Astronomy Report
December 28, 2012
Diane Turnshek
The last night we went out to observe was Christmas Eve. We took a couple of hours to align the telescope (Erick and me, and then Derek later). We were out until 1 am, but AFTER a wonderful alignment (3 calibration stars and three alignment stars), the telescope slewed nowhere near the next fields we tried to get to. We have reset the home position, which somehow the telescope lost, and now it goes back there when asked.
Wednesday night (Dec 26/27) I got up at 3 am and looked out the windows. I can't easily get the engineering hatch door closed, so I am hesitant to open it at 3 am. I can't see well through the windows, many of which as now hazed with condensation between the panes of glass. It seemed cloudy all the way around the horizon and only clear straight up. The sky was very bright, with the full moon and the temperatures were below freezing.The Goblin Valley Clear Sky Chart did not look promising. http://cleardarksky.com/c/GblnVllySPUTkey.html I'd been instructed not to do any nighttime observing without two people in the dome. I didn't get Nora up, but went back to sleep.
Our procedure has been: we align the telescope, then hibernate it, then the next day go to the last alignment and it's too far off to use, so we have to start the alignment procedure again. When we do a two star alignment, the target star is not even in the field of view of the finder. It's so far off, we're not even sure what star the telescope is supposed to be aimed at, so we have to look up the star name.
All three telescopes point in the same direction -- well centered with each other. The knurled knobs have not been turned, but the black knobs have been, once on the first day here before we realized the telescope clock drive didn't work until a calibration has been done. This is hard when a line of interested people has formed to see cool things that I could go to in a flash (like the Moon), but I have to do an alignment first to get the clock drive turned on, which has been taking hours.
We've been hampered by clouds, a full moon and sub-freezing temperatures. We have one more really bright binary star I'd like to observe that goes into eclipse the morning of the day we leave (the 28/29th). Beta Per (2nd magnitude). I don't want to leave any lingering problems for the next crew. It's supposed to be clear tomorrow. If I get an alignment done, I'll leave the telescope in hibernate mode for the next crew and explain the procedure when we brief them. That won't guarantee that it will be aligned when they take it out of hibernation.
I'm going to test the new lunar filter tonight and show the crew some beautiful celestial bodies. April says she wants me to get her up at 6 am Saturday morning to see Saturn and Venus.
A suggestion for people who wish to prepare in advance to be able to calibrate the telescope quickly: Memorize the position of all the named bright stars in the winter sky. Go to a planetarium and sit with the operator and keep putting the names up, then taking them down until you have them memorized. I'll try to go through the list of ones we see regularly in the program like Merfak, Navi, Capella and Deneb. Memorize the positions of the stars on this list for the winter sky. Should we have a set of printouts with the positions marked?
The old mount is still out in the observatory in a white foam box on the shelf to the right of the door, under where the astronomy box is sitting. It's a good place for it, so that the box of eyepieces is at a good reachable height. Suggestion: buy another elbow and eyepiece for the wide field telescope, so you don't have to keep switching while looking for an object.
I never did use my CCD camera, although I tried it out to be sure I could if I wanted to. It wasn't necessary.
I will take a picture of the Astronomy Imaging CCD box and bring both that and the laptop to Hanksville on our return trip tomorrow.
Eric and I are going out to the observatory to put the screws into the dome shortly for the new shutter control, while it's still light. It is positioned perfectly for dome closure.