Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Amateur telescopes and mounts have come a long way over the 20-something years since we began to go “all goto, all computer, all the time.” One thing that took a long time to happen, though? Wireless telescope control. For years that was a sore spot with me. Everything from TVs to garage doors to freaking ceiling fans had a wireless remote—everything but telescopes. There, the HC was still tied to the mount with a (usually too short) cable. I spent my observing life trying to find a place to put the stinking HC and trying not to wrap the scope up like an octopus with PTSD.

Shortly after the Meade LX200 GPS SCTs debuted just after the turn of the century, Meade began selling an (optional) wireless Autostar II controller. That would do it, I thought. Surely every Meade owner would want one, and the other manufacturers would soon follow suit. Hooray!

Sadly, that didn’t happen. The wireless Autostar was somewhat expensive, and, worse, was cranky. It worked sometimes, but not all the time, and often not very well. Because of that failure, neither Celestron nor anybody else offered a similar product. The wireless hand control had to wait until the coming of the smartphone.

Smartphones are small computers, so it was not surprising there were soon planetarium apps for them. It just seems a perfect match: you carry your smartphone around with you all the time, including under the night sky. Why shouldn’t you have a depiction of the heavens on it? Almost every Apple iPhone commercial over the years has included something about astronomy apps. It didn’t take long for those apps to become quite sophisticated, either. Today, the leading smartphone astronomy softs, like SkySafari, are equal to the best PC programs when it comes to features and numbers of objects.

But being able to run some pretty advanced astronomy software is only part of the smartphone equation. In addition to calling over cellphone towers, all smartphones have built in Wi-Fi and most have Bluetooth. Wireless RF communications, that is. And planetarium program plus Wi-Fi equals potential wireless telescope nirvana if you can make your telescope mount communicate over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for telescope mounts is not an overlydifficult a thing for a company to implement assuming there are enough people to make it pay. It turns out there are. Maybe just barely, but enough anyway. Soon there were solutions for telescope mounts that allowed your smartphone to send your goto telescope on its gotos either with Wi-Fi (usually) or Bluetooth (occasionally). These solutions take three forms: wireless-ready scopes and mounts, generic solutions that will work with almost any brand of telescope, and brand-specific setups.

Before we talk over these solutions, however, we’d better make sure you understand that “wireless” doesn’t mean “no wires.” If you live in a place as prone to dew as Possum Swamp, you’ll likely need a dew heater and its associated heater element and power cables to keep the wet stuff off your objective or corrector plate. If you take pictures, your camera will likely be connected to a computer via a USB cable. Still, eliminating the hand control cable helps a lot, since you’ll often be using the HC to move/align the scope, and doing that from different positions, meaning the cable gets really annoying. Heater wires and camera cables are not as big a hassle unless they threaten to wrap up and strangle your mount.

Turn-key Solutions

Celestron Evolution Series

For most people, this is the ideal, a telescope that comes configured for use with your tablet or smart phone right out of the box. This is still the exception in the low-mid priced range, but I expect that to change and quickly. The cost of adding Wi-Fi connectivity to a goto scope is minute, and what’s amazed me is that Celestron, with their Evolution series, is the only manufacturer in this tier who has done so thus far. What’s the Evolution like? I’ll save that for my upcoming Sky & Telescope Test Report on the Evo, but I don’t mind telling you that the Wi-Fi/smartphone features work well.

High-end Mounts

On the high end of the telescope mount market, Wi-Fi connectivity is becoming the norm. I understand that it is standard for 10 Micron mounts now, and nearly standard for the Bisque Paramount series (at least I rarely hear of someone buying a Bisque mount who doesn’t spring for the add-on Wi-Fi board).

Prediction? Within five years all commercial telescopes/mounts will include Wi-Fi connectivity (or Bluetooth in some instances). I will further speculate that most won’t even come with a hardware hand control. That will become an extra-cost option.

Generic Add On Solutions

SkyFi

Just because your telescope didn’t come from the factory equipped to talk to your iPhone or Galaxy doesn’t mean you have to forego the joys of smartphone astronomy. The first Wi-Fi setup (that I am aware of) was actually an add-on for stock goto telescopes. This widget, the SkyFifrom the folks who do the SkySafari astronomy app (and Macintosh program), Simulation Curriculum, wasn’t just there first with a top-flight commercial product, their SkyFi is still the most versatile setup.

SkyFi consists of a smallish 12 VDC powered electronics box and a serial cable to connect to your telescope’s RS-232 port (or, in the latest version, to a USB port as well if the scope/mount has one). That is its strength: it will work with just about any goto scope. The telescope doesn’t know whether it is being sent on gotos from a PC or from your phone; all it sees is a “normal” incoming serial signal telling it what to do.

Any downsides? The SkyFi works with your hand control and does not replace it. You’ll normally do your alignments using the good old HC. Also, according to the manufacturer, SkyFi does not work with Android devices (that are not rooted). If you’ve got Android, you’ll want SkyBT, which is similar, but uses a Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi transceiver.

There are several similar products on the market, but if you dig down a little, you’ll find most of these are based on SkyFi, just as many different astronomy apps are actually SkySafari under a different name. There’s a good reason for that: the hardware and software products of Simulation Curriculum are tops and companies like Celestron and Meade don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel.

Brand Specific Solutions

SkyPortal Link

If you own a Celestron telescope/mount, the ultimate after-market solution is a little widget called SkyPortal Link (formerly SkyQ Link and SkyQ Link II). This is a Wi-Fi dongle that plugs into the Aux or HC port of your compatible Celestron mount—and most are compatible with the exception of the earliest NexStars like the still-popular GPS scopes. What this basically does is turn your Celestron GEM or fork mount into an Evolution scope—with a few caveats.

This inexpensive (around 90 bucks) device has actually been on the market since 2013. I bought one with my VX mount with the intention of using it to wirelessly link the scope to NexRemote running on a laptop. Unfortunately, the device wouldn’t work with the VX and NexRemote despite Celestron’s initial claims to the contrary. There was also an iPhone app for the Link, but it didn’t work with any of the Celestron GEMs and was very limited even with alt-azimuth fork mounts. I put the SkyQ Link in a drawer and forgot about it. I intended to return it for a refund but never got around to that.

Now, I’m glad I held onto the Link. Celestron wasn’t giving up on the device, and while they conceded it wouldn’t ever function as a NexRemote - VX link, they intended to make it work with their telescopes and smart devices. The eventual solution? Give up the poor SkyQ app and get Simulation Curriculum to do a version of SkySafari for them. This free application, SkyPortal, available in iOS and Android flavors, not only works with the SkyQ Link, it allows users to dispense with the NexStar hand control entirely.

I was still skeptical. I almost dug out the link gadget a time or two, but remembering the frustrations I’d experienced with it in 2013, I hesitated. Until I had some hours with the Celestron Evolution under my belt. It was so much fun using my iPhone as an HC that I decided I just had to try that darned Wi-Fi dongle with my VX and CGEM mounts.

So it was one clear evening that I set up the CGEM with my 6-inch refractor, Bit Ethel, plugged in the SkyQ Link, and had a go. Once I turned the mount on and selected the link’s Wi-Fi “network” which appeared in my phone’s settings, the iPhone connected to the scope immediately. I was pleased to see that the SkyPortal app, which I used initially, was just like good old SkySafari (albeit with a limited number of deep sky objects—waddayawant for free?). I went to the settings in SkyPortal, chose “German mount” and “Celestron Wi-Fi,” pushed the “connect and align” button onscreen, and was soon doing a 4-star alignment.

After centering two stars on each side of the Meridian, SkyPortal claimed I was ready to rock. Well, we’d see about that. My skepticism soon went away. Any object I requested was nearly centered in an 8-mm wide-field eyepiece in the 6-inch f/8 refractor. There were no hiccups and no disconnections. The app woulddisconnect from the scope if I let the iPhone go to sleep, but as soon as I woke it up it would immediately reconnect without me having to do anything.

Anything I didn’t like? There are a few rough edges. While the circuitry in the SkyQ Link (and its identical but differently named successors, the SkyQ Link II and SkyPortal Link), is the same, I’m told, as in the Evolution series, the signal seemed a little weaker. When I was in the backyard with houses and Wi-Fi signals all around, my Android tablet would struggle to connect. My iPhone 6s would always work, however.

Initially, I thought the alignment process was going to be a problem. First couple of times out I had a hard, hard time centering stars with the onscreen buttons on my iPhone, often mashing the wrong thing and sending the scope to never-never land. I was almost ready to plug in the hardware HC (you can use the direction buttons on the NexStar HC in conjunction with the app, but only the direction buttons), when, the third night out, the onscreen buttons began to feel normal and alignment began to be easy. Even in the initial attempts when I got the telescope pointing to the ground, moving it to the proper star and centering that would always result in an excellent alignment.

Any other problems? It’s not really a problem, but the alignment part of the SkyPortal app is not quite complete; it lacks the AllStar polar alignment routine. I hope Celestron will correct that (Simulation Curriculum merely adds the Celestron-developed telescope alignment code to the app, and depends on them for updates). SkyPortal is also limited by its number of objects, just over 200. The good news is that you can fix that with SkySafari Plus or Pro, which have many, many DSOs, are inexpensive, and include the Celestron scope alignment routine just like SkyPortal. Overall, the SkyPortal Link is a big win, and is the best option for a Celestron owner at this time in my opinion.

Meade’s Stella

Meade has just come out with a Wi-Fi set up for their Autostar scopes, and while I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, it’s safe to say they’ve taken a rather different path than Celestron. This appears to be based on SkyFi, with (I assume) the only difference other than a different name and different shaped electronics box being that it comes standard with a Meade style RS-232 cable. I was rather surprised to see that it doesn’t, like Celestron’s SkyPortal Link, come with a free app. You have to purchase StellaAccessseparately. The upside being that StellaAccess appears to be SkySafari Plus, and has many more objects than Celestron’s freebie—it is also inexpensive.

Stella is advertised, unlike SkySafari, to work with Android, so that’s a plus, and, unlike the Celestron Wi-Fi adapter, Stella can be used with other brands with the addition of the proper serial cable, so that’s also a definite advantage. On the other hand, I assume that there are no Meade-centric features here. It sends your scope on gotos and you have to have the Autostar connected to the mount for it to work.

What’s it like using a smartphone (or tablet) enabled telescope? It fulfills not just my desire to be freed from that dratted hand control wire, but also satisfies another dream: to have a hand control that shows a color depiction of the sky. All through the 1990s and into the 2000s, I hoped somebody, someday would make a telescope HC that was like a Nintendo Game Boy. It would have a color screen and would have a built in planetarium program in ROM.

That finally did happen about ten years ago, but when Vixen released its (wired) Starbook for the Sphinx mount it was already being obsoleted by the smartphone explosion. An iPhone or Galaxy is always going to be much superior to any hand controller made by any telescope company. Yeah, I thought I’d miss the lack of tactile feedback from real buttons, but as above, the more I use my iPhone 6 with the scope, the less I miss that.

Above all, using my phone is freeing. Not just from that always short coiled hand control cable, but from my laptop and its wires and widgets. I still use the lappie when I take astrophotos, but otherwise, there is no reason to. SkySafari Pro is the equal of any PC program I’ve used. In fact, the experience has been so liberating, that it’s now hard to make myself drag out the Toshiba even for DSLR imaging. Yes, it’s easier to focus on the big laptop screen than on the DSLR display, but I’m finding I’m willing to put up with that to eliminate more wires and batteries and STUFF. Long live wireless astronomy!

M87 shows off its jet to my Stellacam...

What better time is there for chasing Ms? The nights are cooler now and their skies are clearer (you hope). Down here, I may only have to douse myself with one gallon of Deep Woods Off instead of two. And, oh! the Messier beauties you’ll find lurking now. The mid-late summer objects are still on display and lookin’ good. A glance to the east, though, will show the Autumn wonders are on the rise—look how high M15 has gotten—and if you’re up late you’ll begin to witness glories of Winter climbing as well.

Yes, fall’s a great time for a Messier hunt, for crossing them off your Life List. For this week’s edition, however, we’re taking the WABAC machine back to spring as we navigate through the countless faint fuzzies that comprise the great Coma-Virgo cloud of galaxies.

M85

Yes, Coma – Virgo is wonderful, but what makes it wonderful? The sheer number of galaxies on display here and their pairings and groupings. When you stop to think about it, many, many are ellipticals without much detail to offer. Tons of ‘em are certainly easy enough to see with a medium size telescope in the backyard, however, including Messier 85, a magnitude 10.0, 7.6’ x 5.9 S0 elliptical galaxy. And you get a bonus galaxy to up the interest level; M85 is in the field with a dimmer companion, magnitude 11.6. 3.6’ x 3.5’ NGC 4394.

To find M85? While goto or DSCs are the way I’d go in these latter days, M85 is not too hard to pin down. It lies about 1.5-degrees outside to the northeast of a line drawn between two prominent stars, Diadem, Alpha Comae, and Leo’s Denebola. A magnitude 5 range double star, 11 Comae, is just a smidge over a degree to the west of the galaxy.

In the backyard, you’ll want at least an 8-incher to make this object easy on the less good nights. M85 is a galaxy that can be bright in small apertures on good evenings, but dim to the point of toughness on poorer ones. Above all, despite the fact that this is a lenticular with an oval, elongated shape, expect to see nothing more than the good old “round galaxy with a brighter center.” In other words, much like an unresolved globular star cluster. In order to see elongation in M85, I normally require 12-inches of aperture and a halfway decent dark(er) site.

How about the companion, NGC 4394? While it is small, it’s not tiny and is approaching magnitude 12. The 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, will show it on a nice night, albeit sometimes with difficulty. It is about 8.0’ northeast of the main galaxy. Medium high magnification can be a help here. In the backyard, what you can expect to see if you can see NGC 4394 is a relatively faint, round glow. From dark sites with larger apertures, this barred spiral galaxy begins to reveal its arms.

M86

The Face lookin' atcha...

M86, an elliptical galaxy in nearby Virgo, as I mentioned in the last installment, together with its companion galaxy, M84, never fails to elicit a chuckle from me. This grouping is “The Face.” M84 and M86 form the eyes, a little elliptical galaxy, NGC 4387, is the nose, and a near edge-on galaxy, NGC 4406, is the mouth. At magnitude 9.8 and with a size of 10.0’ x 7.4’, M86 is quite prominent in 8-inch and larger scopes even from a relatively compromised backyard.

As I said in the last M-edition concerning M84, “There are so many bright galaxies within the arms of Virgo that it’s hard to know which one you are on. Luckily, the field here is pretty distinctive. If you simply must find 84 the old fashioned way, it lies halfway along a line drawn between Epsilon Virginis, Vendemiatrix, and Denebola, Beta Leonis. Positoned there, look for two bright fuzzballs about 17.0’ apart.” Which one is M86? It is the northeastern-most of the two brightest objects in the field. It is also more elongated than M84, being a Hubble Type E3.

As above, the cartoonish Face is the attraction here, that and the fact that this is the western terminus of Markarian’s chain, the mind-blowing line of galaxies stretching off to the east. But M86 itself? Sorry, pards; it is just another bright elliptical. Very noticeable but very featureless.

M87

And so on to Virgo’s monstrous old fat-daddy spider of a galaxy, M87, for more of the same. This is one of those “been there” objects: there’s not much to see; all you can say is you’ve been there. Actually, there’s a little more to it than that. The knowledge that this is an awesome giant of a galaxy, a titantic elliptical with a mass of a trillion Sols, makes its sight thought provoking and even moving though there is no detail to be found.

The best way to get M87 in your eyepiece is to get on the distinctive M84/M86 pair first. Then, slew your scope a degree and a half southeast. Go slowly and examine the field carefully, but despite the galaxy crowded nature of this part of Virgo, M87 stands out well. In an 8-inch in the backyard it will be fairly hard to miss, and should be duck soup for 10s and 12s.

No, there’s not much to see of M87 other than a bright fuzzy ball. The field? Not too much here either for a small scope from the suburbs. There are two magnitude 12 range galaxies, NGCs 4476 and 4478, about 10.0’ to the northeast, but while they are small, they really need a 10-inch to bring them out of a bright sky background. In my C11 from the OK but not perfect skies of the old Georgia Sky View Star Party at Indian Springs State Park, M87 was…

Basically a diffuse round glow like a bright, unresolved globular cluster in a 3-inch telescope. With TeleVue Nagler Type 2 12mm, 233x I occasionally see hints of a condensed core, but it's mostly a featureless ball.

So that’s it? How about THE JET? M87 is possessed of a supermassive black hole at its core, and this is the source of an incredible jet of matter spewing out of the center of the galaxy. This jet is so huge and luminous that it can even be seen with amateur telescopes. Alas, those amateur telescopes need to be at least in the 20-inch range and stationed under dark skies. Ironically, my humble Stellacam II deep sky video camera in my C8 had no problem showing the jet with a 10-second exposure under suburban conditions.

M88

M88…M88…which one is that? Oh, yeah, back over in Coma Berenices. It’s a bright enough Sb with an intermediate inclination to us that reminds me a lot of M63 (in photographs) with patchy spiral arms similar to those of the Sunflower Galaxy. At magnitude 10.1 and with a size of 6’54” x 3’42, it is not terribly challenging for a 4-inch when your backyard conditions are anything better than putrid.

M88

The best way to land on M88 is to follow Markarian’s Chain, that great river of galaxies, from its beginning at M84 and M86 for about two degrees to the northeast to its conclusion. Luckily for us, M88 lies right at its northeastern end and is the most prominent galaxy in the immediate area. Take your time and move slowly; this is indeed the Realm of the Galaxies, and in a 10-inch or 12-inch, even from the suburbs, there are island universes all over the place. This is a rather star poor area, but there is a 7^th magnitude sun half a degree to the northwest of the galaxy, which provides a good guide to M88.

When you are convinced you have M88, give it a nice long look, sure, but don’t expect too terribly much. Even larger apertures from good site only reveal that it is strongly elongated with a brighter center. The dusty spiral arms are really for the eye of a camera.

M89

So you want to see M89, do you? Well, I salute you for charging through the fuzzy laden waters of Virgo. And this is not a bad one. It’s another round elliptical like many of the galaxies here, but is bright enough at magnitude 9.75 and small enough at 5’06” x 4’42” that it is a reasonably easy catch for your backyard 4-inch. If you can find it. Or, more properly, figure out exactly which fuzzball in the eyepiece is it.

Not sure exactly what to tell you if you have to star-hop. This object is just outside the heart of the Virgo cloud, and there are really no guide stars to help you on your way. If you’re star-hopping with a finder, the best way to go is to move your scope 1-degree northwest of M58, which is substantially easier to locate.

The best way to position the telescope on M89, though? The way I used to navigate Virgo-Coma in the days before computers: I’d galaxyhop. Using a 12mm Nagler eyepiece in my 12-inch telescope, I found it remarkably easy to move around the area by hopping from galaxy to galaxy with the widefield eyepiece and a (very) detailed computer chart. Back then, I used Megastar. Today, you’ll probably want to use SkyTools 3’s Interactive Atlas.

When you’ve arrived, you’ll find that while it is almost featureless, M89 is not entirely so. According to its specs, M89 is slightly oval, but in the eyepiece it looks entirely round. Otherwise it has a fainter halo and a brighter center. However, on an OK night with at least an 8-inch, you may see that it has an intensely bright, star-like nucleus, and that brings M89 into the realm of “very attractive.”

M90

M90

In images, M90, a magnitude 10.10, 9.5’ x 4.5’ spiral, is very pretty indeed, with a bright, oval central region and prominent dust lanes outlining tightly wrapped spiral arms. Unfortunately, once you get outside the central part of the galaxy, its surface brightness is low, and the arms are mostly for imagers, though they can be glimpsed with 10 – 12-inch telescopes on outstanding nights at outstanding sites.

Locating M90 is quite easy if you are already on M89. Just eyepiece hop, following a chain of 10^th magnitude stars north for 40’ and you are there. An 8^thmagnitude star is 14.0’ southeast of the galaxy if you need more help, or just want to be sure you are on the correct galaxy.

When you are on M90, most of the time all you will find is the object’s strongly elongated middle part. And it may not be quite as bright looking as you expect given the galaxy’s fairly generous size. This is a galaxy to keep coming back to on superior evenings, however, since under the best conditions it can begin to give up respectable detail to medium sized instruments.

M91

Oh, how wonderful M91 looks--in pictures. Even in fairly short exposures, this magnitude 10.9, 5.4’ x 4.6’ shows off a classically beautiful barred spiral shape with far-flung, open arms. In the eyepiece the story, as it often is, is somewhat different, but this is still a Messier, after all, and worthy of your attention for sure.

If you wanna get to M91, my advice (for the computer deprived) is to continue your eyepiece hopping, moving 1-degree 22’ west – northwest from M90. Take it easy, since this one definitely looks a little on the dim side. There is a magnitude 8.8 star just 17.0’ west of the galaxy.

Stellacam's M91...

I hate to be a bring-down, but even with fairly large telescopes under quite dark skies, about all you will see of M91 is an elongated something, and you may need averted vision to see even that much. On particulalry nice evenings, you may pick up a stellar nucleus. On the other hand, the camera loves M91, and even a 10-second exposure with my Stellacam 2 showed its basic shape:

As befits its status as M91, this is a marvelous galaxy, big, with a bright round core, a long bar, and easy to see, graceful arms that give it a classic barred spiral "S" shape.

And that, as they say, is that. Fun is fun, but done is done.

But we are not quite done with the Messiers here, though we are in the homestretch now, no denying it. How about your own observing program? If you haven’t caught ‘em all, resolve to do that over the coming year. I am hearing from quite a few of you who intend to do that very thing, and some who even say (my blushes) they are going to print out this series of blog entries and use them as their guide. That’s flattering, certainly, and though I don’t doubt there may be better guides to the M-objects than these articles, one thing is sure: the price is right!

We haven’t yet run through all the Messiers in my series of articles on them, but I thought I’d give you a quick guide (in two installments) to how difficult the Ms are from a suburban backyard, and what it takes to get a decent look at them from there. The reason for this executive summary is the weather is turning beautiful, at least in the southland, and I know plenty of you will be out in that good, old back-forty chasing faint fuzzies.

The Crab Nebula is detectable in a 4-inch as a dim oval. You will need a 12-inch range scope to begin to see much beyond that. In a 12, it will show its basic zig-zag shape on a decent evening.

A 3-inch will show it, a 4-inch will deliver a little resolution, and an 8-inch will make the thing begin to look nice indeed.

Similar to M2, if a little more difficult to resolve. Looks nice if unresolved in my 80mm APO.

M4, the Cat’s Eye Cluster, is loose and a little dimmish. You can pick it up with a 4-inch, but don’t expect it to look like much.

My 80mm APO, Veronica Lodge, will show some stars at high power, and a C8 makes it into a semi-spectacle from less than perfect backyards.

At 25’ across, this cluster is big, but not too big and was just perfect for my old 4-inch StarBlast reflector, Yoda.

M13

If the StarBlast richest-field-telescope did a nice job on M6, its wide field was required for M7, which is 80’ across. As a matter of fact, I somewhat preferred my 70mm Burgess binocs even to the StarBlast.

I could always seethe Lagoon Nebula from out-back with a 4-inch, but it did not look like much. Just a little fuzz around a star. 8-inches and a UHC filter definitely helps.

M9 was difficult, sometimes to the point of impossibility, with the 3 or 4-inch scopes. Mainly because of its low altitude. An 8 or 10 is a really good idea for this one.

M10

Was visible if unresolved in a 4 or 6-inch scope. The 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, did a fine job on this rich and pretty globular star cluster.

M11

Is the beautiful Wild Duck Cluster, one of the very best galactic clusters in the sky, which I unintentionally omitted. Great in all instruments large and small. In binoculars or an RFT at low power, it resembles a loose globular. In telescopes of larger aperture and longer focal length it is that amazing flight of fowl.

M12

Really needed a 6-inch just to easily see this looser glob. A 10-inch can make something of it even on hazy backyard evenings.

M13

My 80mm APO will show a few stars at high power, but just like the old observing guides say, a 6-inch is needed for much resolution. From the suburbs anyhow.

M14

Like M9, this glob is rather low for many of us and an 8 or 10 is the way to fly if possible.

M15

The Horse’s Nose Cluster was very pretty in a 3-inch refractor or 4-inch reflector, but this globular was unresolved in the small instruments. Better in a C8 or my 6-inch refractor, Big Ethel, but doesn’t begin to be great till you go to 10-12-inches.

M16

If you just want the open cluster, a 3 or 4-inch will do it. Heck, 50mm binoculars will do it. If you want the Eagle Nebula you need an OIII filter, a 10 or 12-inch scope, and a dark hood to block ambient light from your eyes.

M17

The Swan is easier than the Eagle, but from the backyard 8-inches and a UHC filter is a Good Thing.

M18

M15

This smallish open cluster was quite nice in my 80mm APO.

M19

Somewhat tough southern glob. Low and largish. Save yourself some frustration and apply 8-inches of aperture.

M20

I can usually pick up the Trifid with the 80mm (equipped with a UHC filter), but it doesn’t look that great from compromised skies even with 12-inches.

M21

Large and bright, this open cluster is not a challenge for a small telescope or binoculars.

M22

I used to enjoy looking at this big globular with my old Short Tube 80 refractor, which didn’t have much trouble resolving some stars in it.

M23

Another bright open cluster that is nice in binoculars large and small.

M24

This open cluster is small, about 5’ across, but rather dim with a given magnitude around 11. Nevertheless, I can sometimes see it with a 4-inch—if with difficulty. Nice in the 10-inch.

M25

At almost half a degree in diameter, this open cluster is good in binoculars and excellent in an RFT like the StarBlast.

M26

A magnitude 9 open cluster, M26 can be difficult in a 4-inch, looking much like a distant, unresolved globular. It’s not that much better in a 10-inch, which at best resolves a handful of stars.

M27

The Dumbbell was sweet in my Short Tube 80, and really, really sweet in the filtered 10-inch, which shows the apple core shape more convincingly from the suburbs.

M27

M28

This glob near the Sagittarius Teapot’s lid is visible in a 4-inch with fair ease, but difficult to resolve even with a C11 in the suburbs.

M29

A small, dipper-shaped open cluster in Cygnus, M29 is good with a 3-inch, and a 10-inch or larger scope really doesn’t show much more.

M30

M30 requires a 6-inch even to look grainy, and a 10 is a must for much resolution. I can usually spot it with a 3 – 4-inch, however.

M31

I could often see the Andromeda Nebula (galaxy) naked eye even from my downtown backyard. Needs mucho field. The StarBlast was super fine for this monster.

M32

M32, M31’s brightest satellite galaxy, was visible in the 4-inch, but sometimes dubious in binoculars.

M33

Dimmer than M31 and still quite large, I found the Triangulum Galaxy a pain with the StarBlast. The C8 reduced to f/6.3 and equipped with a 27mm Panoptic would always turn the galaxy up when it was riding high.

M34

Bright but large. Perfect for the StarBlast or a similarly wide-field scope.

M35

Nice in a 3-inch and just gets better with every increase in aperture.

M36

Easy in the 3-inch Short Tube, and beautiful in a 10-inch.

M37

Visible in the 4-inch, but needed the 10-inch to begin to show its incredible richness and its red central star well.

M38

Very similar to M36. Liked it in the Short Tube 80 and in my 80mm f/11 SkyWatcher achromat.

M39

This triangular open cluster was, like M29, good in an 80mm, and doesn’t get that much better with larger telescopes.

M40

A magnitude 10 range double star, it was very nice in the 80mm f/11 refractor.

M41

Another win for the StarBlast. It’s bright and big and was perfect for the little guy.

M42

Looks great in any aperture, even from rather compromised backyards.

M43

In the suburbs, it takes about 10-inches of aperture to show M43’s comma shape, but it is easy to at least detect in a 3-inch or a 4-inch as haze around the bright star Nu Orionis.

M44

The Beehive. This huge open cluster in Cancer required the StarBlast or a pair of binocs. Easy, natch.

M45

The Pleiades are scrumptious in my 66mm APO, but I’ve never seen their Merope Nebula with that or any telescope from the suburbs—up to and including a 24-inch Dobsonian.

M46

The open cluster was easy in a 3-inch, but the involved planetary nebula, NGC 2438, was invisible. Seeing that took my 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, and an OIII filter.

M47

Sparser but brighter than M46, M47 was rewarding enough in the Short Tube 80, but didn’t look truly nice till I applied the 6-inch refractor or an 8-inch reflector.

M51

M48

Like many Messier opens “bright and large.” An RFT is practically mandatory for good framing.

M49

I could pick up this elliptical (S0) galaxy from the backyard with my 4-inch f/10 refractor or the 5-inch MCT without much hassle. Not a whole lot to see, of course.

M50

This Monoceros open cluster is easy enough to see in a 3 – 4-inch. The main problem is finding it without goto.

M51

The Whirlpool Galaxy is visible in suburban 4-6-inch telescopes as two dim fuzzballs, a larger one and a smaller one, from even under fairly poor skies. To see more than that requires 12-inches and an especially good night.

M52

This medium-sized, medium-bright open cluster is pretty in a 4-inch, and the entire area is impressive on a good night in an RFT.

M53

To make spotting this glob easy, apply 4-inches of aperture. 6 is better. And 8 is better still. It will take the 8-incher to achieve much resolution of the cluster’s stars.

M54

This less than impressive Sagittarius glob often needed the 6-inch refractor for easy detection. The 10-inch was pretty mandatory if I wanted to see it at least look “grainy.”

M55

This is an easier globular than M54 to resolve—if more difficult to find. I could achieve fairly impressive resolution with the 10-inch, and could often at least at least see it easily with the 4-inchers.

So…next time we wrap up this executive summary of the Messiers, and after that it’ll be time for me to get ready for my next big star party, the 2016 Deep South Star Gaze. Fingers crossed, but for once it looks like the weather gods might be on my side this fall!

M110

As I was scrambling around making preparations for the trip to our big fall star party, the Deep South Star Gaze, I took a break and put together the conclusion of last week’s article, an executive summary of the Messiers. Just how difficult are they from the average compromised but not too horrible suburban backyard?

M56

You would think this sometimes-overlooked globular star cluster in Lyra would be easy. It’s a Messier and it is often riding high in the sky for mid-northern observers. Not so. It’s loose, and in a 4-inch is usually visible as nothing more than a dim smudge. It was actually totally invisible in a 4-inch from old Chaos Manor South downtown. Even in the suburban-country transition zone, it needs a 10 – 12-inch to begin looking good, though our 4-inch Explore Scientific AR102 will deliver at least a little resolution there.

M57

No problem here. This is the northern sky’s most famous and maybe best planetary nebula. A 3-inch will show its basic shape (although the central hole is not always easy).

M58

If you are able to see this Virgo spiral from your backyard, count yourself lucky. I can’t glimpse it with a 4-inch, and in an 8-inch SCT it is just a dim elongated something that often requires averted vision.

M59

M59 is a lot like M58: a small, off-round, dim galaxy. The saving grace is that it is in the same field as another galaxy, the more prominent M60, which makes for a pretty view.

M58

M60

This one is a little more interesting than the previous two, being bright enough to be doable with direct vision. A 10-inch will show some outer haze in addition the bright, oval core. On a particularly good night a 10 – 12-inch may also show M60’s companion galaxy, NGC 4647, which is a mere two and a half minutes away.

M61

From the country, M61 can show spiral structure. From the city? You need an 8-inch to make it easy, and all you will see is a round fuzzy that may call for averted vision.

M62

When the summer sky conditions are not too hazy, I can make out this Ophiuchus globular without much difficulty in a 4-inch. An 8-inch on a similar night may resolve a few stars, but that is not easy.

M63

Canes Venatici’s Sunflower Galaxy is one of the gems of the Messier list. That said, in the city don’t expect to see much more than a bright (for a galaxy), large, elongated glow. The patchy spiral arms? For a good look I need my 10-inch, Zelda, at the club dark site.

M64

Another showpiece, the Blackeye Galaxy is easy enough in a 3 – 4-inch telescope. The dust patch, the black eye? 8 – 10-inches and a darker observing site than my backyard is needed to make it obvious to me.

M65

One of the famous triplet of galaxies, the Leo Trio. While it’s not easy to make out these galaxies’ features from my out-back, I can always tell M65 from M66 (M65 is more edge-on looking).

M66

Quite a sight together with M65. As above, it’s easy to tell the two apart (the third member, NGC 3628, can be difficult to see at all from the backyard, even in the 10-inch, on poor nights).

M67

M67, Cancer’s “other” open star cluster, is one of my favorites. While not overly bright at mag 6.9, it’s rather compact and easy enough in the 80mm APO.

M74

M68

Hydra’s seldom visited M68 is really not much of a glob. I often need an 8-inch to see it from the backyard, and there is not a trace of resolution.

M69

This is one of the globular clusters located along the base of the Sagittarius teapot. It’s low much of the time even for me, and is difficult in a 4 or 6. In an 8-inch it is there, but is still utterly unresolved.

M70

Also at the teapot’s bottom is M70. It’s more condensed than M69 and looks brighter, but is still unresolved in an 8-inch (I can see it with the 4-inch). Resolving a few stars takes the 10, and it usually needs to be under a darker sky.

M71

Sagitta holds this very loose globular. While it is indeed a glob, it resembles an open cluster and in a 10-inch it looks a bit like M11. In a 3 – 4? Visible, but only as a misty patch in a star-rich field.

M72

Compared to M2, M72 is most assuredly Aquarius’ “also ran” globular. Quite faint and unresolved in a 3 – 4-inch and sometimes impossible with small scopes from the backyard. It’s easier with 8 – 10-inch instruments, but still unresolved in suburban skies.

M73

This is nothing more than a little group of four stars (it may actually be a galactic cluster rather than an asterism). They are on the dim side, and in a 3-inch can look nebulous, which is likely why Chuck Messier included them in his list.

M74

The famous Pisces face-on galaxy, a.k.a. “the Phantom Galaxy.” There is a reason it’s called that: it is incredibly difficult from the light polluted suburbs. That said, I could sometimes spot it (barely) with my 8-inch f/5 Newtonian when I was doing the observing for my book The Urban Astronomer’s Guide. “Spot it,” mind you. Nothing more. On a superior night, I could occasionally see a dim round something in a medium power wide-field eyepiece. Maybe the toughest M of them all.

M75

Somewhat lost in space in the area between Sagittarius and Capricornus, M75 is usually doable with a 3 – 4-inch, and on an outstanding night an 8-inch may begin to resolve it.

M76

M76

The Little Dumbbell (planetary) Nebula has a reputation for being tough in small scopes. Nonsense. I could usually pick it up with my ETX60; especially with an OIII filter on the eyepiece. A 10-inch begins to reveal some detail beyond the fact that this peanut shaped thing is composed of two lobes.

M77

This face-on Seyfert galaxy in Cetus is easy thanks to its bright core. On the other hand, a bright just-larger-than-a-star core and a relatively bright surrounding haze is all you’ll see whether with a 4-inch or a 12-inch. Looks a lot like a small, distant, unresolved globular.

M78

A reflection nebula not far from the belt, M78 gave me fits from my downtown backyard, even with a 6-inch. Out in the suburbs, it’s easy with a 4-inch, being visible as a haze surrounding a double star.

M79

Lepus’ globular, the only respectable globular star cluster of Winter, really isn’t much. It’s a small dim spot with my 3-inch APO, and requires a 10-inch or 12-inch to show even a hint of resolution.

M80

This Scorpius globular is easy to see. It’s small (so small it can resemble a star at low power) and bright and is not a challenge for my WO 3-inch APO, Veronica Lodge. Resolution is harder, requiring the 10-inch Dobsonian and a lot of magnification.

M81

Another Messier showpiece. Bode’s galaxy is, frankly, however, only a showpiece for backyard telescopes because M82 is in the same low power field. While M81 is always visible from my backyard, it is only visible as an elongated bright oval. Seeing the gossamer spiral arms takes a dark, dark site and 10-inches of aperture (at least) for me.

M82

M82 is a true showpiece. The Cigar Galaxy is not just visible in a backyard 4-inch, it shows off some of the dark detail in its disturbed disk.

M83

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is relatively large and nearly face on, and that usually spells “tough.” It is always at least detectable, however, as a misty, round patch with a bright core with Zelda, the 10-inch. To see it with a 4-inch was a definite challenge requiring dry, clear skies and the galaxy being near culmination.

M84

M84 was usually visible in my 4-inch on a good night, but I liked to use a 12-inch, my now gone Big Bertha, to get a good look at the many other galaxies in the field. This area is one of the ends of Markarian’s Chain (of galaxies). M84 is paired with M86 in this field and is the brighter and rounder of the two.

M85

In a 3-inch, this Coma galaxy can be a toughie, a dim, small, round spot. Much better in an 8-inch, where it shows off a bright, condensed core.

M86

I love M86, which, together with M84, NGC 4387 and 4388, forms a little 1970s smiley face. As noted above, M84 is the rounder and brighter of the two Messiers.

M87

Located in the heart of downtown Virgo, M87 can be detectable in a 3 – 4-inch on a good night and easy with a 10 – 12-inch. There is not much to be seen of this monster elliptical galaxy, though; just a bright center and some surrounding haze.

M88

At the other end of Markarian’s Chain from M84/86 we find M88. It is doable in a 3 – 4-inch on a superior evening as a round fuzzball, and in an 8-inch begins to show off elongation.

M89

I’ve seen this Virgo galaxy with my 4-inch C102 refractor, but it is an easier task for a C8. In my 10-inch Dobbie, it shows a brighter center.

M84 and M86

M90

Near to M89, M90 is similar as far as visibility. In an 8-inch SCT or my 5-inch APO it is clearly elongated.

M91

M91 in Coma can be seen with a 4-inch using averted vision. Frankly, it’s not much better in a 10-inch. Even if you have a 20-inch under dark skies, you shouldn’t expect to see the galaxy’s spiral detail.

M92

While this Hercules glob can’t hold a candle to M13, it is still great. Easy with my C102, Amelia, where it even shows some resolution.

M93

This is a rich Puppis open cluster, and on a good night a 4-inch will show upwards of 50 stars here with a medium power eyepiece. Looked great even from my old downtown site with my Edmund Scientific Palomar Junior 4-inch.

M94

On those punk nights when the haze is bad and the light pollution at its worst, but you still want to see a galaxy, M94 is where you go. Even in a 3-inch, it’s visible under remarkably poor conditions as a bloated "star" surrounded by faint haze.

M95

While not as easy as nearby M105, I was often able to find Leo’s M95 with a 4-inch using averted vision. Of course, all it was was a dim, round spot.

M96

I couldn’t see any details in M96 with a 3 – 4-inch, but it was at least easier to see than its companion galaxy, M95. The C8 would show a little elongation at times.

M97

Even moreso than M76, this one, the Owl nebula, has a reputation for toughness. Uh-uh. I could, as with the Li’l Dumbbell, see the Owl with my 60mm ETX refractor (with an OIII filter). The dark patches? The eyes? That took the 10 or 12-inch and a darker sky than what my backyard usually offers.

M98

This Coma galaxy was often not easy. Not even with the 8-inch, where it sometimes required averted vision to show up at all. Obviously strongly elongated in 8-inch and larger scopes.

M92

M99

M99 was easily as tough as M98. It’s a low surface brightness, near face-on galaxy. Think “at least 8-inches.” In a C8, it is somewhat elongated on good nights.

M100

Another Coma galaxy that frequently demanded the 8-inch. Even then, it was most often just a dim, round smudge.

M101

Let’s go even tougher. The Catherine Wheel Galaxy in Ursa Major, another face-on, a large face-on, is nearly as difficult as M74. Nevertheless, I could sometimes see it with my 8-inch f/5 Newt, and could just about always snag it with my C11 as a large, faint glow.

M102

Don’t worry about it. There ain’t no “M102.” It is most likely a re-observation of M101. If that makes you feel uneasy, look at NGC 5866, which has sometimes been claimed to be M102. NGC 5866 is doable in a 4-inch and obviously elongated in an 8.

M103

This small, loose open cluster is visible in my C102, but occasionally melts into the background star field.

M104

The famous Sombrero Galaxy. I could make out its equatorial dust lane (maybe with a little averted imagination) with my Palomar Junior 4-inch Newtonian on the very best nights. The first time you see it, your reaction will probably be “Darn, smaller than I thought it would be.”

M105

Was always cool in my Short Tube 80 and my Palomar Junior. It’s a bright, round Leo elliptical that really stands out. The small scopes would also sometimes turn up at least one of the two nearby NGC galaxies.

M106

This Canes Venatici galaxy is nice in a 4-inch, but do yourself a favor and view it with a 10 or 12 (at least) where it will begin to show spiral detail in addition to a bright nucleus and a strongly elongated disk.

M103

M107

A seldom-visited Ophiuchus globular, M107 was routinely visible in my 6-inch home-built Newtonian 25 years ago. But only as a dim, round fuzzy. A 10-inch is really mandatory to show a little resolution around its edges.

M108

This galaxy, near M97, is not overly hard and not overly easy. It can be seen in a 4-inch on better evenings, but an 8-inch makes it easier (and e’en then it may need averted vision). In a 10-inch on a transparent night, it will begin to show mottled detail.

M109

Located near Phad in Ursa Major, M109 is a little easier than M108, but still just a dim oval in smaller scopes. 10-inch and larger instruments may show some details, mottling and dark lanes, in the disk on especially good spring nights.

M110

And so we come to the end with M110, M31’s second most prominent satellite galaxy (after M32, natch). While it can be extremely easy in binoculars at dark sites, it can be quite tough with 3 – 4-inch telescopes from the backyard. Relatively large, it’s just a dim something until you get to 10-inches, where it begins to show elongation and a brighter center.

Whew! And there they are! Now, get out and see some of them while the good weather lasts. Down here, I’m pretty sure we are just getting a short reprieve and those cursed equinoctical gales are sure to be on their way!

And so, my fall star party season reaches its apex this year with the vaunted Deep South Star Gaze (née the Deep South Regional Star Gaze). Usually, when I am on the road whether to an observing event or to speak to a club somewheres, you get no blog. This week was different; I found myself with a short article all ready to go. Practically wrote itself, maybe because the below things have been much on my mind of late.

In recent times, I've developed a new appreciation for what a small and inexpensive and simple telescope can do. That comes after spending plenty of years thinking you can't have fun without a big gun and a ton of electronics. One thing that's turned me aside from the big and complex is that after suffering last summer's back problems, I spent months where I didn't dare even haul a C8 into the backyard. That was coupled with my increasing turn to refractors, and, over the last couple of years, a desire to simplify, simplify, simplify.

During those past (almost) two years, I’ve come to want to not just reduce telescope headcount as described in the above piece, but to, yes, simplify as much as is practically possible the scopes I still own and use. While I will still haul quite a lot of astro-junk to a star party, it's not the ton of astro-junk of the last couple of decades, as you’ll find next week when you get a report on the 2016 DSSG. Honestly, I just don't have much patience for All That Stuff in this latter age.

There is a limit, though. While you can have tremendous fun with binoculars or a 60mm telescope once in a while, and while instruments in that class are all some of you everuse, I, like most of y’all, want to see a bit more than what the really humble instruments can deliver. I’ve long thought 4-inches of aperture is the practical lower limit for most of us most of the time. Even so, what the heck can you possibly see with, say, a fast 4-inch achromatic refractor on a cheap alt-azimuth mount? I found out at the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society’s (semi) dark site this past Saturday...

It looked like it was going to be a beautiful night, if a little cool as I judge such things lately, and I certainly wanted to get out there and observe. Frankly, however, the idea of loading up a tripod and a GEM mount and batteries and a big OTA and maybe a computer left me feeling slightly depressed. Still, I wanted to be at the site with my club buddies. So, what if...what if...I just packed the Explore Scientific AR102, a short 4-inch refractor, and my good old SkyWatcher AZ-4 alt-azimuth mount?

Sure, I probably wouldn't see much with that kind of rig—everybody knows you need at least 10-inches of aperture to see anything of the deep sky, right? —but I could bum looks through the scopes of my mates, and if I got tired of that I could just go home and watch TV.

One thing that encouraged me to head to the site even though I wasn’t in the mood for a pedal-to-the-metal observing run? I am now OK with going out there on iffy nights or nights when I might not want to spend more than two or three hours on the field (at most). Compared to the old days, when I lived at the legendary Chaos Manor South, the dark site is now just a hop, skip, and a jump away, a mere 30-minutes to the west.

Loading sure was sweet. 10-minutes—if that—to plop the 102 in the backseat and the AZ-4 in the cargo area of the 4-runner along with an eyepiece box. Out on the observing field setting up was similarly pleasant. No connecting anything, no alignments. The only concession I made to modern technology was that I brought along my Android tablet running SkySafari Pro for charts. I could actually have been just as happy with my current fave print star atlas, Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas Jumbo Edition. It was all simple and easy, yeah, but I was still skeptical I'd see much with such a minimalist rig.

In addition to scope and eyepieces, I did bring along my big Plano tackle box, which holds flashlights, filters, and the other gimcracks I use frequently, but I didn’t bother with the DewBuster dew heater system. The air was surprisingly dry, and I figured my 12-vdc window defroster would suffice if any dew accumulated on the objective lens. Naturally, I had to bring along a jump-start battery pack to run the zapper gun, but I hoped it could remain in the 4Runner.

Once it (finally) got dark, it was time to see what this somewhat silly little scope could do, starting with globular star clusters. Surprise! M13 was beautiful and nicely resolved at high power. So was M2. So was M92. After those three showpieces, I did a quick tour of the Sagittarius and Ophiuchus (Messier) globs, nailing each and every one. Some were just fuzzballs, sure, but some would have remained fuzzballs even in an 8-inch, and all nevertheless looked good.

What really looked good Saturday night? The Lagoon and Trifid nebulae in one low power field using my el cheapo Zhumell 16mm 100-degree eyepiece, the Happy Hand Grenade. After that, I just spent some time cruising up and down the "teapot steam," the Sagittarius Milky Way, bouncing from one open cluster to the next. I didn’t obsess with ticking objects off a list, just relaxed and looked. I observed many other objects over the course of the relatively short night, but the trip was more than worth it just for the opportunity to drink in the wonders of Sagittarius in a wide-field telescope.

How about the dreaded chromatic aberration? I'll be the first to admit my eyes are not as blue sensitive as they once were, and for that reason the color purple was not very evident. Well, except on Venus. But who spends much time on Venus? Even Vega was not bad. Sure, there was come chromatic aberration haze around the star, but it wasn't like a kaleidoscope. On normal deep sky fields, you wouldn't have known the scope was a fast achromat. The stars were nice and tiny and sharp. I did have a look at Saturn, and the view, given the short focal length of the telescope and the resulting need to use a very short focal length eyepiece to get a good look at the planet, was rather impressive. Despite the low altitude of Saturn, Cassini's Division was nice and sharp.

I am currently focused on revisiting the Messiers, but did do a few NGCs too. The Helix Nebula, for example, which was quite impressive with a UHC filter. As far as the more challenging Ms (for a 4-inch), M72 was just a smudge, but there. M56 was not blindingly bright, but actually showed a little resolution.

No matter how nice a telescope is, it won't perform well without a decent mount. The AZ-4 is not a fancy custom alt-azimuth mounting like the excellent (and expensive) Half-Hitch mounts, for example. It's not finely machined, and there are no slow motion controls. There are adjustable tensioners/locks for both axes, a Vixen compatible saddle, an OK (extruded aluminum) tripod, and a nice big pan-handle. It's motions are smooth, very smooth, like the motions of a well-made Dobsonian, and I had no problem tracking objects at higher powers. When using a relatively short refractor, I do unscrew that big pan-handle, as it just gets in the way with anything shorter than, say, a 4-inch f/10.

While the SkyWatcher AZ-4 doesn't appear to be currently available in the U.S., you can get the exact same mount badged as the Orion Versago II for a somewhat higher price. The SkyWatcher mount was not only slightly less expensive than the Orion version, the AZ-4 came with a rather nice 80mm f/11 refractor. I have used this mounting with a C8 and it's usable with that much scope for casual viewing, at least. With the AR102, it's pretty perfect. Recommended.

And so it went for a few hours. Remarkably, I never tired of the 4-inch, and had no need to cadge looks through my fellow observers' telescopes. The only scope I used other than my own, really, was a friend’s StarBlast, which, being a 4-inch f/4, was more like my instrument than different, even though it was a Newtonian reflector. The ‘Blast delivered outstanding images, and it was clear there would be a tremendous amount of things to be seen with the little green guy. Seems to me that in addition to being increasingly enamored of easy to manage telescopes, I am also increasingly fond of wide-field views. Maybe that’s a consequence of having spent several years concentrating on very small slices of the sky when I was doing the Herschel Project.

Finally, the true beauty of astronomy with an ultra-portable 4-inch rig? Packing for the journey home. Again, 10-minutes, perhaps, and I was ready to roll, and a goodly part of that 10-minutes was consumed just by putting the caps back on my eyepieces. Driving off the field, I was honestly bowled over by the knowledge that not only could I see something with an ultra-simple, ultra-cheap telescope, but that I could see so much.

The Deep South Star Gaze, formerly the Deep South RegionalStar Gaze, is a wonderful event. It’s my “home” star party, held in the piney woods of Louisiana just three hours to the west. It’s got great facilities, great people—many of whom are my real friends—and Dorothy and I have been attending for over twenty years. So why were we only onsite for somewhat more than half this year’s edition?

I never get tired of the sky, but now that I can do deep sky imaging from my backyard, my desire to rough it, even in a not so rough fashion, is less than in the years when I lived at Chaos Manor South and could see little and photograph less. There’s also no denying that now that Dorothy and I are retired, a visit to a star party isn’t quite the stress-relieving vacation it was when we were working 16 hour days.

Yeah, I still love the DSSG, but I like my creature comforts too, and three nights, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, is now quite enough. I hoped the folks who signed up for Tuesday and Wednesday had a great time, but I was happy sitting on my couch with the cat watching the World Series on those evenings.

Actually, I planned to do more than just sit with Tommy Tuesday night. I thought it would be wise to set up both telescope and mount in the backyard and make sure they were ready to go after a long layoff due to a cloudy summer. The telescope for this year’s Deep South would be Big Ethel, my 6-inch Chinese achromatic refractor, and she’d ride on my CGEM mount.

Why Ethel? Simple: I wanted to do relaxing visual observing at DSSG this year, much like what I did with my now sold Dobsonian, Old Betsy, year before last. I am on a refractor jag these days, and Ethel had yet to show what she could do under dark skies thanks to the yucky weather, so she seemed a natural. She’d be riding on the CGEM, since its head is tall enough that she doesn’t bump into a tripod leg even when pointed at the Zenith.

I did get up the gumption to actually set up the big and heavy scope and mount in the backyard, but that came to naught. Just at sundown, the clouds poured in. I did a fake goto alignment to make sure things were in good order to the extent possible and returned inside to watch The Flashand the Series. I felt bad for the people on the DSSG observing field and hoped they were having a good time anyway. Unfortunately, Wednesday didn’t look much better. The weatherman, however, was saying Thursday thru Saturday would be dead clear. I kept my fingers and toes crossed.

Wednesday afternoon, I forewent my usual activity—Wednesday is normally my movie day—to run various errands and, when we returned home from that, to get the 4Runner, Miss Van Pelt, loaded. Yes, it was something of a pain wrestling with the 40 plus pound CGEM and the nearly 30-pound refractor, but when I got them into the truck, the rest was pretty easy. When you are not planning on doing imaging, the amount of stuff you pack magically decreases.

I really tried to reduce the amount of junk we usually take to Deep South this year. For example, the ice chest is usually only used to chill my Monster Energy Drinks for consumption on the field, and I only allow myself one per night—lest I start trembling like a Chihuahua—so there’s no need for the big Coleman. A little playmate cooler would do just fine. We packed considerably less stuff and didn’t miss anything we left behind.

Two things I packed that I didn't bring last year were jump-start batteries. One for the mount and one for the DewBuster heaters. I wasn't imaging and didn't plan on having the laptop on the field, so I didn't want to fool with running long extension cords and trying to secure a power outlet. Charts? I'd use SkySafari on my phone and a print atlas. Yes, I was really going simple(r) this year!

Thursday

Thursday morning and time to hit the road. I was a little sorry to be missing the Chiefland Star Party, which was going on at the same time as Deep South this year, but I must admit that much as I love the skies and the folks down Chiefland way, it sure was nice to be only faced with a three-hour drive rather than a six hour one. I am tending to be a stay-at-home in these latter days, and it now takes a big inducement—like Disney World—to get me on the road for a long car trip.

The journey to the Feliciana Retreat Center where the star gaze is held was almost uneventful, and would have been completely uneventful if not for me. I forgot to update the GPS’s maps, you see, and we were faced with a short detour as we neared the Center due to bridge construction the GPS didn’t know about.

Rolling onto the field, I was gratified to see there was a decent, if not outstanding, turnout for a Thursday afternoon. Attendance was down this year, but there were still plenty of people on the field. Last year was a near total rainout, and it’s just a fact of life in the star party biz that if some people stay home one year, they tend to get out of the star party habit and skip the next iteration as well. Which was a shame, since it appeared the weather would be beautifully clear from Thursday to the end of the event Sunday morning.

Clear, yeah, but not cool. It was easily in the mid-80s and humid as well. I took my time getting the big refractor on her mount with the help of my friend, Len, but despite that, I was overheated and feeling half sick by the time I got the EZ Up tent canopy up (with Dorothy’s help, natch). It sure was nice to get back in the truck and blast the air conditioner as we drove to the lodge to get settled in our room.

As you know if you’ve read about my previous trips to the Feliciana Retreat Center, The FRC’s Lodge building contains a beautiful dining hall and two wings of motel-like rooms. These rooms are small and somewhat Spartan—they are not close to the level of even the Chiefland Quality Inn as far as amenities—but they are oh so much better than the bunkhouses and chickie cabins of Deep South’s two previous venues, and better than what you’ll have at 99% of star parties. Unpacked in the room, and me cooled off and feeling somewhat better, we headed back to the field for the afternoon’s prize drawing.

Something you may have noticed if you attend many star parties is that prize donations by vendors are down. There were still plenty of good prizes at DSSG this year, but with the exception of the kind donations by Explore Scientific, Orion, and a couple of others, the star party had to purchase the goodies that were given away. Naturally, I didn’t win a thing, and figured I wouldn’t win a thing, I rarely do—how wrong I turned out to be about that for once. Dinner in the dining hall was at four, so we walked back down to the Lodge as soon as the day’s single prize was dispensed. As usual we left the truck out on the field for the balance of the star party.

Ready to go!

If there’s one great thing about the Feliciana Retreat Center, it is the food. It’s varied a little over the years, but only a little and it was quite excellent this time. The evening’s entre, Salisbury steak, is a nostalgic comfort food for me, and while I don't indulge in mounds of mashed potatoes slathered in gravy anymore, there was plenty of other stuff I could eat, like the excellent salad bar.

Finally, finally it began to get dark. Unfortunately, the dark of the Moon fell on the DST side of the divide this time, so it was just after six before the Sun set, and close to seven before I could think about doing my alignments. Actually, “alignment.” I did center the hollow polar axis of the CGEM in the approximate area of the NCP, but I didn’t take much care and did not do an AllStar polar alignment with the hand control. I was going visual only, and the Celestron mounts are quite immune to polar misalignment causing problems with goto accuracy.

I did have to do a goto alignment, natch. I don’t have a finder shoe on Ethel that will accommodate my StarSense alignment camera, so I had to do things the old-fashioned way. I am spoiled by the StarSense now, but I went many years doing the Celestron 2+4 alignment so it didn’t bother me much.

Then the curtain rose on the night’s sky show, and what a show it was. Perhaps there was a little haze in the humid air—didn't know how could it be so humid when we had not had appreciable rain in weeks—but the transparency was still good, though seeing was not terrific. That also seemed strange. Normally on a damp night far removed from a front passage, the air is steady. Not on this night. Not too terrible, though.

What did I look at? Just the pretty stuff. I was tired from the drive and from set-up, and wasn’t quite ready to tackle a Herschel 400 redo with the 6-inch, one of my goals for the star party. What I mainly wanted to do on this evening was entertain myself with the showpieces and try to get some idea of how good Ethel is and what she might be capable of.

Naturally, the first stop on a night at the end of October in the Northern Hemisphere is always the Great Glob, M13. I went there—the mount placed anything I requested from one side of the sky to the other near the field center all night long—and had a look through my famous “Happy Hand Genade” 16mm 100-degree eyepiece (once sold by TMB, Orion, Zhumell, and probably others). Whoa!

Night falls--finally!

A 6-inch refractor is capable of impressive resolution of brighter globulars, and Ethel was certainly proving that on this night. Hordes of stars everywhere. Tiny stars. Yes, to some extent tiny stars are the result of refractors often being used at lower powers than larger reflectors, but that is not the whole story. There really is that refractor “something” thanks to the unobstructed optics. Even brighter stars were minute pinpoints. There were more pinpoints and they were even smaller pinpoints when I swapped out the HHG for my 13mm TeleVue Ethos eyepiece. The scope didn’t just pull in the bright stuff, either. The little galaxy near M13, NGC 6207, was surprisingly bright and large. Hard to believe this was “just” a 6-inch.

What was the story when it came to chromatic aberration? It was there, but, especially given my eyes, which, as I said last week, are not as blue sensitive as they used to be, it was just not a factor. Certainly, not as much as I’d have expected in a 6-inch f/8 achromat. Mostly it appeared as rather colorless haze around brighter stars. Viewing the typical deep sky field, you wouldn’t have known this telescope was only an achromat. In fact, most of the people who looked through Ethel during the event just assumed she was an ED. Ethel and I did not correct them.

And so it went. I didn’t make it much past 11 p.m., but still saw many beautiful things. The Double Cluster was heart-stopping in a 35mm Panoptic. I just loved the views Ethel delivered, and cursed the fact that I’d gone so many years before finally getting a 6-inch f/8 achromat of my own. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention another 6-inch that impressed me on this night. My friend Charles was set up next to me and had brought out his 150mm Lunt-badged ED refractor. I know these telescopes have a bad reputation on Cloudy Nights, but he obviously got a good one. It did spectacularly well.

But you know what? On the deep sky, the views the Lunt provided were pretty much identical to those in Ethel. More shocking, another friend of mine, Ron, was sporting a beautiful 130mm Takahashi APO. I was thrilled to get a look through that expensive and sophisticated instrument during the star party, but…but…no denying, M13 simply didn’t look much different in his scope than it did in mine. I know that is heresy, and that my eyes certainly aren’t what they used to be, but I saw what I saw is all I can say.

I actually won prizes!

What finally induced me to throw that dreaded big switch well before midnight was the dew. Man alive was it heavy. I was prepared to keep it off the telescope’s objective, having wrapped an 8-inch SCT heater strip around the objective cell and turned the (excellent) DewBuster controller up to 10-degrees. The ‘Buster kept the objective dry, but couldn’t keep me dry. Nothing is more miserable than being wet from head to toe with dew, and on this night there was no way to avoid that if you were doing visual observing.

So, I made my way back to the Lodge where I spent some time trying to look at Facebook without much success. The FRC had changed their Internet setup, and it just didn’t work very well this year. Not well at all. I finally gave that up as a bad business, chatted for a while with a couple of fellow partiers who’d also got tired of the dew, and finally headed to the room where I watched about 10-minutes of a DVD on the laptop before my eyes closed.

Friday

Somehow, someway, I managed to get out of bed and into the shower in time for breakfast at nine. In addition to the dew, what had gotten me down Thursday night, and had been getting me down for days, was an incipient cold. It had been trying to come on, ironically, ever since I got a flu shot the previous Monday. I spent more than a little of the star party feeling half sick and more than half tired, I’m afraid. Breakfast perked me right up, however. As at dinner, while I didn't indulge in the food I used to enjoy a few years ago, like the massive biscuits, there was still plenty of good stuff to enjoy.

After breakfast, I walked up to the observing field. These days I prefer not to hang on the field all day long. It’s just too tiring. I had a mission this morning: drying out my big refractor. As I suspected, despite the dew heater being run till the objective’s lenscap was in place, and despite me covering the scope with an excellent Telegizmos cover, Ethel was sopping wet and her objective lens was completely fogged up. A half hour or so in the sun and all was well.

By early afternoon, it was just this side of stifling hot outdoors. No, it wasn’t like a July day, but it was bad enough. I spent the hours before the prize giveaway inside in the cool Lodge, in the dining room, working on a Sky & Telescope assignment.

At three, Dorothy and I returned to the field, which was now really broiling under an October sun. It was worth it. I actually won something: a nice box of Celestron Plössl eyepieces. Not only did they come in a pretty aluminum case, they were accompanied by a set of filters and a shorty Barlow. Better yet, I actually have a need for ‘em, since I have been using my 3-inch f/11 achromat for a lot of my backyard viewing lately, it only accommodates 1.25-inch oculars, and many of those have gone out the door with the six telescopes I’ve sold over the last year.

Yes, there WERE Pokemon!

Supper, done, it was time to hit the field for my “serious” night. After having written an article about the Herschel 400 recently, I thought I’d revisit some of the season’s objects with a 6-inch. Yes, the 400 is supposedly doable with a 6-inch Newtonian under good conditions, and I had both a 6-inch refractor and those good conditions, but would a six reallydo it? Even a 6-inch refractor, which has more oomph than a 6-inch reflector? I wanted to find out.

Over the course of the hours that came before midnight—which was to be the witching hour for me this DSSG, it appeared—I did over 25 H-400s. Not a one of the fuzzies I went after escaped Ethel, including dim little galaxies down in Aquarius, which was well into the Baton Rouge light-dome. There was little doubt, though, that where Ethel really shone was on the big things. She had enough light gathering power coupled with enough field to make big ones like the Veil and North America nebulae come alive.

I passed 25 Herschel Objects, did a couple more for good measure, and called it a night well before 12. Yes, I was in violation of me and my friend Pat’s old-time rule, “No going to bed at Deep South until M42 is out of the trees.” I wanted to stick it out, but just couldn’t. As on the previous night, it was damp, very damp, and I was tired and feeling sick again. A few minutes shooting the breeze with friends in the Lodge, and I was off to bed. I was darned sure playing Astro Wimp this time out, but there just wasn’t anything for it.

Saturday

Saturday morning dawned to scattered clouds, but it was apparent we would have yet another good night. I considered what to do. The last time I’d done visual at Deep South, Dorothy and I had taken down the tent canopy Saturday afternoon, both so we could pack it while it was dry and to speed our get-a-way Sunday morning. I thought about doing that this time, but decided against it. It was going to be damp again and it would be nice to have a canopy on the field to keep the dew off when I took breaks or wanted to look at a print star atlas (my current fave, Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas Jumbo Edition).

One more prize drawing, and guess what? “I never win” Rod was a winner again. This time I picked up a Bresser 25mm 70-degree eyepiece. It produced beautiful images in the refractor, and was much lighter than the similar focal length, similar apparent field width eyepiece I own, so I was a happy camper. I used the Bresser happily for much of my Saturday night observing.

What did I look at? I again confined myself to the eye candy. What were the most amazing things I saw? The two halves of the Veil Loop in Cygnus, the Veil Nebula itself and the nearby Witch’s Broom Nebula. In the 35mm Panoptic equipped with an OIII filter, the Veil was a marvel, showing off its filigreed nature with direct vision. I have rarely seen the Witch’s Broom, which lies just west of the Veil, look as good as it did. The combo of the wide field of the Pan and the light gathering power of the big objective showed up more detail in it than I’ve seen easily with a C8.

Heretofore, my most memorable look at the Veil complex had been on a long ago near perfect night at the star party’s original home, Percy Quin State Park near McComb, Mississippi, with my old (and now sold) Ultima 8, Celeste. The Veil looked stupendous that night, but I have to say it looked better on this night with Ethel.

After admiring the Veil for a long while, I looked at many more objects, sharing views with my friends and having a grand time. However, as they say in Maine, “fun is fun, but done is done.” As the evening grew older, I began to feel icky again, and, besides that, had resolved to do the packing for the trip home as soon as the sun was up so we could get on the road as early as possible.

Amazingly, I was back on the uber-damp field right at the crack of dawn. Drying off that wet gear and loading it into the truck was not fun, but I got it done, and Dorothy and I were on the road shortly before breakfast.

What was the takeaway? That I still love Deep South. I still love star parties. I may not be quite the die-hard observer I once was, but I enjoyed the DSSG as much as I ever had, if in a slightly different way. I can tell that is true because as we were driving away from the Lodge, I was already looking forward to the next Deep South, in the spring, and was thinking about the telescope I would bring with me and all the fun I would surely have.

M92

The 2016 Deep South Star Gaze is now done, and with it my star partying for the year. And after weeks of unbelievably dry conditions and mostly clear skies, the clouds and rain are back. That means it’s time to continue my detailed observing guide to the Messier objects, starting with a good one.

M92

We begin with Hercules’ other globular cluster, M92. I didn’t spend much time with this star cluster as a youth, not because it wasn’t good, but because, as everybody points out, it is much overshadowed by nearby M13, which I tended to obsess over. I spent my summer evenings in Hercules trying to somehow, some way coax a little resolution out of the Great Globular with my puny Palomar Junior Newtonian.

While Messier 92 is a nice object, it is in no way a first rank globular as some pundits claim. Even if M13 were not in the same constellation stealing its thunder, it still would still be considered an also ran. It is not an M13, but it is also not an M5, an M3 an M2 an M15 or an M22. It’s better than M30 and M53, but is definitely a second-string Messier glob.

Which doesn’t mean M92 doesn’t look stupendous under the proper conditions. At a dark site, this Shapley-Sawyer Class IV globular is busted into hordes of pinpoints by a 6 or 8-inch telescope, and in a 10-inch it begins to make you think it really is competition for the top globs—well until you slew over to M22, that is. Still, at magnitude 6.4 and 14.0’ across M92 is, yes, a showpiece.

Alrighty, then, let’s have a look. If you, like me, use non-goto, non-DSC equipped telescopes at least some of the time, rest assured this one will not cause any object-locating heartburn. To find it with my Rigel Quick Finder equipped 10-inch dobbie, Zelda, I insert a medium-low power eyepiece and position the bullseye on a spot in space that forms a near 90-degree triangle with Eta and Pi Hercules. Our target lies 6-degrees north of Pi and is bright enough that just a little slewing around always turns it up after I position the telescope in its approximate location.

What’s it like in the eyepiece? In my backyard, my 3 – 4-inch refractors can make it look grainy, even on somewhat poor evenings. I was out just the other night with my 3-inch f/11 SkyWatcher refractor, and marveled that not only was M92 easy to find on a hazy evening, but that it lookedlike a globular. While not resolved, it wasn’t just a smudge, either.

As with most globs, every increase in aperture makes the cluster better, but this one, second-string though it may be, doesn’t require a large scope to look terrific, as I found out one night at the club dark site with my ETX125, a 5-inch MCT: “The core looks almost square at 170x. The outer region is round and populated by many, many stars, some of which hold steady with direct vision, and some of which tend to wink in and out.”

M93

M93 sketched with my Pal Jr...

Winter is open cluster time, and one of the better winter galactics is magnificent M93 lurking in oft-ignored constellation, Puppis. What we have here is a group of about 15 – 20 bright stars and maybe 50 dimmer ones spread over an area of about 20-minutes of arc, In other words: perfect for small scopes. Well, depending on your site, anyway. M93 has a rather southerly declination, -23-degrees 51’, and for many observers that puts it a little close to the horizon some of the time, especially considering its somewhat subdued magnitude, 10.93. It is still worth plenty of eyepiece time, though.

Finding M93 manually is not difficult if you can see the magnitude 3.3 star Xi Puppis. The problem for most of you will be that while you can see this star, “Asmidiske,” which lies some 16-degrees southeast of Sirius, you may not be familiar enough with the stars of Puppis to know which one of the constellation’s scattered suns it is. As I’ve often said, if you want to star-hop efficiently, you have got to familiarize yourself with the less well-known and visited constellations. Once you’ve got Xi in the finder, the cluster can be easily swept up a degree-and-a-half to the west-southwest. Despite its somewhat dim nature, M93 should be visible in a low power eyepiece in the backyard.

I often looked at M93 when I lived in my pre-Chaos Manor South downtown home in the 1980s. For a (short) while, the largest telescopes I owned were 4.25-inch and 6-inch reflectors, and given the rather severe light pollution, open clusters were often about all I could see well. While M93 was sometimes in the trees, it never failed to thrill me. Occasionally, as in the accompanying sketch from those days, all I could see with my 4-inch was the central group of brighter stars, but it still looked great. From a dark site in my modern 4 and 5-inch refractors, this field just comes alive with hordes of small stars.

M94, the Croc’s Eye Galaxy

What’s troubling you, bunky? Your spring backyard sky is hazy and the light pollution is heavy, but you still long to see a galaxy? I’ve got one your small scope can pull out every single time, M94 in Canes Venatici. It’s an Sb spiral with a preternaturally bright center as befits its status as a Seyfert galaxy and which allows it to be visible in 3 – 4-inch telescopes with ease in nasty skies.

M94 imaged with the old DSI...

There is absolutely no difficulty involved in finding M94. It is a degree-and-a-half northeast of a line drawn between Canes’ two prominent stars, Cor Caroli (Alpha), and Chara (Beta). Position your scope almost midway between the two hunting dogs—maybe a smidge closer to the Alpha dog—and then slew that 1.5-degrees northeast. The only possible diff is that at low power M94 can resemble a slightly bloated star.

And a slightly bloated star surrounded by some thin haze is all you will see in a small scope from the backyard. Without larger aperture (or a camera) and a dark site, you’ll fail to understand why this object is “the Croc’s Eye.” The reason for that moniker is that in large aperture scopes at high power (or in my in my C8 equipped with Meade’s old DSI camera as here) you begin to see spiral structure surrounding the bright core, which is in turn surrounded by a faint ring (a starburst region). The combination of these things does make this object somewhat resemble a reptile’s eye.

M95

When it comes to spring galaxies from the backyard, we go from the trivially easy to the considerably harder. M95, a magnitude 10.6, 7.1’ x 4.3’ Sb spiral is not impossible, but at times it is unavailable to a 4-inch or even a 6-inch under compromised skies. It’s still a nice catch, however, and if you’ve got a 10-inch available you’ll like the field, which includes its sister galaxy, M96, just 42’ to the east.

Finding M95 without electronic assistance is not always easy. The only ready signpost is magnitude 5.45 Kappa Leonis in Leo the Lion’s “belly” area. The galaxy lies 2-degrees 33’ to the south. A better way to go might be to find the much more prominent galaxy M105 first. From there it’s a trip of only 1-degree 17’ to the southwest to get on the M95 field.

Once there, don’t expect too much if you don’t have dark skies. Even in my 11-inch SCT, M95 was subdued in suburbia: “Like M96, M95 is basically a round fuzzball in light pollution. Stellar core. It is slightly easier than M96.TeleVue Panoptic 22mm, 127x.” Frankly, even under dark skies with larger scopes, don’t expect much else.

M96

M96 is M95’s companion galaxy, and is similar visually to M95. While it’s somewhat brighter at magnitude 10.1, it is also a little larger 7.6’ x 5.0’, and actually slightly less prominent to my eye. Like M95, it cries out for 10-inches of aperture in the average backyard if you want to make things easy. Which doesn’t mean you can’t spot it with a smaller instrument on a good evening. I’ve seen both it and its neighbor with my C102 refractor on haze-free spring nights.

If you’ve found M95, you’ve found M96. Just remember: M96 is on the east, and M95 is on the west.

ATIK Infinity M97...

What can you see once you are there? In 8-inch – 10-inch instruments, you’ll see a somewhat elongated fuzzy, maybe 2’ worth, with a brighter center. In larger scopes at better sites, the galaxy increases in size but still doesn’t give up much more in the way of detail.

M97

M97, the famous Owl (planetary) Nebula in Ursa Major has, as I’ve said before, a reputation for toughness. That’s an undeserved reputation in this day of OIII filters, which can make old Owley pop out of some pretty bright skies. But you know what? I’ve spotted it with a suburban 3-inch without a filter. Oh, it was much better with the filter than without it, but it was nevertheless detectible sans LPR filter. With an OIII? My 60mm ETX has pulled it out of remarkably putrid skies.

It’s no hassle to find the Owl the old-fashioned way, as it lies only 2-degrees 20’ east-southeast of a prominent star, magnitude 2.3 Merak in the bowl of the dipper. Put a filter on a 25mm eyepiece, scan in that direction, and the large (3’24” x 3’18”) round glow (magnitude 9.9) of the Owl will enter your eyepiece.

There, in a small scope, that’s about it: a round smudge. A larger telescope, a 10 - 12-inch may, may reveal the holy grail of owl-watcher, the two dark spots that are its eyes and which are the reason this nebula is the “Owl.” In suburban skies, they are most often only suspected in these medium-sized scopes. At a dark site, they are considerably easier, if not always easy. Large aperture telescopes under excellent conditions may also reveal the several 16^th magnitude range stars involved in the nebula.

M98

We end on another spring object, a galaxy, M98 in Coma Berenices, which lies on the edge of the great mass Virgo of galaxies. How much you will like this magnitude 10.14, 9’48” x 2’48” edge-on Sab island universe depends, as it usually does with galaxies, upon your aperture and your skies.

From the suburbs, it can be visible as an elongated something in an 8-inch. A 10-inch begins to bring out its edge-on galaxy nature, but you need to get out where it is dark to really appreciate this one.

M98

The main problem here is not the seeing but the finding. Take it from me: use goto or DSCs on this critter. The galaxy lies in the fairly star poor area east of Denebola, about 6.0’ from that bright star. If you don’t have access to an electronically enabled scope, detailed computer finder charts can get you there, but it will probably not be fun.

When you are on the galaxy, I hope you are on it at your club dark site. There, in a 10 – 12-inch, or, better, a 16-inch, M98 can be spectacular, a long, luminous spindle with a bright and tiny nucleus floating in the black void.

And so, we end it for this time with only two more installments to go. Given the way the skies look at the moment—the November storms are on their way—it appears you may actually get one of those installments next week. I have the EQ-6 mount and a refractor set up in the backyard right now in hopes of bringing you something different, but the weather gods clearly say “no.”

AR102 and Atlas...

More than a few new amateurs want to take pictures of the night sky. Specifically, they long to take images of deep sky objects, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, through the telescope. The time-honored advice given these people is “Start simply. Take star trails photos with your camera on a tripod and move on up to piggyback imaging. Through the telescope? It’s expensive and there is just so much to go wrong. Your backyard isn’t good enough to let you get much of anything anyway. You don’t want to spend all that money and time and have nothing to show for it, do you?” But is that the correct advice?

I think the first part of the above is valid. Beginning with star trails and then piggybacking the camera, mounting it on the tube of a telescope so it can take advantage of the mount’s tracking while shooting through its own lens, is still the way to go. If nothing else, it gets the novice acquainted with focusing on the sky, operating the camera for long exposure work, and the realities of setting up to do any kind of astrophotography. The rest however? Those cautions about how hard and expensive it is to shoot through the scope and that you can’t do any deep sky work from the average suburban backyard? I set out to prove that wrong just the other night.

Not that I was completely sure I would prove that hoary advice wrong. Especially since my other goal was keeping the cost of gear down just as low as it could possibly be, radically low, and making set up and image acquisition as simple as possible.

First thing any deep sky imager needs is a decent tracking (equatorial) mount. Most of us, however, whether beginning or way advanced, don’t need a 10-thousand-dollar rig. That’s because most of us don’t have the dark and constantly clear skies that justify such an expense. Most of us don’t envisage doing 8-hour LRGB exposures anyway. We just want nice snapshots of the prettier objects to share with our friends and families. If that describes you, you can get a perfectly adequate (used) German equatorial mount (GEM) for 300 – 600 dollars.

What I chose to use for this test was my nine-year-old Synta-made Atlas mount. It is not fancy, but offers decent goto, excellent stability, and (unguided) tracking quality good enough for the relatively short exposures and focal lengths most will want to mess with in the beginning. A used Atlas (a.k.a. “EQ-6”) can be had for as little as 500 – 800 dollars (for the goto version; avoid the old non-goto variant).

Unfortunately, EQ-6 owners tend to hold onto their mounts, so these GEMs are not as common on the used market as you’d expect given their numbers and the many years they’ve been in production. 500 – 800 might also be a bit much for a novice.

80mm APO on a VX mount...

Another good alternative is a Celestron CG5 goto mount or a Meade LXD-75. These are plentiful used and can be had for 400 dollars or even less. They won’t track quite as well as the Atlas, but they will be good enough for beginners using short, fast (low focal ratio) telescopes, and have the advantage of being much lighter than the Atlas. How about similar non-goto CG5 class mounts? Only resort to one of them if you have no choice. Computerized pointing is a huge help in imaging. Do you really want to spend half your time just getting a target in the frame of your camera?

Now for the telescope. To speak plainly, get a refractor. Yes, I’ve had a long running love affair with Schmidt Cassegrains, but I can think of no more difficult scope with which to begin astrophotography. Even when equipped with focal reducers, their focal lengths are long—meaning tracking is critical and it’s difficult to produce images with round stars—and their moving mirror focusing arrangement is a pain for imaging. That alone can cause trailed stars.

I will admit it is possible to get started using an SCT. I went from fooling around with Newtonians to taking my first successful deep sky photos with an SCT and a film SLR. Course, you really had to want those pictures. You had to focus with a dim SLR viewfinder, guide by hand, and it was never certain whether you got anything until you developed the negatives. It seemed worth the pain to me those long years ago, but even when I was younger and more patient, it wasn't exactly "fun."

Today, lazy and ornery as I am (my friends have taken to referring to me as The Honey Badger), my least favorite thing in the world is taking long exposure pictures with an SCT. Get a refractor. Specifically, an 80mm to 100mm refractor with a focal ratio of f/5 to f/7 or a bit more. Of late, my 80mm refractor has become my most oft used telescope for imaging.

But exactly what sort of refractor? In order to keep the price of the telescope down, naturally you’ll be buying a Chinese scope. Possibly a used one. What would be ideal? An 80mm ED model. The “ED” business means the false color, the purple fringing around bright objects, that is a characteristic of non-ED (achromatic) refracting telescopes will be low.

An 80 ED can be an incredibly powerful tool for astrophotography, allowing you to take wide-field shots of even very dim objects. What matters for extended objects like nebulae and galaxies when imaging is not aperture, but f-ratio. The lower it is, the less exposure time you will need, the deeper you can go, and the wider your field of view will be. How much money are we talking? Explore Scientific will sell you a nice 80mm triplet ED/APOtelescope for just a little over 500 dollars.

You’ve just bought a mount, though, and 500 new or used sounds like a lot. Can you go cheaper? You can: with an achromat. Yeah, I hear the veteran astrophotographers howling: “Rod, how can you recommend an achro? Especially a medium-fast achromat? You can’t take pictures with one. There’ll be horrible purple halos around even dimmer stars.”

Yes, I know there will be the dread color purple. But I also know 100mm achros are dirt cheap right now. The above mentioned Explore Scientific offers the very fine 4-inch f/6.5 AR102 for as little as 300 dollars on sale. Almost everything you need is in the box, including a decent finder and an excellent star diagonal. Despite the conventional wisdom, I decided to see whether one of these scopes—which is superior to an 80mm ED for visual use—could deliver pictures that would please a newbie, at least.

Of course, you’ll need a camera. If you’ve got a DSLR of any brand, use that. If you don’t, there is but one choice for the dollar-conscious newbie: a Canon Digital Rebel. They aren’t expensive new (see the website of my fave dealer, B&H), and are dirt cheap used. Only caveat? Don’t go too old. Try to at least get the Rebel Xti. One of these classic Rebels still has more than enough features and capabilities for any beginner. My Xti is nearly a decade old, and I still use it for astro-imaging—frequently. While its top ISO (sensitivity) is 1600, its relatively large pixels mean it is quite sensitive.

To mount the camera in the scope’s focuser you’ll need a (2-inch if possible) prime focus adapter, available for a few bucks from most astro-dealers or from B&H. The DSLR is attached to that prime focus adapter using a T-ring, available for your camera brand from the same sources.

Do you need a computer? You will for image processing, and one can make focusing and image acquisition easier in the field (I use the wonderful program Nebulosity to control my DSLRs during picture taking), but you don’t need one. A simple and inexpensive remote shutter release for your camera, an “intervalometer” will do.

So, into the backyard. While the Atlas’ GEM head is heavy, it’s actually somewhat less awkward for me to lift onto the tripod than my CGEM for some reason. Once I had it on the tripod with the counterweight on the counterweight shaft, it was pretty simple to finish the setup: mount the scope, in this case the AR102, and balance it so it was slightly east-heavy (to keep the RA gears meshed). That only required one 11-pound Synta pancake weight halfway up the declination shaft. Plug in power (an AC adapter I got from Orion) and the hand control and I was done with the preliminaries. And, naturally, right after that, the clouds came.

Before the evening was over, I was able to get a few cloud free minutes, however. Enough to allow me to polar align the mount and check it out (I hadn’t used the Atlas since the 2015 Peach State Star Gaze). To polar align, I follow a two-part procedure. The first part uses the mount’s built in polar alignment borescope.

M15 before processing for chromatic aberration...

First, I rotate the mount in RA until the little circle on the polar borescope reticle where Polaris goes is on the bottom, and set the RA setting circle to “0”. I then turn on the mount and after I enter time/date/location it gives me Polaris’ current hour angle. I rotate the mount in RA until that “time” is under the RA circle’s pointer. With the little circle where it should be, I move Polaris into it using the mount’s altitude and azimuth adjusters (only).

The above will generally give a good enough polar alignment to allow reasonable length—two or three minute—sub exposures on the camera. It’s easy enough to tighten the alignment up a bit if desired, though, with part two of the process, using the built in polar alignment in the hand control. To do that, I complete a three-star goto alignment with the mount and then select Polar Alignment from the setup menu. From there, the process is nearly the same as the AllStar polar alignment used in Synta’s Celestron branded mounts.

To do a polar alignment with the hand control, I choose a bright star (one due south is best), slew to it, and begin the polar alignment routine. The hand control instructs me to center the star in the eyepiece, and then slews away from it. I use the altitude adjuster on the mount to get the star as close to the center of the field as I can get it. After I press Enter, the mount slews again, and I re-center the star using the azimuth adjusters on the mount. When that’s done the process is complete. The manual warns you may want to redo the goto alignment after a polar alignment, but I usually find that unnecessary.

All done, I did a few gotos to see how the mount was performing. It’s no secret the pointing accuracy of the Atlas is not nearly as good as that of the CGEM, with its famous 2 + 4 star alignment, but the Atlas’ three-star alignment is usually quite good enough with a widefield refractor onboard.

Anyhow, anything I requested from one side of the sky to the other was always somewhere in the field of my 8mm Ethos ocular (83x). The Atlas would not be my choice for video astronomy, where I might want to go to 20 or 30 targets over the course of an evening, and where I’d need the mount to put those targets on the small chip of a video camera, but the Atlas with its SynScan goto system is more than sufficient for visual use or for going to a couple of astrophoto targets a night.

Just after the mount centered the Dumbbell Nebula dead center in the field of my 25mm Bresser eyepiece (we’ll address the current crop of wide field bargain basement eyepieces like the Bresser some Sunday soon), the clouds poured in again and M27 faded out. I threw the big switch, covered the scope, and repaired to the den for some Agents of Shield action.

After...

While we had plenty of clouds for several days, we didn’t have a drop of rain—this has been one of the driest falls I can remember—so I was able to leave the Atlas and the AR102 set up in our secure backyard covered by one of the excellent Telegizmos scope covers. Finally, last Friday evening, the clouds departed and I was able to get started.

While I purposefully kept things as simple as possible, not even controlling the mount with the laptop, I did use Nebulosity for image acquisition. With the way my eyes are in these latter days, I simply find it too difficult to focus on a DSLR’s small display, even with zoom enabled.

Using Nebulosity, I can focus with the 17.3-inch screen of my Toshiba, and, using the program’s fine-focus mode, get images as sharp as possible. I thought that would be critical when using the AR102, as any misfocus would make chromatic aberration all the worse. I focused on Vega and the dimmer stars in its field, and when done sent the scope to my first target, M27, using the SynScan HC, which put the nebula almost in the center of the frame.

Let me pay Explore Scientific a big complement right here. The Crayford style focuser on the AR102 proved to be just about perfect. Not only did it have plenty of range, more than enough to focus the the Canon and the (excellent) Hotech field-flattener I used in lieu of a prime focus adapter (couldn’t find my plain prime focus adapter anywhere), its fine focus control made dialing in exact focus a joy. The draw-tube never slipped or threatened to with the Xti onboard, even when I pointed at M15, which was riding high.

In order to eliminate the necessity of guiding, I set the camera’s sensitivity to the maximum, ASA 1600, and limited my exposures to 30-seconds. That resulted in perfectly round stars in almost all my frames and had the benefit of keeping the background reasonably dark given my somewhat bright skies. Despite the typically bright suburban skies, it was apparent sky darkness was good enough to allow even a novice without a lot of image processing experience to get plenty of good stuff.

Alrighty, then. I told Nebulosity to give me 30 30-second sub-frames, and it began clicking them off. How was the chromatic aberration? Oh, the brighter stars definitely had purple haloes. I didn’t worry about that, and didn’t add any kind of filter to the imaging train. I’d decided that in the interests of simplicity I’d do any "filtering" after the fact, during post processing. I am also of the opinion that deep sky results are usually better if you don’t use filters of any kind during exposures. I wandered back inside to watch TV. The mount was tracking well, and Nebulosity was doing its thing without a hitch, so there was no need for me to stay outside kibitzing.

When the M27 sequence was done, I used the HC to go to M15, the great globular cluster in Pegasus. There is a magnitude 6 star in the field with M15, and I figured that would provide a good test of my ability to suppress chromatic aberration during image processing. Indeed, I could see the star had a pretty extensive bright purple halo even in the short subs. Again, I didn’t worry, just let the mount, scope, and camera do their thing.

M27

I was smart enough not to examine the M27 and M15 sub-frames after the last target, M15, was done. Pictures always look much better in the morning. I just shut down, covered the scope, and hauled the laptop inside. Despite not examining the subs, I was pretty sure what I had gotten, and gotten so easily and simply, would have more than thrilled me when I was a novice.

Next morning, I set about to process my pictures, beginning by stacking the sub-frames into single images of M15 and M27 using Nebulosity’s built in image stacking routine (best in the business in my opinion). When I was done, I was not surprised to see that the brighter stars were really purple, but, again, I did not panic.

There are various ways to remove the purple halos of chromatic aberration in post processing. In the interests of simplicity, I decided to do as little as possible. There are ways to reduce not only the color purple, but the sizes of the haloes around the stars using Photoshop. I’ve experimented with that in the past with a friend’s achromatic images. Photoshop is expensive, however, and the procedure not overly simple for a novice. Instead, I used the built-in routine in another Adobe program, Lightroom.

The advantages of using Lightroom is that it is relatively inexpensive and does a lot, even including a built-in routine to remove that nasty purple. All that is required is to move a couple of sliders and you are done. True, the haloes remain, but they are no longer purple and are much less intrusive. Again, there are ways to reduce the size of the halos and the star disks themselves, and if you out there in blog-land have a good (and simple) method of doing that, I’d love to hear about it.

And that was that. Well, except for a little level-adjusting and some minor sharpening on M15. My resulting images are notmasterpieces, but they certainly blow away many of the astrophotos I took in the film era. As above, I know, know, I’d have been thrilled to get these results when I was wet-behind-the-ears. I’d have been thrilled to get deep sky pictures so easily.

What’s next? While these pictures look pretty good, they could have used a little more exposure, so why don’t we talk about the art of autoguiding, autoguiding simply some Sunday soon? For now? Why don’t y’allget outside and see what you can get of the deep sky without a lot of effort?

You’ve accumulated some hours in the backyard imaging with a simple achromat and an Atlas/Sirius/CG5/LXD75/AVX/Bresser Exos-2 class mount. You’re pretty pleased with the results you’ve gotten, and as your processing skills have advanced, you’ve been known to mutter, “Hmm, not bad, not bad at all” when looking at your latest batch of astro-snaps. You’re beginning to think you might be ready to take astrophotography to that vaunted next level, and your questions now are “Should I?” and “How?”

As for the first question, “Should I?” the answer, as it so often is in astrophotography and amateur astronomy in general, is “It depends.” If you are planning on continuing a program of imaging relatively bright objects from the backyard, a higher quality scope and guided imaging can make some difference. However, as you can see in the shots below, it is not like night and day.

Look at M27. The top picture is our original unguided stack of 20 30-second exposures taken with the AR-102 achromat. On the bottom is a stack of 20 3-minute subs done with my William Optics 80mm Megrez II APO. The APO shot is better, but it sure ain’t like night and day. The colors are somewhat more saturated, there is less noise, there is a little (but not a lot) more detail in the nebulosity, and, the main thing, the bright stars are smaller and have no halos. There is even less difference when comparing the APO/Achro M15 pix. These pictures were taken under marginal conditions, but still represent, in my experience, what you can expect from the backyard when you kick things up that notch.

Could I have made the difference larger by exposing for longer with the APO? Yeah, if I could have done that. In my backyard, especially in the presence of the not uncommon haze and humidity which amplify my light pollution, I can't go any longer than 3-minutes, really. As you can see in the unprocessed frame, the sky background was already extremely bright at a modest 120-seconds. I could have used a mild light pollution reduction filter to tone it down, but that brings its own problems.

Verdict? If you plan on continuing to do almost all your work from your less than perfect backyard, focusing on the more prominent objects, and the look of brighter stars in the achromat shots doesn’t annoy you, stick with that achromatic refractor and short, unguided exposures. If nothing else, completing a major project with a simple setup, maybe like imaging the entire Messier catalog from your back forty, will prepare you to take full advantage of more complex rigs if/when you decide to move up to that next level. Your wallet will certainly thank you for sticking with that humble AR102.

Still, there are reasons to think about upgrading to an apochromatic refractor. There’s no denying an ED APO scope is a more versatile scope. One is, for example, more suitable for viewing the Moon and planets—not that the Moon and planets can’t look good in a 4-inch achromat. The main reason for you to switch to an ED scope, however, is if you want to go deeper and intend to do at least some of your imaging from dark sites.

The longer exposures possible from a better observing location buy a lot. Some time back, I did M33, the Triangulum Galaxy. First night out I was tired and didn't want to stay on the observing field long and, so, stuck to short (2-minute) subframes. Looking at the raw images the next a.m., I determined I needed considerably more data, more exposure, to the tune of 3 – 5 minute subframes to make the galaxy really pop. When you are out in the dark you can do that, expose long enough to bring out faint details without the crazy bright background of backyard shots making that a losing battle.

OK, so if you want to take it to the next step, either because you’re going to start imaging at a dark site or because you just want a telescope that will do more things well than an achromat can, step one is getting an ED refractor. My choices, being cheap as I am, are the Explore Scientific triplets or the SkyWatcher Pro ED doublets. While the three element objectives of the ES scopes should theoretically put them ahead of the game in color correction, it’s really a wash when comparing them to the SkyWatchers. Unlike the ESes, SkyWatcher's two element objectives contain one lens made of FPL-53 synthetic fluorite, which makes up for the lack of a third lens element. Either a SkyWatcher or an ES is a great and economical choice whether you choose 3, 4, or 5-inches of aperture. I own the SkyWatcher Pro ED 120, which is a great scope, but I could be just as happy with the Explore (Triplet Essential) 127.

Achro top, APO bottom...

Get that new scope, have fun seeing what an essentially color free refractor can do, and and when you're ready try some longer exposure imaging with it. What you’ll quickly find is that once you get much the 30-second - 1-minute level, you likely won’t have perfectly round stars with the class of mounts we are using. If you want to go longer, you will need to guide. You’ll need a second camera that monitors the position of a “guide” star and issues corrections to the mount to keep that star centered. To do auto-guiding, you will need three things: a guide telescope, a guide camera, and software to make it all work.

Guide Camera

Any camera, still or video, capable of sending images to a computer over a USB connection is capable of working as a guide camera. However, for best results you’ll want one that is sensitive and delivers monochrome images. The reason you need sensitivity is clear: you want to always be able to find a guide star in the field of your target. A star that is good enough in the signal to noise ratio department to allow your guide software to stay locked onto it. The reason to pick a monochrome rather than color camera is that monochrome cams tend to be more sensitive and also less noisy.

So, which one? One of the best guide cameras in the business is Starlight Xpress’ Lodestar. Unfortunately, it’s not just a great guide cam; it’s a fairly expensive one at 650 dollars. At the other end of the price scale is Orion’s StarShoot Autoguider at about 250 bucks. The Orion works—I used one for years—but there is no denying it could be more sensitive. Also, while most guide cams can be used as imaging cameras as well as guiding cameras—many can do a good job on the planets or even the deep sky within reason—Orion’s StarShoot is really for guiding only. It can be made to deliver images with special software, but they are not very good.

So which one? After agonizing over the guide cam question for a long time after I decided to replace my Orion, I settled on a QHY 5L-IIM. It is the same price as the StarShoot (actually, the StarShoot is a rebadged, earlier model QHY camera), but is far more sensitive and is an impressive planetary imager, too. It’s small, it’s cute, and it is oh-so-sensitive. In my years of using the StarShoot, I never landed on a field where there wasn’t a single star I could use for guiding. Frequently, however, there were only two or three even marginally usable stars in the frame, and seeing them took 3-second or even longer guide camera exposures. The typical QHY 5L-II field is filled with dozens of good guide stars in short exposures.

How long your guide cam needs to expose to deliver a suitable star is important because of the inexpensive mounts we are using. If you are forced to use three second or longer exposures, the mount’s periodic error over those three or more seconds may cause your stars to trail slightly. With the QHY I can always get by with one to 1.5-second guide exposures.

Achro top, APO bottom...

Guide Scope

The guide camera needs a telescope to look through. That can be the imaging telescope if you use a device called an “off-axis-guider,” which diverts a small amount of the light from the main scope to the guide camera. An “OAG” is difficult to use, however, and unless you are attempting to image at focal lengths above about 1300mm, especially with an SCT, it is a tool you’ll want to leave for later. Instead, use a guide scope, a small telescope piggybacked on the main instrument.

That guide scope can be any sort of telescope (excluding a CAT with moving mirror focusing). 80mm achromatic refractors like the Synta Short Tube 80s are often used. The 80 f/5 can indeed work well if it is securely mounted. If it is not securely mounted, if its mounting flexes as the telescope changes attitude, etc., stars will trail no matter how good the auto-guiding. Mount that sucker as sturdily as possible using high quality solutions from Losmandy or ADM. Or, if your imaging scope is less than 1000mm in focal length or so, think about a 50mm finder-guider.

A finder-guider is basically a 50mm finder scope that has been modified to accept a guide camera with a 1.5-inch nose-piece instead of an eyepiece. The advantage to the finder-guiders is that they are light and are securely mounted in the average 50mm finder mount and not likely to flex. With a QHY or similarly sensitive camera, one will pick up plenty of guide stars across a wide field. I have even used one semi-successfully with my 8-inch SCT reduced to f/7.

Software

There are numerous guiding packages available, but what is most everybody using? PHD Guiding. Talking the ins and outs of setting it up and using it is the subject for an entire article, which I did a couple of years ago. I will say, though, that the latest iteration of the program, PHD2, is almost plug and play. You will likely get good, if not necessarily perfect, results just using the defaults. Anyhow, start with PHD2 if for no other reason than that so many people are using it that there are oodles of tutorials on how best to adjust its somewhat bewildering array of settings.

Hooking Up

Like working with PHD, setting all the gear up for auto-guiding is a subject for an entire article (here). Basically, though, what you will do is mount guide scope and guide camera on the main scope and plug in two cables. Assuming your mount has an auto-guide input, you’ll run the (included with the QHY) RJ type ST-4 guide cable from the RJ plug on the camera to the RJ plug (the auto-guide port) on your mount. Then, connect a suitable USB cable from the camera to the computer. What if your mount (like the LXD75) does not have a guide input? You can still guide using the mount’s serial port. See the above article for details.

Finally, start PHD and begin taking frames with the guide camera. Follow the instructions that came with the guide scope to achieve initial focus. Getting the guide scope in decent focus is critical for good guiding performance. Some gurus will tell you that being just ever so slightly out of focus yields better guiding, but you still need to be close to focus for good results. One tip? Clicking on a star on the PHD video display will give the current signal to noise ratio. Adjust focus on the guide scope until that number is as high as you can get it. When you are done, click on a bright (but not saturated) star, and click the bullseye reticle icon. PHD will then “calibrate,” move your mount in the cardinal directions to get a feel of how it responds, and will begin guiding.

Before processing...

From there? Take pictures just like you did in the 30-second days, only with longer durations, maybe beginning with 1 – 2 minutes. Another tip? As I hinted at last time, use Nebulosity to control your Canon camera. It makes everything so much easier. Be aware that to use longer exposures with Nebulosity and the early Canons like the Rebel Xti, you’ll need to connect a shutter interface box between the camera and the laptop. Those are readily available from Shoestring Astronomy.

Processing

It’s morning. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and you are ready to see what those hard won long exposure images look like. Process them the same basic way you did your 30-second shots. Stack them using Nebulosity’s built in stacker or the freeware Deep Sky Stacker. Is there anything you will have to do differently when processing longer exposures? In the backyard, the sky background will be considerably brighter, so you’ll have to deal with that using your processing program’s histogram adjustments. You may also have some light pollution gradients. These are the effects of the bright backyard sky and will cause some areas of the image background to be brighter than others. One typical effect of this is vignetting.

Vignetting is what I call “the porthole effect.” The center of the image is brighter than the edges. It’s like you are looking through a round porthole at your object, and will limit how much you can brighten the target. There are two ways to deal with that, the hard way and the easy way. If you want to go hard, take flat-field frames: illuminated, evenly illuminated, shots of the twilight sky or a white card or through a translucent mask. Apply those flats to your images (with Nebulosity or your astrophoto processing program of choice). Or, if you are lazy like me, you can take the easy way out and use a software tool called Gradient Xterminator.

Gradient Xterminator is a simple plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that will virtually eliminate any light pollution gradients. It is extremely simple to use, and the only real “problem” is that you’ll need Adobe Photoshop to use it (it will also work with some versions of Photoshop Elements). Adobe Photoshop is something you probably want anyway as you grow as an imager, and there are options today for getting it that aren’t quite as painful on the pocketbook as in the past.

In addition to light pollution gradients, the sky background in light polluted areas, especially if there was haze present during the exposure, may be badly discolored, brownish or even red as in the example here. It will be even worse if you, like me on the night I shot these pix, allow a little dew to accumulate on the objective without noticing it (I was inside watching TV while Nebulosity took my pictures). The easiest way to fix this yuckiness is with the background color offset tool in Nebulosity. That turns a pain into a pleasure when it comes to getting the sky the correct hue.

And, well, you know what? That is about it. Going from unguided imaging to auto-guiding is quite a leap, but it is the biggest leap you will encounter in astrophotography. Everything else is incremental improvements: better mounts, cooled CCD cameras, imaging through filters with a monochrome camera, etc., etc. Once you have mastered setting up for and doing guided photography with your simple rig, you have conquered 90% of the astrophotography learning curve, and can now, I hope, actually start having fun.

Four years ago, an article appeared here with the title “After the SCT.” In truth, it really didn’t have a darned thing to do with Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes. What it was was a report on the 2012 Deep South Regional Star Gaze. That year, the telescope I took to the event was my hallowed 12-inch truss tube Dobsonian, Old Betsy. The fact that I had her on the field instead of a Schmidt Cassegrain impelled one of my (shocked) fellow star partiers to ask me worriedly whether my next book would be called After the SCT. I replied, “There ain’t no ‘after’ for [me]. I am still Mr. SCT and I still use Schmidt Cassegrains more than any other design of telescope.”

Yes, despite leaving the CATs at home with the cats in 2012, it was true I still loved SCTs best. Well, maybe that was true, or maybe I was whistling past the graveyard. Those words were written just after I completed the observing project of a lifetime, The Herschel Project, my quest to view all 2500 Herschel deep sky objects. Chasing down more than two thousand galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters over the course of a mere three years, especially given our weather and my work schedule at the time, ensured I was sorta wrung out and ready for a change.

Oh, I continued on for the next two years much as I had, using my SCTs to slowly, ever so slowly, tie the ribbon on the H-project. Using my C11, Big Bertha, and my C8, Celeste, to clean up a few objects here and there. Some that I wasn’t 100% sure I’d identified correctly, and some that I wanted to re-image with my new color Mallincam. That’s what I told myself I was doing anyway, but the truth, I think, was really that I had no idea what—if anything—came next for me in (amateur) astronomy.

I did try to get various new observing projects off the ground. I started in on the ARPs, for example, observing them in much the same way I had the Herschels. Some visual observing with the C11 and the 12-inch Dob and lots of video observing with the C8 and C11. It, like every other project I tried, however, fell flat. With a resounding thud. I was worried. Had finishing the Herschel Project also finished amateur astronomy for me?

There it remained until early 2015. That’s when things began to change. No, I didn’t suddenly think up a new approach to amateur astronomy. That happened, but it was the result of other changes. Mostly me entering in upon a time in life when I began considering larger questions than just “Hmm, I wonder how a C14 would do on a CGEM DX?” The big questions, questions like, “How did I get here?” and “What is it all about?” and “What (if anything) comes after this story is done?”

“Began to change”? Not hardly. The astounding thing was that I went to bed one night in early 2015 (after imaging that winter’s cool little comet) feeling much the same as always, and awakened feeling entirely different. What concerned me now was no longer observing projects, but the questions above and many more like them, which suddenly seemed more significant than Arp galaxies. I also began to look with dismay at all the astro-junk I’d accumulated over the last 25 years of my near 50 years as an amateur and began to thin the herd.

Big Eye of my 6-inch...

I won’t bore you with the answers to some (not all) of those questions I’ve come up with so far. Every person has to wrestle with these things for themselves and the answers you arrive at may be starkly different from those I’ve arrived at. We’re talking astronomy here, anyway, and the point is that being preoccupied with deeper thoughts meant I didn’t want to worry about, struggle with, or obsess over telescopes anymore. I did still want to observe, though.

I just didn’t want to be bothered by my telescope when it was time to watch the skies. The C11 was out. So was the C8. I didn’t want to spend 30-minutes setting up a scope. Heck, I didn’t want to spend 2-minutes. In the months immediately following that 2015 winter’s night with the comet, the yen to look at the stars often came on the spur of the moment, and our AR102 4-inch achromat or my C102 4-inch achromat on a light SkyWatcher AZ-4 alt-azimuth mount didn’t bother me. I’d put one of the refractors on the mount and carry it into the backyard in a single piece. No drives, no batteries, no computers, no aggravation, just me contemplating the cosmos.

Yes, I will admit I missed the light gathering power of the SCTs at first. My solution was to buy an inexpensive and ultra-simple 10-inch solid tube Newtonian, a GSO Dobsonian, Zelda. She is almost as quick and painless to set up as the refractors. Do I use her a lot? I did when I first got her, but of late not quite so often despite her simplicity. This past year, my refractors have been in the backyard more often than the big 10-inch.

What changed? I began concentrating on what I couldsee with my "small" refractors rather than what I couldn't. When I learned to do that, it was as if the deep sky became new to me again after all these years. I won’t tell you I was seeing more details in my favorite objects, but I was seeing a different, a new—or at least forgotten—aspect of them and I welcomed that.

It wasn’t just my new mindset that impelled me begin a more relaxed sort of visual observing. It was my body. No, age didn’t suddenly catch up with me, or at least that was only part of it. I was washing down the front porch of good, old Chaos Manor South just after we moved out. Stupidly, I was wearing flip-flops, slipped on the soapy front steps, and crunched my back—but good.

I was in pain for a while, but it seemed as if I’d dodged a bullet and just gotten bruised up and that would be the end of it. Guess again, Skeezix. Last summer, it became obvious that was not the case. I did something that aggravated that back injury. I don’t know what it was, but I was in real pain for weeks. Carrying a C8 into the yard would have been laughable. 3-inch and 4-inch refractors became my lifelines to astronomy. And I had so much fun with them that when my back pain suddenly subsided—almost overnight—my inclination was to stick with them.

The C102...

Sure, I could have gotten a similarly light and portable CAT, a C5 or a C6 SCT, or a 4 or 5-inch MCT, and used it in similar grab ‘n go fashion, but the refractors, and especially the AR102, had the additional benefit of giving me wide-field views at my dark site. That's something I seem to favor these days. Maybe just because I am weary of examining tiny bites of the sky, looking at PGC smudges, after the years of the Herschel Project. Or, maybe, thanks to my new philosophical bent, I have come to want to see the big picture. I'd also be lying if I told you I haven’t begun to appreciate a certain refractor je ne sais quois.

What is that special something refractors are supposedly imbued with? There is one overriding advantage to them: they are unobstructed systems. There is no secondary mirror getting in the way of the of the objective lens. That has several benefits.

First, the light gathering power of the scope is not compromised by the blockage of the secondary. You get the full effect of the aperture you’re paying for; it’s not “4-inches minus the secondary mirror.” That helps some, but not really a lot, since the light gathering power of the telescope is dependent on the area, not the diameter of the mirror or objective. Still, more light is always better than less.

A refractor will deliver more light than a reflector of the same aperture not just because of the absence of the light blocking central obstruction, but because a higher percentage of light is transmitted through a lens than can be reflected by a mirror. As the coating of a mirror ages, its reflectivity decreases and a refractor continues to pull ahead, often to the tune of 1 or 2-percent a year.

Somewhat better light gathering power aperture for aperture is not the largest advantage of a lens-scope, though. What is more important is the better contrast offered by them. The lack of that central obstruction results in sharper, higher contrast images. Not only does that help with details on Solar System objects, stars often look better in lens-scopes.

You often hear refractor-philes say stars are “smaller” in a refractor than in a reflector. That is due in part to refractors often being smaller aperture, shorter focal length instruments than the average reflector. But that is not the whole story.

As you probably know, stars are not perfect pinpoints in any telescope. The merciless laws of physics make that impossible. What we see is an “Airy disk” surrounded by diffraction rings. Here’s the thing: thanks to the missing secondary mirror, refractors distribute less energy into the diffraction rings and more into the Airy disk than obstructed telescopes. Stars tend to look “smaller.” If you’re trying to split double stars at the limit of the telescope’s resolution, the less prominent rings in a refractor may make the difference between success and failure.

Finally, one of the most important advantages of a refractor for me these days is one’s thermal stability. Despite their closed tubes, refractors require considerably less time to cool down than reflecting telescopes. The lens is less affected by changes in/changing temperature than a mirror and is ready to deliver good images more quickly when moved from a warm house to a cold yard. Despite our relatively mild climate, I find my 6-inch refractor is ready to go much sooner than my 5-inch Maksutov Cassegrain.

Zelda...

None of the above is to say reflectors don’t have advantages; they do, of course. They are cheaper per inch of aperture, available in (far) larger apertures, and are more portable in larger sizes. These things are true, all things being equal, but all things are rarely equal.

A 6-inch achromatic refractor is still considerably more expensive than a 6-inch (or 8-inch) reflector, but 6-inch achromats are much more affordable than they have ever been. If you just have to have 12—or 20—inches, you don’t want a refractor, true, but many of us, especially those of us focused on imaging, find we don’t need more than 6-inches of aperture to be happy. Portability? A 6-inch Newtonian is nothing; a 6-inch refractor is something of a beast. Nevertheless, I find setting up my 6-inch on a GEM to be easier than setting up my fork mounted Ultima 8 was in the old days.

There’s also the color question. “False” color, the purple fringing around bright objects in some refractors. This chromatic aberration is not necessarily a deal breaker. APO/ED refractors that show virtually no false color are, like achromats, cheaper than ever. Also, some people are more disturbed by color than others (as we baby-boomers age and our corneas yellow a little, we become ever more happy with “just” achromats). Finally, most of us don’t spend much time observing that bane of achromats, Venus; usually we are viewing deep sky objects that show little or no false color.

The ground truth for me is that the refractor advantages, sharp images, the portability of smaller aperture refractors, and their relative immunity to cool-down issues, have made these telescopes more practical for me for visual use now. Most of the time. There are still times when I just have to drag out my trusty 10-inch Dobsonian. BUT—and I hope I am not turning into a refractor snob—when I look through that Newtonian, something, that ineffable refractor something, is missing.

While I have not done a lot of video imaging since the end of the Herschel Project, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done any astrophotography. Admittedly, I laid off for a while following that night of the comet, but when I eventually picked it up again and began doing some simple, informal deep sky imaging with my DSLRs, I actually found it relaxing. Since I was using refractors for visual work, it seemed a natural to continue with them for photography. And was I ever glad I did.

The best thing about refractors, for me anyway, is their imaging capability. Affordable apochromats may be the best thing to hit amateur astrophotography since the death of film. Let me say here that I have recently been experimenting with imaging with inexpensive achromats, and I’ve been amazed at what they can do, but if you want to do astrophotography, you want an ED scope.

One of the things I'd known for a while, but had filed away in a little drawer in the back of my mind, and only recently taken out (along with some non-astronomy related things) and examined in detail is that deep sky imaging is just easier with a refractor. As you know, I've taken many a shot with SCTs over the years, but my results were never, frankly, quite as good or easy to get as what I can achieve with my 5-inch APO refractor given my modest skills. Sure, if I could afford an AP or Bisque or 10Micron mount I might still be slapping a big CAT on the GEM, but I can't afford a ten-thousand dollar mount these days. Refractors are more usable for imaging on my Ford and Chevy mounts.

OK, so what makes a refractor better for imaging? Three things, I’ve found, speed, focusing, and weight. By “speed,” I am referring to the telescope’s focal ratio. As you may be aware, what matters when determining how bright an extended object (a galaxy or nebula) will be to your camera and how long your exposure will need to be to adequately record it is the telescope’s f-ratio. F-ratio for f-ratio, the only thing more aperture gets you on extended objects is larger image scale. The typical SCT is at f/10, and that requires punishingly long exposures to properly expose dimmer objects. The average apochromatic refractor, in contrast, comes in at f/5 – f/7. Getting these smaller focal ratios with an SCT will require a focal reducer, which can cause illumination problems, vignetting, among other things.

AR102 + AVX...

The average f/10 8-inch or larger SCT has another liability thanks to it aperture and higher focal ratio: long focal length, as in 2000mm and longer. If you’ve tried deep sky astrophotography, you know with every increase in focal length, tracking becomes more critical. Your mount will have to offer excellent tracking, and you may have to guide it even during shorter exposures if your pictures are to have round stars. Alas, the mounts most of us can afford are challenged by long focal lengths, and it’s difficult to get untrailed stars even with guiding.

Focusing as done in SCTs, with the usual moving mirror arrangement, is also a problem for imagers. I don’t just mean focus shift, the subject moving in the field as you focus, but, worse, mirror flop. As the scope tracks, changes in attitude can cause an SCT’s mirror to move slightly, producing trailed stars if you are using a guide scope for photographic guiding as most of us do. Some modern SCTs have mirror locks, and some of Meade’s newer scopes have improved focusing systems, but almost all SCTs are still saddled with the old mechanics and resulting flop.

Finally, mounts always track better with lighter payloads. The GEMs most of us turn to, which tend to be in the Atlas/CGEM class and below, may track very well during imaging with an 80 or 100mm refractor onboard, but can have real problems with 8-inch and larger long focal length SCTs.

Certainly you can take good pictures with SCTs; I’ve taken my share over the years. It’s just easier to do, much easier, with a short, fast refractor. If nothing else, astrophotography is less stressful—it can even be fun—with a refractor. I don’t ever remember a time when I was doing long exposure imaging with an SCT that I wasn’t at least slightly stressed out by something.

And there you have it. More than a few of you have stared in open-mouthed amazement at the news your old Uncle has become a refractor man. Believe you me, nobody is more surprised than moi. That’s just another example—in a rather long series—of how wrong I was a few years ago when I just assumed this stage of life would be without surprises.

Don’t be too sad about this if you’re an SCT enthusiast. I haven’t completely deserted your camp. I still have my Edge 800 and my C11 (though I keep telling myself I will sell Bertha, the 11). None of this says all that much about the basic worth of SCTs. They are still the most versatile scopes, period, and I will always love them (I even have plans for a Solar System imaging project for my Edge C8). No, what my current transition to refractors speaks volumes about is me.

I promise we will get back to the Messiers next week, OK? This week, however, what’s on my mind is a question that is evidently on your minds, too. Certainly, I get asked it often enough at my star party and club appearances: “Uncle Rod, what’s gonna happen to amateur astronomy? All the folks at my club are Baby Boomers or older [as in the picture at left of Rod’s own club]. Is amateur astronomy doomed?” What is to become of our beloved avocation as we Baby Boomers exit stage left over the next 10 – 30 years?

If we are to figure out where amateur astronomy is going, it’s a good idea to examine where it came from. Technically, Galileo was an amateur astronomer—there were really no professional astronomers as we understand the vocation then (though there were certainly physicists). Even that giant of 18^th Century astronomy, Sir William Herschel, was an amateur astronomer. There were pros in his time, but he wasn’t one. He was a fairly well educated man, a gifted musician, but he was not an academic. He had a pension from the King, but that was in recognition of his discovery of the seventh planet and his astronomy “outreach” activities at court; it was not a salary like that the Astronomer Royal received.

Well into the 19^th Century, the line between amateur and pro was blurry. It wasn’t until the latter part of the Victorian era that "professional astronomer" came to be defined as an academic, a professional scientist working at or in concert with a university and usually possessed of an advanced degree. It was at this time that amateur astronomy as we recognize it began to develop.

Slowly, as the 20^th Century came in, amateur astronomers began to change. We went from being like Herschel and the semi-pro amateurs who followed him, people like Carrington, scientists on the cutting edge of discovery, to being more casual sky watchers. We, most of us, went from being geographers to tourists, from ornithologists to bird watchers.

This didn’t happen overnight. It took nearly half the 20^th Century to complete, but happen it did. There is still a place for the amateur in the science of astronomy, but not like in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. By the time of George Ellery Hale, the local Universe had been mapped and its objects cataloged, and the easier questions had been answered. The next level of inquiry required lots of telescopic horsepower, rigorous training, and money.

1950

The change in amateur astronomy was sped up by the amateur telescope making movement in the United States in the early decades of the last century. Thanks to ATMing, some rather eccentric souls—so their fellows thought, anyway—were discovering stargazing was fun. You didn’t have to have a lot of money or be able to do calculus to have rewarding fun in our avocation—heck, you didn’t even have to be able to add 2+2. If you could cobble together a telescope and turn it on the sky you were one of us. Sure, people like Leslie Peltier still contributed to the science of astronomy, but it would be ridiculous to assert they were on the level of Hubble and Shapley.

If you ask me, however, the real amateur astronomy, the amateur astronomy we know and love, wasn’t fully aborning until the 1950s. What was also aborning in the 50s? Kids, lots and lots of postwar kids, the Baby Boom Generation. And here is the key: as those kids were beginning, so was the Space Age. By the end of the decade, Sputnik was flying, NACA had become NASA, and space was on the minds of just about everybody. Especially on the minds of starry-eyed kids. Many of these space-crazy kids (and adults) wanted a telescope, but they didn’t want to make a telescope like Uncle Albert Ingallsdid; they wanted to buy one readymade.

Want to know how much things changed for us in a mere ten years? Page through the January 1950 issue of Sky & Telescope (I hope you were prescient enough to get The Complete Sky & Telescope DVDs while you could). Much will be familiar to today’s readers, like the Sky Gazer’s Almanac (if in plainer form), but one thing will be different: the ads. Or the lack of them. No inside front or back cover full-pagers. Not even a back cover ad. There are a few small interior advertisements aimed at amateurs rather than astronomy educators, etc., but not many. The closest thing to what’s in today’s magazine is a small advertisement for a small Tinsley refractor (yes).

Now, let’s go to December 1959. This is much more like the amateur astronomy we know and love. There are plenty of ads directed at amateurs, if nothing like today. There’s a beautiful Criterion “Custom” Newtonian, and the back cover is occupied by a much drooled over Unitron refractor. By 1959, everybody had, by prewar standards anyway, plenty of money to spend and suddenly there was a small market for telescopes.

Oh, there were still plenty of amateur telescope makers, since larger aperture telescopes like that 6-inch Criterion, were too expensive for most kids (and adults). But the amateur astronomy of Unk Albert’s day, one where almost everybody used small store bought refractors or ATMed 6-inch Newtonian reflectors to observe the Moon, planets, and double and variable stars, was passing. It was disappearing just as the amateur astronomy of the semi-pros that came before had disappeared.

All through the 70s and into the 80s and 90s, the above continued. More amateur telescope buyers, fewer amateur telescope makers. It wasn’t really that the increasing availability of increasingly less expensive larger telescopes seduced amateur telescope makers from their passion. Most of us building scopes weren’t ATMs by choice.

Like me. If I’d been able to afford an RV-6 or Edmund 6-inch Newtonian reflector in 1970, much less a Unitron 4-inch refractor, I’d never have even thought about building a 6-inch reflector. But I couldn’t afford one of those scopes. I knew the only way to continue on in astronomy, for me at least, was to take it to the next aperture level, and the only way I could do that was by building, home-brewing, a scope. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t overly interested in grinding mirrors and lapping the threads of pipe mounts, but it was the only way.

1959

As the 1980s came in, ATMing had become a far less important part of our avocation, and no longer defined us as it once had. That was despite the popularity of simple, relatively easy to build Dobsonian telescopes with their cardboard tubes and plywood mounts. While Dobsonian builders caused an uptick in scope making in the 80s, that didn’t last. As soon as commercial Dobsonians became widely available, observers flocked to them. Those commercial Dobs were part of the equipment boom in amateur astronomy that began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. It was caused by two things: we Baby Boomers had money now, and there were (slightly) more of us in astronomy.

By the 90s most of us Boomers had appreciable disposable incomes. In that decade, we were entering in upon our peak earning years, and many of us didn’t think twice about dropping a measly two grand on a C8, for example, something that would have seemed impossible for most of us in 1970.

Our ranks also grew somewhat (after shrinking following the temporary influx of new people caused by Halley’s Comet). While retirement was still a distant speck on the horizon, some Boomers had begun casting about for something to do as their careers wound down toward that, and remembered how much they used to love the stars and how much they’d dreamed of a big telescope in the 60s and 70s. They realized they could now have that big telescope, went for it, and dived back into amateur astronomy as if all those intervening years had been but a dream.

The commercial astronomy market wasn’t just growing in the 1990s; it was changing. For one big reason, of course: C-H-I-N-A. It began with a somewhat silly little telescope, the Short Tube 80. Orion, the original Orion, Tim Giesler’s Orion, had noticed these short f/5 80mm achromats, which were being made by this Mainland China firm, Synta, and decided to give them a chance in their catalog (badged “Orion,” natch). The rest is history. Soon everybody and his or her brother or sister wanted one. Tons of amateurs, novice and advanced, enjoyed these simple and refreshingly different wide field refractors.

The 80 f/5, humble as it was, represented a quantum leap for the Chinese scope industry, which before the Short Tube 80 had been pretty sad and invariably ridiculed by U.S. amateurs (remember the pitiful Simmons 4-inch Newtonians?). What is remarkable is that Synta went from the ST 80 to the SkyWatcher Esprit APO refractors in less than two decades, other Chinese firms were not far behind, and PRC telescopes went from being laughed at to being respected by us. Sometimes grudgingly, but respected nevertheless.

1958

The entry of China, who naturally undercut the prices of U.S. telescope makers easily, had two major effects. The amount, the crazy amount, of astro gear available to us exploded. And the mainstream, middle-of-the-road U.S. telescope industry imploded. While top of the line telescope makers like Astro-Physics were secure in their niches, old-line mid-price firms like Celestron and even once top-dog Meade failed and are now wholly owned by Chinese companies (perhaps the same Chinese company, as you may decide if you venture to unravel the convoluted interrelationships of Chinese industries).

So, we found ourselves in the second decade of a new century: sitting fat, dumb, and happy with more powerful astronomy gear than we ever dreamed of possessing. Many of us even had time to use it now. Only one thing began to bother us. When we’d look around at club meetings, it was obvious we were a graying bunch. Oh, a few younger people would occasionally wander into the avocation, but many of them were only young in comparison to us Boomers, and for most clubs and star parties, new young folks were few and far between. How long has it been since you heard of a club with a thriving Junior Section?

Why no kids? I, like many of you, had palliative excuses. “The youngsters are there. They just don’t join astronomy clubs. They go to online astronomy forums when they want to hang out with their fellow amateurs. They are busy with school. Plenty of twenty-somethings would love to be in astronomy but just don’t have time with careers and kids.”

Those are the things I used to tell myself, but after years of paying close attention to our demographic, not just at clubs and star parties, but online, and teaching undergraduates at a university, I came to the conclusion that my excuses were wrong. There really are fewer youngsters who are interested in astronomy. This has been going on for at least thirty years, if not forty years, and is accelerating.

It’s human to want to pin the blame for something bad happening. And that is just what I did next. Why aren’t the kids interested in astronomy? “It’s the darned video games. Or the cell phones. Or maybe today’s kids lead such structured lives thanks to their Gen X and Millennial parents that they don’t have time for astronomy.”

While all the above things share part of the blame for the lack of youngsters in our hobby, they do not constitute the whole problem, and aren’t the root cause of the scarcity of young amateurs. I suspect that if there were fewer “distractions,” there would be more kids in astronomy, but maybe not quite as many as you would think.

An epiphany came to me late one sleepless night. It cut me like a knife and at first I didn’t want to believe it, but by morning’s light it began to look more and more like that sometimes-sought after and sometimes feared Ground Truth:

The amateur astronomy of the last fifty years was an aberration. It was brought on by a special and unlikely to be recreated time in our history, the now past Space Age.

Short Tube 80

More than anything else, the race to the moon, the fascination for the Great Out There made palpable by Project Apollo and which extended even into the early Shuttle years (though with much diminished intensity), was what initially attracted many of us. Could something like that come again? Perhaps, perhaps if there were a pedal-to-the-metal push to land on and settle Mars it could. Unfortunately, while I’d love to be proven wrong, I don’t see that happening. Not in my lifetime for sure, and I am skeptical it will happen during the lifetimes of my children.

So…what? So, amateur astronomy is doomed? Yes, it is.Well, not really. Amateur astronomy as we’ve known it over the last fifty years is doomed, I believe. It can’t help but be. Our ranks will begin to shrink, and as they shrink, the ad pages in the magazines (possibly virtual pages before long) displaying the tons of products that have defined our astronomy will also shrink in number. This may be accompanied by a large increase in Chinese telescope prices, both because of (recent) political forces and because of rising wages in the East. So, amateur astronomy is gone? Bye-bye? I didn’t say that.

A different amateur astronomy will go on at a reduced level. Heck, anyone who looks up at the stars in wonder is an amateur astronomer. Assuming you can see those stars; light pollution will suppress our numbers, though not as much by far as the departure of the Boomers. Again, amateur astronomy’s decline will be the natural result of the Space Age receding into the past and becoming a subject only for the history books and the (boring) reminiscences of grandpa and grandma.

What will the next amateur astronomy, say the amateur astronomy of the 2060s, be like? Unless we wind up, to quote Kim Stanley Robinson, “On Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars!” and everybody is suddenly gaga over space again, I suspect much like the amateur astronomy of the 1920s - 1940s. A minor pursuit followed by a small number of special people. Many of whom will be making their own telescopes (probably printing them out on a 3D printer).

“Tell me, spirit, are these the shadows of things that must be, or the shadows of things that MIGHT be?” What can we do to prevent the end of amateur astronomy as we know it? Not a darned thing, I suspect. If you were to lend Elon Musk 100-billion bucks or so, that might prime the space/astronomy pump again. Frankly, I’m not even sure that would do it, though.

There's also those distractions I mentioned. In addition to the coming of the Space Age, there was another factor in the amateur astronomy boom. Yes, it coincided with the (even by today’s standards) technological marvels of Apollo, but few of those technological marvels had yet filtered down to us little people. There was an almost total lack of the distractions mentioned above.

Not only were there no home computers in the mid-1960s, most of us didn’t even have color televisions yet. For us kids, it was three (maybe) black and white TV channels, the books in the library, or get up a game outside with your friends. Maybe you could listen to a record on the stereo if you didn’t play Paul Revere loud enough to annoy your parents. The phone was hardwired into the wall, and Mum and Dad yelled at you to GET OFF if you were on too long with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You are not gonna get that lack of distractions again, campers, unless something truly bad happens, and I suspect that astronomy will be the least of your concerns if it does.

Am I sad about all this? I’m not sure. I know I would miss much of today’s astronomy: the never-ending club meetings on Cloudy Nights (.com) and Astromart, the pages and pages of Sky & Telescope“Hot Products,” and going crazy deep into the Universe (heck, I got tired of seeing PGC galaxies). On the other hand, a slower, simpler sort of amateur astronomy, an amateur astronomy concerned with what you can see with simple scopes does have its appeal.

At any rate, I don’t have to worry about it. I won’t live to see how this plays out. By definition, me and my fellow Boomers won’t be around for the New Amateur Astronomy, be it good or ill. All I can do is wish it well and meditate on all the Space Age Fun we had!

M103

After last week’s slightly controversial topic, we’re back on calmer ground with the next to the last installment of my Messier series. The end of these articles will not be the end of my writing on the Ms, however. I have another series planned and hope to start it in the new year. Why? After many years of ignoring Chuck’s list in my quest for the dimmest of the dim, I find I have been drawn back to these beautiful—well, with a couple of ringers—deep sky objects.

This week we are heavy on galaxies. In fact, all but one of this week's crew are galaxies, the exception being a single open cluster. That cluster is also the only one of this bunch that is readily visible now. Take heart, though; before you know it the Lion and the Virgin will be back and with them these wonderful (and sometimes challenging) island universes. Prepare now to take on the Virgo challenge, touring all of the maiden’s and Coma's M-galaxies when spring comes again to the Northern Hemisphere.

M99

Messier 99, the Pinwheel Nebula (galaxy), is, in pictures anyway, a beautiful near face-on Sc spiral galaxy located on the western end of the great Virgo cloud. A look at its specs, magnitude 9.87 and a size of 5’44” x 4’22” don’t make M99 sound overly difficult. That’s what I thought reading them when I was a youngun before trying to run this beast down from my parents’ suburban backyard. I mean, my 4-inch Palomar Junior reflector would easily show a 10^th magnitude star, so why shouldn’t it show this brighter than 10 galaxy even more easily?

Reality was a bit different as I found as soon as I began hunting the Pinwheel. There are plenty of galaxies in this area, and I thought I'd found M99 a time or two, but no. The star field around the galaxy is fairly distinctive, and the tools I had at hand, Becvar’s Skalnate Pleso atlas (I knew better than to try to navigate Virgo-Coma with Norton’s) and the wonderful “A Messier Album” column in Sky & Telescopesaid “nope.” In fact, I don’t think I saw M99 with the Pal Junior until the 1980s, though I had of course seen it with other scopes by then.

M99

The problem for me was that while this galaxy is somewhat bright, it’s also somewhat large, and, worse, it is a face-on spiral, the most challenging species of galaxy for backyard observers. Couple that with small aperture and primitive 1960s eyepieces (war surplus optics), and M99 was way difficult. Luckily for you, today you're likely armed with more knowledge, better finding tools, good oculars, and larger aperture than I had way back when. It is now more than possible to find M99 from the back forty on a good night, even without goto.

As a young observer, it was a point of honor with me to learn to navigate the Realm of the Galaxies. I remember that being challenging (in a good way) but also frustrating. It still is both those things today, though we have deeper print atlases to help, atlases like Uranometria2000 (a good choice for Virgo) and far, far deeper computer atlases like TheSky and SkyTools. Still, if you are more interested in seeing that hunting, at least in this crowded area, you’ll be much happier with go-to or digital setting circles.

If you want to or have to do things the old-fashioned way, this is one that is not too terribly difficult. You’ll find the Pinwheel, which is not actually in Virgo but over the border in Coma Berenices, lurking a mere 49’ southeast of a decently bright guide star, magnitude 5.05 6 Comae. In the field of the target object is a distinctive magnitude 7 range star, the brightest in the immediate area.

Forget the sweeping arms that give this galaxy its name. What you will see in the backyard, even with some fairly large aperture scopes, will be a slightly elongated lint-ball with a brighter center and, on especially good evenings, a tiny core. From a dark site, however, a 10 - 12-inch telescope will begin to show hints of spiral structure in the haze surrounding the galaxy’s small nucleus.

M100

You wanna know how hard M100 is to observe? It’s like M99, only worse (for the backyard bound). Yes, at magnitude 9.35, it is slightly brighter than M99, but at a size of 7’24” x 6’18” it is considerably larger, which is a bad thing, especially with face-on spirals whose light is badly spread out by their orientation to begin with. Still, it’s on our list, so let’s go get this rascal, which is sometimes nicknamed “the Blow Dryer Galaxy” (don’t ask me why).

The easiest way to find M100 without electronic aid is by finding M99 first. Then, move 1-degree 44’ to the northeast and you should be on the proper field. There are no bright stars in the area, so move slowly and carefully and use a detailed computer charting program to help you.

M100

Actually, there is another way to find this one or any other deep sky object: with analog setting circles. Yes, those old fashioned “dials” can work. IF. The biggest problem with analog circles on amateur mounts is their size, or lack thereof. Those on many GEM mounts are too little to be anything more than useless decoration. Those on the average SCT are better. Yes, the declination circles are still small, but the RA circles are large enough to work well. Both also have verniers (instructions for using them are here).

The main requirement for using setting circles successfully is that you be well polar aligned. The closer you are to the pole, the more accurate they will be. Oh, and you will have to calibrate the RA circle every time you use the scope (with the drive turned off, the RA circle, like a clock, loses “time”). Best bet is to go to a star as close to your object as possible and set the circle to the star’s correct RA. The declination circle on SCTs is set at the factory and shouldn’t have to be messed with often, but if you need to calibrate in declination do just like you did for RA.

When everything is ready, what kind of accuracy can you expect? I used the analog circles on my Celestron Ultima 8 SCT, Celeste, to navigate Virgo successfully one year at the (old spring) Peach State Star Gaze. No, everything I went for was not always in the field even at low power, but most of the time objects were close, and I only had to do a little hunting around. At the very least, "manual" circles will get you in the neighborhood, and a 50mm finder will allow you to quickly refine your aim. You can also use analog circles on a Dob, and perhaps we’ll talk about that next installment. Can analog circles be good as digital setting circles? No, not even close, but better than just using a finder/Telrad in bright skies? Yes.

Anyhow, when you are on M100, what you will see from the average suburban backyard is, unfortunately, “Not much, amigo.” Under good conditions you will see a large round fuzz spot that gets brighter toward its middle. You may also be able to make out its star-like nucleus. That is normally all. At the dark site? With larger apertures, some details, dust lanes and mottling, are apparent, but don’t expect slap-you-in-the-face spiral structure. You may also glimpse a small 14^th magnitude companion galaxy, NGC 4322, 5.0’ to the southwest.

M101

M101

You thought M99 and M100 were tough? Hoo-boy! M101, the Catherine Wheel Galaxy, is, with M74, the toughest of the tough in the Messiers. Why? Like the previous two, it’s a face-on Sc spiral. But it is worse. Way worse. The reason is that it’s also huge, 28’48” x 26’54”. Yes, M101’s visual magnitude is 7.8, but, remember, that means it is the same brightness as a magnitude 7.8 star thrown out of focus till it occupies nearly half a degree of field. Not only is its light badly spread out, it is difficult to frame it so as to provide some contrast. You want some dark sky around this big galaxy to furnish that contrast, but you’ll have to use a low power eyepiece to do it. In the suburbs, the sky background is bright at low power, so you get no contrast gain.

The good part? Finding this galaxy’s location is easy. It forms a near equilateral triangle with the two end stars of the Big Dipper, Alkaid and Mizar. Insert a medium power eyepiece that gives somewhat over half a degree of true field in your telescope—before the advent of 100-degree AFOV eyepieces, I liked 12 and 16mm 82 degree oculars depending on the scope I was using—and start staring.

I don’t want to give you the idea that this galaxy is impossible from the suburbs; it is not. When I was writing The Urban Astronomer’s GuideI saw it frequently with my C11 (albeit sometimes with difficulty) or, on superior nights, with the 8-inch f/5 Newtonian I was using for some of the book’s observing. It wasn’t easy, though, not even with the C11. And I certainly could not see details:

M101 is one of the real challenges from the suburbs, and I didn't expect much on this relatively poor night. Try as I might, I couldn't see any hint of its outer nebulosity much less the spiral arms. After examining the field for a while with the 12mm Nagler at 220x, I did catch sight of with appeared to be its central area, a faint spot about 10' across, but this was not easy in the C11.

M104

At a dark site, of course, it is a much different story. I’ve seen the galaxy easily with 10 x 50 binoculars from the very dark Spruce Knob Mountain in West Virginia, and reveled in its spiral arms with the C8 at f/6.3 on good evenings from less superior locations, like French Camp, Mississippi, home of the Mid South Star Gaze. On the very best nights, an LPR filter reveals the arms are peppered with HII regions, M101’s nebulae.

M102

Take a break, Jake. There is no M102. NGC 5866 has often been suggested as M102, but it is clear to me that 102 was nothing more than a re-observation of 101. If you can’t bring yourself to accept that, by all means take a gander at NGC 5866; it’s not a bad object. I’ll wait right here.

M103

Let’s take another break, from dim and difficult galaxies at least. M103 in Cassiopeia is a bright (magnitude 7.3) and small (6.0’) open star cluster. It’s a beauty, though it would be even more beautiful if it weren’t set in such a rich star field. As it is, it is sometimes slightly difficult to distinguish the actual cluster from the background in wide-field telescopes from dark locations.

There is nothing to finding 103. It lies 1-degree northeast of bright Ruchbah, a magnitude 2.65 sun that is one of the stars of Cassiopeia’s “W.” When you’re on the proper spot, have a look through your finder (scope). The cluster should be visible as a short line of three or four brighter stars.

When you are on Messier 103 with the main scope with a medium power eyepiece, especially a medium power wide-field eyepiece (such oculars are surprisingly inexpensive now), you are gonna like what you see, yes indeed. My impression is that this looks much like Cygnus’ M39, a small triangle of brighter stars with plenty of dimmer ones both within and just outside that triangle. The view is made even prettier by the presence of a red-orange central star at the heart of the cluster. And the whole thing is set in that crowded star field, which really looks super from my club dark site.

M104

Gosh-a-mighty, how I loved the Hale Reflector photographs of M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, when I was a kid. This is one of the relatively few objects that didn’t disappoint me too much when I first saw it with my 4-inch. Oh, the view through my 1-inch Kellner eyepiece couldn’t compare to 200-inch plates, but, still, the basic features were there and I was thrilled to see the renowned Sombrero with my own eyes.

How to locate? This magnitude 8.0, 8’42” x 3’30” near-edge-on lies in Virgo, but I always find it easier to star hop to from Corvus. Begin at magnitude 2.90 Algorab. About 2-degrees 45’ north of the star you will notice (in the finder scope) a Y-shaped asterism of magnitude 6.0 range stars. Trace this asterism as shown in the picture, and you will find M104 just 25’ to the east of the last Y star.

When there, your first impression may be, as was mine as a 12-year-old, that the Sombrero is smaller than you thought it would be. Pump up the power to at least 150x, though, and you will begin to see those legendary details, the “hat brim” and the “crown,” at least. A 6-inch refractor or an 8-inch reflector will show the famous equatorial dust lane readily on a good night. Yes, it is doable with smaller apertures, but you’ll have to find a magnification that makes the galaxy big enough so you can see much of anything, but which also doesn’t make it too dim.

M105

We’ll end this installment with another easy, pretty view. While Leo’s M105 is relatively dim as far as its magnitude value, 9.79, goes, it is a medium sized (5’24”), almost round elliptical with a bright center that makes it pretty easy, even in a 4-inch. Normally, E galaxies aren’t that attractive, but this one has a couple of aces up its sleeve, two companion galaxies, magnitude 10.0, 3’49” NGC 3384 7’19” to the northeast, and magnitude 12.83, 2’49” NGC 3389 9’29” to the southeast. The three together make for a superb view.

Locating M105 by manual means can be hard or easy depending on how dark your skies are and how high the lion is in them. The best way to get to the group is to star-hop 1-degree 38’ south from Kappa Leonis. While that star is often invisible or nearly so in the average suburban yard thanks to its magnitude of 5.45, it will how up readily in a finder scope.

M105

After you get done admiring Messier 105 itself, see if you can pick out the two companions that form a triangle with the Messier galaxy. The dimmest member, NGC 3389’s, 12.83 magnitude figure sounds daunting, but I could regularly see it from the heavily light polluted backyard of Chaos Manor South with my 12-inch Dobsonian, Old Betsy, thanks to its small size. Not only do you get a pretty triangle of galaxies here, M95 and M96, that pair of galaxies we visited just a while ago, is only a degree to the southwest if you want to go on a side trip.

One more and we will be done with the Ms, but that won’t come for a while yet. Christmas, if nothing else, is going to intervene. As is usual, the next blog will arrive on Christmas Eve rather than Sunday, and will likely be shorter and perhaps more sentimental than usual.

Nota Bene: I’ve received word that for a variety of reasons the author of Deepsky Astronomy Software, Steve Tuma, is discontinuing sales and support of his program. While there are other more modern planning programs available today, DAS was one of the first and still has some great features. Features like copious log notes for many objects from accomplished observers—something I find often comes in handy. If I were you, I’d contact Steve and see if you can still get a copy...

Merry Christmas, y’all! This is gonna be a short one tonight. You see, I screwed up. Bad. I thought I had everything ready for Christmas: a nice turkey, the ingredients for my (justly) famous giblet gravy, sufficient side items, bread pudding, and the components for my insane bourbon sauce. Yes, I was feeling good. Not stressed out at all.

Until yesterday afternoon: “Oh, my God. I forgot to move the turkey from the freezer to the refrigerator!” The bird would take four days to defrost in the fridge and I only had two left. What would I do? What WOULD I do? The answer was, “You’ll get up a 2:30 in the morning and defrost it in cold water.” So that is what is gonna happen tonight, campers.

Of course, I knew there was no point in trying to go to bed early. I used to to do that in my engineer days. When I’d go on a sea trial for a cruiser, or a destroyer, or a landing ship, I’d need to get up a 2:30 or 3:00. So, I’d go to bed at 6:00 p.m. And if I did that, I’d toss and turn for hours. So, I didn’t plan on retiring till 9 or 10 or 11 or so.

But that still wouldn’t leave me much time to compose the traditional Christmas Eve blog. You won’t get a long remembrance of Christmases past (which, given my current mind-set, may be a good thing). I thought it would, however, leave me time for my traditional Christmas Eve look at the greatest Christmas ornament of all, M42.

After a couple of years of being skunked badly, tonight looked to be reasonably clear. Given my early wakeup call, I didn’t want to fuss with a big telescope, so it was my beloved SkyWatcher 3-inch f/11 refractor that got stationed in the backyard as I waited for the Hunter to get up off the horizon.

Yes, early on the sky just looked great; it was a lovely blue at sundown. Surely, I’d spend the late hours of this most wonderful of nights admiring the winter jewels with my little telescope.

Alas ‘twas not to be. While waiting for Orion to get nice an high, I spent about half an hour in my shop, the vaunted Batcave, talking to a friend of mine on the phone. When I came out around 10:00, not only was the refractor sopping wet with dew, fog, dense fog, had moved in, and the sky was like cotton batting.

I hope you were able to see more than I was on this most numinous of evenings, but don’t worry about me. Despite being skunked astronomy-wise for the third year in a row, hope springs eternal in my heart. Someway, somehow, it will be a great Christmas and a great year despite everything. A year when your and my hopes will somehow be realized.

Son of Rumours

As I sat in the den half drowsing after I got up at 2:30 a.m. to begin defrosting that darned bird, I recalled a few things I’ve been meaning to mention to y’all…

This is sorta like a return of the old “Rumours” column in my ancient newsletter, Skywatch (you can read over ten years of back issues hereif you are interested). Maybe I will do this every once in a while, when I have little items to share that don’t fit anywhere else (like the long, long-running “Strays” in QST magazine).

The first of these things is that, as I mentioned last time, Steve Tuma is discontinuing sales and support of his Deepsky software. That has turned out to be happening a little quicker than I imagined it would, with the program’s website already off the air. Steve has mentioned in his Yahoogroup that he does have a few DVD sets remaining. He also says he’s open to the idea of allowing someone to post the program’s zipped files on a server. Contact him at stuma@comcast.net.

Another new Celestron mount? It appears so, the CGX-L. This is apparently a replacement for the CGEM DX. It is the CGX (which replaced the CGEM) mount with a CGE Pro tripod, a heftier counterweight shaft, and an extra Aux port. I say “apparently” because as soon as someone noticed a webpage on Celestron’s site announcing the new GEM and spread the word on Cloudy Nights, the webpage and all other Celestron mentions of the L vanished from their site. CN also soon deleted all the threads about the CGX-L.

Is this going to be the replacement for the CGE Pro as well as the CGEM DX? I’m not sure. I’ve long thought Celestron would get rid of the Pro. Why should Synta continue to produce two mounts with similar capabilities, the CGE Pro and the EQ-8? I was thinking the “new” Pro would be an EQ-8 with servo motors and a NexStar hand control, but you never know.

Hello 2017! Just hope you are better than the monster of a year that’s just departed. Bad as it’s been for numerous reasons, li’l old optimist me at least takes comfort in—what else?—the eternal stars. Oh, they are not really eternal, but they seem so for ephemeral creatures such as ourselves. I’ve learned that when my path is dark and dim, those distant stars can illuminate it. I am comforted to look up and see the stars of Orion look just as they did when I was a boy.

Anyhoo, in lieu of the next Messier column, which will come next week, I give you my yearly summary. Reading back over all these articles, what was the main thread this past annum? If I had to sum up my astronomical year in a few words? I guess it would be “the year of the refractor.”

January 2016

“Goodbye Betsy, Hello Hermione”

If you were reading the blog in 2015, you probably noticed, maybe even with dismay, my gradual transition to refractors, which was presaged by the beginning of a series of articles called “The Refractor Way.” If those had paved the way, this one cemented things. This entry recounts the arrival of my SkyWatcher Pro ED 120.

It was one heck of a big change. The telescope I sold to finance the new refractor was my time-honored Dobsonian, Old Betsy, who had been with me for over 20 years, the peak years of my amateur astronomy career. Everything turned out OK, though. While I sometimes still miss Betsy, I wasn’t using her, and her replacement, Hermione Granger, is good at so many things, including visual observing, where she competes well with a C8. It was indeed the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“Smart Phones + Tablets + Amateur Astronomy: Where we are Now (Part II)”

You must have been living under a rock if you haven’t been aware of how big an effect smartphones and tablets have had on amateur astronomy. The astronomy apps we’ve got now, like SkySafari, are incredibly powerful. At the time this article came out, I hadn’t yet tried interfacing scope + phone, but even without that, the utility of smart devices for our avocation was more than obvious. Last nail in the coffin of print star atlases? Maybe.

“The Refractor Way Part III” (and Part IV)

The next two articles in my refractor manifesto concerned a big dream of mine (regarding amateur astronomy, anyway). I’d wanted that holy grail, the 6-inch refractor, since I was too young to have even been able to lift one. I finally realized that dream last January in a surprisingly inexpensive fashion.

“Simple. Neat. Really No Trouble at All: Stellarium”

It isn’t just telescopes where I appreciate "simple and easy" these days. Stellarium, the free planetarium program, is both those things, but it is also profoundly, powerful. In these latter days, there are not too many astronomy things I want to do that I cannot do with Stellarium.

February 2016

“Do You Like Jumbo Shrimp?”

As above, smart devices (and computers) may have somewhat supplanted the print star atlas, but there are still good ones, and some of us still like to use paper star maps at least part of the time. There are even new print atlases being published, like Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas Jumbo Edition. It won’t really fit in your pocket, but it is a substantial improvement on its already great predecessor. Just get it, even if you have SkySafari.

“In Starland with a 4-inch Refractor”

Namely, the AR102 achromatic refractor from Explore Scientific. Yeah, its dew shield sure is funny looking, but you get so much for your money. Great f/6.5 optics, a decent finder, an excellent star diagonal, and maybe most of all, a kick-butt focuser. Everyone should have one, and given its modest price almost everyone can. The legitimate heir to the much-loved Short Tube 80 of the 1990s.

“Issue #481: The List Part I”

Coincident with my switch to refractors (mostly), was my return to looking at the pretty stuff. Like the Messiers. This entry is my take on the first five.

“Issue #482: Pensacon 2016: When is a Con a Comic Con?”

Occasionally I feel the need for the SOMETHING DIFFERENT. This time that was Pensacon 2016, Pensacola, Florida’s big comicon. Had a wonderful time, bought some cool stuff, and saw one of my idols, Neal Adams.

March 2016

“Issue #483: The Messier: Part II”

More Messiers to include Ms 6 – 12. I got enough positive—nay enthusiastic—comments about this one to impel me to soldier through all 110 Messier objects.

"Issue #484: Big Ethel Goes to the Dark Site"

“Big Ethel” being my new 6-inch achromat. What did I discover? When collimated, she became a powerful performer. Also, the Celestron VX mount was up to the task of holding this big tube. Or would have been if I’d had a pier extension for the tripod. As it was, I had to be careful not to let the tube bump into the tripod, which would happen when slewing anywhere near the zenith.

"Issue #485: The Messier III: The Next Batch"

Here, I pressed on with Objects M13 – M19

"Issue #486: The Last Gasp of the Go-to Wars"

This article, which formed the basis for my recent Sky & Telescope“Focal Point” column, concerns the battle over computerized telescopes in astronomy. I actually think this war is over, since my column didn’t create nearly as much controversy as my last Focal Point on buying stars did (why do a Focal Point if you can’t ruffle some feathers with it?).

April 2016

"Issue #487: Let’s Have Some More Ms"

Still more Messiers, Ms 20 – 27.

"Issue #488: The Truth About the Magazines"

A lot of you sure have some weird ideas about the astronomy magazines, and especially Sky & Telescope. What kind of weird ideas? I’ll direct you to the Cloudy Nights “Astro Art, Books, and Websites” forum if you want a taste. Herein, I try to correct some of those occasionally odd misconceptions.

“Issue #489: The Messier Gang 5”

I continue with Messier 28 – 35.

“Issue #490: The Refractor Way Part 5: Is One for You?”

Well, is one? While I primarily use refractors these days, a lens scope wasn’t always the scope for me. While they now are the scope for me, that doesn't mean they are for you. The quiz at the end of this article should help you decide if you are a refractorphile in the making.

May 2016

“Issue #491: The Messier VI: The Auriga Trio”

This far in, with Messier 36 – 41, I was finding out that, surprisingly, writing about these good old DSOs was not boring at all. Not only was it fun, I found I still had a lot to say about them (even after writing a book, The Urban Astronomer’s Guide, which covered many of them in detail).

"Issue #493, Scrimmaging"

This (smaller, more informal) springtime edition of our local star party was notable for several reasons. It was my first experience imaging with Hermione Granger under truly dark skies, the spring weather actually cooperated fully for once, and I only stayed two days. Lately, I find two – three days at a star party is quite enough, and was happy to scurry home on Saturday to enjoy Free Comic Book Day.

“Issue #494, The Messier VII: The Greatest”

This one was notable for containing everybody’s fave, M42. Also present were M43 – M49.

“Issue #495, Here’s Exactly How You Do It: Imaging Jupiter (or Mars or Saturn)”

Not only was this a tutorial on planetary imaging in general, I gave some tips for using the new stacking app everybody was talking about, Autostakkert.

June 2016

“Issue #497, At the Messier Halfway Point”

This batch, which featured M50 – 56, found me, almost unbelievably, at the halfway point. Things would slow down a bit for a while after this, however, since I spent much of the summer traveling to distant star parties and astronomy clubs.

“Issue #498, The Magic Ring”

Since I knew my roadtrips would intrude, I squeezed in another couple of M-articles, this one containing numbers 57 – 63.

“Issue #499, Getting a Black Eye”

And one more for good measure, with M64 – 70. By this time, the series had picked up some fans, and some folks were actually printing the articles out for use at the scope. ‘Magine that!

July 2016

“Issue 500: The New Deep Sky Planner”

There are plenty of great deep sky observing planning programs like SkyTools and Deepsky, but I make no bones here that the one I’d used most in recent times was Phyllis Lang’s venerable Deep Sky Planner. “Venerable,” sure, but Ms. Lang had just updated her soft with version 7 and guess what? It was better than ever.

“Issue 501: ‘Lo, there shall be anending…’”

The time had come for me to talk to my fellow Baby Boomers about many things, including what should you do about all that astronomy gear you’ve accumulated over the last 40 or 50 years.

“Issue 502: How Low Can You Go on the Messiers?”

We all—well most of us anyway—love the Messier objects. The question on my mind, however, and perhaps on those of my fellow increasingly lazy baby boomers, was “How small a scope can you use to profitably view the list?” In the process of writing this one, I had a ball observing the Ms in the backyard with 4-inch and 3-inch telescopes.

August 2016

“Issue 505: On the Road Part I: The Maine Astronomy Retreat”

It was, as July ran out, time to get on the road for the late summer and early fall star party season. The first stop was a week at the Maine Astronomy Retreat way up north. To sum up: great observing, great people, great food, great facility. I’d go back anytime. Only slight bummer? Had nothing to do with the retreat, but with my airline. My flight out of Boston was cancelled. I spent an evening in a hotel in the midst of an industrial park near Logan. Oh, well…the hotel bar and cable TV kept me entertained. And it was nice to enjoy the air conditioning after an uncharacteristically warm week in Maine.

“Issue 506: On the Road Part II: The Northwoods Starfest”

Next stop was the NWSF in a state I’d never visited, Wisconsin. This was another great time. A little shorter, but great food, people, and observing too. Nice facility, and to top it all off, tenderfoot me “camped out” in a brand new Fairfield Inn and Suites. Coming back to that beautiful new room each night helped make a great experience even better.

“Issue 507: Messier XI”

Back home for a quick breather, it was time to get after Messiers again with objects 71 – 77.

September 2016

“Issue #508, On the Road III: Almost Heaven Star Party 2016”

I’ve been to this star party, held in West Virginia on the slopes of Spruce Knob Mountain, so many times over the last decade that it was difficult to find something new to write about. Nevertheless, great skies and friendly folks made this a winner. For me, “no surprises” is a good thing.

“Issue #509, The Messier XII: Steady as She Goes”

With objects 78 – 84, we were definitely beginning to see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

“Issue #510, Conquering the Herschels”

I observed the 2500 Herschel objects over the course of about three years. I don’t consider that a huge feat; it was more just having the right equipment, a plan, and a little perseverance. People still ask questions about how I did it, though. While this article did answer some of those questions, its main goal was to encourage you to get out and begin the Herschel 400. Come on in the water is deep but fine.

October 2016

“Issue #512: More Messier Madness!”

With Ms 85 – 91, we were entering the final phase, and I was still having a ball with these articles.

“Issue #514: How Hard are the Messiers from the Backyard? (Parts I and II)”

Though I was close to the end of my main Messier series, having nearly covered ‘em all, I still thought it would be a good idea to give short “executive summaries” on all the objects in two articles, since the fall observing season was upon us and many folks would be out in the old backyard chasing Ms.

“Issue #515: In the Dark with a 4-inch Refractor”

What can you see from a dark site with an humble and easy to transport 4-inch achromat? A lot, it turned out.

November 2016

“Issue #516: Big Ethel Gathers Photons at the 2016 Deep South Star Gaze”

After those go-go years of the Herschel Project, it’s nice to spend a star party doing leisurely visual observing. Which is exactly what I did at the 2016 DSSG using my 6-inch Achromat. She performed beautifully (people were sure she was an ED scope). As is my wont of late, I was only on-site for three nights of the 5-night event, but those were the best nights of the star party. Sometimes I do get lucky.

“Issue #517: Beginning the Messier Homestretch”

‘Twas definitely that with Messiers M92 – M98.

“Issue #518: How Simple Can It Get?”

What do the experts say? You can’t do astrophotography with a fast achromatic refractor. I set out to see if that was true. Was it? Read the article to find out, but I will say the humble Explore Scientific AR102 is one heck of a little jack of all trades.

“Issue #519: How Simple Can It Get II:Kicking it Up a Notch”

In case a simple achromat just wasn’t good enough for you, I kicked it up a notch in the next one, using a fine APO refractor, but still kept deep sky astrophotography as simple as it can be.

December 2016

“Issue #520: After the SCT Redux”

This is the coda for the “Refractor Way” series. Why did I switch to refractors? You get the full answer here.

“Issue #521: So, What’s Gonna Happen to Us?”

Didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but a couple of years of philosophical musings about my life led to some musings about amateur astronomy and its fate as well. The answers I arrived at may, alas, not make you happy. This article garnered the most attention and responses of any in 2015. Don’t wanna toot my own horn overmuch, but this is a must-read, campers.

“Issue #522: Almost There, Almost There…”

M91 – M99 and we were indeed almost there. One more to come; next week perhaps.

“Issue #523: Happy Christmas 2016”

And, so, with my traditional Christmas Eve message to my readers, we were done for another year. What will 2017 hold? My crystal ball is hazy on that, folks. Let us hope for the best, however, and keep fingers and toes crossed. OH, I think it will be a great year for astronomy no matter how the eclipse goes weather and crowd-wise. The rest, though? I am not so sure about that, I must admit.

Nota Bene: As I’ve mentioned, Steve Tuma is discontinuing sales and support of his excellent Deepsky program. Steve tells me he’s looking for a server somewhere to upload the program files to so everybody can continue to download and enjoy the program—for free. If you know of a suitable site, please contact Steve at stuma@comcast.net

And, so, we find ourselves at the end of the Messier road. Don’t feel sad, though. While we’ve caught ‘em all here, if you haven’t seen them all with your own eyes and your own telescope, you have a huge adventure in store and I envy you. Even if you have observed the entire list, you, like me, will likely never tire of these beauties. Why not give the Ms another go? This is a great time to begin that; the fall wonders are still around, the winter spectacles will soon be riding high, and before you know it the multitudinous Messiers of spring will be on parade.

This actually isn’t the end of Messiers in the blog. Since I am mostly focused on bright and spectacular deep sky objects these days, you can expect another Messier series shortly. I won’t keep you in suspense about it, either. The new articles will involve me viewing the list as John Mallas did for his and Evered Kreimer’s famous book, The Messier Album, with a 4-inch refractor. When will the series begin? That depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is the weather.

What will I see with my Celestron C102 compared to what Mallas saw with his 4-inch Unitron? Will my drawings even remotely resemble his sometimes-eccentric/fanciful looking ones? I actually did some observing along these lines some years ago, writing more than a few blog entries about the experience. At the time, however, I didn’t have a 4-inch refractor—I used a 5-inch MCT instead—so I think it will be fun to revisit the Messier Album with a scope more similar to what John used. I also plan to be more systematic this time, drawing every object John drew. If you want to follow along, I urge you to get this fine book. It’s out of print but easily available.

M106

M106

Messier 106, a bright (as galaxies go) Sb spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, is one of the least visited and least appreciated M-galaxies. Why? I am not sure. While it’s large at 18’36” x 7’12”, it’s also bright at magnitude 8.41, and its intermediate inclination means its light is not badly spread out. Certainly, it’s a nice sight in the suburbs with 10-inch range scopes, and is visible in smaller instruments.

Part of the problem may be that while not exactly tough to find, M106 is kinda out in the middle of nowhere, lying about halfway along a line drawn between Chara, Beta Canum Venaticorum, and Phecda, Gamma Ursae Majoris (a bowl star in the dipper asterism). Thanks to the galaxy’s relative prominence, it shouldn’t be tough to run to ground manually, however. If you need further guidance, it is 1-degree 40’ southeast of magnitude 5.25 3 Canum Venaticorum.

What will pop into your mind when you arrive on the field of M106? “Whoa! Bigger than I thought.” You may see as much as 10 – 12’ of galaxy, and it will be obvious that it’s strongly elongated. Even on poor nights you may also make out a small nucleus, albeit with some difficulty, as I did one hazy backyard evening with my C11:

M106 is surprisingly attractive despite haze. Easily visible in the TeleVue Panoptic 22mm with direct vision. Occasionally, I think I see hints of a nucleus, but not often. obviously elongated North/South.

On good nights from a darker site, a 10-inch class scope should reveal at least trace of dark details.

M107

There are globulars and then there are globulars. Ophiuchus has plenty, but not all are like its two gems, M10 and M12. M107 is not a bad glob, mind you, just not an outstanding one. Think “M53.” It’s resolvable from the suburbs, but you will likely need 10-inches of aperture to do it, and upping the power is a must.

M107

One good thing about M107 is that it is trivial to find, lying only 2-degrees 43’ southeast of a prominent star, magnitude 2.50 Saik, Zeta Ophiuchi. Position your scope on the star, insert a medium power eyepiece and scan slowly and carefully south-southwest. This magnitude 8.85, 13.0’ across star cluster likely ain’t gonna put your eye out, so be careful.

On the cluster’s field, my 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, showed this as a loose looking globular with but a few stars resolved. This was on a typical hazy summer backyard night. Under better conditions, M107 will look better, but as I noted in my long entry, “It’s a Messier, but truly not much of a Messier.”

M108: The Surfboard Galaxy

I’ve always liked M108. It’s distinctive, and its nearness to another of my favorite objects, M97, the Owl Nebula, adds even more interest. But we are a long way from “spectacular” here. Under suburban skies, anyway. In an 8-inch telescope, M108 is a dim streak, as its stats would suggest: magnitude 10.70 and a size of 8’42” x 2’12”. In an 8-inch in my backyard, it is often an averted vision object. It is better in the 10-inch (a 10-inch really gives you a leg up in the backyard), but not worlds better.

Like M107, M108 is at least trivial to find. If you can locate the Owl manually, all you have to do is move the telescope 48’ west-northwest roughly back in the direction of the bright dipper bowl star Merak. If you are coming from Merak, move 1-degree 30’ northeast. As with M107, but even moreso, go slowly. Higher magnification, maybe with a wide-field 12mm ocular, will help.

Don’t expect too much when you do find this bugger. You should be able to tell it is elongated, but that will likely be about it. From a better location than the backyard, things do improve in a hurry. In an 8-inch at the club dark site, I can begin to make out dark detail that makes the galaxy look somewhat like a miniature M82. In reality, this object is nothing like weirdly disturbed M82, being a more normal dusty spiral.

M109

M109

In a large aperture scope, or with a deep sky video camera, Ursa Major’s M109 is distinctive and interesting looking. It’s what I used to call a “tie-fighter galaxy” when I was doing the Herschel Project. It’s a barred spiral that looks a lot one of Star Wars’ bad guy spaceships if you’re seeing the bar without the full extent of the delicate and dim spiral arms that extend from it. Other people call these “theta galaxies,” but that’s other people, not me. At magnitude 10.6, M109 is not overly bright, but neither is it too large at 7’36” x 4’42”, so it is at least doable from average suburban digs.

Like M108, M109 is easy to find thanks to its proximity to Phecda, the dipper bowl star. Move 29’ south-southeast of the star and you should have M109 centered. With a 12mm wide-field, you may be able to move the star to one edge of your field and have the galaxy visible on the other edge if your scope isn’t overly long in focal length.

What you will be able to make out of M109 depends on scope and sky. With 8-inch and smaller instruments, all you are likely to see from the backyard is a dim oval thing that may require averted vision. Even with larger aperture telescopes at considerably better sites, you still may not pick up much beyond that. Well, perhaps a subdued nucleus. To see the bar and arms, I cheated, using my Mallincam deep sky video camera on the C11, which made the galaxy’s tie-fighter aspect easy from my back forty.

M110

And, finally, at the very end of the road is one of M31’s two nearby satellite galaxies, a magnitude 8.07 E5 elliptical. While it is rather bright, it’s also fairly large (21’54” x 11’00”) and is not always trivial from the backyard. It is much more difficult than M32, and on poorer nights M110 can be surprisingly difficult—or invisible—with a 4-inch.

M110

At least you don’t have to worry about hunting. Surely, you can find its great parent galaxy, M31, if you are beyond the greenhorn stage. M110 is located 38’ northwest of that huge beast (farther from the center than the brighter satellite, M32, that is). It is well separated from the “nebulosity” of the galaxy.

On good nights, M110 can be tantalizing, even from the backyard. In a 10-inch, I can not only see that it is quite elongated, as befits it with its E5 classification, and that it brightens towards its center, but that there are occasionally tantalizing hints of dusty detail just on the very edge of perception.

And that…is all. I hope you’ve enjoyed the series, and I also hope that, if you haven’t seriously attacked the list yet, I’ve encouraged you to do so. Folks, there is an absolute lifetime of enjoyment in these special objects.

Nota Bene: What do I use these days when I need a planetarium program? I use Stellarium. It does everything I need to do and more. And it is free, and you know I like that. The news is that version 15.1.1 is on the streets, and the program is better than ever, now including a DSS function that allows you to superimpose DSS images over the charts (if you have an Internet connection). There is no reason not to upgrade, folks; go get it.

It’s 1965 and I’ve just gotten my first real telescope, a 3-inch Tasco Newtonian (a pawn shop refugee). I really don’t know what the heck to do with it other than look at the Moon—which is wonderful, of course. Shortly, though, my first issue of Sky & Telescope arrives. Surely it will clue me in to everything I need to know about this amateur astronomy business. Alas, after looking through it I wind up more puzzled than I was before.

Sure, there was ample amateur astronomy in the magazine (if not as much as today) following the pro/science articles up front. But the writers seemed to think I already knew enough about astronomy to understand them. Heck, even the advertisements were indecipherable due to the jargon. I was getting nowhere in a hurry.

What was a “clock drive”? When the author of an article said an object in the telescope was “30’ northwest” of another, did that mean the object was 30-feet from the other one? How could you tell what was north or south or east or west in the eyepiece anyway? What was a “Meridian” or an “Ecliptic”? What did “R.A.” and “Declination” mean? What was “figuring” a mirror? Why did it have to be “parabolic”? What was a “prime focus”? What in God’s name was a “drive corrector”?

My confusion didn’t last too long. Between the mutual support and advice me and my buddies gave each other in our little proto-astronomy club, the Backyard Astronomy Society, and the wisdom dispensed by some of Patrick Moore’s books, I finally got off square one. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, though, and I sure wished somebody had explained all those puzzling things somewhere clearly, simply, and in one place.

Today, with the Internet, things are easier, much easier, but it would still be nice to have explanations of the basic concepts and terms of practical astronomy in one spot. Certainly astronomy is every bit as foreign and confusing for beginners now as it was back then. There’s a reason for that. At the beginning of the last century, U.S. secondary science educators decided to deemphasize geology and astronomy in favor of biology and chemistry. Most students get very little on astronomy after the occasional middle school “space science” unit, and its ideas and language are a mystery to most.

The sky globe...

So? In hopes of making that learning curve a little less steep, here are some brief solutions to the head-scratching puzzles you, Joe and Jane Newbie, are running into on the Internet and in the astronomy magazines. There won’t be room to give you everything you need to know in one go, so we’ll do a part II (maybe even a part III and IV) in fairly short order.

The Sky Globe

Many beginners have an awfully hard time wrapping their heads around the way the sky works. All those imaginary lines and stuff, and it’s always in motion! There is an easy way to understand it, however. What did the Ancient Greeks think the sky was? They believed it was a great crystalline globe surrounding the earth. The stars were points of eternal fire, or maybe they were holes in the sky globe allowing the eternal fire beyond to shine through. Of course, today we know that is nonsense. The sky isn’t a glass globe. If, however, you can suspend your disbelief for a while, thinking of the sky as a globe makes it easy to understand how it works.

So, we have this great crystalrotating about the earth once every 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds (a “sidereal day,” see below). Yes, I know it’s really the Earth that’s rotating, but remember what I said about "suspension of disbelief"? To our eyes, it’s the sky that is turning.

Lines and Points

Celestial Poles

If you have a basic knowledge of Earthly geography, the globe of the Earth, understanding the lines and points of the sky is easy. Let’s begin with the celestial poles, the analog of the Earth’s poles. Extend the axis of the earth north and into the sky. The point where the Earth’s axis penetrates the sky globe is the North Celestial Pole (NCP). Extend the axis south into the sky globe and you have the South Celestial Pole (SCP). The sky globe appears to be rotating on this axis, which extends from the North Celestial Pole, through the Earth, and into the South Celestial Pole.

Where are the poles in the sky? They are found at an elevation (north or south) equivalent to your latitude value. Down here, I am at 30-degrees north latitude, so I find the NCP 30-degrees above the northern horizon, conveniently marked by the bright 2^nd magnitude star, Polaris (which is actually about ¾ of a degree from the true NCP).

Celestial Equator

Do the above with Earth’s equator, extend it into the sky as a flat plane, and you have the Celestial Equator. The Celestial Equator is the imaginary line that divides the sky globe into a Northern Celestial Hemisphere and a South Celestial Hemisphere, just as the earthly equator separates the globe into northern and southern hemispheres.

Latitude (Declination)

Look at the globe of the Earth. How do you find your position north and south of the equator? Simple: there are imaginary lines of latitude. We have the same thing on the sky globe, lines of latitude. They perform exactly the same job; they allow you to find your position north or south of the CelestialEquator.

As on earth, latitude is measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds beginning at the equator, which is 0-degrees. For some odd reason some beginners tend to think the equator should be 90-degrees, but 90 degrees north or south of the Celestial (or terrestrial) equator brings you to the poles. The equator in the sky or on earth is 0-degrees. Latitude is measured in (angular) degrees, minutes and seconds.

Conventions for stating a latitude value? Degrees are indicated with a degree symbol, a single quote (‘) is minutes, and a double quote (“) is seconds, just like in your high school geometry or trigonometry courses. A minute is a distance equal to 1/60^th of a degree, and a second is a distance that’s 1/60^th of a minute. North thirty degrees, thirty minutes, and thirty seconds is written as 30°30’30”. If you don’t have a degree symbol in your font, a lowercase “d” will do. If the latitude in question is a south latitude, a latitude south of the Celestial Equator, a minus (-) sign is placed in front of the value. You can put a plus (+) sign before a latitude to indicate “north,” but the lack of a minus sign is taken to mean it’s a north latitude.

There is one difference between latitude on the Earth and latitude in the sky: in the sky this north-south measurement is called “declination” (abbreviated “dec”) but that is the only difference. “Declination” might sound forbiddingly technical to you, but it’s not; it just means “latitude on the sky globe.”

Longitude (Right Ascension)

Just as the sky globe has lines of latitude, declination, that allow us to locate points north and south of the Celestial Equator, there are also lines of longitude that enable us to find positions east and west. Just as on Earth, the combination of heavenly latitude and longitude allows us to find anything we want—stars, planets, and deep sky objects.

Celestial longitude is actually simpler than earthly longitude. On earth, longitude is in east and west values. Just as latitude is stated in relation to distances north and south of the equator, longitude on Earth is stated in terms of how far east or west (+/-) you are from the Prime Meridian (the zero line of longitude, which runs through Greenwich England). Longitude in the sky is simpler in that it begins at the sky’s Prime Meridian and runs east, increasing in value, until it comes back around. There is no east/west in celestial longitude.

When talking latitude, it’s easy to see where you measure from. On Earth or in the sky, it’s obvious you begin at the equator. But for longitude, you must choose a starting place. There’s no really obvious place to place the 0 line. On Earth, that line runs through Greenwich, England. Why? Britain was the world’s preeminent naval power when navigation was being sussed, and led the world in the quest to figure out how to determine longitude at sea (not so easy). But where to put the 0 line of longitude in the sky?

Ecliptic

Before talking about the sky’s Prime Meridian, you need to understand another line, the Ecliptic. The Ecliptic Is the Plane of Earth’s Orbit. The major planets are in orbits that are almost in the same plane as the Earth's. As such, they always appear close to the ecliptic. In terms of what you see in the sky with your eyes, the Ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun through the sky. This path does not remain in the same positon throughout the year, however.

The Vernal Equinox

You may have noticed that the Sun’s path is farther north in the (Northern Hemisphere) in summer, and farther south in the (Northern Hemisphere) winter. The path of the sun moves north and south over the course of the year. When the path is farthest north, it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Farthest south and it is winter (reverse that if you live in the Southern Hemisphere). The Sun’s moving path across the sky and the change of the seasons are due to the tilt of the earth’s axis. That’s why we have seasons. It’s notbecause, as some astronomy newbies (and other people) imagine, the Sun is closer in the summer thanks to the Earth’s elliptical orbit—the reverse is actually true in the Northern Hemisphere.

Vernal Equinox

Back to celestial longitude. The chosen point, the place the 0 line of longitude, the prime meridian in the sky, runs through is the Vernal Equinox. The Vernal (spring) Equinox is the point where the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. As winter ends, the path of the ecliptic moves north, and eventually runs into the Celestial Equator. When the path of the Sun reaches this point, when the Sun hits the Celestial Equator, it is spring. The zero hour line of celestial longitude passes through this point. The Vernal Equinox point is also known as "the First Point of Aries" (the Vernal Equinox no longer lies in Aries, but don't worry about that right now).

Right Ascension

Since, as above, there is no east/west value for celestial longitude, that makes it simpler to work with. Two things make it more complicated, or at least complicated soundingto novices, however. The first is its name. Just as celestial latitude is not called “latitude,” celestial longitude is not called longitude. It is “right ascension” (abbreviated R.A.) That’s scary sounding, but just remember right ascension = longitude. What hangs most newbies up is not celestial longitude’s name, but the way it is measured.

Rather than being given in degrees, minutes, and seconds as latitude is, right ascension is measured in hours,minutes, and seconds. What you have to understand is that these hours, minutes and seconds do not really describe time; they describe distance. One hour of right ascension is 15 angular degrees. 1-minute is 1/60^th of that and 1-second is 1/60^th of that.

The seasons...

Why “hours” instead of degrees? Since the sky is always in motion, it makes a certain amount of sense. Let’s say you go out one evening and look to the eastern horizon. You notice the bright red giant star, Aldebaran. “Pretty!” you think. But you want to watch a rerun of your favorite program,Jersey Shore, on TV. You hop inside and enjoy Snookie’s antics. Afterwards, you wander back outside and immediately notice that in one hour Aldebaran has risen 15-degrees in the sky. It has moved a distance equal to one hour of right ascension (multiply 15 times 24-hours and you will come out with 360-degrees).

If you just understand that R.A. = distance, 1h = 15-degrees, you will do OK. The convention for stating R.A. is a lowercase “h” denoting hours, an “m” for minutes, and an “s” for seconds as in: 19h17m00s.

Zenith

The Zenith is the point in the sky that is directly over your head. It never moves.

Nadir

The Nadir is like the Zenith, but is the point that is always directly beneath your feet. Like the Zenith, it never moves.

Local Meridian

Yet another imaginary line you need to know is the Local Meridian. It is the line that runs from the North Celestial Pole to the Zenith, through the South Celestial Pole, through the Nadir, and back around. It never moves. As time passes, celestial objects—the Sun, the Moon, planets, stars, deep sky objects, everything—hit and cross this line. When an object touches the Local Meridian, it is said to be “culminating” or “transiting.”

When an object culminates is an important thing for a sky watcher to know. When a star, for example, is on the Local Meridian, it is as high as it ever will get in your sky. If it’s located very far north or south in declination, that might not be very high, but it is still as high as the star will get. And that’s the best time to observe it, when it is as far from the thick, dirty air on the horizon as possible.

Solar day...

Local Sidereal Time (LST)

How do you know when an object will transit the Local Meridian? You check the local sidereal time. When a line of right ascension is straight overhead on the Local Meridian, that is the current LST. Say the 11-hour line of right ascension is on the Meridian. That means the LST is 11:00. Any object with a right ascension, a celestial longitude, of 11h is culminating.

How can you find out what the LST is? Most astronomy program, especially planetarium programs, will give LST. Some, like Stellarium, will display this value as “Mean Sidereal Time” and/or “Apparent Sidereal Time,” but for our purposes that's the same as LST. Right now, it’s 19:17 and globular cluster M56, which has a right ascension of 19h17m, is on the Local Meridian and high in the sky. Typically planetarium program, including Stellarium and Cartes du Ciel, display LST in the information window that comes up when you select an object.

Sidereal Day and Solar Day

Yes, yes, I know back in first grade your teacher, kindly Miss Franklin, told you a day is 24-hours long. But that’s not exactly true. Not always. The actual time it takes the Earth to rotate once on its axis (as measured by the time it takes a star to make two transits of the Local Meridian) is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and four seconds.

So what’s with the “24-hours”? That’s a Solar day, the time it takes for the Sun to transit the Meridian twice. Why the difference? The Sun is close compared to the stars, and the fact that the Earth is moving along in its orbit in addition to rotating, means a bit of parallax error comes into play. As you can see in the picture, when the Earth has rotated once on its axis, it’s moved along in its orbit (greatly exaggerated here) as well, and, so, has to turn a little more on its axis to put the sun back overhead. That extra time is the nearly four minute difference in the two varieties of day.

Measuring Distances in the Sky

All this degrees and minutes stuff is well and good, but how do you judge distances in the sky? Luckily, nature has provided you with a convenient measuring tool. Your outstretched fist covers about 10-degrees from thumb to pinky. Your index finger is approximately 30’ across. “But Rod,” you might say, “I have small hands.” Nevertheless, this should still work. Most people with small hands have correspondingly short arms, and your outstretched fist will still span 10-degrees.

Whew! That was a lot. Nearly too much for one sitting, so we will stop here. Go over these concepts until you are clear on them; these are things every astronomer needs to know. Even in this day of do-everything computerized telescopes, I believe it is still vital—for understanding and enjoyment—that you know how the great sky globe works.

Next time? I am not sure. I’d say that if the weather continues to be as lousy as it is right now, we might go on to Part II of the novice files. Or I may talk about the new Stellarium. Or something else may come into my mind (such as it is). We shall see.

I don’t claim to be some kind of software guru, but I have been using astronomy software since computers first came to our avocation. Most of you know that, and I am often asked which software I use. Those asking are sometimes disappointed when I say, “Whatever is cheap and simple” rather than “The latest version of TheSky X Professional (or Maxim DL).” In part, that’s because I amcheap. And it’s also in part because the things I do in astronomy today are simple enough that they could probably be accomplished with a 20-year-old copy of Megastar.

Just because I don’t spend a lot/any money on the software than runs on my PCs (no Mac here despite my not infrequent threats to go Apple) doesn’t mean my astronomy programs aren’t capable of doing far more than I do with them. We are in a golden age of incredibly capable astronomy freeware with softs like Cartes du Ciel, Deep Sky Stacker, Sharpcap, Astrotortilla, Auto Stakkert, ASCOM, Registax, and, the subject of today’s article, Stellarium.

Yes, there are tons of excellent planetarium programs, freeware and payware planetarium programs, beyond the above mentioned Cartes (a long time favorite of mine and a wonderful piece of software) and TheSky X, but what I use more than anything else today is Stellarium. Why? It’s simple and it’s pretty and that is exactly what I appreciate at the moment. It also does everything I need, and could do far more than I ask it to. If you’re interested in the basics of Stellarium, including how to install and configure it, see this article (from over five years ago, hard as that is for me to believe). Today, we’ll mostly be looking at what’s new in the latest release, Stellarium 15.1.1.

To make the above-linked long story short, Stellarium, in addition to being free, is a relatively quick download, and while, like any astronomy software, it needs to be configured, it’s not that tough. For the most part, there are no submenus of submenus of submenus. You get some fairly clear choices in a few (multi-tabbed, admittedly) windows, “Location,” “Sky and Viewing Options,” and “Configuration.” It’s all easy to do and it’s fairly obvious what you should do without even looking at help pages.

Without (top) and with (bottom) DSS (click to enlarge)...

Even setting up a connection to a telescope is not that bad. It’s duck soup if you can use the program’s built in telescope drivers (Celestron, Meade, Losmandy, SkyWatcher, Argo Navis). If you have a non-compatible telescope, you’ll have to use an add-on helper program, StellariumScope to give the program access to the multitudinous ASCOM telescope drivers, but even doing that is fairly simple.

How much computing horsepower does it take to run Stellarium? For the current version you’ll want a reasonably fast processor, but a 2.4 gig one like those in even the cheapest boxes from BestBuy is more than sufficient. Most important is a video card that supports the Open GL graphics system. You’ll also want Windows 7 and up, OSX and up, or a reasonably current flavor of Linux/Unix as your operating system. You can download older versions of Stellarium to accommodate older OSes and video cards, but you really don’t want to.

What is the first thing you will notice the first time you boot up Stellarium? Just how beautiful it is. This software is used in conjunction with projectors in planetariums, and it’s easy to see why. Its sky is as realistic as those in the most expensive apps. Weather, fog, passing satellites (actual satellites), sporadic meteors, beautiful horizon scenery, and a luscious looking sky with a superb rendition of the Milky Way are all there. You can download plenty of additional stars, and the program contains thousands and thousands and thousands of deep sky objects. Movement around the sky, dragging it with a mouse, is wonderfully responsive.

But those of you who’ve, like me, been using the program for a while know all that. What you want to know is, “Why should I go to the trouble of downloading the new one and going through that configurating again?

Here’s a (partial) list of what’s new from the program’s website:

- The Digital Sky Survey (DSS) can be shown (requires online connection).

- AstroCalc is now available from the main menu and gives interesting new computational insight.

-A lot of bugs have been fixed.

- Added support of time zones dependent by location.

- Added new skyculture: Sardinian.

- Added updates and improvements in catalogs.

- Added improvements in the GUI.

- Added cross identification data for stars from Bright Star Catalogue, 5th Revised Ed.

That first thing, DSS, is the money here. Being able to download and overlay Digitized Sky Survey images on Stellarium is a wonderful tool. Sure, you need an Internet connection, but it’s getting to the point where many star parties provide that. Not only are the charts prettier with DSS, they are more detailed. Compare the program’s normal display of M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, to one showing the DSS image of M33 (above). What’s really cool about this feature? Plenty of planetarium programs allow you to superimpose DSS images over their charts, but most require you to be zoomed in tight. Not Stellarium. The image at the beginning of this post is 30-degrees of Cygnus with DSS “on.”

Astrocalc...

While the program’s developers warn the Digitized Sky Survey feature is still somewhat experimental, it worked flawlessly for me. Occasionally, when using wide fields of view, there were a few “stitching” artifacts, but these didn’t bother me or cause problems. DSS is reason enough to upgrade to the new Stellarium. The current release is 15.1.1, btw, because the initial 15.1 build had problems with missing dlls, which prevented you from downloading the additional star catalogs offered for the program.

“Astrocalc” is Stellarium’s text-based ephemeris module. You can now overlay it on the screen with a push of the F10 button. In addition to ephemerides, this tabbed window will give positions for comets (clicking on a comet in the list will center it on the chart), find conjunctions, and display a graph showing altitude versus time for the selected object. That last is similar to the observability graphs offered in several other programs, and it is a very popular and useful tool for me.

The other additions, like a new “sky culture” (constellation system), are more minor, but still welcome, and undoubtedly useful to some of the program’s large base of users. As above, Stellarium is used by more than a few planetariums and science museums. More important to most of us, I suppose, are the updates and expansions to the program’s deep sky and star catalogs.

There’s always that ever-popular question among deep sky hounds, “How many DSOs does it got?” I don’t know that there’s a numerical total anywhere on the Stellarium website, but the DSO catalog has undoubtedly grown with the last couple of releases. For example, zooming in on a field in Coma revealed plenty of magnitude 16 PGC galaxies. I am more interested in imaging and observing the bright and spectacular galaxies, clusters, and nebulae these days (I used to chase Arps, PGCs, and UGCs), but if I were currently interested in the dimmest of the dim, I’d still be just fine with Stellarium.

What’s the experience of using the program like for those who haven’t tried it yet? Most people tend to think of this as a very visual, GUI oriented program, and it can be that. Grab the sky and drag it around, use the roller ball on your mouse to zoom. It’s a silky smooth and, yeah, visualexperience. Strangely, however, one of Stellarium’s major strengths hearkens back to the earliest days of computing. What it’s very strong with is hot keys.

Yes, it’s cools to mouse over to the left side of the screen (which makes one of the program’s tool-icon-menus appear), click that pretty “find” icon, and locate what you want with the aid of the window that comes up. Cool, yeah, but somewhat annoying out on a dark observing field. Much easier/simpler is pressing F3, which summons that same window without mousing around and clicking. Much of what you need to do with the program can be done quickly with F keys and key combos. , for example, takes you do the eastern horizon post-haste.

It's just so pretty!

The ability to do things quickly with hot-key combos doesn’t end with the things built into the program by the developer. Stellarium includes a powerful scripting system that will allow you to compose scripts to do things with a few key presses, things as simple as pointing at a certain object, or as complex as taking you on a tour of the best NGC objects.

How do I use Stellarium? Basically, in three ways. First, I use it to give me quick “What’s up?” looks at the sky. You know, “What’s high in the east right now?” After Windows changed enough that that DOS oldie but goodie, Skyglobe, would no longer run, I cast about for a program that was quick to load and would let me get to my chosen horizon in a hurry. Initially, I used the free soft I got with my Edge800/VX telescope four years ago, the lowest level of Bisque’s TheSky X, the First Light Edition. That’s a nice but very limited program (natch), so I was pleased to be able to ditch it for the recent releases of Stellarium, which load quickly on my modern PCs, and which offer those quick hot-keys to allow me to get to anything and anywhere.

Secondly, I use Stellarium when writing observing articles, whether for this blog or for Sky & Telescope. The program has an excellent measuring tool that allows me to easily determine that NGC Umptysquat is 3 degrees northwest of M Whatsit.

Finally, I use Stellarium in the field with my telescope. While there are built-in drivers for all my mounts, I generally use the SteallariumScope program and ASCOM drivers, since ASCOM gives me some things the built-in drivers don’t, like a little onscreen hand control. That allows me to center objects I am imaging without messing with the real HC (and prevents my editor from complaining about my poorly centered/composed astrophotos). Going to objects with Stellarium is a breeze, by the way. Select an object, hold down the CTRL key and press “1.” That’s all. No icons to hunt or menus to navigate.

In the field, I often use Stellarium alongside a planner/logger—SkyTools, Deep Sky Planner, or Deepsky. While you can’t interface Stellarium with Deep Sky Planner as you can some other planetarium programs, I don’t find that a huge problem. I locate an object in DSP’s database, switch to Stellarium, hit the F3 key, and type in the object identifier, Not a big deal. And then I just do my thing with Stellarium and my telescope. I have never had any problems with or program crashes in the field. Yes, computers can be cantankerous, but Stellarium is exemplary for its good behavior.

And there you have it. If you are a Stellarium user, you’ll want to upgrade ASAP in order to get the DSS feature. Not a Stellarium user? As I said earlier, there are many great free planetariums these days, like Cartes and Hallo Northern Sky, but since there’s no money involved, why not give Stellarium a try; you just might like its way of doing things. You are firmly in the TheSky X or Starry Night camp? Again, it don’t cost nuthin’ so why not try Stellarium? There’s a lot to be said for “simpler.” Me? I’m allergic to menus within menus within menus, and that’s one of the reasons I’ll be rolling with Stellarium for a while, I think.

Last time in this series, we discussed the features of the great sky globe, its lines and points, things like the lines of right ascension and declination, celestial longitude and latitude. This Sunday, we begin talking about destinations in the sky, the objects those lines of declination and right ascension help us find.

Stars and Constellations

The Naming of Stars is an Important Matter

Do you remember T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? No? Surely, though, you’ve heard of the famous musical based on it, Cats? Anyhow, Eliot informed us that every cat has three names. The same is true of stars. Every star you can see in the sky—and many thousands and thousands beyond those you can see with your naked eye—has (at least) three names.

Even if you’re the newest of novices, you probably know at least a few star proper names. You’ve probably heard “Polaris” (a.k.a. The North Star), possibly “Sirius” (the brightest star in the sky, “The Dog Star”), and very likely “Betelgeuse” (“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”). You may also assume that’s how astronomers identify stars, by their proper names. While astronomers, amateur and professional, do tend to refer to a handful of brighter stars by their names, that’s about it.

Why is that? First of all, only a relatively few stars, maybe a couple of hundred out of the four or five thousand visible to the naked eye, have proper names. Also, most of the star names in common usage are of Arabic origin and are difficult for non-Arabic speakers to pronounce and remember. Sure, Betelgeuse is easy enough, but then you have Zubenelgenubi, Al Minliar al Asad, and Fum al Samakah. There’s got to be a better way.

There was, beginning with an alternative means of identifying stars devised by German astronomer Johannes Bayer in 1600. He hit on a star nomenclature system that was simple and elegant and is still widely used today. Bayer dispensed with proper names and instead christened stars with lowercase Greek letters. Often, but not always, he designated the brightest star in a constellation as “alpha,” the second brightest as “beta,” and so on. Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, for example, is identified with the letter alpha and the Latin genitive of its constellation name, “Alpha Canis Majoris.” Simple, neat, elegant.

Unfortunately, there are serious problems with the Bayer Letter system. First, Johannes didn’t always stick to the “brightest star is alpha” rule. Sometimes, the placement of a star in a constellation was more important to him than its brightness. For example, Adhara in Canis Major is the second brightest star in its constellation, but because it is far to the south, he gave it the letter epsilon rather than beta. The most fatal problem for Bayer letters, however? There are only 24 Greek letters, so even a small constellation exhausts the alphabet in a hurry.

What’s the one thing you can’t run out of? Arabic numerals. That’s what occurred to 18^th Century French astronomer Joseph Lalande as he was working with the star catalog (list) of British Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed. The other idea Lalande had was to not worry about stellar brightness. In an age long before the development of photometers, it was often hard to tell which stars were brighter than others, especially considering that some stars, like Algol in Perseus, are variable—their brightness changes.

What Lalande did instead was to give each star in a constellation a number based on its right ascension, its celestial longitude. The westernmost star in Canis Major would be “1 Canis Majoris,” and the star just to the east of it would be “2 Canis Majoris,” and so on. Is Lalande’s system, which came to be called “Flamsteed Numbers” for the catalog he applied it to, perfect? No. Due to the effects of precession, the slow wobble of the Earth’s axis, which affects the coordinate system over time, some of Lalande’s numbers are now out of order. That is not a big deal, though, and today Flamsteed numbers are probably still the most oft-used identifiers of stars.

Proper names, Bayer Letters, and Flamsteed Numbers are the only designations stars possess, however. There have been dozens of star catalogs compiled in the last four centuries up to and including the Hubble Guide Star Catalog, which contains millions of entries, and even beyond that to catalogs with many millions of entries. So, many stars actually have considerably more than three names.

Constellations

If you knew “Betelgeuse,” “Sirius,” and “Polaris,” you probably also know a few star patterns, “constellations,” or parts of them at least. Likely the Big Dipper (part of the larger constellation Ursa Major), and perhaps Orion the Hunter, who is prominent in the sky right now. And you probably know these constellations as often distinctive “stick figures.” The bright stars of part of Ursa Major seem to form a dipper or plough, Orion is the outline of a man complete with a belt and sword.

These constellation stick figures are useful, and even professionals employ them to orient themselves in the sky on the infrequent occasions when they have reason to look at the sky with their own eyes. Certainly, amateur astronomers use them frequently. They are an easy way to find objects—stars, planets, deep sky objects. The constellation stick figure outlines are informal however.

There are no official constellation stick figures. Designs for the constellation outlines range from the simple and elegant, as those in Sky & Telescope’s monthly star chart, to the strange and torturous ones drawn by children’s author H.A. Rey in his book, The Stars, a New Way to See Them in an effort to make the figures look more like the things they are supposed to represent (the usual stick figure of Sagittarius looks like a teapot, not an archer). There are officialconstellations, however.

A “constellation” as thought of by professional astronomers and most amateur astronomers is a different thing. It is not a stick figure. As shown above with Orion, a constellation in this sense is an area of the sky. Everything within the blue, dashed border is in the constellation of Orion whether it is part of his stick figure or not. These sorts of constellations are analogous to the counties on a state map. There is a combined total of 88 constellations in the sky’s Northern and Southern Celestial Hemispheres, and their boundaries were made official by the International Astronomical Union, the body that handles the naming of objects in astronomy among other things, in 1922.

Deep Sky Objects

What’s a “deep sky object” (DSO)? We’ll save the minutiae of star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae for a future installment. Today, we’ll just talk generalities. Deep sky objects are those things other than single stars that lie beyond the Solar System: star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae. Some observers consider double stars to be DSOs, but most don't.

The basic amateur astronomer “life list,” the Messier catalog, composed by French Astronomer Charles Messier in 1781, and was, initially a listing of odd fuzzy things Messier saw with his small telescope (often a 4-inch refractor). The Messier is the place to start when you are beginning your exploration of the Universe outside our Solar System. Initially, Messier’s idea was to catalog fuzzy objects that could potentially masquerade as comets, confusing his fellow comet hunters.

The objects in Chuck’s list are commonly identified as M-1, M-2, etc. All are visible from the northern hemisphere, natch, with even the southernmost objects doable from mid-northern latitudes.

While the original goal of the M-list may have been to aid comet hunters, Messier soon went beyond that, including objects, like M45, the Pleiades star cluster, that surely no one could have mistaken for a comet. The M-list not only contains objects that Messier and his friends and colleagues saw, but those from other sources, including some, like the Orion Nebula (M42), that had been known for a long time. While Messier’s original list stops at M103, seven more have been added over the years by various people, with the “Messier” now widely considered to contain 110 objects.

The next person to compose a major deep sky catalog was the famous English amateur astronomer William Herschel in the latter part of the 18^thCentury. He and his sister Caroline cataloged a whopping 2500 faint fuzzies. While the Herschel Catalog is famous, it’s no longer in use. It was absorbed into the even larger NGC catalog developed by Herschel’s son, John and John Louis Emil Dreyer in the 19^thCentury.

While the most popular list of deep sky objects with amateurs after the Messier is the Herschel 400 list, a subset of Herschel’s catalog containing the 400 best objects for smaller telescopes, the DSOs in it are identified by their modern NGC numbers, not their old Herschel designations.

The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated “NGC”) is the bread and butter deep sky list for astronomers amateur and professional. The basic catalog contains 7840 DSOs total for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. An addition to the NGC, the two-part Index Catalog (IC) published by Dreyer in the late 1800s, brings the final NGC object tally to 13,226 DSOs. NGC objects are identified with "NGC" or "IC" and a four digit number following a space, "NGC 7331," for example. While technically considered part of the NGC the IC catalogs' numbers begin with IC 1.

While many NGC objects are, yes, dimmer than Messiers, and new amateurs can be a bit skittish about diving into the bigger list, not all its objects are tougher than the Ms. There are plenty of showpieces Charles Messier missed. For example, the spectacular galaxy NGC 253 does not appear in the M-list. All the Messier objects also have NGC numbers, by the way. M31, the Andromeda galaxy, for example, is also NGC 224. How about the IC? Most of them are indeed tough. Oh, there are some easy IC open clusters, but most of these catalogs’ DSOs are faint and difficult “photographic” subjects.

There are plenty of other catalogs besides the Messier and NGC. Most are specialized like the PK catalog of planetary nebulae or the Collinder catalog of open star clusters. Some, like those two, are in common use by amateurs. Others like the PGC and UGC catalogs, which contain millions of faint galaxies, are only used by those of us with the largest telescopes or most sensitive cameras.

And…I think we’ll stop right here. The next “lesson” will concern star charts, and will, like the first installment, be a lot for Joe and Jane Newbie to bite off and chew in one sitting. When will that come? As before, it depends on the weather. I currently have a telescope set up in the backyard, but it is sitting under layers and layers of thick, nasty clouds.

I come not to praise Celestron, but neither do I come to bury them. I used to be a Celestron fanboy. For years, I bought only Celestron's gear and praised the company to high heaven. In recent times, things have changed. For one thing, Celestron ain’t the Celestron it used to be. It’s long since been bought out by Chinese telescope giant Synta. I’ve changed too; maybe I’ve grown a little more cynical and skeptical than I was in my salad days.

However, I still like a good bargain if it’s a good bargain, and I’m not afraid to give praise where praise is due. Or criticism when that’s warranted. So, where does one of Celestron’s more popular and inexpensive mount offerings, the Advanced VX German equatorial mount (GEM), fall in the spectrum from damnation to salvation?

About four years ago, I began thinking about a replacement for my then most used rig, a 1995 Celestron Ultima 8 SCT tube riding on the company’s Advanced GT (CG5) telescope mount, a medium-light, computer-equipped GEM. Why? I wanted a new mount mostly because my CG5 was approaching ten years old, and I wasn’t quite sure how much longer the inexpensive rig would go. With early retirement in the offing in 2013, I also wanted to ensure any necessary astronomical gear purchases were taken care of while I was still working full-time, if possible.

I initially considered a wide range of mounts, especially to include the Losmandy G11 and the iOptron CEM60. Eventually, after worrying myself into a tizzy over the choices, I decided the best thing for me would be to get a mount as similar to the CG5 both in weight and capability (and price) as possible. I was also addicted to the Celestron NexStar hand control and didn’t want to give that up. Before spring 2013 was out I ordered the new successor to the CG5, the Advanced VX. Actually I ordered Celestron’s Edge 800 SCT/ VX pairing.

Why did I buy a new telescope to go with the new mount? At the time, I had three freaking C8s, and my most used one, Celeste, the Ultima 8 OTA, who you’ve read about many times if you frequent this blog, had always been a good performer. There were, a couple of reasons. For one, I was attracted by the better field edge offered by Celestron’s corrected Edge SCTs. For another, Celestron always gives you a real good deal if you buy a telescope/mount combo. The Edge 800 with its off-white tube was just so pretty, too. And I just felt like I deserved a retirement telescope, e’en at the somewhat young retirement age of 59.

This story is not the story of the Edge 800, however. I may talk about her, "Mrs. Emma Peel," again someday. My switch (for the most part) to refractors means she doesn’t get used as much as she used to, but she’s still a good telescope and I still like her and user when I need a long focal length large(er) aperture instrument. What does get used all the time? The Advanced VX mount.

As is sometimes the case in modern amateur astronomy, my experience in obtaining the VX wasn’t overly smooth. While it arrived promptly from my astro-dealer of choice, Bob Black at Skies Unlimited, it had to be shipped to Celestron for replacement shortly thereafter because of two problems. One was that the hole on the declination counterweight bar for the “toe saver” bolt was mis-threaded. The safety bolt, which is intended to prevent the 11-pound counterweight(s) from smashing your toes if the counterweight locking bolt should come undone, would only thread in a few threads.

That was not a huge deal. What was was the other problem, that the hole in the underside of the mount head that the tripod’s threaded rod screws into to secure mount to tripod was also mis-threaded. I screwed the rod into the mount when I set the VX up for the first time, and found out to my dismay that there was no way I would ever be able to unthread it again. I had to destroy the rod and the hole in order to get the mount and tripod apart for return to Celestron.

Celestron replaced the VX promptly with a mount that was perfect (you can see a video of the replacement mount immediately after its unboxing here), but there’s no use denying that receiving a bad mount is not an uncommon experience for buyers at the low end of the astro-market. That knowledge didn’t make me feel a bit better, however. While the VX is considered a bargain mount by some of the folks in our game, to me 900 dollars, which is what it costs, is a not inconsiderable sum.

While most people will not have a problem with their new VX, my experience and the experiences of more than a few other purchasers show its QA can be spotty. Be prepared. Above all, if you receive a mount that is bad out of the box, don’t agree to have Celestron fix it for you. Insist on a replacement, an immediate replacement, from them or your dealer. If you bought a big screen TV at BestBuy or HH Gregg and it was dead out of the box, you wouldn’t agree to ship it to LG or Panasonic and let them keep it for a month or so while they fixed it, would you?

Be that as it may, things began looking up after the second VX arrived. I missed taking the mount to the Spring 2013 Deep South Star Gaze Spring Scrimmage—the replacement arrived just a little too late—and I used good old reliable CG5 with the Edge 800 instead. I was shortly able to get the VX and Edge down to Chiefland, Florida, to the Chiefland Astronomy Village for a Chiefland 4th of July and a good shakedown cruise, though.

That’s what I intended, anyway; the weather gods had other ideas. All me and the Edge, Mrs. Peel, saw was the undersides of clouds. Thick rain clouds. That turned out to be the story for much of the summer of 2013, and I didn’t get a chance to see what my new rig could do under dark skies for quite a while.

The Specs

Before I talk more about how the VX performed, I suppose it’s a good idea to summarize the mount’s basic specs. The Celestron Advanced VX is a computerized goto GEM mount that uses Celestron’s NexStar + (plus) computer hand controller. It is powered by two servo motors (with encoders) that are similar to those that were used on the CG5.

While Celestron doesn’t publish a figure for the weight of the mount’s EQ head, it’s about 18-pounds. The 2-inch steel-legged tripod comes in at 18 pounds as well, and is the same basic model (with a slightly different head) that is shipped with the CGEM, the EQ-6, and several other Synta-made mounts. The VX is light enough when separated into components—mount, tripod, and counterweight(s)—that most people will have no trouble transporting it and setting it up.

The VX comes with a single 11-pound counterweight, a DC power cord, a short serial cable, and (usually) a DVD containing a telescope control program—the First Light Edition of TheSky X at the time I bought my mount.

How about payload capacity? Celestron says 30-pounds. That is actually, surprisingly, a downgrade from the figure they published for the CG5, 35-pounds. Is the VX less sturdy than the CG5? No. Either the company decided to be more realistic about the weight this mount can handle, or they just forgot the figure they quoted for the CG5. The capacity of the two mounts is pretty much identical. That is, around 30-pounds for visual, and maybe 15 – 20-pounds for the more demanding task of imaging.

What’s New

Are the CG5 and VX identical save for appearance, then? No. The VX is very much an improvement on the CG5 in several ways. The CG5 was nothing more than a non-goto Vixen Great Polaris mount clone with goto motors pasted on, and it looked it. While the mount worked well, it definitely had rough edges. The CG5’s plastic motor housings could, for example, interfere with movement in R.A. If you lived at 30-degrees latitude or south of that, you’d find you’d have to remove the mount’s forward altitude bolt or the R.A. motor housing would bump into said bolt and prevent you from reaching 30-degrees altitude during polar alignment.

The internals of the VX are much the same as those of the CG5, though the motor control board has supposedly been somewhat improved. However, the mount head has been completely redesigned. The motor housings now look like they are actually part of the GEM and don’t interfere with any of its movements. The R.A. shaft housing is more sleek looking, and the CG5’s pitiful polar scope eyepiece cover, which was always falling off and getting lost, has been replaced with a nice thread-on job.

Perhaps the most important redesign was of the control panel, though it’s taken Celestron a couple of tries to get it exactly right. A bug-a-boo with the CG5 was that the connection for the declination motor’s cable was right there with the rest of the mount’s identical RJ-11 receptacles. Plug the declination cable into the hand control port or vice versa and you could do real damage to the mount. The initial VXes improved on that somewhat, putting the dec receptacle on the top lip of the control panel, which extends out from the R.A. housing. Some folks still managed to plug the declination cable into the wrong receptacle, though. Celestron eventually, in the most recent production runs, gave the dec cable a connector that can’t be plugged into an RJ receptacle.

What else? The mount now features Permanent Periodic Error Correction (PPEC). The CG5 didn’t have PEC at all, permanent or otherwise. Another, more important, improvement is that the altitude and azimuth adjustment knobs are larger and better on the VX and make polar alignment easier. Also helpful is that the VX, like the CGEM, features an internal battery that keeps time and date current when the power is turned off. Finally, the too loose power connector of the CG5 has been replaced by one with a thread on collar that ensures a firm power connection.

The VX mount has shipped with Celestron’s Plus HC from the beginning, and will soon be equipped with the new USB HC, which includes a built-in USB-serial converter for control with a PC without an add-on serial converter.

What’s Not New

That’s a pretty impressive line-up of improvements. What didn’t get fixed, though? Mainly, the declination axis. Unlike the right ascension axis, which features ball bearings, the declination axis uses a thrust bearing. The axis rides on plastic. Some people have expressed concerns about that, and it’s true the declination axis doesn’t move as freely as the R.A. axis, but I’ve never had a problem balancing even lighter scopes in declination. My mount also auto-guides reasonably well in dec, so I’ve pronounced this a non-issue. How about the mount’s sound? The CG5 is a notoriously noisy mount when it is slewing at high speed. That is caused in part by the motor housings resonating. The VX is noticeably and substantially quieter than the CG5 and at least slightly less noisy than my CGEM.

In Use

The VX is identical to all the other Celestron GEMs in most respects when it comes to alignment. The only exception is the more expensive mounts’ homing/limit switches. The VX doesn’t have them. Instead, as with the CGEM and CG5, you set the mount to a home position manually using marks on the R.A. and declination axes. The marks are improved over the CG5’s stick on labels, at least. The VX has engraved R.A. and declination home position marks that are easy to see with a dim red light.

Once you are in home position, it’s the same old story as with other Celestron GEMs. You do a 2+4 alignment for best goto accuracy. You align on two stars the hand control chooses for you. When they are centered in finder and eyepiece, you go on to add as many as four “calibration” stars. These stars allow the mount’s computer to take cone error—misalignment between the telescope and the VX’s R.A. axis—into account, and are what is mostly responsible for the mount’s excellent goto accuracy.

And the VX’s goto accuracy is outstanding. I’ve never worried about getting objects in the field of view of a medium power eyepiece, even with the f/10 SCT, or in the frame of fairly small camera chips. Any object you request, from horizon to horizon is just there assuming you’ve been careful in your goto alignment—used a medium power reticle eyepiece and done final star centering with the mount’s up and right keys only.

Polar alignment? A GEM mount must be accurately polar aligned for good tracking. Like the CG5 and CGEM, the VX is amazingly immune to goto accuracy problems caused by polar misalignment. If you are just observing visually, it’s usually enough to merely point the mount north and raise the R.A. axis’ altitude to a value equal to your latitude. If you are taking pictures, however, you need a good polar alignment.

The VX doesn’t come with a polar alignment borescope (one is available as an option), but you don’t really need one. Like the other NexStars, you can employ the hand control’s built-in polar alignment routine, AllStar. Once you’ve done a good 2+4 alignment, AllStar will have you center a star using the mount’s altitude and azimuth adjusters. Allstar is more than adequate for most imaging purposes.

Making Alignments Simpler

The alignment process, centering up to six stars, can be something of a hassle, but Celestron’s optional StarSense alignment camera takes all the pain out of that. The StarSense easily and accurately performs a goto alignment with the VX without user intervention—other than to set the mount to home position and start the procedure. Since you don’t have to do a second 2+4 alignment following the ASPA—StarSense does it for you—it’s painless to do two ASPA iterations and really dial in polar alignment. In my opinion, StarSense is almost a must-buy for Celestron GEM owners.

In the Field

Since my mount came with the Edge 800 OTA, that was the scope I used with it initially and for about a year and a half thereafter. I was mostly imaging with deep sky video cameras like the Mallincam, and, for video, the setup was a dream. While there was some backlash in the VX’s declination axis, there was little on the R.A., pointing was excellent, and my results were everything I expected and more. While the tracking quality of the VX was not worlds better than that of the CG5, it was somewhat better and more than good enough for unguided video imaging with short (usually around 15-seconds) exposures.

However, my purchase of the VX came at a time when changes were in the offing for me. One of those changes was that after using nothing but video for picture taking for the previous several years, I was turning away from that and back to using CCD and DSLR cams. Oh, I’d had a ball with video, but I suddenly wanted prettier, more finished looking pictures than what my Xtreme or Stellacam could deliver. How would the VX cope with the longer, guided exposures demanded by my DSLRs?

The answer was “fairly well,” though more than a few of my images with the Edge 800 (reduced to f/7) weren’t quite perfect. The stars might be a little off-round if you were zoomed-in far enough on the picture. Mostly, I think that was my fault. For one thing, I was using a fast 50mm guide scope. Most people will tell you these can work OK up to about 1500mm of focal length, but I was almost there at 1400mm and was pushing it. Also, I often forgot to lock the telescope’s primary mirror down. Finally, me being me, I sometimes (usually) wasn’t as exacting with the AllStar polar alignment as I could have been. When you get up around 1400 - 1500mm, everything becomes critical.

I could have tightened things up with a better guide scope or an off-axis guider and a better polar alignment, but as 2014 wound down, one of the things that began to change for me was my choice in telescopes. One day, I began wondering how the combination of my 80mm Megrez II Fluorite refractor and my Canon 60D DSLR would do with the VX. I just happened to be heading out to my club dark site that evening, and decided to take the William Optics APO rather than the SCT. I was bowled over by the wide field shots I got.

And it wasn’t just that the smaller scope’s wider field was cool. It was eye-opening how darned easy it was to get perfectly guided shots at 550mm. The 50mm guide scope was more than adequate at this image scale. And sometimes it wasn’t even needed. One night I was shooting with the Megrez and VX in the backyard, where I really need to keep exposures down to two minutes or so because of the bright sky background. Watching the subs coming in, I thought to myself, “Man, PHD 2 (my auto-guiding program) sure is guiding well tonight.” Then, I realized I’d forgotten to startPHD 2. While I do usually guide for exposures of a minute or more, you can get away with a lot at 550mm, that you can’t at 1400mm.

There were more changes ahead for me as 2015 began, including changes in my approach to astronomy. I sold my 12-inch Dobsonian (the fabled Old Betsy), three C8s, an RV6, and some other gear (finally to include my old CG5) I wasn’t using, and applied part of the proceeds to a 120mm APO refractor. As I’d expected, it was easier to manage for imaging than my SCTs had been, even with its fairly substantial focal length of 900mm. If nothing else, there was none of the SCTs’ dratted focus shift to annoy me. And, yeah, I gotta admit I found myself becoming addicted to the refractor visual experience, that certain-special look of images in a lens scopes.

How did the VX do with the 120mm? Until recently, I didn’t know. I only used it on that mount for visual, moving it to the CGEM for imaging. The other day, however, as I was preparing to test a new camera, I got lazy. I like the CGEM a lot. In some ways, the mount gets a bum rap on Cloudy Nights (ya think?), but one thing I don’t like about it is its weight. Lifting over 40-pounds onto a tripod just ain’t my bag these days. I was not convinced the VX would handle the longer focal length for imaging, though. But, on the night in question I was, yeah, feeling lazy and also more than a little sore from working in the yard, and thought I’d give the VX a try with the 120mm.

I wasn’t in the mood to set up for guiding, either. I just wanted to figure out how to operate the camera and its software. So, what I did was limit my exposures to 30-seconds. If I had to throw out every other sub-frame at 900mm I would just do that. Surprise! I didn’t have to toss a single sub all night. I did take pains with balancing the scope, and I did do two iterations of the ASPA polar alignment, but other than that I just let the VX do its thing and it performed admirably.

In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. The VX handles large payloads well for visual use. My 6-inch f/8 achromatic refractor, which approaches 30-pounds with a 2-inch diagonal and a heavy 100-degree AFOV eyepiece onboard, is good on the VX. It would actually be very good for visual with the VX if Celestron just sold a half-pier extension for the tripod. As is, the 6-incher’s tube is a little too long and can crash into the tripod if you are not careful. With that experience in mind, the idea that it can handle the 11-pound 120mm refractor, including for imaging, shouldn’t be a surprise.

One of the great advantages of the VX for me is that I am willing to set it up even on iffy nights. Lately, the sky has to look darned near perfect before I’m going to wrestle with the CGEM or my old EQ-6. The mount is also robust. I’ve never worried about leaving the VX set up in my backyard under a Desert Storm Cover for three or four days.

That’s good, but how has the mount held-up over nearly four years of fairly frequent use? No complaints. It’s never done anything crazy. It is working as well today as the day I got it out of its box. Heck, I haven’t even had to replace the little button cell battery that keeps time and date current yet.

The greatest complement I can give Celestron’s "bargain" goto mount? I’ve often speculated as to what I would replace the VX with if it went up in smoke one night (not that I expect that). It would be a similar size mount, and I’ve been attracted to some of the newcomers in this class like the iOptron CEM25 and the Exos PMC-8 from Explore Scientific. But I would probably just get another VX. It’s never been a hassle, has never irritated me, and has never failed to do what I want done on the observing field. What greater praise can you give a mount than that?

Keyspan USB-Serial Converter Cable

It’s been—wow—the better part of two decades since laptop computers began to appear on our observing fields and observers began to use them to send computerized telescopes to sky objects. Unfortunately, a stroll through the Cloudy Nights mount forums reveals a lot of you still have trouble getting mounts talking to computers. That is not something to be ashamed of. There are several gotchas involved, gotchas that can drive those of us who don’t do much with computers in our personal or professional lives absolutely MAD.

Luckily, it’s fairly easy to get even the most computer-phobic person going with connected astronomy. Well, most of the time. On the PC side of the house, there are so many computer hardware configurations and variations that anything is possible. There can be inexplicable difficulties that defy reason and stymie the most PC savvy person. Luckily, that is not usually the case, and it often takes no more than 15-minutes to get a rig working. That’s because if there is a problem it usually has nothing to do with telescope or computer; it’s the connection between computer and telescope mount that stops people before they get started. That is what we will address first.

Well, we’ll address that after you have the two items needed to make a computer-telescope connection work (in addition to your fave astronomy program). First you'll need a serial cable. This must be a cable wired specifically for your mount. Why the scope makers didn’t just adapt the standard RS-232C cable, I have no idea, but they didn’t and there is no use worrying about that at this late stage of the game.

A Meade cable won’t work on a Celestron, and a Celestron cable won’t even work on a SynScan (SkyWatcher) mount despite the fact that both are made by the same company, Synta. Get the specificcable for your mount/telescope from an astronomy dealer, or, if you are handy with RJ crimpers (most telescope cables use an RJ plug for the scope end), make one according to the pin-out for your particular mount. Most telescope/mount manuals will give the design specs for a serial cable.

Next, you’ll need a “USB to serial converter.” What? To this point, most telescopes only “speak” RS-232C serial. While that is a somewhat outmoded data communications standard, it has its pluses for astronomy. You can run very long runs of serial cable without a problem. If you want to control a telescope thats' in an observatory or set up in the yard from inside your house, RS-232 serial makes sense.

Com 3 is assigned...

Unfortunately, modern PCs (and Macs) don’t have serial outputs. That's long since gone the way of the buggy whip. Luckily, the above-mentioned converter cable is an easy solution. The converter takes a USB signal coming from a computer and changes it to the serial data understood by a telescope/mount. And all is well, right?

Not necessarily. Most of the time, any USB to serial converter you can find (they are now scarce in local computer stores) will work OK with a scope mount. But some do work better than others. That can be important if you want to do more complicated things than just sending a mount on gotos with a PC. If, for example, you want your laptop to take the placeof a hand control (NexRemote and EQMOD). If you do, I recommend the Keyspan USB-serial converters (available from B&H Photo). In my experience they are the most reliable and problem-free.

First Steps

With serial cable and converter in hand, it’s time to get connected. The first step is getting the PC squared away with that serial converter. You don’t need to fool with the telescope or cable yet. Just plug the USB – serial widget into the laptop. If the PC (or Mac) is anywhere near recent, it will automatically install a driver for the USB-serial device (if you have a very old computer, say a Windows XP machine, you may have to download and install a driver for it manually).

What’s a driver anyhow? That’s a term that will come up again and again in the world of computer – scope interfacing. In short, it’s a little program, a little app, that tells the computer about a particular device. What it is and how to talk to it. When you plug in an external device, be it a USB – Serial converter or a printer, the driver is accessed and tells Mr. Computer what to do. This works the same whether you have a PC, or a Macintosh.

Once the driver is installed and the computer declares the device (the USB-serial cable) ready for use, there’s one more thing to do. On a PC, you need to open "control panel"/"hardware and sound"/"device manager" and see which com port number (serial port number) the computer has assigned to the converter cable. This is very important. Not do doing this or doing it incorrectly is what gives most people problems.

Selecting one of TheSky's internal drivers...

To check the serial port assignment in recent flavors of Windows, right click the Start button and choose “control panel.” Click “hardware and sound,” and then “device manager.” A “tree” will appear, with “com and LPT ports” on it. Expand that entry, and you should see a com port number. The PC has a serial port now and has assigned it a number. If you’re a Mac user, you’ll need to do the same, and I hope you know how to do that, since I sure don’t. At any rate, remember the com port number; you will need it. If you always plug the converter into the same USB port, the same number will normally be assigned to it. If you plug into a different USB port, a different com port number may be assigned, and you may have to check it again.

Getting Telescope and PC Talking

The next thing to suss is the telescope driver type question. Does your astroware use external or internal? Telescope drivers work the same way as the drivers the PC uses to communicate with the USB-serial cable, or printer, or anything else. The difference is that they are accessed by the astronomy program instead of the computer itself. The PC doesn’t know anything about telescope mounts. As far as it is concerned, the scope is a generic serial device, end of story.

The fine points of goto commands and such vary from mount brand to mount brand and even sometimes from model to model, and the astronomy program in use has to have an appropriate telescope driver—Celestron, Meade, Losmandy, etc.—in order to know how to command the telescope and how to interpret the data coming back from it over the serial interface.

There are two general types of drivers in use by astronomy software, internal (“built-in”) drivers and external drivers. Internal drivers come with the astronomy program, and are written by the people who wrote that software. Many programs have moved away from internal drivers. Most software authors or even development teams don’t want to be saddled with writing drivers to support every new telescope/mount that comes out, as you can imagine.

Despite the above, there are still some well-known PC programs that come with internal drivers including TheSky X and Stellarium. Macintosh software invariably uses internal drivers, since a system of external ones has never been developed for the Mac. If your astronomy program uses built-in internal drivers, you simply choose scope brand and model from a list in the software’s “telescope” menu, fill in a few items, and are good to go.

ASCOM Chooser in Cartes du Ciel...

External drivers are the norm for the PC world these days. The beauty of them is that the authors of astronomy programs don’t have to worry about drivers at all. All they have to do is provide a link to a 3^rdparty driver system. In the PC world, that is ASCOM, “Astronomy Common Object Model.” While ASCOM provides drivers for more than just mounts (focusers, cameras, etc.), its most common role is as a telescope mount driver system.

The way it works is this: download and install a program called the “ASCOM Platform.” It handles communications between an ASCOM compatible astronomy program and a driver for a particular telescope, which is also downloaded from the ASCOM website.

While there has been talk about porting ASCOM to Macintosh over the years, that has never happened. A few people have tried to come up with ASCOM-like external driver systems for Apple, but none has caught on. ASCOM has never come to Linux either; in part because Linux users have their own system called “Indi.” Indi is, like Linux itself, not quite as user friendly to install and use as ASCOM, but the main reason you probably haven’t heard of it is that there aren’t that many non-professional astronomers using Linux/Unix for telescope control.

Configuring the Telescope Interface

One thing many beginners miss? Unless you are using specialized software like NexRemote or EQMOD, the first thing you do when interfacing computer and telescope is not start playing with the laptop. The first thing you do is align the telescope/mount with the hand control the old-fashioned way, just like always. Trying to interface the scope and computer before the telescope is aligned will cause nothing but problems.

If your astro-software uses built-in (internal) drivers, interfacing to the telescope will differ somewhat depending on the software in question, but all programs require similar things to be filled-in in the telescope set up window. The example I’m using is TheSky 6, which normally only works with built-in drivers (but can be “tricked” into using ASCOM).

ASCOM Chooser in Stellarium...

The first thing to do is select the telescope or mount brand/model. While this can vary a bit, most programs that use internal drivers will list individual telescope models. In the picture above, I’ve chosen the good, old CG5 German equatorial mount. After that, enter basic communications settings. With TheSky 6, press the “settings” button. With other programs, the com setup and other options may all be on the same screen. Anyhow, enter the com port number found in Control Panel (or in the appropriate place on a Macintosh). If the software wants baud rate, enter/choose “9600.” A few older programs (like the still-popular Megastar) will ask for data bits, parity, and stop bit. You don’t have to understand these serial communications arcana; just enter “eight, one, and none” (8-1-n).

Most programs will offer some additional options, as TheSky 6 does. Do you want telescope crosshairs on the screen? Should the software automatically switch to night vision mode when a telescope is connected? When everything is selected or entered, click a connect button or, as with TheSky, go back to the telescope menu and choose “link/establish” (or with other software "connect,"“enable interface,” or similar). The documentation that came with the astronomy software will make clear how to proceed.

That’s it for built-in drivers. Using ASCOM is a little more complicated, but not much. You don’t (can’t/shouldn’t) start the ASCOM program; the astronomy software you are using will start it for you. The beauty of ASCOM is that the telescope/mount setup windows are the same no matter which astronomy program you use. Everything will look the same and you will enter data the same way whether in Cartes du Ciel, SkyTools, Deep Sky Planner, or any other ASCOM compatible program. The difference is in how you get to the ASCOM Telescope Chooser.

In Cartes, start ASCOM by clicking the little Telescope Control Panel icon. Other programs may require you to choose “scope setup” or something similar from a menu. At any rate, once the Chooser is onscreen as in the picture above, select the desired telescope brand or model . Which that is, brand or model, depends on the telescope driver. Currently, Celestron has a “unified” driver. Pick “Celestron,” and the driver will automatically figure out which particular Celestron scope/mount it's connecting to. Other drivers may require choosing a specific model from the Chooser’s pull-down’s list. “LX200,” for example. Naturally, as mentioned earlier, drivers must be downloaded from the ASCOM website and installed for them to appear in the list. The ASCOM platform only comes with a couple of drivers, "POTH,""Telescope Simulator," and a couple of others.

Once the telescope is selected in the Chooser, click “properties” to enter the specifics of the setup. Here, you’ll give ASCOM the com port number, indicate whether or not the telescope mount is operating in equatorial mode (is a German equatorial mount or a fork mount scope on a wedge), and enter the observing site’s latitude and longitude. You may be asked for different data depending on the particular scope driver, but all will want that all-important com port and also the site’s lat/lon.

Connected and ready for a night of laptop-enabled fun!

When you’ve OKed the settings window and the Chooser window, you’ll connect to the scope much as with built-in drivers. How you do that depends on the program itself, not ASCOM. Cartes has a “connect” button on the scope control panel; other software may have a “connect” or similar choice on a “telescope” menu. When you are successfully connected, a set of crosshairs should appear at the telescope’s current position on the program’s star chart (with some astronomy software, like TheSky, you’ll first have to select “show scope crosshairs” in the setup), and there should be some indication computer and mount are connected and talking, like the green “light” on Cartes’ scope control panel.

Where do you go from here with ASCOM? ASCOM provides useful additional functions, some of which are enabled in the ASCOM set up window and some of which you select in the astronomy program. One feature I like is ASCOM’s “hand control.” If you choose to show that in the driver set up, a little set of HC direction buttons will appear onscreen once the scope is connected. I find that useful when I am imaging. I can sit at the PC and fine-tune my centering with the ASCOM HC instead of having to mess with the real hand control.

Another oft-used ASCOM option, which is accessed from the astronomy program in use, is “sync.” When you go to an object, you may find the cursor is centered on it, but the object is not centered in the eyepiece. Center it in the eyepiece, and it will be then be off onscreen. That can happen for a variety of reasons, but you can cure it with a sync. This is completely different from the sync function in the hand control, and just allows you to center the astro program’s crosshairs on the target when it is centered in the eyepiece.

And you know what? That is all there is to it. Let me say again: the place beginners foul up is usually not with something complicated like entering baud rates or serial data specs. It is almost always in getting that darned USB-serial converter com port correctly entered into the software.

Late Breaking News

Celestron’s most recent hand controls eliminate the need for a USB-serial converter. Well, they don’t really eliminate it, they just make it so that you don’t have to go out and buy one. The newest NexStar HCs have a mini USB receptacle on their bases rather than an RJ-style serial port. You connect a computer to HC with a standard USB-mini USB cable.

Is that a good thing? I’m not sure. You don’t have to worry about finding a USB-serial converter that works properly. BUT… You are now limited in the length of cable you can run to the scope without using USB boosters. Four or five meters is the max. The new HCs don’t free you from the need to mess around in control panel to find the com port number, either. This is not really a USB connection. The new hand controls have aninternal USB to serial converter, and the PC will see the HC as a serial device. You will still need to enter the proper com port in the software. Me? I think I prefer to just continue using my good, old Keyspan, thank you.

Up next? There’s a big Moon in the sky, and the weather isn’t the best right now, so it may be that we return to the Novice Files for installment 3.

Sans Wires

Issue #512: More Messier Madness!

Issue 513: How Hard are the Messiers from the Backyard?

Issue #514: How Hard are the Messiers from the Backyard (Part II)?

Issue #515: In the Dark with a 4-inch Refractor

Issue #516: Big Ethel Gathers Photons at the 2016 Deep South Star Gaze

Issue #517: Beginning the Messier Homestretch

Issue #518: How Simple Can It Get?

Issue #519: How Simple Can It Get II: Kicking it Up a Notch

Issue #520: After the SCT Redux

Issue #521: So, What’s Gonna Happen to Us?

Issue #522: Almost There, Almost There…

Issue #523: Happy Christmas 2016...

Issue #524: Good Riddance 2016

Issue #525: This is the End, My Friends

Issue #526: The Novice Files Part I

Issue #527: The New Stellarium

Issue #528: The Novice Files II: The Naming of Names

Issue #529: Four Years with a Celestron Advanced VX Mount

Issue #530: Get Connected