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.
