The Scruffy Astronomer

You can do this! I used inexpensive equipment to get some reasonable photos of Jupiter (and one of Saturn). In doing so, I learned a pile of lessons, which I've listed at the end. It's planetary season, with Jupiter just past opposition, meaning it's overhead at midnight. Saturn's not far behind. I'm a nebula hunter and not a planet expert, so I'm really a beginner in this area. Planets are tiny little things, but they're very bright. They're about as far, technically, as you can get from nebulas, which are large and dim. The aim We wanted to get some photos of planets to show what inexpensive equipment is reasonably capable of in the hands of someone who isn't much of an expert. I'm also keen on using non-premium equipment to take photos. I'm often quite pleased at the results you can get without having to shell out big bucks. The equipment For a scope, I grabbed a saxon 127 Maksutov on a go-to mount . I could have taken a similar

People who have been into the showroom in Mitcham will know just how fast I am to demonstrate a DSLR hanging off any scope. At the first hint of photography I'm off to grab a t-ring and my trusty Pentax. This week I've got a saxon 127 Maksutov at home to try to get some photos of Jupiter, so (of course) it's out with the DSLR again. This time I'm using an intervalometer so I don't have to touch the scope when taking photos. But aarghh! Don't you hate this? Cables! Cables cause so many problems - they wave in the breeze (like the intervalometer on the 127 Mak here), they catch on the tripod adjustment screws and they flop around while slewing or tracking. But worst of all - my Labrador's tail gets caught in them every time. She's so waggy. As you can see in the photo, it's amazing she hasn't knocked the whole tripod over - yet. No matter what your setup, from beginner to experienced imager, you'll have this problem. It's unavoidable. If yo

So there’s something huge, metallic, and buried under the southern region of the side of the Moon that we can't see? Sounds like the opening scene of an episode of Star Gate (he said, revealing probably more than he needed to). But yes, that’s exactly what NASA has discovered.  NASA cleverly combined two separate sources of information to figure this all out. The first source was an experiment called GRAIL. In this, two spacecraft (cutely called EBB and FLOW) measured gravitational fields and how they differed over the various parts of the moon. The second source was a pile of new, high-accuracy maps of the lunar surface, including heights. This was gathered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Combining these sources, NASA found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin, which is a depression on the far side of the Moon, down towards the south pole, had higher gravity than other areas. This indicated something very large and very dense underneath it. So large and dense, in fact, that it’s

About now, Jupiter is at its highest, and Saturn is rising in the evenings. It’s at this time that we begin to think about looking at the planets. Planets are surprisingly challenging things to get a good look at. The problem is that they're so small. It’s only because they’re so bright that we can see them with our naked eyes. The large planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are similar in apparent size (if you include Saturn’s rings), but smaller planets like Mars are tiny. To get a decent look at a planet, you need buckets of magnification. A telescope's magnification is calculated by the ratio of its focal length to the eyepiece’s focal length. In order to see a disk on Jupiter or Saturn, you’ll need around 100 times. My wide-field refractor's focal length is 560mm, and my only eyepiece is a 20mm. That only gives me 28 times (560/20), so I've got no hope. All I'm able to see is a bright dot. The "beginner" telescopes we sell have focal lengths around 700mm, an

  The Winter Solstice is here, and the nights are long and cold. For “normal” people, this is a bad thing, but for astronomers it means hours of viewing with cold crisp air making for good seeing conditions. If the clouds stay away, of course. I've prepared a list of things to look at in winter. Of course, new Moon is the best time for seeing the dimmer ones such as the nebulas. Remember also that the size of the target will determine how well you’ll see it in any particular scope. Sometimes magnification isn’t your friend! I've ordered it by the time each object reaches its highest point, so it'd be best to start at the top of the list, as these will be starting to set (some don't set at all). The picture is my unguided attempt at Rho Ophiuchus, the neighbour of the Dark Wolf nebula. This is highest at 10:10pm on the 21st of June - you’ll need a good dark site though. Dark nebula: C 99 - Coalsack Nebula (07:15 PM) Open cluster: NGC 4755 - Jewel Box Cluster (0

  It's winter in Melbourne, and there are signs of it everywhere. We've had some rain - not enough, I hear, but some. It's also getting cold at night (which appeals to the astronomer in me). But there's another, less welcome, sign of winter. I assume most birdos will have noticed the presence of Pied Currawongs in Melbourne. I love their call, which someone once told me was "come on, Geelong"! For some reason I always associate the call with camping up at Lake Catani on Mount Buffalo in summers. Historically, Pied Currawongs would breed in higher altitudes, like the Great Divide and the Grampians. In winter they would come to lower altitudes, probably to escape the worst of the cold and snow, so you'd see them on the coast. In those days, we hardly ever saw Currawongs on the coast. But over time, they have developed a habit for wintering in the city, to the point where they're becoming a bit of a pest. Not only do they compete with smaller birds

A couple of years ago, a mate and I went out on a birding trip. We were after Bustards (we probably dipped - long story) and Red-lored Whistlers (we didn't dip). For an overnight stop, we camped at Broken Bucket Tank. This is on the Murrayville Track, about an hour out of Nhill, getting into the Big Desert. Getting up in the morning, we noticed this fog bow.  A fog bow happens when light from the sun (behind us) encounters fog, which is, of course, tiny water droplets hanging in the atmosphere. The effect is nearly - but not quite - the same as a rainbow. Like for the rainbow, light hitting the spherical water droplets gets refracted on entry to the water, reflected at the back of the droplet, and then refracted again on the way out of the droplet. (See a diagram here .) The angle the light gets reflected back at determines the apparent size of the bow. Where it's different is that fog droplets are way smaller than raindrops. At this size, diffraction starts to become i

Jupiter opposition, oppositions in general, and media garbage. A few days ago (on the 11th of June) Jupiter reached "opposition" with the Earth. What this means is that both the Earth and Jupiter were at the same angle from the sun, with the Earth sweeping "under" Jupiter, like the minute hand passing the hour hand on a clock face. At this point, Jupiter and Earth are (pretty much) as close to each other as they ever get. Which is not to say much, because Jupiter and the Earth are a looooong way apart. Check out this diagram. The distance between Jupiter and Earth is least when the planets are lined up with the Sun, but at other times that distance isn't hugely different. Of course, it hadn't stopped some people from losing their minds about this. USA Today has run a story that somewhat breathlessly tells us that "Jupiter will be so close tonight, its moons will be visible with binoculars". Duh, you can ALWAYS see them with binoculars. Dece

First light pictures are always exciting. They're proof of concept photos that give you an idea of what you're going to improve from. Our mate Daniel's existing rig is a 115mm triplet refractor. With the flattener, its effective focal length is 644mm. All this is mounted on a Sky-Watcher AZEQ6-GT mount. Previously he was using a Canon DSLR attached to the scope's flattener. Daniel decided to upgrade to an astronomical camera, and we sold him a ZWO ASI071MC. This is a cooled colour sensor that screws to the back of the flattener, and sends pictures to a laptop. Somewhat ambitiously, he also decided to upgrade to autoguiding and use Sequence Generator Pro (SGP) as controlling software for the system. This is exactly what I did a while back and it nearly killed me. There are so many things to learn! We worked through the setup, but there was one last problem. The laptop wasn't able to connect to the mount through the handbox, so autoguiding was out. The guide

People ask us all sorts of questions about their scopes. Of course, the number one question is about polar alignment, but probably the second-most popular question is about power supply. Go-to mounts need power to slew (er, that's techy speak for "move around"), not only to find the target, but also to track it as you watch. More sophisticated setups will have cameras, dew heaters, auto-focus mechanisms, and all manner of geekiness. Sky-Watcher, saxon and Celestron mounts all require 12 volt power. They normally come with a cable that ends in a cigarette lighter attachment. The question people ask us is what to do with this? Well, you can set up your telescope near your car - which isn't such a bad option - but it's better to have a battery or power supply. A powertank - a large battery with some extra attachments - will power your scope and mount all night. You can get extra large capacity ones which will last up to a week if you're careful. What's

Why would you do that to yourself? This is the reaction that a lot of birders have to pelagic trips. One of birding's more extreme activities, a pelagic trip involves taking a boat out to the "open ocean". Precisely what this means is a little unclear, but you're a long way from the shore armed with nothing but a camera and a boat that's way smaller than humans should be remotely associated with. The boat pitches and rolls hugely and unexpectedly, and keeping your feet - and your breakfast - is a challenge. Adding binoculars and a long lens makes it all but impossible. The benefits, though, are astounding. A while ago, I was invited by Paul, a very old friend of mine, to come on a trip out of Portland. We ended up taking an open boat out beyond the continental shelf. My GPS told me that we reached 50km SW of Portland. This is not part of the relative safety and calm of Bass Strait, but more like the wilds of the Southern Ocean. But there are such birds

5 June 2019 We don't have a photo of the week contest, but if we did, these would be there for sure. Jenn Stephens posted these to the Victorian Birders Facebook page the other day. They're Plains-wanderers. These are odd birds. They're not Quails or Button-quails, although they are similar. They run in preference to flying, even when startled. And you can see by the photos they're grassland dwellers. Plains-wanderers used to be a lot more widespread than they are today. They used to be seen on the grasslands near Werribee. Their main problem is habitat reduction and degradation through farming, as well as predation by foxes. To see them these days, you have to go way further north, and most likely, this means going north of the Murray into the Riverina. It's a bird that I'm very unlikely to ever see. They're critically endangered, with only around a thousand left, and the decline is continuing. Various groups are trying to prevent the bird's e

3 June 2019 Need more help polar aligning that go-to equatorial mount? I've just published a video on how mounts with SynScan hand controllers (that's mounts such as the EQ3 go-to, HEQ5, NEQ6-Pro, EQ6-R, AZ-EQ6 or EQ8) help you got aligned. You don't need a polar scope, just the mount, a SynScan handbox, a well-aimed finderscope and the telescope. (I don't cover Celestron go-to mounts here, like the Advanced VX, CGX, CGEM-II, or CGX-L. Celestron's routine is similar, but with a few minor differences. I've done it with a CGEM-II and believe me, it's very much the same.) Very basically, this is the routine: Rough alignment You set up the scope as close to polar aligned as you can (with the mount pointing due south and the altitude set to your latitude). Three-star alignment Turn on the mount and do a 3-star alignment. This will end with the handbox telling you how far off the pole you are. (The errors are called "maz" and "mal"