Amateurs ramblings No.8

It has been a rather long while since I posted something astronomical or otherwise in nature. Thank goodness I do not work for a newspaper or a journal  since I would certainly be fired for lack of output!

Over the past several months I have been busy working and trying to stay somewhat sane in this crazy world. The sanity part happens to be the most difficult. This past May I was offered the change to fulfill a long standing dream of mine: to own my own observatory. Just think! Head outside without the hassle of setting up and with the flip of a couple of switches-bingo the observations begin! Thanks to city and county regulations this dream was not to come true this time around. Where I live there is a permit for just about everything, except if you want to place a beer cooler in your backyard. First there is the $85 permit to allow construction. Next is the $200 inspection for every little project that one does. With a total budget of $500, this project was already in trouble! To top things off were the letters to and from the surrounding neighbors granting permission for construction.  Since this was not a NASA project, I hung the dream up to dry for a time. Yes, the observatory idea/dream still remains but we will allow that to come true some years down the road when we build a country home.

So what about that budget? Moving along from depression to something better: my good old Losmandy G-11 will be getting some upgrades and repairs. So far one of the repairs has been canceled. The main drive board has some corrosion on a microswitch terminal and I removed that allowing for the PEC (periodic error correction) circuit to be used. The other section may involve a trip to Radio Shack for a coiled cord and an order to Hollywood General Machining for a new stepper motor. I thought about a new main worm gear, but that can wait until later since the difference between the current and new worm gear is one arc second in periodic error. One arc second is 1/3600 of a degree, or about the diameter of a golfball approximately 5.5 miles away. My scope camera combination averages about three seconds of arc per pixel at 670mm focal length. The periodic error without corrections to guiding can be a good as 5 seconds of arc or 1.8 pixels if the mount is well adjusted. Not bad! Of course this is atmosphere limited, but I am happy with round stars in the exposures.

One of the other upgrades is a water cooled heat exchanger for the CCD camera. The cost is pretty low for telescope items, but worth the extra 20 degrees below ambient cooling. The cooler the ccd chip, the lower the dark noise present in the exposures. This dark noise must be subtracted from the image and that is done with a dark frame. A dark frame is just an image of the electronic noise present and when subtracted from the ccd’s light exposure removed that noise. At a later time I will get into the the details of ccd image processing.

Working is taking up most of my time these days. I have been out imaging from time to time with the scope. Part of these observing runs I have been adjusting the scope and mount to produce better images. I am still working on those and trying to tune the system to produce its best. Until I post again–hopefully not in four months, here is a little blast from the past. A picture taken from Lake Kissimmee State Park, Florida back in October 1995. This was the era when film was king and the ccd revolution was beginning to heat up. Enjoy Orion!

Orion as imaged in October 1995

Well folks, I have not been able to head out and observe due to the wonderful Florida summer weather. That is the only bad part of living here, that and the Florida State Bird-the Skeeter. But anywho, if you have some clear sky–download this map and head out:

http://skymaps.com/skymaps/tesmn1109.pdf

Look overhead for the three bright stars: Vega, Deneb, and Altair. These three stars for the Summer Triangle. Vega is in Lyra that Lyre, Deneb in Cygnus the Swan. Cygnus appears to be flying down the Milky Way toward our campground that we mentioned a few weeks back. South of there is Altair, the brightest star in Aquila the Eagle. On a dark clear night the Milky Way divided into two parts starting up in Cygnus and run through Aquila. This division is just some of the dark nebulae that exist in our galaxy, hiding more distant stars in this area.

A little aside….

Below is a photograph taken in October 1995 of northern Cygnus. The glow to the right in the photo is the lights of Lake Wales, Florida some 10 miles to the west. Some four or five months later a new mall opened and the lights from the parking lot significantly brightened the western sky as seen from this location. I have not been to the site since 2009 for good reason: the northern sky is now brightened by a new motel complex outside the gate of the park. When the weather and time permits, I have another location that I want to return to: Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. I will tell you about my observing experiences there next time…..

Northern Cygnus

Due to my return to work after summer vacation and issues with the wonderful Florida weather, I am taking a short hiatus. I will post again this weekend after settling in to the normal work routine.

This is just a little aside before I continue the Celestial Campground series.

Here is a little photograph of the same galaxy using two different types of technology. One was taken back in May of 2001 with film, the other in April of this year with a CCD. I posted them large so you will be able to see the details of the photos. Yes I said photograph. This was taken in the day when most of us took some film and an SLR camera with a stash of lenses out to a dark site. Back then we had a large selection of films to choose from. Most of the amateurs I ran across did not have a CCD camera, if they did it was used to guide the telescope while a film camera recorded the heavens above. Those days are coming to a rapid end.

Now it is the other way around. Few of the amateurs use film and now opt for DSLRs and CCDs for grab a pic of the heavens. Some of the best moments in my time as an astrophotographer was learning patience at the guiding eyepiece of my telescope. Also I built up a tolerance for neck pain and eye strain. Yes you read it correctly! We spend hours hunched over an eyepiece that contained fine crosshairs and a red LED to illuminate them. Most of the time the guide star was pretty faint and one must contain that star at the intersection of those crosshairs. One wrong tap of a button and your precisely guided photo is ruined. I had that happen more times than I care to remember, but still the rewards were great after a night of guiding at the scope. From time to time when the scope was performing great, I would look up and take in the stars on that wonderful velvet black backdrop before returning to my game of chase the star.

Now I have made the transition to digital and use a CCD camera with the scope. Today I can reach stars much fainter than the faintest stars I recorded with film. Also back in the film days you had to either develop it yourself or take it to the local camera shop now the image appears on a screen.  I hit the local Ritz Camera about once a month with a roll or two of pics. Now I just hit the enter key to say the pics to my hard drive.  No drive to the mall and waiting an hour for there processing to be done. No worry about the film getting messed up in the developer or finding out that an entire night passed and the film did not go through the camera. With CCD, you just delete and retake the exposure. The down side of CCD–your night vision is wrecked from the computer screen, but that is the price we pay for great images these days.

Do I miss the film days? Yes I do, and from time to time I catch myself daydreaming of the nights that I spent huddled over an eyepiece under a velvet black sky……

The top picture is a 10 minute exposure with the CCD, the bottom is film and a 55 minute manually guided exposure.

Fox Able I

July 20th is most remembered for an event that took place a quarter million miles from here.

There were 16 other important landings, on this date in 1949.

The Soviets were testing Western resolve with the Berlin Blockade. The Berlin Airlift, to relieve the city had just started.

The postwar reduction in force in Europe left little in the way of NATO airpower to confront any danger. Shipping more fighters from the U.S. meant loading them on slow ships for the trip across the Atlantic.

David C. Schilling had a better idea, that he had been promoting for some time. Events gave him a chance to use it, with the full blessing of Air Force Headquarters.

Schilling had risen to the rank of Colonel, in the elite 56th Fighter Group during WW-II. This was the first unit to fly the P-47 Thunderbolt from England. They shot down more Luftwaffe planes than any other group. Shilling himself, had over 20 Kills, five of them on a single mission.

After other duties, he was again in command of the 56th, at Selfridge AFB, Michigan.

He led 16 Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars to Germany, by air, saving the boat ride, and weeks of precious time. The operation was named “Fox Able I”. The phoenetic letters stood for ‘Fighter, Atlantic, first flight.

They flew the Pond in stages, as the F-80 had only a 900 mile range. Selfridge to Dow AFB, Maine. Then via Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, England, and finally landing inGermany.

Fox Able I proved to the world, that Europe could be reenforced quickly, …a point certainly not lost on the Soviets!

It was the first combat-ready, squadron strength, deployment of jet fighters across the Atlantic, however, they were not the first jet fighters flown across. Six RAF Vampires flew the other way two weeks earlier, to provide demonstrations at airshows in Canada and the U.S.

Schilling led other long-distance fighter flights, including the first nonstop England to U.S. flight, (with three aerial refuelings,) and the first Wing sized deployment of jets from the U.S. To Japan.