Out And About!

After a month in the Midwest and a brief taste of dark skies on the CAC bus trip the weekend before, the draw of dark skies on the long Memorial Day holiday was enough to get me out to look at the stars! On Friday, after feeding the kitties, I headed out towards Kitt Peak and set up on a favorite pullout along the access road. Unfortunately it had been a windy day and the winds failed to drop like they were supposed to. I was way underdressed for the gale winds and cool temps at elevation - fortunately the snow mobile suit I keep in the van was still there and made the night's observing possible! The wind also limited the scopes I could use - I stayed with the 500mm Canon lens and the 70-200 zoom for some wider-field imaging.

The highlight of this time of year is always the rising Summer Milky Way! How can I avoid shooting my favorite area of the sky yet again - the area around the orange supergiant star Antares in Scorpius? At left is a spectacular 2-frame mosaic with the 500mm lens. Antares is the orange star very near the center - its light scattering off the dust cloud through the center of the frame. Right of Antares is the huge globular star cluster Messier 4, while between them and a little above is another globular - NGC 6144, located more than 4X the 7,200 light years of Messier 4. I love this field of view because of the complicated mix of dark, reflection and emission nebulae.

But I knew there would be another visitor as well! I recently saw a finder map for comet 71P/Clark. It is not particularly bright, but visible as a small greenish smudge not far from the left edge. The right image shows it a little better, complete with a little tail trailing off to the upper right! Comets that display any color usually show some green - caused by the sunlight breaking up carbon molecules that will glow green in the vacuum of space.


Another target on Friday was an emission nebula in Scorpius. I was shooting with 2 cameras - a recently-obtained T5i that has been modified for increasing red wavelengths to better record the red nebulosity of ionized hydrogen clouds. My other "new" camera (now over a year old) is the full 35mm format Canon 6D which also seems to excel at recording red nebulosity. I headed for what is called the "Cat's Paw Nebula", NGC 6334. At left is a wide field with the Canon T5i and 70-200 lens working at 175mm focal length. The two bright stars at lower left are the "stinger" stars of Scorpius, so this field is quite low in the sky. But right in the center is the "Cat's Paw" - looking like a red-ink print of the paw of a cat. The red coloration, of course, is caused by the ionization of hydrogen by ultraviolet light from hot stars in the cloud of gas. At right is the view with the 500mm and 6D, and again, has good red sensitivity for these hydrogen clouds. Both are relatively short exposures - the wide field at left is 12 minutes total exposure, the right is only 10 minutes! I've still got some exposures from Friday to look at, but these are gonna be my favorites!

On Saturday, I decided to head out to the Chiricahua Astronomy Complex (CAC) of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA). Even though I had just been out the weekend before, with the 40" scope as a potential viewing instrument, and the dark skies there is a powerful draw making up for the 2 hour drive... I got there just before sunset and set up my mount and the same setup as the night before on Kitt Peak. However, this time there was no wind and it was much more pleasant! At left Carter Smith is at right with his trainee John Meade, getting the 40" telescope ready for the evening. While it looks like a shot taken about sunset, it was considerably darker, but thanks to the "magic" high speed of the 6D, 1/3 second at ISO 8000 makes it no problem! Returning to the pads where my gear was set up, the same shot reveals the hubbub of observers preparing for the night...

My main goal for the night was a "bright" comet - C/2015 V2 Johnson! When it comes to comets, most anything visible in a small telescope or binoculars is considered bright, and unfortunately, this one will not quite be visible to the naked eye. Some of you know that Melinda's maiden name was Johnson, and as far as I know, the discoverer of Comet Johnson is not a relative! He is Jess Johnson, and works for the Catalina Sky Survey right here in Tucson. This comet was discovered as a faint smudge in November of 2015, and is just now at its closest point to the sun and the earth. We'll be able to show it as part of the Grand Canyon Star Party this June, after which, it will slowly be leaving the solar system - its hyperbolic orbit means it will not return to our part of the solar system again. With the 500mm lens, I got 10 frames of 2 minutes each and used the "Nebulosity" program to stack the images on the slowly-moving comet image. The result is at left. The bright star at right is Epsilon Bootes, and the comet is slowly moving almost due south.
What is interesting about the comet is that when zooming in, a sun-ward pointing spike appears!  This usually indicates that the earth is passing through the orbital plane of the comet.  At right is a cropped, stretched version perhaps showing it more clearly.  These sunward spikes are illusions and are actually well beyond the comet.  The solar wind pushes released gas and dust away from the sun to make the tail, and as we pass the plane of its motion, long-ago releases material can appear to point towards the sun.

 

That was the highlight of my Saturday at CAC. I tried some similar low Milky Way objects, but ran into some of the light dome off of Douglas 20 miles south of the observing site. Best to stay higher in the sky! I'm spoiled by the black high-elevation skies of Kitt Peak... Oh, and I did get a glimpse thru the 40"! While my camera was shooting comet Johnson, I ambled up and was just in time to view the huge globular cluster Omega Centauri. With it so low, no stepstool was needed, so extremely comfortable to observe. The cluster looked for all the world like a swarm of fireflies as the long path thru the atmosphere made the stars dance wildly! It was a sight not easily forgotten!

CAC Dedication!

I don't set out to only post every 3 weeks or so - it just happens to work out that way! Last night the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA) threw a party! Over the last couple years the club has developed a relationship with a benefactor that funded a warm/meeting room along with a pair of ginormous telescopes! Last night was the dedication of the Reynolds-Mitchell Observatory at the TAAA's Chiricahua Astronomy Complex (CAC). Bob Reynolds has generously contributed to a large roll-off roof observatory, but the star of last night's show was dedication of a 40" telescope! The TAAA wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted to attend could make it, so went to the trouble of leasing a big tour bus for hauling members on the 90 mile drive from the TTT truck stop at I-10 and Craycroft. Who could turn down a free bus trip, box dinner included, highlighted with viewing with a 40" telescope?! Not me! At left, our travelling hostess Mae makes sure we all have what we need!

I can't recall riding a big tour bus since our Senior Class Trip to Washington DC 45 years ago, so it was a fun time. Our seats were higher than the truckers in the big semis that we passed, so was a nice view of the passing scenery. Of course, some might claim there isn't much scenery in Southern Arizona except brown-colored desert, but Texas Canyon, shown at left is always amazing, especially if you don' have to pay attention driving! And, of course, once you've made it to Texas Canyon, you've already passed about a million of the signs at right - "The Thing" is a tourist destination just east of Texas Canyon, and is actually kind of a cool-kitschy stop worth a visit - especially if you need a rest room or a Dairy Queen stop! As mentioned, the TAAA also sprang for meals - boxed dinners from a local deli, with 4 choices of sandwich - pretty high living!


The trip seemed to fly by, and we got there a bit before sunset. There was quite an agenda on the night's program and after a rush to the bathroom (twin flush toilets!), the facility tour started. First up, former TAAA president and site manager John Kalas gave a guided tour of the site from the ramada. That's him at left, taken in a 4-frame mosaic taking in the sweep of members present (nearly 100 I'd guess), ramada and the new scope/warm room at right.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, I skipped the treasurer's tour of further development plans, instead staying and documenting some of my friends that I recognize from my travels up and down the Sulphur Springs Valley. From CAC, as from down to not-to-distant Whitewater Draw to the south (sandhill crane site) views of "Cochise's Head" as well as the 60-mile-distant Mount Graham topped by the LBT telescope showed up as familiar friends!


A few minutes later and it was time for more speeches! Former TAAA president Tim Hunter and owner of the Grassland Observatory reviewed the club's search for a dark-sky observing site, culminating in CAC. In the photo at left, Tim is shown at left, and Carter Smith (Chief Telescope Operator) prepares the 40" for use as John Kalas introduces our benefactor. At right, Bob Reynolds says a few words before handing off the sissors to his wife to cut the ribbon opening the warm room and telescope!







All too slowly, it got dark and the scope operators did an alignment to get the giant 40" telescope pointing and tracking and finally ready for use. The first object - a stunning view of Globular Cluster Messier 13. This view is taken with the Canon 6D with Nikon 16mm fisheye lens wide open at F.2.8. The 20 second exposure (ISO 5,000) shows stars and objects much fainter than the naked eye can see, including Omega Centauri just upper left from light dome from Douglas at right. Messier 13 can be spotted at upper left if you can make out the keystone of Hercules. At the upper edge is Jupiter, and between it and Scorpio rising at bottom center, a faint section of the zodiacal band can be seen!

A bit later and the scope was turned to Messier 82 in Ursa Major. The edge-on galaxy, 12 million light years distant displayed very nice dust lanes crossing the luminous band. In the photo at right (exposure details same as above), besides the scope, dominating the sky is the bright glow of Zodiacal light in the west - the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) can be spotted in the midst of it! While both photos seem to show the area was brightly lit, the exposures seem to amplify the amount of ambient red light about. It certainly didn't look brightly lit to eye!

Before we knew it, 9:30 had arrived and we needed to board the bus for the return trip to Tucson. By the time we disembarked, loaded up the small amount of gear into the van and dropped off passengers, we walked into the house right at Midnight. A very special night of observing "in the can"! All I can say is that an observing trip down to CAC with the 40" is a rare treat - about to become less rare!

October TAAA Meeting!

A little late with this post - almost 3 weeks! Well, I've been busy... I was able to make the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association monthly meeting on 7 October, and brought my camera along to take some shots of the slides - both for my own memory, and document on the blog for those who might have missed it to see some of it too.

I had an out-of-town visitor, so missed the beginner's lecture, but really wanted to attend the main lecture - Katy Garmany, Emeritus Scientist talking about the history of Kitt Peak National Observatory and the Tohono O'odham Nation, on whose land it resides! Now I'm a sucker for that sort of thing after 5 years on staff back in the early '80s, docent in the early '90s, and until recently a guide on the night time public observing sessions the last 5 years. It is what brought me to AZ in the first place and is my absolute favorite place in Southern Arizona. A talk on the history and the O'odham homeland - naturally I wouldn't miss it! At left is Katy awaiting the start of the lecture, and at right is her title slide showing the view of Kitt Peak from "the wrong side", from near Sells, capital of the reservation.

She started from the very beginning, back to the National Science Foundation's mandate for a national observatory, and the search by Aden Meinel and Helmut Abt to find a location. At left is shown the sites that were eventually identified and investigated through Arizona. She also showed the note from Helmut Abt's notebook indicating that Kitt Peak appeared to be a good site (from his airplane over-flights) and deserved further exploration. For the first time I learned the astronomers asked permission to climb Kitt Peak twice and were refused both times!

Then, as the legend tells us, tribe representatives visited the 36" telescope on the UA campus to examine the sky and learn a little about what astronomers do. It was after that visit that Meinel was granted permission to climb the mountain. And as the illustration at right shows, Katy's husband John Glaspey located the original movie reels in the NOAO basement a few years back!

After a failed attempt by Meinel and Abt to climb the mountain on 6 January, 1956, accompanying Meinel and Harold Thompson on 14 March were O'odham guides Al Martinez and Raymond Lopez, along with newspaper reporter Clifford Abbott. NOAO also supports a page of images from the first ascent. A night-time view from that first ascent is shown at left. I'm not sure any of the film images from the movie appear there, or if they were taken with other cameras or from the newspaper reporter than accompanied them. The movie is a true AZ time capsule from 60 years ago! The introductory scenes show the trip out Ajo Way, little more than a 2-lane road in those days. Road signs for 7-up and Old Tucson mark the last place to fill up for fuel before heading across the desert! John Glaspey has allowed me to upload it to Youtube for you to watch it. Note that there is no sound, just images from the original 16mm film taken on that first ascent up the mountaintop that eventually became the home to Kitt Peak National Observatory...

!

While the short movie was the highlight
for me, Katy went on to explain the interactions of the Observatory and the tribe, including employment, lease agreements, craft sales and continuing education utilizing observatory staff on the reservation. Also presented were some of the cultural beliefs of the O'odham and some of the sky stories she knew about. Over the decades, the relationship of the Observatory and tribe has not always been smooth - she relates the story of the failed attempt to locate the VERITAS gamma ray telescope array on the mountain as example. In recent years though, former Kitt Peak director Buell Jannuzi has worked to strengthen relations. She noted also that Kitt Peak is no longer a true National Observatory as NSF has pulled money away for other projects and many of the telescopes are now operated by consortiums.  It appears though that while no longer available to astronomers on a competitive basis (how the National Observatory was run for 50 years), it will continue to be a front-edge research facility.


She closed by informing us how we can become educated in the ways of the Tohono O'odham, and suggests the visits in the slide at left. It is a shame that a visit to Kitt Peak, on the eastern edge of the reservation, doesn't expose us to more of the culture and facilities located 20 miles beyond Kitt Peak in Sells and beyond...

After questions the meeting was concluded by a planet report from Erich Karchoshka (at right)- always interesting because he indicates alignments, occultations and appearances that we might not be aware of.

 And that was the October, 2016 TAAA meeting!

Meeting Night!

Last night was the first Friday of September, so was a general meeting night of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. It has been a few months since I've posted about one, and for this one, both the beginner's and main lecture interested me, so brought the camera along to document. A few notes about that - I used the Canon 6D for the first time. In the nearly dark lecture hall, I was still able to get decent pictures of the speakers with a 15th second exposure, thanks to ISO 6400! However, since I wasn't sitting in the center aisle, the pictures on the screen were highly "keystoned" which was mostly squared back up with Photoshop... With everything going on in our lives, I don't make all the meetings, but they certainly are worthwhile for anyone interested in astronomy, since we draw on a wide variety of speakers and qualified members for some really interesting talks.

Ben Baily, shown at left, is our current president, serves as emcee, running the meeting and introducing business and speakers. As I indicated, we have some pretty advanced members, and last night had a few local celebrities join us. At right is David Levy, a well-known comet hunter with 22 comets to his or shared credits. He is also a noted author of astronomical-related works with 34 books, and founder of Jarnac Observatory! Behind him is Tim Hunter, a now-retired radiologist who co-founded the International Dark-Sky Association in 1987 whose mission is fighting light pollution, founder of Grasslands Observatory, and the author of a weekly astronomy column in the local paper.

For decades now, we've hosted a "Beginner's Lecture" an hour in front of the main lecture - really just a reason to hold a second talk! The club tries to schedule something that will appeal to those just getting into the hobby. Some of our main lectures given by scientists go way over the heads of many members, thus the idea for an introductory talk was introduced...

Tonight's warm-up talk was by member Mike Magras, who arranged a tour of the Torrance, CA plant of Celestron - one of the foremost telescope manufacturers for the amateur telescope market. Mike had some minor work done on his tube assembly, which resulted in the tour. Celestron was acquired by Synta Technoloty Corporation in 2005, most of the manufacturing capacity of all smaller optics was moved to Asia, with the exception of the 11" and 14" Schmidt-Cassegrains and the EdgeHD production line of the same size.


Celestron has been around a long time - nearly 50 years! Mike talked briefly about Tom Johnson, Celestron's founder when he introduced the compact optical design of the Schmidt-Cass. Actually, let me correct that - he didn't introduce the design, but rather, formulated an inexpensive way to make the complicated curve of the corrector optics. While the 4th-order curve can be polished into a thin piece of glass, testing and fabrication of the plate is involved and not for the faint-hearted! Tom developed the method shown at left - polish a "mandrel" of the inverse curve, and use suction to pull a thin plate into contact with it. The back is then polished flat and when the vacuum is released - presto, a corrector with the correct shape! While Bernard Schmidt himself used a vacuum technique to make the first correctors of the telescope that bears his name, it was Johnson's technique that allowed industrial production-line quantities of them...

In Celestron's current facility, most of the tube assembly is still made in Taiwan as shown at right - only the correctors for the above sizes are made in California, and the spherical secondary mirrors are supplied polished but uncoated - for reasons to be revealed shortly.

Part of the "secret" of the success of the larger sizes is Sandra - shown at left. She seems to be the magician utilizing the black arts in finishing out the optics. Assembling the correctors and primaries for the first time, she uses an artificial star for an initial alignment and has the skills to recognize errors that can be corrected by slight figuring of the spherical secondary mirror (why it was provided un-coated). Shown at her polishing stand, she has a hot plate for warming the pitch, a spindle in the white tub in the background, and uses a paper origami technique for making raised or lower areas on the lap to remove glass preferentially (inset).

When finished to her tolerance, the secondary is coated and installed in the final tube assembly where it undergoes one of the final tests, shown at right. In this setup, an artificial star enters the rear of the telescope through a beam-splitter, goes through the scope to a flat where it is returned to an eyepiece for a high-power view of the "star". Note that the 2mm focal length eyepiece, combined with the 4,000mm 14" telescope results in a magnification of 2,000X! And since it goes through the telescope twice (referred to as "double pass") it again doubles any potential errors, as if 4,000X were used...

After Mike's talk he answered a few questions - unfortunately for a group like this, there were some hard questions that couldn't be answered, but did what he could. We then had about a 20 minute break to stretch the legs and socialize a bit with friends before the main lecture started.

The main talk was given by Anjani Polit (at left, shown in inset), who oversees the science planning and scheduling for the HiRISE experiment of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, now in its tenth year of operation at Mars. The acronym HiRISE stands for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, and is effectively a 20" diameter spy telescope in low orbit around Mars. An incredible experiment, it can resolve details less than a foot diameter as it whirls in orbit 200miles above the surface.

As the image at right illustrates, it has assisted in surveying 7 landing sites and taken hundreds of thousands of images. While HiRISE has amazing resolution capabilities, the field is so small, only less than 3% of Mar's surface has been imaged with the highest resolution. With such resolution, it is almost as good as a lander at investigating virtually any spot on the surface and surveying it over a long period of time to look for changes.

Case in point for these temporal changes were shown by images that I've made into gif images here. At left are shown "Recurrent Slope Lineae" (RSLs) that occur as certain seasons that they think are briny deposits being carried down slope as underwater ices melt or sublimate.

Similarly, at right is shown a pair of images showing motion of a barchan sand dune over the course of a 3 year period. Look closely at the arrowed sections to see the obvious motion. With the high resolution of HiRISE, you can estimate that the entire dune is moving on the order of a foot every year given the scale at upper left... For dunes to maintain the shape and motion seen here, the wind in the thin atmosphere must maintain a nearly constant direction.


Other changes that have serendipitously been made with HiRISE are landslides along canyons or crater walls. Obviously you cannot plan to see these but have been spotted accidently, as shown at left. Other temporary phenomena like dust devils have also been spotted. At right are recent meteoroid impacts that are more obvious as they might be as they've broken into icy layers below ground level. They are demonstrated to be water or carbon dioxide ice as they melt or sublimate with the passage of time.



There are a wide assortment of "what the heck is that" moments seen in HiRISE data. At left is one from the polar regions that Anjani said scientists thought were from gaseous jets coming out of the ground affecting the frosts at ground level. And while you've already seen the barchan dunes above, seeing them in false color is another thing. She said (as I recall) that the observed wavelengths are blue/green, red and near-infrared, so the colors can be stretched and recombined into something that might not resemble how they would look to the eye. As a result, blue sand dunes!



I think one of the favorite images was taken early in the mission. They now have rules about spacecraft maneuvers to minimize the impact on other science experiments. As a result they only tilt a few degrees off-nadir, in other words, the spacecraft is almost always within a few degrees of looking straight down. Yet here comes this spectacular image of the moon Phobos, one of the most detailed I've ever seen, but to take it they certainly had to break the pointing rules, as Phobos is always at least 90 degrees off-nadir! Still, images like this, or of watching the Curiosity mission hanging below its parachute, and a few others as well brought gasps from the crowd.

She closed with a couple points of interest - there is a program called HIWish that is effectively a plea for the public to suggest places to observe. Since in 10 years they've only covered less than 3% of the area, they will never get full coverage, so they are looking for assistance in where to look. Click the link above for more information.

And finally, a video that compressed much of the wonder of her presentation into a perfect 2 minute performance (spectacular music!).  Click, turn up sound and go to full-screen HD and enjoy!

TAAA Meeting Night!

Most Tucson amateur astronomers know what happens on the first Friday of the month - the monthly meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA)! Arguably living in the astronomy capital of the world, we have some pretty good meetings. With the Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Planetary Sciences Institute, Steward Observatory and the Lunar and Planetary Lab all headquartered in central Tucson, we are rarely lacking for world-class lectures about the universe or latest data from spacecraft. We even get great lectures from TAAA members themselves, some of them working at the above institutions!


Last night was the first Friday, so of course, we got together, but our normal lecture hall at Steward Observatory was being used for final exams - it is that time of year! So we arranged to meet across the street at the auditorium of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The location fell into the theme of the evening - celebrating the history of LPL. The traditional Beginner's Lecture was a showing of the great documentary "Desert Moon", a 2014 movie by Jason Davis. Using archival footage as well as interviews with early employees, it tells the story of how LPL played a central role in the space race and eventual landing on the Moon. Gerard Kuiper, who founded LPL in 1960 is at center in the right image, and Ewen Whitaker, one of the main interviewees, is at right.


The movie is a testament to Kuiper's leadership and assembling this team around him, most just barely out of their teens! They played central roles as Kennedy surprised scientists by declaring the Moon as a goal for NASA. Starting with the lunar atlas Kuiper started at Yerkes Observatory, after founding LPL they supported virtually all the lunar missions leading up to the landing. Fortunately, the movie Desert Moon is free for viewing on-line, and at 35 minutes long, is a great watch, even on a computer screen. My favorite scene is the un-narrated final scene when some of the now "old-timers" who played such central roles, put their swagger on and strutted down the University Mall - shown at left!

The main meeting started promptly at 7:30, and after a few announcements and business (Springtime Board Elections!) the main lecture started - given by LPL director Timothy Swindle. He admitted that the first half dozen slides of his normal talk were well covered by "Desert Moon", so modified his presentation somewhat. He also announced that much of what he presented was covered in a recent book, recently published by UA press - Under Desert Skies by Melissa Sevigny. Reading her book would likely be a great addition to the information gleaned from Dr. Swindle's presentation.



Dr. Swindle points to the launch of Sputnik in the 50s, and the 6 week period in Spring of '61 in forming the direction of LPL's mission to the Moon and beyond.  So the developing space race kept funding levels high and the department focused both on the Moon and a fledgling planetary space program.  After the successes in the Moon landings, UA continued involvement in the Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini and Mars missions.



He told the story of Lujendra Ojha, an undergraduate from Nepal working on a student project with data from HiRISE, under the direction of principle investigator Alfred McEwen, and discovered "streaks" on the inner walls of craters and gorges that follow up spectroscopy showed was briny water - one of the first direct indicators of water on Mars.




He also told the story of Richard Kowalski. One of the primary research works of Steward and LPL consists of searching for Near-Earth Asteroids with the Spacewatch and Catalina Sky Surveys. Kowalski is the ONLY observer to discover objects BEFORE they struck the Earth, one exploding over Sudan, the other striking the Atlantic Ocean. He is shown at right holding a small piece of the asteroid/meteor that landed over Sudan.

He closed out his talk with the latest mission coming out of LPL - the OSIRIS-REx mapping and sample return mission to an asteroid. Facing a launch this September, it arrives at Bennu in 2018, and returning with its precious cargo in 2023. Answering questions for a good long time, it was a great talk and enjoyed by all.

After the meeting's conclusion, most stayed to interact outside the auditorium over snacks. Another great meeting!  The next one will be the day before the Grand Canyon Star Party starts the first weekend of June!