Second Saturday Saturn

Despite a pre-weekend forecast for thunderstorms, Saturday stubbornly stayed humid (to the point of Midwestern Mugginess), windy (gotta love that Gulf air from the south) and sunny (well, more hazy than clear, but not really overcast).  After walking Apollo shortly after sunrise, I resolved to remain indoors and further test my new central air conditioner.  I wiled away the day with housework, reading and movies (three of them, or was it four?).

I finished watching Centurion via Netflix streaming (aka Watch Instantly) around nine o’clock.  I relinquished the remote to my husband so he could watch either UFC or F1 and headed north to my Dad’s house for some moon and Saturn observing.

I left the Meade ETX-90 with him last week to see if it needed a tune-up for it’s drive mechanism.  I found some helpful websites and he did crack open the case to confirm everything looked in good shape (nothing obviously broken or breaking).  So, tonight’s experiment involved attempting an accurate polar (or equatorial) mounting of the ETX on the field tripod.  Before the sun set, he had leveled and oriented the telescope per the instructions for the telescope, tripod and Autostar computer controller.

The libration of the Moon over a single lunar month.
The libration of the Moon over a single lunar month.

I arrived to a darker sky with less haze than I observed last week.  The moon had about a third of a crescent.  Dad had the telescope tracking the moon (for several minutes) so I enjoyed reviewing the craters visible along the terminator.  Absolutely stunning!  I really should have grabbed the digital camera out of my car and snapped a few photos.

Somehow, we disrupted the Autostar and lost the date/time and tracking as we fumbled in the dark.  We spent some time realigning the telescope using the Easy align feature of the Autostar, first confirming and centering the telescope in the ‘home’ position with Polaris visible through the eyepiece.  Unfortunately, the stock viewfinder that came with the ETX-90 is unusable in the polar mount ‘home’ position because the telescope is 90 degrees to the base.  You can’t get your head between the end of the telescope and the top of the drive mechanism!  I have a remedy for this coming soon.  On Friday I ordered a red dot finderscope from Celestron that I hope will eliminate this problem.

Bootes
Bootes

The first star on the alignment procedure was Arcturus (in the constellation Bootes), easily found in the northeastern-eastern sky by following the arc of the Big Dipper, and the brightest star in the northern hemisphere and fourth brightest star in the night sky (only Sirius appeared brighter last night in the southeastern night sky).  The second stop on the alignment tour asked for Capella.  I used the Field Guide to the Stars and Planets that I checked out from the Kansas City Public Library last week for a star chart containing that star.   I learned that Capella is one of the brighter stars in the constellation Auriga (and later at home I learned Capella is also the sixth brightest star in the night sky and third brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.

Auriga
Auriga

Even though Capella is bright, with the moon in the same region of the sky, with increasing haziness and wind, I could only see with my naked eye one other star in Auriga — the beta star in that constellation.  I hesitantly told dad, who was steering the telescope with the Autostar and the viewfinder, that the right-most bright star above the moon was probably Capella.  He centered it and we were ‘aligned’ again.  Then we told the Autostar to ‘go to’ Saturn.  The ETX got close, or close enough for us to find it through the light pollution (courtesy of the southeast sky and Leavenworth, Lansing and Kansas City), the increasing haziness and the tree limbs of the tall trees along the eastern edge of dad’s property.

We observed Saturn for fifteen or twenty minutes, trying various eyepieces and barlows.  I had forgotten to check before leaving my laptop the location of Titan in relation to Saturn so I can’t confirm or deny whether I actually saw the moon Titan.  What amazed me about this observation period was the ability to continue to observe Saturn through the telescope, even through tree limbs and clouds!  I often couldn’t find Saturn with my naked eye, yet the telescope tracked it nearly flawlessly (so long as I didn’t use too high a magnification eyepiece).

We packed up the telescope once we could no longer see any stars with our eyes.  Even the moon was shrouded in haze and thin clouds.

Once I returned home, I re-researched polar mounting the ETX on the field tripod.  My dad had read and thought the latitude adjust on the tripod meant you had to subtract your current latitude from 90 degrees.  So, instead of setting the adjustment equal to our latitude (of 39 degrees), we tried setting it to 51 degrees.  I did notice that when the telescope attempted to find Arcturus, it was pointed northeast but down below Arcturus by quite a bit.  So, I re-read the field tripod’s user manual (via PDF from Meade’s web site) when I got home and confirmed that you set the tripod to your actual latitude, no math necessary.  We’ll just have to try it again later.  We also plan to re-train the drives in the ETX-90 per instructions in the Autostar manual.

I Spy Saturn

I unpacked my telescope this evening and re-read the instructions for polar mounting it to my tripod.  Tonight I anticipated the first clear skies in weeks and Saturn made it’s yearly debut in opposition to the Sun.  Basically, the Earth is between the Sun and Saturn and for the first time in a couple of years, Saturn’s rings are not ‘on edge’ to us.

Once I re-familiarized myself with my telescope, I took it out front of my house (east side) and used the tips in the article ‘Give me five minutes, and I’ll give you Saturn in April 2011’ to quickly locate Saturn in the eastern sky. Using the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle, I found the bright star Arcturus.  Then, I drew an imaginary line (from left to right) from Arcturus to Spica.  Almost directly above Spica, was a bright object which I guessed was Saturn.

Even though that section of the sky has the most light pollution (because Lansing, Kansas is 25 miles northwest of the Kansas City, Missouri metropolitan area and I’m also about ten miles west of KCI airport) and a few wispy clouds remained, I easily found Saturn.  Terry came out and took a look for a few minutes.

Since I polar mounted my telescope, I decided to try again to use the Autostar tracking device to align, find and track Saturn.  The gears still slip and have slack in them, but I don’t have any alternatives, since a call to Meade a couple of weeks ago proved disappointing.  Contrary to what I was told last fall, Meade will no longer repair the model I own.  They will, of course, sell me a refurbished one for $400.

Anyway, I was too close to the house to do a proper alignment on two stars, but when I told the Autostar to find Saturn, it did get within five or ten degrees of it.  Once I got in the neighborhood, I fine-tuned and center Saturn in the eyepiece and set the telescope to autotrack while I had fun observing the rings of Saturn and one of it’s moons (Titan I think).  I used a variety of eyepieces, down to a 7mm.

I hope it stays clear the rest of the weekend so I can see the slimmest crescent moon yet (tomorrow morning), Venus and maybe even Mercury (something I’ve yet to see).  And of course, Saturn.

I also need to remember to mail off my membership application to the Astronomical Society of Kansas City.  Then I can foray down south of Kansas City and use a larger telescope at the Powell Observatory.

Keep looking up!

Terrestrial Triumps and Tragedies This Past Tuesday

Transferred from my MySpace blog (originally posted October 5, 2010):

Second star gazing journal.  After calling Meade Support on Monday, I recalibrated the drives and retrained them as well as finally dialing in (for the most part) my viewfinder … all before the sun went down.

Then I packed everything up (carefully) and headed west to my local community park a couple of miles west of my park.  I was a bit disappointed to see what appeared to be a soccer practice occurring even though the sun had set at five minutes before seven.  Since I didn’t want a stray hyperactive youngster to knock over and destroy the expensive and sensitive telescope equipment, I resolved to wait until everyone left.

In the meantime, at five after seven, while sitting in my car, I could already see Jupiter with my naked eye … clearly the brightest object in our autumn evening skies.

I waited another thirty-five minutes before everyone finally left.  So by 7:45 p.m. I was finally set up and ready to try again.  I first manually found Jupiter and confirmed my viewfinder was centered and in sync with the telescope.  It was for the most part.  I then spent fifteen or twenty minutes looking at Jupiter and it’s moons.  I started out with the 26x eye lens and then added the 2x barlow which really brought Jupiter in close and didn’t dim it too much.

By then it was dark enough to attempt an alignment.  I aligned on Altair but didn’t recognize (nor now do I remember) the second star the AutoStar wanted to use for alignment.  I centered on the brightest star I found in the viewfinder.  Then I told it to find the constellation Cassiopeia and it tried, but ended up off by half a sky (basically looking southwest instead of northeast).  I interrupted the sidereel so I could synch it by moving the telescope around to the correct portion of the sky.  My goal was to attempt to find the Double Cluster near Cassiopea and eventually the comet Hartley 2 which is between the two (Cassiopeia and the Double Cluster).  I didn’t have much luck, but I enjoyed viewing so many stars … layers upon layers of them.

Next, I then went in search of the binary star in the handle of the Big Dipper … Mizar and Alcor.  That was easy to find and quite interesting to view.

Lastly, I focused on a bright flashing object in the northwestern sky.  When I attempted to focus on it it appeared to flash green and red rapidly.  (I later determined this flashing star was Arcturus and the red/green was caused by the Earth’s atmosphere).

Unfortunately, about that time, the local constabulary arrived with bright headlights (thankfully not pulling out the spotlight) to inform me he needed to close the park.  I replied the posted sign stated the park was open until 10:00 pm.  He rebutted my statement by saying it was supposed to close at sundown.  I replied the posted sign did not state that caveat.  So, I took one final look at Jupiter and it’s moon, then packed up the equipment and was home by 8:45.  I barely got an hour’s worth of star gazing in.

I’ve learned, though, that my telescope probably needs to be serviced.  Meade, in it’s proprietary wisdom, does not provide parts or service partners, so the telescope will have to be packaged and shipped to their world headquarters in California for service and repair.  I’ll call them tomorrow to get the gory details.

I enjoyed a wonderful but short hour of moonless nearly perfect dark sky viewing.  Not too cool, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky.

Keep looking up!