Astronomy Report
December 22, 2012
Diane Turnshek
December 20, 2012, we went out with the film crew at dusk. It's one of the two times of day without shadows and with subdued lighting so they can get the effect of nighttime in their film. (The other time being dawn, of course.) They wanted to see Mars through the telescope, but it is really too low to be seen at this time of year. They quipped that since they were on Mars, they actually wanted to see Earth in the sky.
Erick and I then turned off the telescope, turned it on, aligned it very well--at least that's what we thought anyway. The clock drive won't initiate until the alignment is done, so we need to do an alignment or restore the previous one at the beginning of each run.
We sighted on Vega, Altair and Deneb, then couldn't figure out if we actually had Navi in the field of view since it was so directly overhead and at an awkward angle for observing. We went to Mirfak as a calibration star instead. I've been using my smart phone to ID the stars, but even when I know which one it is in the sky, I am having trouble getting it in the field of view of any telescope, even the finder. I end up sighting down the tube for a rough estimate of position. When we then tried to get to Jupiter, the telescope was WAY off. If we had used alignment stars in different sections of the sky, we would have been better off.
We left the 14” telescope with Jupiter centered in the field of view and when we went back to check two hours later to see how far and in which direction it had drifted it was pretty well centered. My planned stellar exposures are going to be under 10 minutes, so drift is not going to be a problem.
I'm was hoping to observe eclipsing binary star SV Cam, which goes from magnitude 8.6 to 9.4 for a 3 hour eclipse starting around 9 pm, but it was way too near the moon (which is now in 3rd quarter phase).
The focus knob is the same difficulty to turn in either direction. I just can't get a good grip with gloves on. Nothing is attached to the focus knob. I doubt it's affected by the cold, but it's hard to turn. I cut the tips off my gloves--the index finger and thumb on my right hand--which works better, but it's cold. Some people were smart enough to buy hand warmers (and foot warmers) at REI before they came and they've offered to share them with the rest of us.
I found an old paper observatory logbook on a shelf in the Hab from the 2011season. I wrote a couple things in it and put it back on the shelf. I understand we are not using this system anymore, but I love paper journals. At Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, the journals go back over 100 years. It's interesting to read of the problems they had back then and compare them to today; sometimes in the discussions of personal interactions of observatory staff, it could have been written yesterday.
After a request from Mission Support, Erick and I checked the power at the observatory and it was stable.
I grew up in New England and I'm used to the proper safety protocols around cold, ice and snow. I check for frostbite regularly. My cold weather gear is top-notch and the only thing that was difficult was using the focus knob and the computer with no fingers on my right hand glove. In the morning of the 21st, when the temperature was in the negative numbers, I decided I couldn't observe without harm and did not go out for my scheduled binary star run. I'm really careful.
On the night of the 21st, Derek and Erick went out and tried to realign the telescope, then they put it in hibernate mode. (Page 28 in the users manual.) At 3:30 am, I got up and immediately got a nosebleed, delaying our trip out to the telescope. Nora and I went out to catch a binary star through its eclipse. It was hazy. We realigned the telescope in the record-breaking time of 35 minutes. We're getting so much better! The target eclipsing binary star, although fairly bright, was not visible in the haze. Dawn came before we wanted and we were forced to go inside and get warm and eat breakfast (oatmeal with dried fruit, nuts and cinnamon).
The hardest part of observing is closing the hatch door when we return to the Hab. It's heavy and has to be lifted as you pull it inward because the hinges sag, a task made all the more difficult with chilled fingers that can't grip well. The front door of the Hab is on a roller so this isn't a problem there. Proud to say, I finally managed to close the thick, heavy engineering hatch door all by myself.
The green laser is now kept near to the skin under our jackets, or else it doesn't work. When it works, it's awesome. You can see the green path up to the object you're pointing to and I've been showing the crew constellations and stars. Our walkie-talkie needs to be kept warm, too, so we keep it in an inside pocket.
We got the Moon filter package in the mail. Nora is looking forward to using it. Derek sent a copy of the picture of the box and filter with his report. In the background is the CCD photo of M31 that I took.
On the 22nd, the film crew took some shots inside the Hab of us planning an EVA and outside at the observatory between 5 and 7 pm. They had us rotate the dome, open and slew the telescope while red lights shone out the slit. Red lights are used in observatories because they allow a person to see without affecting night vision. We would have started into our night of observing then, but it wasn't clear. The long-range weather forecast is not ideal--I've got Hanksville weather on my laptop in a window that I refresh many times a day, as well as the sky forecast from Goblin Valley State Park: