The Scruffy Astronomer

High clouds! I've been taking photos of star clusters for a while now. I've been trying to demonstrate how much people with small telescopes in the city should be able to see. This one didn't go so well. Clusters are not only pretty, and most don't need lots of magnification. They're also largely immune from the city's light pollution. So I went out a week or two back to the dark sky site with my largely autonomous equipment all programmed to take photos of five different clusters. I set up, polar aligned, sorted out the inevitable technical problem that cropped up (urghh) and then got started on the first of the five targets. The night was pretty good, with the Moon setting in the west and not being too much of a problem (remember star clusters aren't badly affected by stray light). The first two images went without a hitch, and so I decided to leave the telescope doing what it was programmed to and I retired to my tent. ...

Occasionally, working in an optics shop, we see sad sights. This is one of them. A customer was recently setting up their telescope - a beautiful EdgeHD 925 - when it fell off the mount. In a previous life I was employed to analyse incidents like this and make recommendations as to how they might be avoided in the future. In this case, however, we didn't feel the desire to cross-examine a clearly distressed telescope owner. We took the scope into the warehouse and examined it. The corrector plate at the front of the scope was completely shattered, and some of the glass had fallen into the tube. The primary mirror didn't look damaged though, and apart from some superficial damage on the edge of the tube's front, the rest of the scope seemed - without examining it at least - to be OK. The corrector plate in a Cassegrain is not a simple piece of plain glass. It's carefully and subtly made to counteract the spherical aberration arising from the primary mirror. Beca...

The Hubble Space Telescope has been working now for over 20 years. Some (maybe all) of the photos it's sent back have been incredible, and the science it's produced has developed our knowledge of the cosmos considerably. But it's also getting a little old. In 22 years, technology has marched quite a bit, meaning the instruments we put up there are not exactly cutting edge. But second, Hubble's spectrum is limited to UV and visual frequencies. We're starting to get curious about the infrared - that is, what's going on on the other side of the visual spectrum. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWT) is nearing completion, and is due to be launched in October this year. This telescope is intended to complement and replace Hubble. The telescope itself is large. Its mirror has a "sort-of diameter" of 6.5 metres, but it's not circular, Rather, it's an array of 18 hexagon-shaped mirrors, 1.32 metres across. To give you an idea of th...

Lots of clients ask me what they can see with their new telescopes from the city. Sure, you can see the Moon and the planets. But right now, most of the planets are hiding behind the Sun, and irritatingly, the Moon disappears every couple of weeks. So what is there to look at? Star clusters! They're pretty, easy to find, easy to see from the city, and completely under-rated. The Little Beehive cluster, which is also known as Messier 41, or simply M41, might be a little trickier than others to find. If you go outside at around 9pm and look towards the north-north-west, you'll see Orion with his three belt stars. If you're from the Southern Hemisphere, you'll call it the Saucepan, with its three base stars. From here, look higher and slightly towards the left. You'll see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius is the eye of Canis Major, Orion's hunting dog. The dog stretches even further away from Orion, and the Little Beehive is in the...

I love to go on overnight hikes with my daughter. It's wonderful to spend time with her just out in the bush. We always get on well, but on a hike, we really match and have a great time. The Norwegians have a saying " ut på tur, aldrig sur " (on a walk, you're never grumpy). Summer can be a good time for hiking, as long as it's not too hot, and fires aren't a hazard. The cooler months are better for non-alpine hikes, but because we both work, this was an opportunity to get out, so we took it. Our hike started at Telegraph saddle, and the first day was short, just down to Halfway Hut. From there we went to Roaring Meg and left our packs at the campsite, continuing to the Lighthouse and back with just a day pack. The third day was back to Tidal River via Oberon Bay. However, hiking isn't entirely without problems, though. I'm getting on a little, and Emma is much fitter and stronger than I am. I've had problems with knees and ankles before, and it ga...

Something a bit different today. Occasionally we take great photos that we didn't expect. Often this comes about when something cool happens just as we're pressing the button, and sometimes it's chance. This time it happened when inner-city Melbourne-based Paul was focusing a camera attached to an off-axis guider (OAG). Paul uses a ZWO ASI120MM Mini guide camera on a Celestron OAG attached to a Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with Celestron 0.7X reducer. There's a mouthful! Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects a photo through an OAG... but I'll allow Paul to continue: "I was struggling with focus on my guide camera. I had left my telescope set up after a night of failed attempts at autoguiding on Thursday night. The forecast for Friday was that it was going to cloud over, but around 8pm on Friday evening, the clouds hadn’t yet arrived and the Moon was just “there” waiting to be imaged! "I turned the mount on and selected “Solar System Al...

I'm an introvert, and I do like it this way. One of the things about introversion is that it lends itself well to astronomy (as well as birding) as pastimes. I like being alone on the astrophotography field, working at my images, solving problems (which are legion), and watching images come down. However, humans are social creatures. I don't want to do the solitary thing all the time. Most interaction I have with other people in the hobby is done through social media, which is good, but it's not as good as being face-to-face. It also doesn't help when you have a problem and need advice. Any help I get on social media comes from someone who is hearing about my issue distantly, removed in both time and space. Twice a year, the Astronomical Society of Victoria holds star parties. They're held up at the ASV's dark sky site in Central Victoria. The latest one was in March, and a couple of hundred people turned up, including a limited number of non-members. I to...

A little while back, I was visiting my parents in Rosanna (a suburb in Melbourne only a few kilometres from my place). it was a pleasant morning, and we were on the veranda at the back of their house. At some stage in the conversation, a bird began calling. I pricked up my ears, trying to identify the bird. As so often happens, it sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Describing a bird call is a very difficult task. If pushed, I try to find a word that conveys the same sort of general sound as the call. In this case, my guess would be the word "woody", although with the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first. It was repeated in groups of between three and seven, with a short gap between each group. Yeah, I know, not very communicative. My curiosity piqued, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a recording of the call. It wasn't a particularly good recording, but there's enough bird and sufficiently low backgroun...