#79 Small Telescope Adventures, Part 2: First Light with the Space Eye 50 mm Refractor

First light for Space Eye came the same day we received it (see Part 1).  However, the night was mostly cloudy, very windy, and pretty chilly.  We didn't even bother setting up Deb's 6".  Set up time from car to observing takes about 2 minutes, so we really liked that part of our evening.  We were at our favourite dark sky site outside of Windsor, ON, though we may as well have observed from our light-polluted back deck at home.

Our first project with the new scope is a tribute to a fellow blogger who appears to have abandoned his cause, or perhaps run into some other type of difficulty.  His idea for observing objects with a 2" scope got me thinking.  Here is his blog, not updated now for many years:

http://small-telescopes.blogspot.ca/

His project was to observe 50 objects with a 2" scope; ours is 60 objects, one for each dollar spent on the scope.  Like him, we will limit ourselves to only 10 lunar sites.  However, we are going to use William T. Olcott's "Field Book of the Skies" to select our objects.  So here we go!

 My own copy of this incredible book.

Object #1: Mizar, Ursa Major:  First light went to the Horse and Rider, Mizar (mag. 2) and Alcor (mag. 5).  Both stars were seen in the 5x20 finder.  At 30x there is a fainter star midway between the two naked eye stars, forming a triangle with them.  Deb then went on to split Mizar first (2.4-4/14"), at 30x.  My eyes were watery from the wind, but I eventually got it, too.  At 60x it is a beautiful object, with a possible slight colour difference, the fainter star yellowish and the primary white.  Star images seemed excellent, despite passing clouds and a lot of turbulence tonight.  Had this been the only object seen tonight, it would have been enough to tell us that we had a very good little telescope on our hands.  This was no toy.  Unfortunately, the wind hampered most steady views.  Olcott tells us that this was the first double star ever discovered, by Riccioli in 1850.  In 1889, Professor Pickering discovered that the star was also a close binary.  He goes on to say that the star has the distinction of being the first one photographed by Bond, using the collodion process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process).  To us, it looked something like this at 60x, minus background stars:

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000603.html

Mizar is a gem object in a good 2" glass, and we are glad we chose it to be our first object!

Object #2: Oc 457, Cassiopeia:  Mag. 6.4; 20'; Br. * mag. 8.6:  This object appears on Olcott's map of the constellation, south preceding Delta.  In the comments section he is rather concise:  "The cluster NGC 457 is an elegant group."  Who could resist a come-on like that?  In the 6" and 12" mirrors this is a great showpiece cluster.  What would it look like in a 2"?

Despite several attempts at long looks at oc 457, the clouds and wind thwarted us.  30x showed us about a dozen bouncing stars, using averted vision.  60x gives a much better view, and many more stars can be seen.  However, we enjoyed our best views (a few seconds at a time) using my Epic 11 8 mm eyepiece, giving 75x.  I am not adverse to using other eyepieces, provided we used the given ones first.  It becomes pretty amazing at this range, with a ton of resolved stars showing clearly, along with the two brightest ones.  I did not have enough clear sky time to actually count stars, but there were more than 20.  Perhaps I will return on a better night.  However, it does seem that this telescope will shine prominently in the study of open clusters and double stars!  It looked a bit like this to us, only jiggly.

NGC oc 457

http://www.graphitegalaxy.com/index.cgi?showsketch=8 

Object #3:  Messier 15, Pegasus:  Mag. 6.3; 18'; Br. * mag. 12.6:  Easily picked up at 30x, the globular cluster appeared remarkably bright and concentrated.  60x will show the brighter star just north.  At this range the center is very bright and star-like, surrounded by a larger area of bright haze, and then again by fainter haze.  Obviously we will not be resolving many globulars with this scope, but the bright ones will be easy to see.  Olcott includes this as the only deep sky object on his telescope map of Pegasus.  His brief text line reads: "The cluster M15 was discovered by Maraldi in 1745."

 M15.  No stars resolved for us, but the star north could be seen.

http://www.astroimages.de/pics/gallery/full/M15-20080928.jpg

Object #4:  B Cygni (Albireo):  3.2-5.4/35":  Easily the highlight of the night, colours and star images were outstanding!  We have a winning scope on our hands!  Deep golden yellow and very blue, surrounded by a rich star field.  Viewed at 30x and 60x, in between the clouds.  Olcott claims yellow and lilac, and says "very fine."  He continues below the chart with: "Many consider B Cygni the finest double star in the sky.  Its contrasting colours, gold and blue, are very beautiful."

Albireo.

http://i1.wp.com/astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/07/Albireo-Chumack.jpg?resize=960%2C762

Object #5:  Alpha Ursa Minoris (Polaris):  2.5-8.8/19":  Olcott claims this to be "not an easy object in a 3" glass."  Ponder, then, the plight of the lowly 2" glass.  However, we split it!  I spotted it first at 75x, impossibly tiny and faint and quite close to the primary.  When it comes to star images and splitting doubles, refractors rule.  We were able to (barely) glimpse it afterwards at 60x, once we knew where to look (just above it in the eyepiece, as in 12 o'clock high).

Polaris

http://jeffreysboldlygoingnowhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Polaris.jpg

Three doubles, an open cluster and a globular later we packed up our gear (3-4 minutes) and headed home.  We are now five objects into our 60-object Olcott project.  I hope you will join us for the rest of them in the coming months, under the heading "Adventures with a Small Telescope."  I doubt that a new astronomer on his/her first night out would have had our success, especially with the crappy weather.  Our long experience with telescopes, the night sky, reading charts, dark adaptation for the eye, and using averted vision all came into play.  We were able to turn an otherwise unusable night into a modest success!

 

Mapman Mike

 

Beginnings (dedicated to William T. Olcott)

     My love for astronomy began over two cold nights in early November, 1968.  It was a hunting weekend and I was at the cottage with my dad.  With interest growing at the time about the lunar surface (the first manned lunar landing was to be in July, 1969), I went up on a nearby mountain with my 6x30 binoculars, lay down on the cold ground and gazed at the moon.  It was full, but I was intrigued by what I saw.  I went up again the next night, and made some notes about the craters, ray structures, and dark areas that I saw.

     The next Monday morning I went to my high school library.  It had one astronomy book, and I checked it out for a week.  "Field Book of the Skies," by William T. Olcott, had maps of the moon at different phases, as well as maps of constellations and what could be seen in them.  It was also a complete prep course on astronomy.  I read it cover to cover about seven times, checking it out week after week.  Over the long, cold Sudbury, Ontario winter I developed a strong thirst to see for myself what the skies had to offer.

     When March finally arrived, my favorite uncle provided me with my first telescope.  He had received it as a gift when he was a child.  It was a 3" reflector, a plastic model of the Hale 100" Telescope.  The mirror was crap, the eyepiece was plastic, and it was colored a garish red and blue.  But to a 15 year old kid, that first view of the lunar surface at 30x sent me into ecstasy!  I saw mountains, craters, mare, and other things I could not describe.  I saw Jupiter and 4 moons.  I was suddenly in with the in crowd!  I was an astronomy geek!

My first telescope, a small 3" reflector modeled on the 100"

Hale Telescope.

The toy scope was once featured in a Gumby cartoon!

     It did not take long to figure out that I needed to upgrade if I wanted to do some serious observing.  I soon had a Tasco 4.5" reflector on back order.  It would take an agonizing month to get to me, so I went to K-Mart and bought a 40mm refractor for the interim.  It was quite serviceable with its table-top tripod, especially at 15x.  I had my first clear view of the Orion Nebula, and even M 41, the amazing open cluster in Canis Major.

     When the Tasco reflector arrived, I felt like I had my own private observatory for the first time.  Despite crappy eyepieces, that telescope showed me (for years!) the possibilities.  Summers at the cottage, under the darkest northern Ontario skies one could imagine, brought me unforgettable visual image after image.  To this day the best view I've had of M 101 was with that telescope, spiral arms and all, in a sky so dark that binoculars would have likely shown the galaxy.  The Mars opposition of 1971 was also very memorable, at least until the planet-wide dust storm obliterated all detail!

     Throughout all this I was struggling with the little constellation diagrams in Olcott, somehow managing to use them to learn to see and to love the night sky.  What an improvement to my observing life when the same uncle (Jimmy Whitehead) that gave me his toy telescope also bought me Norton's Star Altas and the Menzel book "Stars and Planets."

     But it was Olcott's book that really captured my imagination and got my interest in observing to a fever pitch.  As we packed up our gear last night after an incredible and highly successful session, we saw Antares rising in the southeast, heralding the arrival of summer.  I will now conclude this entry with a wonderful quote from his book:

     "Recreation, in the widest sense of the word, includes intellectual pleasure, enjoyment of sheer beauty, mental relaxation, and the fun of sight-seeing.  If the sight of the first robin or the first crocus in spring brings you delight, you can experience the same exultation by being able to recognize the seasonal return of various celestial objects of beauty, such as Spica, as they return to our night skies."

William T. Olcott (1873-1936)

May your skies be dark and clear until next time.

Mapman Mike