by Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar editor

An amateur astronomer is one person, with one telescope, observing under clear, dark skies, right? It's you, your telescope, and the sky. Much of my observing is like that, but not all. You can (and you should) connect with fellow amateur astronomers because these connections can significantly enhance your observing program and your appreciation of the night sky.

Recently, I had dinner with one of my long-time astronomy friends. We were chatting about the issues he was having with his research-grade instrument and control system and about my equatorially mounted setup. We talked about how the control systems model the sky, the accuracy of pointing systems, the benefits of adding software that improves pointing, and so on.

I talked about my variable star photometry program (measuring the brightness of stars) and how some of my unguided images have tracking errors and had to be discarded from the image stacking process. Then, he mentioned the PEC (periodic error correction) capability of my mount and asked if I was using it. Uh, no, I haven't been. This is one of those 'duh' moments when you realize that you have a capability and you're not taking advantage of it. So, I'm going to work with my mount's PEC capability, learn it thoroughly, and see what it can do to improve tracking. Sometimes, you need a friend to remind you of the obvious.

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By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

Amateur astronomy is changing, again. This change is being driven by technology, the Internet, and the overwhelming amount of astronomical data now available. In the over 20 years that I've been in amateur astronomy I've seen large (often Dobsonian) telescopes come into our hands, we've seen the incorporation of computers and technology into telescope designs, and we've seen amazing advances in astrophotography.

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By Bill Pellerin
Houston Astronomical Society
GuideStar editor

www.astronomyhouston.org

Do you find yourself setting up your telescope and then asking yourself, “What am I going to look at?” Or, have you missed a clear dark night because you can’t think of anything that you want to observe. I hope, in this article, to convince you that by focusing on one or more areas of astronomy and delving deep into those areas that your astronomy ‘career’ will take off. What’s more, if you do that, you will never run out of things to observe.

Perhaps it’s time to change how you approach your observing. If you’ve been something of an ‘astronomical tourist’ (someone who looks at objects, says, “how nice”, and moves on) and it’s time to pick your area of interest and do a deep dig into that subject. It has been my observation (pun intended) that those who are most enthusiastic about their observing program are those who really, really understand what they’re looking at and why it’s interesting. These are the same observers who have taken the time necessary to learn about the objects and who understand the object’s place in the cosmos.

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Bill Pellerin
Houston Astronomical Society
www.astronomyhouston.org
GuideStar Editor

Good Enough

There’s a scene in the book Huckleberry Finn in which Huck and Jim are considering boarding a wrecked boat to see if there’s anything of value to be retrieved. Jim doesn’t think it’s such a good idea and says that the pair is doing “blame well and we better leave blame well alone…”.

An observing friend of mine quoted that passage to me while considering improvements he could make to his astro-imaging setup. His setup was producing very good images and any changes might make it incrementally better but instead he wanted to concentrate on executing his imaging program with the equipment he had. Everything was working ‘blame well’ good enough for his purposes.

A more contemporary writer, Paul Simon, wrote a song that says “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true”. All of us think about how we could improve our observing equipment – larger telescope, better mount, better camera, better eyepieces, etc. Sometimes, though, we just chasing the train in the distance when leaving your equipment inventory ‘blame well alone’ is the right thing to do.

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You Can Observe Every Night

By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

On December 18, 2010, the Saturday night before the full moon that became the total lunar eclipse (that I didn’t see because of the clouds) I did some visual observations of interesting stars. In particular, these were carbon stars on the new Astronomical League Carbon Stars program. I didn’t expect to see much with the sky as bright as it was, and using a 3” telescope. Most amazing to me was the fact that I was able to see all but one of the stars on my observing list for the night. That is, I could see 7 of them, but not the 8th. Not bad. The fact that the sky wasn’t totally dark meant that the brighter star patterns were easy to see and match to the star patterns on the maps on my computer.

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The Astronomical Curmudgeon

Telescopes, not binoculars for newcomers

I’ve seen it said many times – ‘The best telescope for a newcomer is a pair of binoculars’. I disagree. The best telescope for a newcomer is, well, a telescope. At public star parties do the people who look through your telescope get excited about dim galaxies or about dim smudges of light? Of course not. You do, because you understand what you’re looking at.

The public gets excited about what they are seeing when it is nice and bright, and when you have a good story to tell about it. Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon are the ‘wow’ objects for public star parties. After those, bright clusters (the Pleiades), a nice asterism (the coathanger) or a colorful double star (Albireo) are great public star party objects.

The telescope market has changed in the last few years and there are now quite a few choices of telescopes that are inexpensive. In fact you can get a 3” reflector with two eyepieces and a finder for under $50. With this, and other inexpensive telescopes the owner can see Saturn’s rings, the moons of Jupiter, the craters on the moon, and many bright nebulae and clusters.

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Outreach… Sharing the Sky

By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

Don’t miss an opportunity to share the sky with someone. It helps swell the ranks of sky watchers, increases support for our shared goal of keeping the skies dark, and it introduces the public to an activity that can become a lifelong passion. How do you get started? This short article will give you a few ideas.

Venues

You will need to find venues for sharing the sky. Some amateur astronomers have been successful doing ‘sidewalk astronomy’ events. These involve setting up their telescopes in high foot traffic areas and inviting passers-by to look through their telescopes. These usually well-lit urban environments don’t provide dark skies, but the moon, the bright planets and other bright objects can be shared.

Other amateur astronomers have been successful bringing telescopes to organized events, to schools, to places of worship and so on. How do you connect your volunteer group to these events?

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Social Networking for Astronomers

By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

You think that social networking on the Internet is only used by those who want to chit-chat about what they had for breakfast? Think again. Social networking covers a lot of ground and there is plenty of material that is of interest to astronomers. Think of this as a new mode of communications. We’ve had web sites and email for a while, but these communications capabilities allow astronomers, and others, to communicate with large groups of people in near real time.

A lot of astronomy clubs, including my home club – the Houston Astronomical Society, are working on attracting new members and are taking advantage of as many communication avenues as possible, including social networks. Professional observatories, working on public outreach as part of their mission, are also using social networking as a tool to communicate with other professionals and with the public.

These are great times for astronomy enthusiasts who want to keep up with what’s going on. The problem may be that there is too much information coming our way. You have to be selective about what you pay attention to. If you are a lunar and planetary observer, information on that subject may get your attention. If you are a double star observer, you will pay attention to information on that subject.

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The Astronomical League has received the sad word that Jack Horkheimer, Public Television’s  Star Gazer for 30 years, has died. 

He was a long time supporter of the League, including his sponsorship of the League’s Horkheimer Service and Horkheimer Youth Journalism awards.  In addition to being a giant in the planetarium field, many amateur astronomers were honored to hear him speak at various League ALCons, regional conventions and star parties.

He will definitely be missed.

Here is the link for the news story:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/20/1785361/star-gazer-host-jack-horkheimer.html

As Jack always said “Keep looking up”.