Saturn Observation Night

Saturday night, Feb. 23, was our observance of the Saturn Observation Campaign's international Saturn Observation Night. At Stephens Memorial Observatory we officially opened at 8:00 PM --though there were visitors at the door well before then-- and had good skies for the occasion. Immediately after opening the first of the night's 33 visitors had a look at the beautiful stars and clouds of the Orion Nebula. The dome's aperture was pointed south in its parked position and, when I opened the shutter, there was Orion in all his glory! One young boy was single-minded in his interests. He didn't care to see the nebula, he was there to see Saturn! Nothing else would do! He complained repeatedly to his mother who assured him, as did the astronomer, that we would soon see the ringed world. Once everyone had a look at M42 I turned the dome to face east, swung the century-old, 9-inch Cooley Telescope around and began our viewing of Saturn. The young enthusiast was pleased.

We had a good, clear night with decent seeing conditions. While the rings, as viewed at this time, are approaching edge-on, we could make out the gaps between the ring system and the limbs of the planet and careful observers were fortunate to be able to glimpse atmospheric banding. At least four moons were also seen. It's always gratifying just how impressed visitors are when they first see Saturn through a good telescope. I quickly lost track of how many folks exclaimed, "Oh, WOW!" as they peered through the eyepiece. "Just like a picture," was also happily repeated. Everyone from grade-schooler to grandmother was delighted with the view. It was cold in the dome --about 28F degrees-- so once most visitors got a good look, they took off for home. Many happily took home JPL picture sheets showing an excellent planetary portrait taken by the Cassini spacecraft, doubtless to show others what they were fortunate to see with their own eyes.

Most visitors arrived in the first hour, then there was a long period of quiet when only one or two people were in he dome with me. A couple, the man being an amateur astronomer, stayed long enough that we stepped outdoors and, with unaided eyes, spotted The Beehive (M44) star cluster. It looked very fine through my 10x50 binoculars!

Though we were supposed to close at 10 PM, we had a group of late visitors who not only stayed to see Saturn but the Orion Nebula and the rising waning gibbous Moon, as well. Saturn and the Moon are always crowd-pleasers.

A fine lunar eclipse

After a day or two of nail-biting, monitoring forecasts of sky conditions, the Clear Sky Clock tipped the scales for me... Wednesday night's sky would be clear and we would be able to see the Feb. 20 total lunar eclipse.

I packed up only one extra eyepiece --the great antique scope has a wonderful low-power ocular that presents the entire lunar disk-- and bundled myself up. It was a c-o-l-d night!

As the eclipse was getting underway a freshly-cleared sky began to cloud up. A thin layer of cloudiness obscured all detail from the Moon just as Earth's shadow was taking a good chunk out. And a little snow fell through the dome slit! Gad! Just as I was beginning to give up hope, however, the sky quickly cleared and we had good seeing for the rest of the night!

The view of the Moon through the 9-inch refractor was typically spectacular. Even the full Moon looks great through that scope with its fist-sized eyepiece. During the partial phase of the eclipse, however, there was a time when the lunar limb was relatively bright, the central portion of the disk was bluish, and the dark shadowed region took on a reddish hue. Quite beautiful. During totality the Moon took on a pale coppery color; it was not a particularly colorful eclipse. Impressive and beautiful, nonetheless. Saturn, near opposition, was also near the eclipsed Moon (the bright "star" to the left of the shining Moon in the photo above) so during the hour-long totality I swung the telescope over to give visitors a look at the ringed world. Even at low power --Saturn quite small in the field of view-- visitors were excited to see it. At about 100X the excitement grew. Seeing was only a little better than fair for while we could make out the gap between the inner rings and the planetary body, no shadow could be seen and no detail within the ring plane. Two or three moons were visible. I'm hoping for better conditions for Saturday's Saturn Observation Night. As totality was ending I swung the scope back to the Moon to watch bright light begin its progress across the disk.

In all more than 44 visitors came into the observatory -- there were probably more but people were coming in to look through the telescope and going out to enjoy the sky with their own eyes ... they were getting into the event!

The last visitors left at around 11 PM and I was finally free to try some photos. A little too late, however, to get the shot I wanted... looking at the Moon along the telescope and through the dome. The Moon had already brightened to the point that I couldn't balance the exposure. It's a nice photo anyway and I'll use it for some things, it's just not the picture I had imagined. It was getting late and my feet and hands were getting cold --it was 18 degrees F. in the dome-- so I closed up and went home.

A fine lunar eclipse.

Astro Webcam test

So what do you do in this digital age with the excellent lenses you purchased over the years for your 35mm film camera? Well one thing you can do is purchase an adapter from an Australian company that will mate your beautiful Minolta 250mm f/5.6 RF Rokkor-X mirror lens with your trusty Philips ToUcam Pro II Web camera. What you get from that is a very good Web cam with excellent optics for all sorts of uses -- especially in getting "live" images from a telescope into a computer and, potentially, on to the Web.

I did my first test imaging with the rig Saturday night (Feb. 16) with the Moon at waxing gibbous phase. The image shown here (test image #5) was made with at 7:22 PM using my Toshiba notebook computer and Microsoft Vista, CoffeeCup Software's Webcam 4.0, the ToUcam and 250mm telephoto lens . The camera setup was attached to a simple fixed photographic tripod. Looks good! Not quite as sharp as I remember the Meade images, but not bad for a first try! Excellent color and detail. Mount this rig to a telescope with a clock drive and we'll have something!

In late 2004 I began doing some digital imagery, first using the Philips Web cam and my 1,000mm Meade 390 refractor. I was very pleased with the results. I even used the setup to webcast the total lunar eclipse Oct. 27 - 28, 2004 from the roof of Westlake (Ohio) Porter Public Library! My only disappointment was not being able to show the entire lunar disc -- the small size of the CCD chip made for magnified views of the Moon and I was unable to test and correct the setup before eclipse night. It was fun, however, and people enjoyed it (from as far away as Texas), and mine was one of the few "live" transmissions on the Web! Now, with shorter focal lengths and excellent optics, I can image the entire face of the Moon or, with proper filtration, the Sun.

I'll need to do more testing: For one thing, the CoffeeCup Webcam software, though it does have some excellent features, doesn't seem to allow control of camera exposure and the image preview was inaccurate.

Unfortunately the weather doesn't look promising for the Feb. 20 total lunar eclipse and my observatory lacks high-speed Internet connectivity. I may, however, take that fancy new notebook in and see if I can reach my dialup connection toll-free --doubtful-- and if I can, that would open some new possibilities!.