Mojave National Preserve Star Party, Saturday, November 1, 2014

Upcoming, on Saturday, November 1: The Mojave National Preserve Star Party. Not ideal for true dark sky observing, but it'll be darker than in town, and you'll have some great "guides" to help lead your tour of the night sky!

Night at Mt. Wilson Observatory

I recently spent a half-night with a group, observing through the historic 60" reflector.

The 60" is the largest telescope dedicated primarily to public use and outreach. You can rent the telescope for a half-night or a full night. Currently, it's $900 for a half-night, or $1700 for a full night. How much that works out per person depends on how many people you bring in your group (up to 25), and if your group is also planning to rent a bus.

In our case, we rented a bus. And our group size was 25. That made it $125 per person, which is pretty steep, but a price I was willing to pay for my first view through the big telescope.

Unfortunately, the skies at Mt. Wilson are far from dark. That means that even with the 60" of aperture, some extended objects are less impressive here than through an 11" telescope from truly dark skies. Resolution is better, of course, so if seeing is good, you can see better detail on planets and split double or resolve individual stars in globular clusters easily.

The 60" telescope is also limited to objects more than 35 degrees above the horizon. That excludes the heart of the summer Milky Way. I was a little disappointed to learn that.

Of course, if you've never observed under a really dark sky with a moderate-ly large telescope, this will be by far the most impressive view you'll ever have. Also, on planets, the views are superior.

I've attached some shots I took, mostly from inside the dome, after dark. They have numerous red nights around the one end of the dome, so seeing inside is not a problem. It's tough to photograph, though, especially without a tripod.

It's also hard to focus in the dark. I semi-solved the latter problem by stopping my lens down to f/8. Of course, the aggravates the long exposure problem. Still, with enough careful bracing, I'm satisfied with my results.

Objects we viewed included Saturn, M57 (the Ring Nebula), the Cat's Eye Nebula (don't recall that NGC number, off-hand), M13, M92, another planetary nebula, several double stars or significant stars (Barnard's Star, for example), and a comet). M57 was definitely nice, with the central star apparently visible. Of course, had they added an O3 filter. . . ?

Saturn looked great, but the view was too short.

Overall, worth a trip, but less of a quantum leap in viewing experience over what I had seen before. Then again, I've been to much darker places with fair-sized telescopes. For those less telescopically endowed, the experience is undoubtedly more impressive.

NASA explains why the world won't end in 2012

Just in case you find yourself talking to someone who believes the world will end next month, NASA has a handy reference page for you to check out.

Endeavour Opens to Public on October 30

I got a "sneak preview" today. It was really cool. ;D

This is the first view of Endea-vour, as you walk into the hanger. It's big, of course. And a little dark. I had to push the ISO up to 400. For shots of the belly, even at 3200 it was dark. Ended up going with a flash for most of them.

This is Endea-vour from the port side. The general flow they expect is you'll walk around and across, and exit from this side. There's also a little sales area near here, with mostly kid-sized NASA-like gear.

I had a friend at the Observa-tory who had an authentic tile. He was able to find where it came from by matching the number (and knowing the general area where it would be located). It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with nearly every tile a unique size-shape combination.

The tiles are surpris-ingly fragile, despite their ability to insulate the shuttle on reentry. Here, it looks like the movers dropped it a bit. Wouldn't have taken much for that ding, considering the size and weight of the shuttle.

Some day in the future, Endea-vour will stand as ready for launch, complete with mock ups of the external fuel tank and the solid (fuel) rocket boosters.

Information on seeing the space shuttle can be had at California Science Center's website, linked above.

Sidewalk this Saturday

That's the goal, anyway: Saturday, October 27, in Monrovia, at the corner of Myrtle and Lime. Figure from about 7pm - 9:30pm. Possibly 15-20 minutes earlier on both ends, though.

In the meantime, I'll start working on my LX80 write-up. It'll be several days before I'm done.

No Sidewalk Astronomy on Sep 22

Pretty clouds as the sun sets tonight, which, unfortunately, means no sidewalk astronomy tonight. We'll try again next month.

Endeavour Flyby from Mt. Hollywood Trail

Some of the shots I took today of the Endeavour flyby. It made three reasonably close passes of the Griffith Observatory area, including one practically right over it.

From my perspective, about 1/2 mile northeast of the Observatory, I had the downtown skyline as a backdrop.

The tricky part was going to be framing this and tracking the flying shuttle at the same time. Turned out I only got a few shots sort of like I wanted.

Most of the shots are "as-is." No crop, nothing but occasional adjustments of exposure. I should probably fiddle with the photo software some to try to get better contrast.

By the way: Sidewalk astronomy in Monrovia tomorrow (Saturday, September 22). Probably just the moon, and maybe a few double stars or star clusters. Saturn is setting really early, Mars is quite distant, and Jupiter is at least another month (probably two months) from evening visibility. Figure telescopes will be set up from a bit before 7pm on until about 9pm.