Watched the Timothy Ferris TV special “Seeing In The Dark”, last night. Overall, I enjoyed it; it was well produced and had a nice feel to it, and it was nice to see a program that was centered around “our” aspect of astronomy.
However, I did feel it didn’t quite reach its full potential in a few places:

1) More time might have been spent interviewing passers-by at the sidewalk astronomy event to illustrate the interest of, and the impact on, the general public when amateurs put on these events.

2) More time might have been spent on star parties and the participants, particularly throughout a night of observing and imaging.

3) Although, he was trying to dramatize his own youthful experiences stargazing, by going back to the fifties (a la Beach Blanket Bingo), I think he missed a golden opportunity to grab today’s youth with footage of high school observing groups – or young astronomy award winners.

4) After professing the wonders of viewing the night sky, the end of the film shows him and his son inside playing guitars, while a computerized astrophotography set-up does all the astronomy. After the time he’d spent infecting the viewer with the lore of astronomy, that just seemed to be an odd way to end it.

But, for all that, the photography and graphics were really well done, and I’d watch it again. 8/10

Set up last night on the driveway to start imaging and wouldn’t you know, the minute I started, I noticed a smokey smell in the air. I looked up and I could barely make out the milky way. I measured an SQM of 19.47. Surprisingly the NA Nebula managed to show up in the frames. This was first time trying out my Celestron LPR filter. I really got lucky with the framing of this object, since it is so large that it took up the entire frame and I could barely even see it on the camera display.

Canon 300D, 80mm Equinox,10x4min, lpr filter

Later in the night the SQM got up to 20.17 and I thought it would be nice to try M33.
Canon 300D, c6 SCT @f6.3 15x4min, no filter

By Kerry LH

I arrived at Lynden at about 10:30 pm and it was already starting to get foggy.
I set up the Great White Scope (GWS) out in a field where long views to the east and south would be available, and was appalled by the fog. There was so much fog i could play my laser through it and cut it in cross section. It was intriguing to see there were areas of no-fog embedded in the fog, and that it extended between 10 and 50 feet above me. At times there were layers of fog with fresh air between them.

Should i have known from the weather reports? They called for clear skies. I see the CSC still reports good transparency for Wednesday morning. They have not swept it under the rug yet. I do see a bright red patch on the Humidity line though. That will be a clue for next time.

Rather than take down the scope and try again tomorrow, i decided to wait out the fog, if that’s possible. The key curiosity was whether waiting out the fog is ever rewarded. I planned to use this evening as a standard to decide when to pack up in the future, if fog was coming in. I wanted to know if the skies could be redeemed. So i waited.

The Kendrick dew guard (DG-3) powered by a tiny 9v battery, on my secondary kept it fine all night, and although the scope was dripping wet by morning, the mirrors persisted just fine.

I also had a dew heater resistor-strip made by Tim on my findersope, and it was keeping it dry to the touch on the outside and just fine on the inside.
I lacked a dew heater on the eyepiece of my finderscope, which eventually needed some sympathy. I took the red dot finder off for a while and kept it in my pocket, in anticipation of clearer skies.

I perched my XTi on the GWS and took some constellation photos of Orion, and worked on getting the focus just right. I used my F1.8 50 mm lens. It fits the entire constellation of Orion into one shot.

I really need a gadget to support time exposures now. 30 seconds at a time does not yield much detail in each frame.

I had some fun with my laser watching tiny fog particles blowing through the beam,
and thought about what gets rid of fog… wind. But there was really only the gentlest of a breeze, and it was not blowing anything away. I wondered if starting the car could create some kind of fog-busting updraft, but i could not drive around in circles because that would kick up a lot of dust on the field. It was interesting to note that in some directions the laser seems to expire in the fog, and in others, it breaks through and the beam can be seen dimly extending further into the sky.

A big enough scope can see through fog – not.

But higher up the sky looked fine. The pleiades were shining out at me, so i trained the scope on them for a while. I would get them again much later after my Sequential Messier Marathon (SMM) made some progress.

Mars was bulging and contracting, occasionally looking round for a second or 2.

I decided to make sure the fog was not going to block all progress by looking for and finding M1. It was easy to see once i had the right spot in the sky. Thus encouraged, i went for a stroll, after putting the cover on my GWS and leaving the dew busters running.
I returned to the scene at about 2:30 am.

As the 3:45 am rise time of M41 approached, i started picking out stars near Canis Major. It turned out the sky was adequate above the horizon, but the horizon was completely fogged in.

I found the open cluster M41 at about 4:34 am, and made a sketch of it. It looked fine in the GWS, at 73x magnification. M42 and M43 were easy to find and see in the night sky, by then Orion was quite high up. M42, and M43 yielded some details and nebulosity which i also tried to sketch. The trapezium was easily split by the GWS.

M44 was a real devil to find in the fog. I could only see Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and there’s a page break in my sky atlas between there and M44, so judging distances and angles was really hard. The fog made star hopping almost impossible, and too difficult for me either way.

Venus was a nice sharp crescent moon shape. It is indeed very very bright. When it first showed up it was high enough that i did not see it rise, and i thought it must be an approaching plane. About 10 minutes later when it had not moved i realized my mistake.

Noting that both Venus and M44 were on the ecliptic helped to find M44, and eventually i could spot it in the fog, in the finderscope, and bring it in with the GWS.

M46 near Canis Major was to prove too difficult to find. Then the fog came in so thick i could hardly see the buildings, and the laser showed it to be a solid layer more than 50 feet thick. It was time to stop. The sun was going to rise in an hour and there’s no way i could see DSO’s against this background. I started the car and put the heater on, making a bit of a drying kiln, to put pieces of the scope in, after toweling them off. It took a while but my buddy and i had a chat while i disassembled the GWS and put it safely back in the car.

It never occurred to me the CSC would report clear skies all night but i would be fogged in. Now i have a new appreciation of what can go wrong at a star party. I would say it was not the best of nights, but now i know that the dew busters i have can stand up to anything. I just need some eyepiece heaters now. I am looking forward to crisp winter nights with good seeing, where dew will not be able to send me home, no matter what.

Just a heads up that the Timothy Ferris documentary, Seeing In The Dark, will be broadcast on PBS (WNED HD) tomorrow night (Wed.) at 8pm.
However, from my interpretation of the TV listings, you will see it only if you have a “digital” connection – otherwise you’ll be watching the Monterey Pop Festival 🙁 followed by an Elvis special (I’m not kidding).

Seeing In The Dark will be shown on “regular” WNED on September 26th at 1am (hey, we’re astronomers – we’ll be up, right?)

If you can’t get to a digitally-connected TV, try your feed anyway – programming often changes.

UPDATE: – if you have Bell ExpressVu it is on channel 284 – Wed. 8pm

It was a nice calm, quite, and not too cold night. Three of us set up for observing and imaging for a few hours. I tried my 70mm f/2.8 (not an APO though) to see how it would do. It had some CA but it certainly is fast compared to the lenses I normally use. The following is a very bright portion of the Milkyway (including a number of Messier objects). The image has been drastically reduced and compressed.

UPDATE: reposted image – with a little less saturation…

Kerry?s recent blog about the Astro-dollies reminded me that I hadn?t posted about my first digital imaging session earlier this month. I?ve managed to retrieve my pictures from the depths of our computer?s reluctant hard drive and the better ones (Ha. Ha. Ha.) are posted with this report.

During the night that followed our perfect HAA Binbrook picnic (thanks again to Glenn & Gail for organizing it and delivering perfect weather!!), I had an absolute blast learning to image with my new Rebel Xti and Celestron GOTO mount. Both Jackie and Kerry were ?instrumental? (sorry ? bad pun) in showing me the ropes and making my first attempt mostly successful. Jackie acted as my imaging guru and Kerry patiently lent her eyes to the task of composing and/or confirming focus for us when we were having trouble. Thank you, both!!! Having such a high level of expertise so close at hand made the whole learning process great fun and very effective.

I can?t recall a time when I laughed so hard during an observing session. (Lesson #1: don?t laugh while you?re holding the camera?s cable release. You?ll end up with an image that looks like a flock of seagulls flying in the shape of the Andromeda galaxy.)

As I mentioned earlier, here are a few trophies from my first imaging session. The images are unprocessed (I haven?t got a clue how to process them!!!) and compressed to fit this page. (That?s astro-code for: they look a lot better in person or they will (I hope!) after they?ve been processed.)

Astro-dollies rule!!

Ann T.

M27 – Dumbell Nebula

Andromeda Galaxy (M31) & friends (M32 & M110)

LOL… OK Astro Dollies is a name some of us active women HAA observers and astrophotographers like to call ourselves. For the record I didn’t come up with it.

Last night after having a nice quick dinner at Tim Hortons/Wendys, Jackie, Steve and I headed for Binbrook. We were greeted with beautiful clear skies to the south and only a few big patches of cloud to the north (probably over Hamilton city). We set up at 9pm and started observing right away. I opted to put my 6in SCT on the camera tripod since I have been a little burned out from setting up the portable astro office. We hunted down many DSOs and spent some time looking for the Stephens Quintet. We found ngc7331 easily but had a difficult time finding the nearby magnifincent five. We thought that we might have found them in Steves scope but it could have been our averted imagination playing tricks on us. We should be able to see them in a 12 or even 16 in scope but perhaps we weren’t looking in the correct position. Near midnight Jackie and I were starting to feel the cold and we wanted to pack it up a little earlier than planned. Steve wanted us to all wait around for m41 to rise so that he could continue his messier marathon in order…. we had to tell him no way are we waiting till past 4am. So he reluctantly started to pack up as well. Sorry Steve. Well I think 3 to 4 hours of observing is not bad at all. Tonight I’m sure they’ll be out for a much longer time. I won’t be able to join in though.

Below is my feeble attempt at the milkyway from early last night. About 6 x 30 second exposures taken with my 18mm lens on the Canon 300D. I used a small $15 table top tripod (I bought off of Tim H) for stability.
By KerryLH

Oh ya I almost forgot to add that Steve was nice enough to let me check out his Sky Quality Meter. Binbrook was about 20.16 and on my drive home it ranged from 16 to 20…. and at home in Grimsby I measured 20.06 overhead/south, but a poorer quality (but still not too bad) 19.47 to the north. THe SQM is a cool gadget. I would love to see how it ranges on different clear nights with varying seeing and transparencies. Apparently last night the CSC was saying seeing and transparencies were to be fairly poor quality. Didn’t seem all that bad though.

The Clear Sky Clock (CSC) called for a few clouds till 9 PM.
So it turns out that the only clouds were centered over Hamilton, far to the north, and Binbrook Hill was pristine. The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) read 20.15 and the milky way spilled all across the zenith.
I made my way with Jackie and Kerry to our hilltop observatory.
It was nice to arrive together, since the headlights could light the setup process without trashing anyone’s night vision.
I think an improvement to the CSC would be to lift a small sub-bitmap for each cell, rather than just expanding a single pixel to fill the cell.
Then, at a glance, you could see the extend and proximity of clouds at each hour, without having to poke around.

My next Sequential Messier Marathon Object (SMMO) was M40 and although i set the Great White Scope (GWS) up dangerously close
to a spot where a tree would soon hide M40, i managed to get setup,
collimated and align the finder to the main scope with lots of time to spare.

Kerry broke the news to me that M41 does not even rise till 3.53 AM, and by then will be low behind trees, so the rest of the evening was spent trolling for other DSO’s.

While Kerry and Jackie did unguided shots of the sky with their cameras,
i pointed out that an EQ platform is effectively tracking, and can be used to support a tripod in any direction. We started conspiring to do an EQ platform clinic and make one for each participant.

I patrolled around the sky looking for things i could remember how to find… and I brought in M28, Jupiter (which required more counterweights), M34, M57 and was going to ask for a 5 mm eyepiece to try to bring out some detail in it (M57), but the GWS had stopped tracking (The battery on the EQ platform was dead)… i was able to attach the standard connector on my scope’s primary fan to power it though, so i was back up and running in a few minutes.

but soon we were off on other pursuits…

We went on a search for Stefan’s Quintet, and although a fine faint fuzzy just south of NGC7713 could be barely seen in the GWS, even i had to say ‘bring on the cameras’ because no amount of averted vision was going to help get detail on that one. (Turns out it was discovered in a 16 inch scope, so perhaps it’s worth another look, now that we know how to find it).

The counterweight issue with the GWS is starting to get more troublesome.
I need to get a new case for the water bottles as it’s getting hard to keep removing and replacing them in there.
The concept of some heavy chain is starting to sound better all the time, although it would only work if it was allowed to touch the ground, not just the EQ platform.

The Helix Nebula was seek’d and not found. The sky in the southern direction was actually rather dull, and i could not make out guide stars very well at all.

I put my XTi onto the water bottle holder and snapped a few 30s time exposures, and a single 30S Dark frame. It turned out that the BULB mode requires the finger to remain on the button till the exposure is over, which is actually a bit of a problem because the support on the scope for the camera is not strong enough to drag me along with it.

I guess i will soon be in gadget building mode again. I would like to make something which can time an exposure and a repeat rate for exposures.
Preferably without requiring an entire laptop running to do so.

One more try… M74. But it was not to be. Kerry was packing up and Jackie was soon to beat a hasty retreat, well in advance of fabled 3 am endurance records. Even before midnight there was talk of packing up. I ended up packing up at about 12:30, intent on doing some early morning set-up on Monday to bag M41-M45.

OK I’m sort of kidding…. but seriously, ever since getting my binoculars (15×70) I have had many enjoyable observing sessions that I often wonder why so many people overlook them when they are starting out in the hobby.

Last night after the thunderstorms passed there was a fantastic clearing. Hubby looked out and said the milky way looked the best that he has ever seen from our place. Since there was no way I was going to set up my scope to do any type of imaging. I opted instead for the fold out chair, my 15×70 binoculars and laptop (for the sky chart). I spent a little bit of time hunting down some open clusters between Cepheus and Cassiopeia. I found M52 and a few other nearby NGC clusters. M52 was pretty bright and had a bit of a nebulous look to it. I couldn’t really resolve any single stars though. Turning towards the east… Andromeda Galaxy looked great, since it was pretty high up and the air was so clear, the spiral arms took up about half of the field of view in my binoculars. I panned down and there was M33… large and faint as usual. I checked out a few more clusters including the Perseus Double Cluster and of course Pleiades (M45) twinkling ever so brightly low in the sky. A definite sign that winter is coming. After that I really wanted to see how faint I could get with the binoculars in my mag5.5 skies… so I started to hunt down NGC7331, a galaxy in Pegasus that has quite a few very small companions. It took a little while but I can definitely say that I saw it with averted vision. I double checked the stars with my astro program, along with the actual tilt/elongation relative to the other stars and it definitely met the criteria. Next on my list was a pair that I imaged last month… NGC 6946 (fireworks galaxy) and nearby open cluster NGC 693. Again after some hunting, I could see the open cluster with direct vision and the galaxy was much smaller and was only seen with averted vision. If I didn’t try to pinpoint the exact location relative to various stars, I probably wouldn’t have found them.

Just after midnight, I started to get a little chilly so I decided to pack up and head in… after 1 hr of successful observing. .

I headed for Silent Lake Provinvcial Park (SLPP) as soon as my dinner banquet was over, and arrived at about 11:20 pm on Friday night; I was greeted by a wondrously dark clear sky.
The SQM reported 21.6 which is about as dark as i have ever seen it.
Since nobody else was in the parking lot, i debated setting up the Great White Scope (GWS) or going in search of the others. (They had said you cannot see the sky from the campsites, so i wondered if they even knew it was clear). The other motivation was getting my tent out of the car so i could reach the scope.

After fishing up a map from the front gate, i found my site. The roads are very bumpy and it’s a good idea to go nice and slow when there’s a GWS in the car.

Everyone had already gone to sleep, since, as i found out later, it had rained earlier in the evening.

I guess it’s a good thing i did not immediately set up the scope, because there was a patch
of rain at midnight for about 15 minutes, timed to coincide with me setting up my tent. The rain relented and the skies cleared again. I settled for some binocular observing from the campsite through my small bit of sky, till about 3 am. Unfortunately, the zenith is not a good binocular target without a binocular box, and it was a bit of a physical strain. I did eventually reel in M31 and some other bits near it.

Saturday was a busy day, including a canoe trip on the lake, piloted by Don. On our return from the canoing, i was able to pass the oars to Margaret and Bruce, who went on a dragon-boat practice to the end of the lake and back in something like 1/3 of the time Don and I had spent. (But we did both ends of the lake, so i don’t feel quite so out-classed.) Some pretty fine food followed, with Sausage on a bun with Glenn and Gail, and a yummy salad made by Margaret.

The evening observing session got underway at about 7:30 pm, with Don and i leading the charge back to the day-use parking. Apart from a quick visit by the ranger, and a swimmer, we had the whole area to ourselves.

We decided to set up down by the beach, which provided an excellent view to the southeast along the lake. Unfortunately some trees near the beach blocked access to M45 for a time.

I entertained a parade of observers with the GWS on deep sky objects, including Neptune, Uranus, and the Helix Nebula. The evening was punctuated by shooting stars.

I continued my quest for sequential messier marathon objects (SMMO’s), getting M33. The trees were not placed well and i did not get any more that evening. But that’s a good reason to explore the rest of the sky in the meantime.

At about 3 am clouds rolled in from the east and blocked most of the sky, providing an invitation to pack up and sleep. The hooting of owls along the lake was impressive.
I almost suspected it was a prankster, since instead of hooting, they called, “Hoot Hoot Hoot Hoot, Hoot-Hoot, Hoot-Hoooooooot” with the last hoot trailing off and lowering in pitch. I could hear them being answered from far away. Also the timing that i heard was not necessarily what the owls were hearing, because one was much closer to me than the other 2.

Also loons were calling on the lake. I heard all the variations of loon calls. Again, with the night air, they seemed to be very loud and carried a long way. It’s about 6 km from one end of the lake to the other.

On Sunday, i set up for a hike around the lake, but discretion was the better part of valour when i realized that my knees might not take it and I would be miles from home when it happened. The trail is rather rugged in spots. I elected to return after a time spent at the first scenic lookout, and have a swim at the beach, and an afternoon nap.

Since everyone took off by 2pm, I had the parking lot to myself in the evening. It was so dark and quiet. The SQM again read 21.6. I bid goodbye to 3 vehicles of picnickers with canoes and a snarling puppy, and a lone swimmer. We talked a while about astronomy and her experiences with family members who awaken early to see things like lunar eclipses.

While I waited for Polaris, I set up the Nextstar on a tripod and poked around the sky with it. Then I tried putting the XTi on it and picking up an image of Jupiter. Alas, i did not have good focus, and the image was pretty small, but at least the Nextstar is compatible with the XTi in terms of focal distance.

I tried some longer exposures, of terrestrial stuff. Eventually I started using the timer
on the camera so that pressing the button would not set the mount shaking.

I finally got a sighting on Polaris at about 8:00. Apart from one car that swung through the parking lot about 15 minutes later, i was alone for the rest of the evening. The passing trucks, about 1 every 10 minutes, on Hwy 28 about 2 km away were the only noise on an otherwise silent and almost windless night.

The Kendrick DG-3 was up and running, and i put on the fan on the primary, since i did not want dew to be the end of things this time. The DG-3 uses up a 9V battery in about 5 hours, depending on the weather, i guess.. It cycles to maintain the secondary just a bit above the air temperature.

My next SMMO, M34 was easy to find. After that it would be a few hours before M35 came up,
so i spent the time honing my skills with memory of the constellations, reviewing the other objects i have seen before. I found the Helix nebula from memory, after recognizing Aquarius in the sky.

I can now fish up many Messier objects from memory, and the dark skies rewarded the effort with clear detailed views: M51, M100, M81, M82. The eagle nebula, and the wild duck cluster were still up, so i found them and studied them for a while, but Saggitarius was partly obscured by trees and setting fast.

I then turned my attention to NGC objects, using those near my intended M35 part of the sky as a selection criteria. I think i will craft some hand-drawn finder charts to highlight the way i find them since i normally have to use visible stars with my red dot finder, to get close. Star hopping with the Nextstar is very difficult because there are so many more stars than in the Atlas.

Mars and Aldebaran also came up. Mars was a small red disk, but when studied, it was like it was on fire, changing shape almost constantly. I guess the seeing was not so great for objects in that direction, low on the horizon. I had no planets near the zenith to compare with.

Looking at M45 i saw lots of tiny stars with the GWS which are invisible in smaller scopes. Also some differently coloured visual doubles in the center of M45.

M35 eventually came up and rewarded me for waiting for it. It has a lot of small diamond-like stars. I was able to find M1 again. (It took a very long time the first time i looked for it, at Starfest), M36, M37 and M38 were easy to find, and M39, near the zenith, called for some acrobatics.

By then M40 was low on the northern horizon, and some clouds had rolled in from the north.
I spent maybe 20 more minutes looking at the rest of the sky, and watching for meteors, and saw about 12 of them in the evening, but none so brilliant as the ones at Starfest.

M31 was big and bright. I could definitely see detail and nebulosity extending far from the core in both directions. I decided to pack up and had partially disassembled the scope when the clouds parted showing m40, but m41 was going to be hours away and the clouds were definitely moving in.

I was packed up and back at camp by 4 am, considering sleep or packing up to go home. Sleep won, and it was just as well, since packing up the tent in the dark makes it hard to sweep off the sand on it. Awake at 11, and on my way at 12:26 pm, Monday, i was home by 3:35, including time to stop for gas, a Plaque about a ‘Dynamite Explosion’ and some reasonably heavy traffic for a while in Toronto.

It’s a fair drive to SLPP but if you know the way the roads are good and the skies are dark. Next time i will bring a better stool so the zenith will be easier to see, and hopefully my camera will be in operation so that swathes of dark sky can be captured. Also, i think i will stay one or 2 extra nights, assuming there’s no events pressing in on my time from each side like this time.

Special thanks to those who shared their meals with me. All were so yummy. It’s a wonder i can keep my figure.