This is my article for our club newsletter in Windsor, Ontario, Canada for January. Past newsletter and information about the club can be found on our website, RASC Windsor.
It was way back in 1968 when I first got interested in astronomy. I began with binocular observations of the moon in early November. In December, Apollo 8 and 3 astronauts successfully orbited the moon and returned safely. The next craft to go that way would be Apollo 11 half a year later, followed by #12-17. Those of us lucky to be alive during those heady days all have our own special memories, and we continue to treasure them. Sometime in the late 1980s I got interested in Brian Eno's ambient music, including one of my favourite albums, called Apollo. The music is all instrumental, quiet and gentle for the most part, and was used as background for a film of the same name. The original film, which I was never able to track down, had no speaking, just images and music.
That film was re-imagined, reworked, and renamed For All Mankind in the late 1980s. This time dialogue was added to the images, but only the voices of Apollo astronauts, mission control, and John F. Kennedy were used. Al Reinert, the director, got cooperation from NASA, and Criterion bought the rights to the film. I didn't even realize the film was showing on the Criterion Channel until I bought an updated and expanded version (2 CDs) of the album by Eno. The CD notes talked a lot about the movie, and lo and behold, I instantly put it into my queue and it has now been watched, enjoyed, and loved. There have been many documentary specials about Apollo, most of them featuring narration, talking heads, and Walter Cronkite. This one is different.
What Reinert did was assemble NASA footage from the archives (a story in itself, told in one of the extra features), much of it never seen before, and compact the lunar missions into one big mission, showing scenes from all the lunar flights, and even from an earlier Gemini flight. It becomes one brilliant and focused film, and instead of dwelling entirely on science, it lets the astronauts, in their own words during the missions, describe their feelings and responses to what they were doing, with Houston mission control listening in. Thus we get a totally different take on Apollo, much more human and aesthetic than the science ones we were given back in the day. We see candid moments aboard the spacecraft never seen before, and we follow along from the Earth to the Moon on a voyage of discovery that has yet to be surpassed in human history.
Along with the feature comes
4 extras, filling in information that the movie could not show.
For example, the movie has no talking heads, but the extra features
do contain interviews with many
of the astronauts years later. One short feature
talks exclusively with the late Alan
Bean, who became an amazing artist upon his return (he died in
2018). Another short extra feature talks
about the lengths to which the director went to
assemble the footage he uses in the film. Yet another one interviews
15 of the Apollo astronauts. The whole collection is
available for purchase on DVD, and looks like something I will
purchase if it leaves Criterion Channel before I can
watch it again a few more times. If you do not subscribe to
Criterion Channel this is only one reason out of about
2,000 to do so. And if the Apollo lunar missions
seemed a bit dated and unexciting to you,
or you don't really know that much about them, or you would
just enjoy a new perspective, then you need to watch this
film. It may even be something your club might consider
showing at a future meeting.
Messier of the Month: M 42
It’s finally time to tackle Messier 42! Last year I talked about its little brother or sister (I can never tell which), Messier 43. They both appear in the same field of view, but are distinct from one another. M 42 is one of those objects that consistently improves with increased aperture and magnification. But it’s always best to begin with the naked eye view, followed by binoculars. My first view was with 6 x 30 binoculars, beneath a street light in front of my home in Sudbury, back in the winter of 1969. My first telescopic view was a month or so later, with a red and blue toy 3” reflector, a plastic model of the 100” Mt. Wilson scope, with a terrible mirror and a plastic eyepiece giving about 25x. Even that view blew my teenage mind! More recent views with my vastly superior 2” refractor confirm this as a public showpiece in even the smallest instrument.
In March 1974 I observed the nebula from Sudbury with my 4.5” Tasco Lunagrosso reflector. Viewing it at 22x I wrote at the time, “The whole scene had a three-dimensional atmosphere to it, and one could imagine oneself peering into the swirling depths of the universe.” In the 12” from Hallam (January 2019) I wrote “Visually, I find the nebula much more satisfying than any photo of it I have ever seen. I would much rather view it in a telescope than look at a photo.” Parts of the nebula resemble the giant wings of a bird, wings extended. A large dark lane appears in the south. The blown out area around the quadruple star has a distinct 3D appearance, and seems long and cylindrical, like a giant wave about to crash. At 12” there is simply too much detail for the eye to perceive, and as magnification is increased (up to 250x) the nebula becomes mottled, with many variations of grey, white, and black, as well as many shades of brightness. Following along the extensions, it takes a long journey before it fades away into the background sky. The cluster involved with M 42 contains about 20 stars, with Theta 1 and 2 being the main highlights. The Trapezium (quadruple star, also Theta 1 Orionis)) is seen well at 84x and 136x, along with 2 other fainter stars north, embedded in the nebula. This object is required viewing for all amateur astronomers.
Messier 42—-oc 1976: Cluster size 47’, a sparse group.
gn 1977: 20’x10’, emission and reflection nebula, associated with the cluster.
