Messiers in UMa, Io Crosses Jupiter

Two clear, dark nights in a row, though tonight the Clear Sky Clock says it's a little less transparent. I dunno, looks about the same as last night to me. Temp 44°F, humidity 64%, winds calm - a cool breeze every now and then to remind me it's not summer just yet...

Again with the TV85 on Porta, but tonight all Vixen LVW eyepieces, starting with 22mm. Found M51 easily, right where I left it. I notice some blur at the edge of field of the 22mm. Swapped out with the 17mm LVW, still some edge blur but darker background helps bring out the fuzz around the two galactic cores.

Moved on to M81 & M82 before they dipped behind the house. I could clearly make out the different shapes between these two - M81 the soft oval of a not-quite face-on spiral, M82 almost rectangular. Swapped out the 17mm (35x) for the 13mm (45x); background darkened greatly again with the increased magnification, and virtually no edge-of-field distortion. The 13mm LVW is a keeper, for sure.


On to the bowl and the Messier pair M97 (Owl Nebula) and M108 (spiral galaxy almost edge on. Found the Owl first, then noted it's position on the chart near a triangle of stars which stand out at mags 6, 7 and 8. M97 makes a squat triangle with one pair, M108 a right triangle with the other. Back and forth betweem the 13mm and 17mm, definitely better views with the former.


Interestingly, while looking at M81 & M82, a satellite passed between the two. Shortly thereafter the same thing happened while viewing M97 & M108. Astronomical odds, I suppose.

Jupiter in the 13mm showed good contrast during brief and far-between moments of settled seeing. I watched Io emerge from Jupiter's disc at around 12:43 (0443 UTC); I did not see Io or it's shadow on the disc in the hour or so prior. Very good detail with 8mm LVW (75x), even better with 13mm + 2.5x Powermate lens (115x) - probably the best views of Jupiter I've ever had with the TV85.

Jupiter Quickie

Took the TV85 out for an hour or so to take a peek at Jupiter which is now rising out of the muck around 11pm (0300 UTC). Io and Callisto were stacked just to the side of the planet resembling a colon. Conditions were OK: 40°F and calm, 73% humidity. I stuck with the Tele Vue 8-24 click zoom eyepiece this time.

Approx. view with TV85 + 8mm (75x)

I was hoping to chase some of the Messiers in UMa, but my neck and shoulders are sore as all hell and I just didn't feel like doing the requisite zenith contortions with the Porta mount. I did catch a glimpse of M13 as Hercules rose above the trees; particularly nice widefield 35x views with the 17mm Vixen LVW!

MicroObservatory: M81

I recently happened upon the Harvard University MicroObservatory web site which features a system of remote-controlled 6" Maksutov telescopes with CCD imagers. Visitors are allowed to pick targets from a list of various objects; the request is then scheduled and imaged. An email is sent to notify you that your image is ready for download.

I chose spiral galaxy M81 (NGC-3031) since it's on my list of April Messier objects in Ursa Major on the evening of 21 Apr 2006. The next day I found the notification email with a link to my image. The unadjusted GIF image was OK, showing little more than the bright nucleus of the galaxy:


A bit of Photoshop tweaking and I was able to draw out the bar and spiral arms. I didn't have much luck reducing the grain, but the result is better than I expected when I first saw the raw image:


Cool.

Chandra & Eddington

A while back I started to read Arthur I. Miller's Empire of the Stars, an excellent account of S. Chandrasekhar's life and work on stellar life and death, as well as his relationship with his nemisis, the renowned British astronomer Arthur Eddington. I made it about halfway through but never got to finish the book as it had to be returned to the library.

I just borrowed the book again (with my last bookmark still in it! I guess I'm the only one in Sussex County with an interest in astrophysics...) and am now perusing the previously read chapters to refresh my ever failing memory. The first time around, the physics, while presented in layman's English, was still a bit above my level of understanding. My self-studies in stellar evolution have clearly paid off, however, because I am understanding things a lot better this time around - I no longer get glassy-eyed when the conversation turns to neutron degeneracy pressure. Thank you, Professor Pogge!

Chandrasekhar's pioneering work on supernovae and black holes won him a Nobel Prize in 1980, bitersweet vindication after Eddington nearly destroyed Chandra's reputation and career. This book is truly superb.

Update 6/5: Found EOTS at the Barnes & Noble Used Book Annex for $6.00! It's now part of my library.

Feynman Immortalized In Stamp

I can't believe I missed this one, seeing how I'm in the Post Office about a hundred times a week. Issued 04 May 2005, still available on www.usps.com, including first day covers. Tuva or Bust!

Found on the web:

Richard P. Feynman to Sandra Chester, date unknown

Dear Sandra,

I was delighted too when I heard about the Nobel Prize, thinking as you did that my bongo playing was at last recognized. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that there had been some mistake - they cited some marks I made on paper some 15 years ago - and not one word about percussion technique.

I know you share in my disappointment.

Thank you,
Richard P. Feynman

For fellow Feynmanphiles:

• Richard Feynman (Wikipedia)
• Genius by James Gleick (Amazon.com)
  
• Lectures on Audiobook (Audible.com)
  
• BasicFeynman.com
• "Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle" (NASA)
• "Los Alamos from Below -- Reminiscences of 1943-1945" (Caltech)

Sun and Stars

The Sky & Telescope web site has coverage of last Wednesday's total solar eclipse. This particular photo was taken by Jay Pasachoff, co-author of Nearest Star, an excellent overview of solar astronomy which is currently near the top of the night table book pile.

The May issue of S&T has a great cover story on Population III stars, ultra-massive bodies which theoretically predate the dark period following the initial inflation of the universe. These stars are believed by some to be the first source of heavier elements which have been detected in Population II stars, which until now were thought to be the first stars to form after the Big Bang and which (according to that theory) should contain only the lightest elements like hydrogen, helium and deuterium. A Population III star has never been observed, but as with the CMB it may be simply a matter of waiting for the technology to catch up with the theory before instruments capable of detecting these oldest and farthest stellar bodies are developed.


My recent fixation with star formation and stellar populations was triggered while listening (for the 5th or 6th time) to Timothy Ferris' The Red Limit audiobook. Then I stumbled upon downloadable podcasts of Ohio State University's Astronomy 162: Introduction to Stars, Galaxies & the Universe lectures by Prof. Richard Pogge, along with lecture notes for the course. I always thought it would be cool to sit in on astronomy classes; this is the next best thing. Not much math involved (thankfully), and so far - I've listened up to lecture 10 - I'm able to grok the material fairly well. A lot of it is a refresher of stuff I've already read and learned, and then some of it really has advanced my understanding of things like spectrocopy, star classification, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, measuring the mass of distant bodies, etc.

Knowing shit like this really makes observing stars a lot more interesting; in fact, I always thought stars were pretty boring before I understood them. I suppose that's normal, because newcomers always seem to get into astronomy to look at deep sky stuff. I certainly focused on DSO's for years, and only started paying attention to stars once I accepted the fact that I wasn't going to see much in the way of galaxies with a 8" SCT under suburban skies. I've also learned that if one is really going to embrace this hobby and squeeze the most out of it, then most of one's hobbying will be done in a chair with a book (or increasingly for me, in a Jeep with an iPod).