This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
What I Liked
Each year, the Observer’s Guide is produced and sold to amateur and professional astronomers across North America, and those astronomers vary considerably in their capacity and interests. It’s hard to serve any “one group”, but as I am at the intro stage to the hobby, I’ll review from that perspective. Some highlights include:
List of observatories, star parties, planetaria (pp 11-14);
Observable satellites of the planets (pp 25-26);
Observing artificial satellites (p 38);
Overview of filters (pp 64-67);
Deep-sky observing hints by Alan Dyer (pp 85-87);
Lunar observing (pp 158-161);
The brightest stars (pp 274-283, 285); and,
The deep sky (pp 307-337).
Of course, it also has the key reference materials:
The Moon (pp 148-157);
The Sun (pp 184-193);
Dwarf and minor planets (pp 241-251); and,
Double and multiple stars (pp 291-294, 296-297).
And it has specific highlights for the year:
The Sky month-by-month (pp 94-121);
Times of sunrise and sunset for 2019 (pp 205-207);
2019 transit of Mercury (pp 139-143);
The planets in 2019 (pp 211-229); and,
Comets in 2019 (p 264).
I’m happy too that some of the errors in URLs published last year have been corrected.
What I Didn’t Like
I still find the pages on telescope exit pupils (pp 50-53) to be incredibly dense. I keep meaning to find a more basic set of explanations online of it, but I never seem to get around to it. I would add the next section on magnification and contrast in deep sky observing (pp 54-57) as equally confusing. I have to believe that dense text can somehow be explained more easily to the newbie with some basic guidelines for common scopes and ages of users. Equally, I’m not thrilled with the astrophotography section (pp 91-93) which still lists the “big cameras” as best, in the same way that many photography websites ten years ago suggested that professionals would never go digital. There is an emerging market for people sharing prime shots they take with their smartphones — souvenir quality shots, not NASA shots — and it is almost completely ignored by the section (grudgingly it says “even cell phones”). I also find that the economic bias of last year towards higher-end binoculars and scopes continues. But those issues are mostly me just being picky — they aren’t enough to reduce the overall rating.
Disclosure
I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.
This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
What I Liked
One of the most obvious challenges for an Observer’s Guide of this kind is balancing the needs of newbies and moderate amateurs with the needs of advanced astronomers, photographers, and outright astrophysicists. However, I’m on the newer end of the spectrum, and I found the typical wealth of information such as using the handbook for teaching purposes and resources (p 17); observable satellites (p 25); filters (p 64); deep-sky observing hints (p 85); the sky month by month; and overviews on planets, dwarf planets, satellites, the sun, and various star options before getting to the deep-sky lists (which could benefit from better presentation). However, I think my favourite section was on the Moon. The entire handbook is “made” just having the info from Bruce McCurdy on lunar observing starting on page 158 as it is perfect for me. Relative shifts per day (p 158), Canadian content (p 160), the Hadley Rille (p 161), and the lunar certificate (p 161) are all great elements for me to try to see in the coming year.
What I Didn’t Like
I was surprised to see a number of errors in included URLs. While it is hard to stay evergreen, these were links that had not changed from last year and when I went back to the RASC website, the links worked just fine. Somehow they got edited in publication and never tested. Even links to the actual RASC website were wrong. There are also some highly technical pages on magnification, telescope parameters, night myopia, and exit pupils, and while correct, they are presented so densely that re-reading them left me more confused than informed. Finally, there is a strong economic bias that creeps into the texts in a few places — on binoculars, the only ones they mention as being good cost around $1500, and when talking about using Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes (often bought as they are quite portable), recommends just putting it in your backyard observatory, assuming, of course, that you have the money to have a house with a backyard with room and resources to build an observatory. In addition, there are numerous editing choices made throughout the text such as lists sorted by one variable instead of by one that might aid organization. I’ve already found myself copying lists from previous years online into spreadsheets so I can resort them into a more usable format.
Disclosure
I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.
The Bottom Line
Solid guide but some editorial and tone issues throughout.
Despite the fact that I bought my telescope five years ago, I consider myself relatively new to astronomy. Mainly because of the myriad of alignment challenges that I’ve had over the last five years, I feel like I’m starting fresh, albeit with more knowledge than most enter the hobby. I’ve done some basic starhopping, attended numerous RASC meetings, gone to star parties, done some outreach. You know, got my feet wet.
As a RASC member, I also get the annual RASC Observers Handbook. Yet for the last five years, it’s been hit or miss with me whether it was useful. In 2015, I dove deep, and did a review (A newbie’s guide to the RASC Observer’s Handbook 2015) based on being a complete noob and how I found the contents. 2016 was okay, flipped through. In 2017, I didn’t even open the plastic wrap around it until a few weeks back when I got the alignment issues solved.
This year, I wanted to go hard core on the guide as part of my 50by50 challenge. The 2018 edition arrived two weeks ago, and my basic intent was to read it cover to cover. I know, I know, it’s part field guide, it’s not meant to be read cover to cover. Yet I wanted to know what was in it so that I could go back and dive into sections when I needed them. Here’s what I found…
Introduction
One of the biggest and most obvious challenges for an Observer’s Guide of this range is trying to hit a target audience of RASC members that combines newbies, solid amateurs, semi-professional astronomers and photographers, and outright astro-physicists. That is a huge spectrum of potential users, and there is virtually no way to write a single text that will fit all four stops on the spectrum. Yet, for me, a newbie alumni potentially, I found some quirks that bothered me.
One thing that bothers me is a number of website errors in URLs. Don’t get me wrong, the web changes every day, and trying to keep up to date on a series of links is a no-win battle. That’s true of almost any publication that is linking to publicly available information. Sites change their structure, move some files, and voila, a dead link. And I have this site which deals with dead links all the time.
But that’s not this type of error. Most of the links haven’t changed, and they are already up to date on the RASC main site. Just somehow they got edited before they went to print, and they no longer work. On page 10, there are some recommended readings, atlases and software links, and there is a link to an article by Andrew Franknoi. Except the link takes you to a generic entry portal for the magazine that the article is in, and it was only by other google searching that I luckily chose the right issue. However, later I was on the RASC national site for the 2017 guide, and the link was there. So I clicked it again, and it worked, took me right to the article. So between last year and this year, someone edited the URL for no apparent benefit. In the same section, there is a reference to Sky Safari being available on the desktop which was news to me. So I surfed and couldn’t find it. Until I realized that yes it was available on desktop, but only Mac. Would have been good to know before wasting time looking for something that doesn’t exist. Later on page 15, there are a list of selected internet resources. Some good ones in there, a standard list that appears every year. Which URL is wrong? The one for the Observer’s Handbook. On the site, it is rasc.ca/handbook; on the list, they called it rasc.ca/observers-handbook. Which doesn’t take you to the handbook, it just throws an error. Really? They got their OWN url wrong?
Page 16 starts with an article about using the handbook for teaching purposes, and I really like the resources they have for the Night Sky (page 17) around constellations, when they’re visible, and even just a list of them.
Basic Data
Page 25 has “observable satellites of the planets” and I’m very excited by the list. I’m sure some variant was in previous handbooks, but I’m adding it to my observing target list for 2018. Equally, page 38 has information on observing artificial satellites too.
Optics and Observing
Pages 49-59 are all about magnification, telescope parameters, night myopia and exit pupils. I read the articles twice and I was more confused than when I started. At the end of page 53, there are some examples, and it probably should have aimed to get there a lot faster. Ideally, and I may be missing some huge variables, they would take some basic types of scopes and give ranges…like for the Schmidt-Cassegrains that range in aperture from 4″ to 8″, or maybe even 11″, they could use basic eye piece sizes (32mm, 25mm, 20mm, 15mm, 10mm, 8mm, 4mm), show the magnification that goes with that, and add the exit pupil. Then use shading in the table to show the different ranges that are good combos. Then do the same for refractors, reflectors, dobs, etc. Heck, if they want, they could add in seeing quality to eliminate most of the “high magnification” values that are more theoretical than practical, unless you have near-perfect skies. I’m going to look for better explanations online. It is clear they know their stuff, it just doesn’t come across as very user-friendly to understand.
After the challenge of the first ten pages of the section, I was excited to see the updated article on binoculars that is included in some form annually. And so it has the great info on page 60 about what you can see, i.e. without needing a telescope, you can see a lot. Unfortunately, when it comes to practical information, the only pair it recommends is the Canon 10x42L with image stabilization. Sure, I agree it is a superb instrument. And for the almost $1500 it costs, I would expect that. I’m not sure why that pair is relevant as the majority of people buying are people who didn’t have $1000 for a scope or even $700. The reason there’s a market way less than that is because that is what people can afford. Much more useful would be some indication of the entry-level astro models with 2-3 examples, and then maybe a small jump up before going all the way to the wallet breaker.
By contrast, no pun intended, the filters article on page 64 is awesome. Great combo of basic info about all the different types of filters. Having recently experienced for the first time the benefits of the Ultra Block and an Oxygen III in viewing the Veil and Orion Nebulae, I was inspired to branch out more with this article.
Skipping over a few articles of limited resonance for me, I came to the one on Weather Resources. I think this article has appeared before, but I was struck on page 76 that it is incredibly outdated. It talks about the effects of fires in B.C. in 2002 and 2003 having implications for viewing far away, but so did the ones in 2015 and again this year. This year could be forgiven for being excluded due to time constraints in publishing, but we have much more recent examples than 2002. But where I just about lost my sh** was on page 77 when I read:
The popular Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes do not come with cooling fans and they are known to suffer from internal turbulence, especially at large apertures. Only a few advanced amateur astronomers will have the courage to add fans to those telescopes. Any telescope, and particularly the Schmidt-Cassegrains type, should always be brought outside to cool it down at least two hours before the observing session. Better yet is to keep a telescope permanently outside in a backyard observatory.
The bold and italics are added by me. I don’t have a problem with the cooling info for SCTs. I do however have a huge problem with such a strong economic bias creeping into a field guide for observers. Just like with the previous article on binos, albeit written by a different author.
First of all, not everyone lives in a house to even have the chance to have a backyard. Lots of people live in apartments and condos. Second, separate from that, many wouldn’t have the money to build a whole separate observatory in their backyard or the space to do it, or even the lines of sight to make it useful, even if the skies were dark enough where they live. Third, this is in a paragraph about SCTs. Why are SCTs so popular? Because up to 8″, they’re highly portable. But sure, the best object is to go out and buy a house so you can have a backyard to put a SCT in your personal observatory. There’s a reason a lot of the people doing that are retired…they have retirement and savings, and have the time and resources to do that. Most Canadians don’t. I’m extremely fortunate to have a good job, and above average disposable income, and I don’t have the extra money to move to darker skies and build a personal observatory. I wouldn’t expect an article in a field guide to actually piss me off, but this one did.
Moving on, we come to light abatement, and there is a great chart on page 84 about star parks and dark sky preserves in Canada. Except for some reason, the chart is organized by reverse chronological order of when they were created — not by GPS coordinates, not by province, not by closest city, just by reverse chron. I suppose it shows history, but most people would want to know where they are in Canada…so why not put a map with a date next to it? I don’t get it.
I’m all the way to page 85 before I start hitting the mother lode. Alan Dyer’s deep-sky observing hints. Which starts with planning. Page 86 has Paul Markov on the observing logbook, and while I didn’t use the RASC default one (side note — the URL for this was wrong too, again one of RASC’s own links (!), although I did find it eventually on the national site), I found enough in the Markov article and elsewhere to design my own. I’m not quite finished with a couple last minute additions and tweaks, and adding a bunch of static info up front, but I’ll print and bind it in coil when I’m done so I’ll have a nice half-sheet size notebook.
Kathleen Houston has another inspiring article on sketching, and I confess I was a bit underwhelmed. Even though I have no ability whatsoever for drawing anything, I love the premise. Enough so that my logbook has a space for each observing to draw in, if I so choose. I figure if I put it in, I have the option; if I don’t, I’ll never do it. So it’s in for now. But I think what would make this article “sing” more is some actual practical examples. Like a few pictures with a corresponding simple sketch beside each one. To actually show people what we’re talking about, rather than pages of prose. After all, the whole point is that a picture/sketch is worth at least a couple hundred words, isn’t it?
I was a bit disappointed with the astrophotography primer, and maybe that isn’t fair to the author. It’s an almost impossible task to describe at any level of detail that will make the masses happy. But for me, the part that bothered me was around the afocal imaging and a rather basic / negative treatment of it. If anyone has doubts about the quality of imaging with a smartphone, check out Andrew Symes on Twitter. Based in Stittsville, he has some amazing planetary shots. All with his iPhone and Nexstar 8SE with Alt-Az mount. None of the equipment that people are supposed to use to do AP. And he’s getting amazing results.
The Sky Month by Month
Okay, I confess. My eyes glazed over reading this section, which admittedly is the meat of the book. Many people might buy it just for these chapters. A great overview of each month, all condensed down to 26 pages. Yet, I can’t help but feel there is something missing. Like Letterman doing a top 10 list for each month. Or maybe even just the top 3. Three things that are UNIQUE to that month. The best time all year to see Saturn. Or a fantastic view of some DSO that will be high in the sky with little distorting atmosphere between us and them. Or a meteor shower. January for example has 42 events listed for the month. Even if you go with the bold ones, there are 17. Sure, I can guess which ones are better. Hello, lunar eclipse! But it would be great for people to have almost a “basic” option, a “medium” option, and a “challenge” option for each month.
Eclipses
Page 122-146 has a lot of information, and while some of the lunar stuff is interesting, I confess I feel like the entire chapter is a year too late. I don’t remember if 2017 had such a chapter, as I said I just opened it(!), but there was a reason to have it this year. Without the solar eclipse in N.A. driving interest, I feel like the whole chapter is overkill. Even with a lunar one this year to aim for…
The Moon
I love this section. Maybe in part because I want to do the Lunar certificate for RASC sometime, and I think the moon is undervalued as an accessible target for people.
For me, the entire handbook is “made” just having the info from Bruce McCurdy on lunar observing starting on page 158 as it is perfect for me. Relative shifts per day (p. 158), Canadian content (p.160), the Hadley Rille (p.161), and the lunar certificate (p. 161) are all great elements for the coming year.
The Sun
Like the previous chapter, I am interested in this one as I have a solar filter. I don’t however have a solar scope. Which means what I can do is kind of basic. But it’s a start. And I can do it during the day. Kim Hay’s article on page 186 on solar observing is a bit more basic than I would like, would have been good to have a bit more detail like the moon article. Oddly enough, I found Roy Bishop’s article on Sky Brightness at midnight the most, ahem, illuminating. While fairly basic, I hadn’t thought of the night wind-down in terms of times and horizons, partly as I’m more constrained by sky glow of suburbs that don’t start to taper off until after 10:00 and often 11:00 or 12:00 anyway.
Planets and Satellites
Pages 211-240 cover the seven planets and is probably the most useful section in the short-term. Like the Month-by-Month section, I wish it was a bit clearer as to when the best viewing was, as some of the descriptions are kind of “on the one hand, this is good, but on the other, this is not so good”. Give me a date or a month, people! Break it down! I have what I *think* it means, but honestly, I have no guarantees I’m reading it right. But I took a LOT of notes in the margins.
Dwarf and Minor Planets // Meteors, Comets and Dust
I was going to skim read these two sections, I confess, as I’m usually in the city glow, not a dark sky, and I have an 8″ SCT. Which means my chances of picking these ones out are quite low in the beginning. Maybe later when I know what I’m doing, and I’m at a dark site, I might have a chance. But I’m willing to pick the best night of the year to try for it, and if I can time that for a dark sky viewing, I’ll go for it. I’m optimistic that some day I might get to it, but maybe not 2018.
Stars
The star section, pages 270-306, should be the simplest in my view, and yet I find the various lists confusing. First we have named stars, that seems simple enough, 85 stars whose names I have seen. Then there’s a list of the brightest stars. Equally simple, I thought. It even says there are 286 of them. Great. Except it organizes by the technical name, not the known name, so Mirach is Andromeda B. Umm, okay. Fine. I guess that makes sense. And then we have the 50 brightest stars by magnitude. WTF? Why wouldn’t you just combine this with the list of 286? Presumably they’re on the list. Couldn’t that REALLY detailed table have a column to identify it’s rank out of 286? Then there’s a list of nearby stars. Okay that makes sense too. Wait, a separate list of “easily observable” nearby stars. Okay, colour me confused. No wait, I haven’t got that far yet — I still have double stars, multiple stars, and carbon stars, before I get to coloured double stars. Not to mention variable stars and expired stars. I see lots of LONG lists, and not much of a guide to filtering them other than to do the 50 brightest or the easily observable nearby ones. It would be great if they were organized by season though. Not sure how I’m going to use much of the lists unless I can download the e-version.
The Deep Sky
Unlike the stars section, the deep sky section is just richness personified. I love all the lists and I want to do them all:
Deep Sky Selection – From Near to Far;
Open Clusters
Globular Clusters
Messier – by season
Finest NGC Objects – by season
Dark Nebulae
Deep Sky Challenge Objects
Deep Sky Gems – by season
Wide Field Wonders
40 Optically Brightest Shapley-Ames Galaxies
The Nearest Galaxies
Galaxies with Proper Names
Conclusion
The RASC Observers Handbook 2018 has a huge amount of material that is useful to multiple users across the spectrum. And for me personally, there are a lot of things that I will try and turn into useful target lists for various nights. But there are some editorial and tone issues in a few places that made it a less than positive initial engagement with the guide.
This past weekend, skies were looking promising and so I planned to do two star parties back to back. Friday night was the first one in Carp, the last RASC star party of the year. I’m not only a member, but I’m also actually serving as the acting star party coordinator. We have marshals though to cover if I’m not actually there, so mainly my job is to send out the notification emails in advance as reminders, and then make the call for the day before or day of the event.
I was a bit later arriving there than I had hoped, not getting there until about 6:30 p.m., so had to set up in the dusk. Long past the sun dropping below the horizon and taking the moon and three or four planets with it. I was wondering if I would be able to see Mars, Jupiter or Venus if I was using my solar filter as they are really close to the sun, but I wasn’t overly hopeful. I never got to try though.
Saturn was still up, so that was good. Turnout was about average, maybe 20+ scopes with the big 25″ from one of the members down at the end. I wandered down around 9:00 p.m. and the line-up was about 25 people long, and apparently was even longer at times.
I had this great idea to use a special list I organized on my tablet as my viewing targets, and it went out the window pretty fast as I didn’t have it set up early enough to avoid blinding people with white light while I got it going. So I did my basic alignment and some star tour stuff, before heading for seeing Saturn. Shortly after I got going, someone wandered over to say they had a new 8SE, same scope as mine, and would I mind coming over and helping him get going as he was having trouble with the red dot finder. Don’t we all?
I felt like it was time to repay some of the help I’ve received from others. Lots of people are reading my blog entries about my alignment problems, often looking for tips and tricks to see what might help them. But within RASC, I’m more often the one asking for help than giving it. It was nice to be able to explain some of the setup steps, how to make it work well the first time, etc. And more importantly, to get the dang red dot finder to align on a red light above the Diefenbunker. One alignment on Mizar and one alignment on Altair later, and he was aligned. First target was Saturn, and it was awesome to hear his excitement in seeing it in HIS scope and to then immediately call over his son who had passed the initial patience point several minutes before (I’ve been there, I recognize it!). They looked at a bunch of stuff for the rest of the night and it sounds like it went well.
Then I lost my scope. Not really. It was just that I wandered back, and of course, it’s VERY dark, and I couldn’t even FIND where I had set up. I had to wander back the opposite way twice to just to figure out where I was. Mostly as there were people looking through it at Saturn still. 🙂
I looked at a few things, and then I heard someone say in passing that the only planet available was Saturn. And I thought, “Wait a minute. I know I looked at Uranus and Neptune a week or two ago, they should still be up now.” So I went looking. Until I found Uranus. So then some visitors wandered over, and we all agreed yes it was disc-like and yes we thought it was Uranus. Hard to see it in a simple 25mm eyepiece or even my 17.3mm. But one of the other RASC members came over and confirmed it was indeed Uranus. So we tried for Neptune. That one we were far less certain of, but we did find something disc-like, just without the tell-tale blue. But again, the member confirmed it was indeed Neptune, which made one of our guests quite happy — he had now seen all 7 visible planets in a scope. Beats me — I haven’t seen Mercury yet.
Two more guys wandered by and we started looking at nebulae. The nearby member also lent me an Oxygen III filter to pull out some details from the Veil Nebula which was cool, albeit quite dark with the filter on. We looked at a bunch of objects for about 90 minutes. Mostly as the one guy is thinking of buying a scope like mine, and wanted to experience it. Around 11:00, I think, I happened to notice that Orion was up, and someone mentioned the Orion Nebula. I hadn’t seen it in almost two years, so I was in. But the guy loaned me an UltraBlock filter. Which made the nebula just “pop”. Eloquent as always, I think my official comment was “Holy crap!”.
After the two guys left, a couple came along where it was obvious the guy was super interested and his girlfriend was playing a supportive partner. She was interested, but she clearly had passed her interest point. Nevertheless, she was game to keep going, so we split some stars, looked at Uranus, etc. Just before the end of the night, I wandered down to the 25″ scope to see M15 and then looked at it afterwards on my own much more pitiful 8″ scope. It was almost laughable the difference. On the other hand, mine fits in the back of my car; the 25″ travels in a horse trailer. I love to see through it, but man, it’s HUGE.
And that was it for the night. And for the season. Sad to see it go, particularly as I have everything working now!
On Saturday, I ran by the telescope store to talk about filters and a specific EP that I have, checked a few things out for their “used” items, and then I headed out to Luskville for the AstroPontiac evening. I’m on the Board, although that mainly means I try to go to their star parties, I do the website, and I sign some docs from time to time. My friend is the main driving force, and he has some good results to show for it.
My son had asked to go on Friday night to the Star Party in Carp, but with my marshal duties, I wasn’t planning on leaving until after midnight, too late for him. So I planned around him coming to Luskville, along with my wife, and we got there just between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. Not that there was any rush. The skies were REALLY overcast.
Fortunately, it’s right next to the Luskville Falls hiking trail, so we went and looked at the waterfalls and then had a little picnic dinner while watching leaves fall in the dusk light and listened to the falls themselves crashing in the distance.
Just after 7:00, I said, “Why not?” and I tried setting up out of pure force of will. The skies weren’t cooperating, but perhaps if I set up, they’d open up. They were supposed to clear at 8:00 p.m., but it wasn’t certain. We crossed our fingers.
I did manage to catch Saturn not long after 7:00 through a small opening in the clouds. I wasn’t aligned, but I could manually spot it. The clarity/seeing was pretty low quality, but we saw it. Then the hole closed and we waited. Just after 8:00, it did look like it was going to clear…some of the clouds started to drift away, I managed to do an alignment, and then they clouded back in again.
My friend managed to keep a bunch of people engaged for about 45 minutes explaining the sky, even if he couldn’t show it to them. And I passed the time giving an interview to the local press about the Initiative. That was a first for me.
Not too long after 9:00, we called it a night and started packing up. Most of the night, Jacob was in the car playing on his tablet, which is the reason I brought it. Sitting around in the dark talking about skies we’ve seen in the past isn’t that exciting for him. I managed to show off some of my old photos of what is possible to see even with a basic scope, but that’s a pale imitation of the real thing.
However, although it wasn’t the BEST NIGHT EVER or anything, it was still fun. We can’t always have great nights, but we can make whatever night we have as great as possible. And any night I can see Saturn, I call a win.
When I set my goals for the year (Goals for 2017 – Nudging the needle), I had some astronomy goals in mind. Specifically, under my blue goals, I wanted:
Astronomy: Fixed battery supplies + 1 viewing…I want to attend the RASC annual meeting, do at least 1 viewing at Star Party+Luskville+cottage, but I’ll start with 1 viewing. And work on reading the new RASC guidebook for the year.
and under my yellow goals I had:
Astrophotography: One decent shot…Sure, I would like to do more. Level 2 would likely be a complete set of moon phases (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full). Level 3 and beyond could be constellations, planets, figuring out the laptop thingy, filters, etc. But I’ll start with the moon. And somewhere in there I have to sort my existing astro photos.
Since my new 50by50 goals kind of overtake the regular 2017 ones, I wanted to keep something in my new goals related to astronomy and I wanted to be realistic. So, in the end, I chose:
Upload my previous astronomy photos to my photo gallery;
I didn’t expect to meet all five of those in one week!
Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this last weekend was the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual General Meeting, and because it was Canada Day, the Ottawa Chapter (of which I am a member) had offered to host the meeting. About 150-200 attendees across the three days, I think. Including…dun dun dun…me!
Yes, I registered, and yes, I went. I confess readily that I suck at attending RASC meetings. The local chapter meets the first Friday of the month, and there is a mix of technical and non-technical presentations. But the meeting is way across town, you have to pay for parking, the items I usually care about are only part of the meeting, and the reason I joined RASC is not really what they do. I originally hoped for more “informal training”, as I generally don’t know what I’m doing. I had hoped, I guess, that there would be more offerings on set themes, kind of like groups going out one night at the start of the year where everyone gets to figure out how to work the scope better; then perhaps a night aimed at studying the moon; another aimed at planets, or constellations, or clusters. Not really how it works. And I thought the star parties would lead to more obvious bonding, but honestly, you’re in the dark and you can’t even really see the other person you’re talking to most of the time! Don’t get me wrong, some people find it great; I’m an analytical introvert, and mingling is not one of my big skills. All things being equal, I feel I might as well stay home and watch the YouTube feed. 🙂
But I join every year, I pay my dues, and this year, I decided I would go to the annual meeting. I know! Surprised me too!
I won’t cover everything, but I picked up my registration on day 1, including my extra swag, a nice t-shirt for the conference. I was already wearing my “You have a place in space” shirt from the US Planetary Society; if nothing else, I have the group swag. I checked ou the displays, spoke to a couple of people, and said hi to Tristan working the Focus Scientific desk (more on that later). And then I decided to attend a sesson on “50 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Algonquin Radio Observatory”. I know, right, how could I pass up such a stimulating topic? Dr. Brendan Quine was presenting, and I had heard good things about him, but seriously, why would I care about the topic? Cuz it was a title that did not do the presentation justice. He was fun, engaging, and talked about not only the basics of VLBI and it’s foundational work to create GPS, but also the transfer of the ARO from the government to the private sector and what his company (Thoth) was doing these days. Including workable ideas for space elevators. Not a dry technical presentation at all, although some in the room could have likely handled that detail too, and highly entertaining. Plus I found out that the ARO rents rooms out to guests who want to come and hang out i.e. a place where I could do a weekend’s worth of observing in Algonquin Park where the observing + sleeping is the same location, not a hotel somewhere nearby. With reasonable rates. Colour me intrigued, and I might book something for this fall (when the bugs are gone!).
I even attended the BBQ the first night. I normally eschew the social aspects by nature, but if I want to meet people, I kind of have to do it, right? So I did. And ended up sitting at the same table as our local rock star, Gary Boyle. Okay, so there is nothing remotely “rock star” like about Gary, but he is regularly interviewed by CBC, his name is recognizable to anyone in the Canadian astronomy community plus lots of people internationally, and not for nothing, he just had an asteroid named after him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/astroid-named-after-gary-boyle-1.4075015 Plus I actually managed to talk to someone I had never met before, Heather from Calgary, who helps out with the Executive and is on several sub-committee/task teams. Practically being a social butterfly by my normal standards. And checking off part (a) above…meeting attended!
I left the BBQ and headed to pick up my son Jacob and wife Andrea, then a friend Mike, and we headed out to the star party in Carp. The weather wasn’t looking awesome but it was still a “go”. We arrived just around 8:30 as the sun was still setting, and Ingrid (wife of Attila, owners of the giant scopes) showed us sun spots on her small 4″ scope. We had a lovely sunset, and then we got to see the Moon, and then Jupiter along with four moons eventually as the night got a bit darker. This was the only the second star party I have been at without my own scope, and the first Ottawa one for Mike, Andrea and Jacob. We all walked up and down the row looking through all the different types, seeing the different setups and viewing options. Later, someone had Saturn in their scopes, so we had to look at them all again for that. Easy to see the rings, all good. Then the fireflies arrived. The field next to the viewing area was dancing. And all of that was in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. By which time the clouds were threatening and the bug stuff we were using was NOT working well enough to stay. Great evening, and tick off part (b) of my goal…star party attended!
On Canada Day, I quite enjoyed the presentation on the solar system and current geological controversies from a retired NRCan scientist, highly enjoyable, and again, a topic I normally wouldn’t have chosen to attend if it was part of the monthly series. I even chatted with some more people at lunch — Eriq La Salle, and his friend Taras, plus Mike M of course — and got some really good advice from Taras on viewing areas and my battery problem. I avoided the opportunity to go visit the Hill that night for Canada Day, and hung out at home with my family. Sunday was okay too, nothing big sticks out, although I skipped the actual AGM in the morning and the banquet at night (which apparently was quite good).
I mentioned above that I talked to Tristan, as well as Taras, and most of that conversation was about two things. First, I have a battery problem. I have two PowerTanks to power my telescope, but they are both standard batteries, which means if you over charge them or leave them on charge or let them go too low on charge, they die. Never to work again.
I killed a large PowerTank, I killed a small PowerTank. And the pain of figuring out what to do with them has been a bit paralysing. I sought other people’s opinions and options online, and found out I could try putting the PowerTanks on trickle or DC charge to see if it would help revive them, but reliability would always be an issue even if I get them to work. Or take them apart and replace the core batteries in them. Which has a bunch of labour involved, not very clear instructions, potentially a need for soldering (!), and no guarantees of success, plus the cost of the batteries, maybe $175+ to attempt to fix both? Or I could say screw it and buy one of the almost idiot-proof lithium ion phosphate ones that don’t die if you mess up the charging schedule. But they cost almost $200 and well, I already have these other ones, they just need fixing. Grrr…
Problem solved. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the old ones, maybe offer them to anyone who wants to try to repair them or for parts. In the meantime, I had power for my scope. You know, that scope I haven’t really used in over a year. Tick box (c) above…power issue solved!
The fourth item on my list was to have one decent shot of the moon. I have a range of options to do this, none of which I’ve figured out how to do reliably or consistently:
Smartphone by itself, not very exciting;
Point and shoot by itself, ditto;
DSLR by itself, with a tripod, at least now I’m in the ballpark;
Scope + smartphone over eyepiece — hard to get the phone centred above the eyepiece;
Scope + point and shoot over eyepiece — similar to smartphone problem, but I have this little adapter thing, just never got it to work very well;
Scope + NEXIMAGE 5 + laptop + software — I’ve done this before, even got some shots, but stability was definitely an issue, plus replicating the outcome from shot to shot.
Scope + DSLR with adapter — sure, this is supposed to be easy, but I’ve struggled on anything other than the moon;
Scope + DSLR with adapter + laptop + software — supposed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the previous option but I haven’t figured that one out yet;
Now, I have been treating these like a series of more and more complicated options and / or more reliable and sophisticated photos. Bear in mind that I am using a SCT-style scope on a basic alt-az base…this is NOT designed for sophisticated astrophotography, and honestly I don’t want it to do that…I just want some quick snaps of what I’m seeing, preferably all less than a second or two of elapsed time. I won’t get the beautiful colour shots of other people, but I’m okay with that. More souvenirs of what I saw, records of my viewing, than art.
And I can pretty much eliminate (a) and (b) above. I haven’t tried (c) yet for the DSLR just on a tripod, not consistently, although I do have a photo or two of the Milky Way and constellations. D-H are all increasingly complicated, as I said, and I wasn’t really into it.
Until I went to the conference and saw what Tristan was selling. A Meade smartphone adapter, one with a very simple setup, with good reviews online. For $30. Hell yeah.
It is a simple adapter that attaches itself to your smartphone and puts a little ring adapter over your camera so that you can “mount” it over an eyepiece i.e. the ring holds the top of the 1.25″ eyepiece (without the rubber cup around the EP) and thus allows you to almost centre it perfectly before you even put the EP into the scope. You can see the layout of it here at the FS store: https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1354
And I managed to get a few decent shots…they are not DSLR quality, nor will I be publishing them in an astro magazine, but as a fun addition to my hobby, I was pretty happy. Then I tried to get a “little” fancy, and do some zooms.
I have moon maps, so I can go through some time and label some of the features. But for now, I’m happy with just getting the shots. Part (d) complete…a good shot of the moon.
Which has left me with one simple piece outstanding — to organize my astronomy photos over the last 4 years and upload them to my site. I had them semi-organized at one point when I had a Piwigo sub-site, but never got around to fixing the mess of how they are stored now that I’m with SmugMug. I hadn’t even uploaded them. So that’s fixed too. I have shots of the sun (1), moon (54), Venus (2), Mars (6), Jupiter (5), Saturn (19), Milky Way (8), Constellations (6) and my gear setup (1). Not all photos in those batches are created equal, but it’s the best I have so far. And with that, I’ve completed part (e)…upload astronomy photos to the gallery.
Which means one of the items that I didn’t think I would come close to completing before the fall is done. I’ve re-started my astronomy hobby. Feels good.
