortable and in a warm room, there is less rush because I'm in a nice warm room. I also can have almost no direct light pollution on my eyes because I use curtains to keep stray light off my eyes. I don't use a fancy EQ tracking tripod, but a simple altAz mount tilted toward the window. It's not even a balance level tripod, but a simple support that is sturdy and my aim and tracking is manually performed. I used a wide field refractor or binoculars. A short wide field telescope works. I don't recommend open tube telescopes for this, or dobsonian Newtonian telescopes. This is better with small refractors, like a wiliams optics 70mm or 80mm telescope. I used my vixen bt80 binocular which worked well with 32mm eyepieces. I tried a nexstar 4se for planetary observing of Jupiter in -3 degree weather. That was not good, I don't recommend a long focal length sct or Maksutov for this kind of observing.
This means I end up looking at a target longer for brief glimpses that are pretty good, but never excellent. It also means that I spend more time looking at a small patch of the sky because the window view is limited. Also I end up using lower powers and never use high power, which means planetary viewing is really bad with this technique. There's a lot of little adjustments one can make and a lot to discover when viewing using this technique. New things to learn. I'll post more about that later.
I think the school system could use a window technique like this for solar observing from the classroom with the proper solar telescope and a simple tracking mount setup. Something mounted on a sash based wedge perhaps. More on this later.
I'm supposed to give a brief ten to twenty minute presentation about this at the meeting and that includes questions from the audience. I threw together my presentation the other day and timed a presentation test and found my presentation a bit to long. 30 slides and 18 minutes without questions and answers. I have to work on revising that so I can quickly relate what I've learned from my observing tests.
- Some quick conclusions from my tests, you results may vary.
Low power small refractors and binoculars work well for indoor observing.
A simple but sturdy alt az tripod is best. This is better for solo observing because you need more eyepiece time to watch and wait for the good views.
Binoculars work great. With two eyes you overcome seeing difficulties a little better.
Turn off heat registers to the room before observing. The room will slowly get colder, when it gets down to about 55 degrees I'd close up.
Look though the upper sash of the window, sliding down the top sash to observe through. Place two tripod legs against the front wall close to the window with one tripod leg back. Raise the tripod to the right height, then extend the inside leg to tilt it closer to the open window. The tripod should be fairly sturdy and have some friction because the head of the mount won't be level, the tripod leans against the window sill to get the lightweight telescope closer to the window opening.
You'll observe from 30 to 60 degrees most of the time, only looking at a few constellations from the porthole like view.
Curtains or thermal drapes can block out the stray light from outside street lights, and also blocks out sone of the winter cold.
These are some of the things I've verified.
Setup and tear down can be 15 seconds and you can observe while your in your pajamas, perhaps adding a coat on. Less time to bundle up and no snow shoveling. So you can spend more time looking through a telescope because your setup and tear down time are reduced. Thats some of my basic conclusions.
Visual observing can be good, but never excellent. This will not provide good images for photography, it's only for visually looking through the telescope. It takes longer so it's better for one observer, not a crowd session. Because you'll need to be on the eyepiece longer. (For crowd viewing setup the telescope outside or use an observatory.)
Also, much of the time I was using low powers, like 26 power on my vixen binoculars. Sometimes 36 power, but found moderately high powers like 70x to be almost useless. So this is more for wide target observing and maybe some lunar observing.
I'll write more updates later.
For the die hard astronomer looking to get the best views, it's still better to bundle up and make the sacrifice to go out into the cold. You'll get better visual views.
But if your hungering for a quick observing fix of the night sky and don't want to venture out in the cold you can get some satisfaction with indoor observing through an open window. I know a few older Faac astronomers who never go out in the winter to observe because they hate the cold. These may get some joy from winter observing through an open window with a little bit of practice.
I found I could easily observe for up to 90 minutes most of the time,with perhaps a sweater or coat near the end of the session. I'd close up in about 30 seconds, and open up the heat duct to allow the room to warm back up.
Note:
(I also observed toward the east and northeast away from prevailing winds, so the wind wasn't blowing into the room.)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment