ESSAYS - 2
Are there any astronomical standards?
The other day I saw a post in sci.astro.amateur from a reader who had seen an article about an unusual galaxy, and wondered "what the experts on this group made of it."
 The object is shown here in an article on Martin Nicholson's website; I've created a very heavily processed smaller version of it to illustrate this commentary.
Greg Crinklaw, the frequent s.a.a. contributor and a first class intellect who is both an excellent amateur observer and the developer of the superb planning program "SkyTools", looked up the object after expending some effort, and found its listing on NED.
It is classified as an irregular spiral galaxy type, and certainly is a very obscure one.
But Greg noted that the coordinates given for the SDSS finding chart were in DECIMAL form for the right ascension! That is, they were given as 135.4727518 degrees rather than the conventional form
9h01m53.40432s, which is the r.a. coordinate used by NED (the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, one of the most important astronomical resources on the net.)
Greg admitted that he was going into "rant" mode to complain about this, and added:
...few things make my blood boil more than a bunch of physicists
who come along and think they can dabble in astronomy while ignoring and
thus disrespecting astronomical conventions. (The RA on the SDSS page
is in degrees).
This drew a heated rebuttal from Chris Peterson of the amateur "Cloudbait Observatory", who describes himself in this discussion as an "astrophysicist". Chris' point of view was that:
I see decimal degrees being used in astronomy more and more often, thank
goodness. We can't get rid of the h:m:s/d:m:s convention soon enough,
IMO. It's only useful for unautomated amateurs, and marginally so even
there. For everybody else, it's just a PITA.
(I hate to say this, but I wasn't immediately aware of what "PITA" meant; I lead a sheltered life, I guess. Suffice it to say, I learned that this web acronym refers to a discomfiture in the posterior region.)
Chris continued:
Seriously, as a programmer, I don't see how you can not see h:m:s and
sexagesimal notation as anything other than a pain. The system is
useless for any sort of calculations, so you always have to be doing
conversions. Every online catalog and astronomy app handles things a
little differently, so providing coordinates is never straightforward.
Greg responded with what seems to me to be one of the most cogent, rational, and intelligent explanations of a point of view that I have EVER read on this newsgroup. The entire statement is wonderful but I must abbreviate it here to focus on the main point that he was underlining.
As a programmer I know that all calculations are done in radians and
internally everything is actually done in binary arithmetic.
That does not mean that I would choose to use radians for my coordinates
any more than I would use binary numbers.
In fact I wasn't complaining about the use a decimals. I was complaining
about the improper use of units. The unit of Right Ascension is hours.
Period. It is not degrees. In order to enter the RA given on the DSS
web site into NED I had to enter it into my calculator and divide it by
15. That's completely unnecessary as the standard unit is hours, not
degrees.
In my opinion any person or group of persons who arrogantly enter
another discipline and ignores it's standards is being arrogant and
disrespectful.
Why use hours? Because this system was derived over many decades by
people who actually watched the sky; people who had a connection to it
beyond equations and computer models. In short, astronomers. Human
beings, not computers.
Before I even read Greg's reply, the following situation came to my mind. Suppose you are trying to describe a very small round planetary nebula, and triangulate its location with respect to close field stars. Do you mentally conceive of DECIMAL VALUES of right ascension, or "common" values of arcseconds or arcminutes? I always think of the latter, for after forty years of looking through telescopes, I've come to be very comfortable with such measurement units, and -- if I know the 'true field' of my eyepiece -- I can guesstimate what the distances are in those units, fractions of a degree. And, my star charts have equatorial boundary lines that are in minutes and degrees; r. a. values for astronomical objects are in h, m, s in virtually every list used by astronomers up until the last few years, when decimal values have "crept in" via the backdoor, as it were.
But Greg had an even better example than the one that occurred to me:
You mention the sexagesimal system; it is also
useful for human beings. As an example:
I give you the Declinations for two stars that have the same RA:
(1) 32.265083
(2) 32.251611
Haw far apart are these stars in arc seconds? Will they appear as a
double star? A wide pair? Close pair? Will they both fit within a 1'
field of view?
Now I give you these same numbers in units designed for people rather
than computers:
(1) +32d15'54.3"
(2) +32d15'05.8"
The answer to the questions should now be obvious without any computer
or even a calculator. Those of us who have a proper education in
astronomy, and didn't just walk in thinking they could pick up a little
here and there (because astronomy is not a real science worth teaching)
understand this.
Likewise, Right Ascension in hours is useful to the astronomer (if not
the physicist who can't even name a single constellation) because it
relates to time.
This reminded me of an experience I once had after a night of observing at Lick Observatory, following one of my wife's "Music of the Spheres" concerts. Regina, Wally Downs, and I were breakfasting, joined by a professional astronomer and two of his grad students. One of them had just done a run on the Shane telescope, taking data about a large, faint nebula. I asked, "what is the size of the nebula?", wondering if I might be able to find it in my own 10" telescope.
Her response was to screw up her face in utter distaste.
"Size? SIZE? Why, I have no idea what you mean."
I replied, "Well, what is the angle that it subtends, in degrees or minutes?"
She said, to my own disbelief, that she had absolutely NO idea and could not possibly answer my question. The concept was alien to her. (I guess she thought only in much more abstruse "professional" concepts than such an old-fashioned one, now relegated to "mere amateurs" who knew no better.)
In fact, I felt completely intimidated by her response and its tone. She immediately ceased to talk to me, as though I was such a bumpkin as not to be worth another moment of her time...
I guess when you are a 24 year old post-doc, you may have an inflated sense of self-importance!
Yet it seemed uncharitable of her to be so arrogant and dismissive of a Lick volunteer who had dedicated a weekend of his time and effort to raise money for the organization...
Thus, one might forgive me for taking the "side of Greg" on this issue of ignoring -- or subverting -- the long standing concepts that have helped us all conceptualize one aspect of celestial objects: the "traditional" or "standard" astronomical coordinate system.
But, computers -- and their man-made interfaces -- are changing all that. I repeat: MAN-MADE. For one must remember that input procedures are not created automatically; they are programmed by HUMANS who decide what the source code is to say, and what data it asks for.
Greg continued,
The role of the computer is not to dehumanize us by forcing us to use
binary arithmetic or radians. The role of a computer is to do its
calculations however it needs to, yet relate the input/output to humans
in those ways that humans can best relate to. They are computers after
all, and simple unit conversions are something they excel at. Any
programmer who forces his/her users to adhere to the needs of the
computer without bothering to provide an interface that is best for
humans is lazy.
At this point, Greg -- who has as he 'admits' an advanced degree in physics, let loose with a quite stinging commentary on the "arrogance" of physicists, which is secondary to the main issue.
The point is that there ARE "standards" and to sweep them away and force a radical change in method by astronomers, who have to adjust to "physicists' ways", causes two problems: one is a waste of time, since the astronomer must look up or calculate the decimal value -- when the "traditional" units are already easily understood and well documented; and two, that the human brain is not conditioned -- or adapted -- to think in units that are as non-conceptually small as values that are four or five or more places to the right of the decimal point.
Greg's final riposte:
I'll say it again, waltzing into a field with a long history and rich
traditions and blatantly ignoring them is arrogant and disrespectful,
and those who do so while looking down their noses at others may just
find themselves the butt of a joke...
Ok, I'm done ranting now. :-)
Greg
As much as I agreed with Greg, I am amused to note that, like me, he's sometimes inconsistent -- as are well all! I recall writing to him more than a year ago, complaining about the problem of various astronomy programs requiring such varieties of syntax to process entries of things like the Perek-Kohoutek catalogue. Sometimes you need to remember the zeroes; sometimes they are completely eliminated; sometimes they are replaced by nulls or underspaces. Why not, I proposed, adhere to "standards", being those that are used by the predominating printed catalogues and web resources?
His reply? "There are no standards in astronomy".
Well, Greg: I guess we now agree that there indeed are standards!
Or, are there?
To summarize: my own perspective is that there are "astronomical standards" that have evolved through the actions and contributions of astronomers. Greg is right: astronomers have created a coordinate system, and it has served us all very well for many decades. Chris is also right: standards DO change -- evolve -- as new techniques, and needs, influence them.
Monday 30 July 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
I've Left Yet ANOTHER Forum...
Your author may not be the 'easy-goingest' amateur astronomer in the asylum; that much he'll admit. But, when somebody refutes absolutely reifiable, objective, truthful, accurate FACTS by insisting that they aren't so, what should be the proper response?
Do you ignore it? Do you start in on a rant, yelling in caps that this isn't the case, and then just repeat your position all over again? Do you engage in childish sand-lot bickering, in back-and-forth exchanges for thirty or forty point-counterpoint posts until the brain rots (while all other sane and well-balanced readers lose interest and move along, and no longer care what you might have to say, fearing for your rationality?)
I find that, personally, I cannot ignore this sort of thing. It has to be dealt with, patiently. But I don't care to argue.
The issue: someone on a moderated astronomy forum who was a beginning observer and telescope maker asked a question about the comparative merits and functions of two competing "top rank" star chart programs. As the user of both, I replied and gave to the best of my knowledge an answer based on what I'd learned I could do with them.
I don't post very often to groups or forums, and in the last five years have kept mostly to myself, burned by previous years' encounters on usenet. The person who rebutted me, specifically stating that my opinions were wrong and that I had mis-described the differences, was -- on the other hand -- one of the most loquacious of Net posters, whose remarks are simply EVERYWHERE.
He has gigantic websites; writes books; puts out newsletters; is on usenet; contributes to practically every astro forum in cyberspace; holds forth in lengthy reviews that, according to his website, are not entirely independent (stating that he sometimes 'does them' for a 'few' companies that he 'really believe[s] in', confirming my own suspicions about 'reviews' that never seem to point out any significant flaws that were obvious to ME the instant I tried to use the programs myself.) He also gives talks and organizes club activities: in short, he's an acknowledged expert, but is, in my opinion, over-exposed; has, it might be claimed, appeared to have engaged in unrestrained self- promotion, and is on the verge -- it might be argued -- of becoming, to the people who don't agree with him, something of a nuisance.
I like his energy, dedication, enthusiasm, and wit (err...some of it; the folksiness and corny quality do put me off as I'm not of his particular regional background), and am somewhat awed by his sheer output. But, other folks in the world of amateur astronomy might be 'permitted' to have their opinions too, once in a while, without having to count on being "negated" by him.
My immediate personal reaction to having my carefully-considered ideas and understanding rebutted was, you have to imagine, like the scene in the old movie (or was it "Twilight Zone"?) where "Robbie the Robot" is fed some conflicting information. "That does NOT compute! That does NOT compute!" he cries with robotic panic, the little wheels in his translucent plastic head whirring around frantically, with smoke curling out of his cowlings. The cognitive dissonance is too much for the poor metallic creature, who eventually falls down in a dead-robot-faint.
For, what do you do when FACTS -- not mere subjective opinions -- are negated by somebody? It might as well be, in this particular case, like someone cornering me and insisting, finger-in-my-face, that "The earth is not round." Or, "We did NOT go to the Moon!" Or, "2 plus 2 do not make 4, they make 5."
Generally, when this sort of thing breaks out on usenet, it causes a lot of ad hominem wrangling. I've learned not to do this, or -- at my weakest -- at least try not to be tempted.
In this particular case, my immediate reaction was to question MYSELF. I asked my adversary if he could teach me what I did not know about this matter, since every evidence I had at had, and every experience, told me otherwise. I simply could NOT validate his point of view. Facts are facts...computer programs have specific functions, and are designed with locked-in interfaces, menus, and algorithmic sub-routines. Compiled programs that are stand-alone Windows executables, using conventional object-oriented code, to not "improvise" and morph into OTHER things on your hard drive. They don't "sprout new menus" or suddenly "change commands". They simply do not change for ONE person, while staying the way they were when installed for OTHER users. That is, this does not happen if updates, or patches, or supplements are not added, or not created and merged into a program; in this case there was no way that had occurred. No: I had to face it; my adversary was actually incorrect but he was insistent that I was the one who had erred.
The next morning, I drove to the dealer's store where I had purchased the software two years earlier. The manager (who had worked for the company for fourteen years) and his assistant (who had owned that series of programs under several editions, dating back to the mid-90s), and I all put our heads together. As three long-time users of this program, including two salesmen who had, for years, demonstrated it and sold it to customers, we contemplated the disagreement. Could the program DO what my adversary said it did? No. The menus were not present; the commands weren't there; the functions did not exist. Yes: I know it may irritate some for me to say this, but in this particular narrow case, I was RIGHT. I am not always right; being human, I make mistakes. But, now I was entirely correct.
Furthermore, the program that I had described as having some specific, desirable functions that the other one lacked, was demonstrated for me by these two gentlemen. It was awesomely good. An entire sub-system existed that created an observing plan. You could filter your desired intents, and then analyze the objects you had chosen over any period of time you desired, in order to find their transits and local elevation. You could export the data. The plan could be saved and integrated into a star chart display, and control your telescope. The plan's info could be printed. All the things I said it could do, based on my prior experience with a friend's version -- and with my own earlier, simplified edition -- were verified. I was so impressed when I could find the precise MOMENTS every day, over the course of an entire year, when Omega Centauri, the giant globular cluster, would emerge over my own horizon, that I bought this new, comprehensive program on the spot.
Now, I intend to leave the forum where this "expert" holds court. He objected strongly about other experiences I wrote about, finding -- as a reviewer of software himself -- that I was 'wrong' about other things, too: issues that, to me, are also factual and objective, and not opinions.
For instance: one star chart I use puts objects in the wrong places in the sky. The errors may be as much as 10 arcminutes, which -- in the case of tiny, faint objects like PGC galaxies or small planetaries -- makes them impossible to find. It will plot an object in as many as THREE different places, simultaneously! It also will incorrectly display the position angles and sizes of galaxies, and has "created" entirely spurious and non-existent galaxies from its bad internal data.
I discussed the merits of various star chart programs and included a mention of these vagaries, comparing one program that had carefully sifted its data, having had a panel of world-class experts work over the numbers, to avoid these anomalies; it also plotted actual photographic pictures of the sky UNDER its vector graphic display, so that one could immediately verify the accuracy. But, another celebrated program -- the one I previously described -- was supplied with flawed, inconsistent, conflicting databases. If you want absolute accuracy and have, say, a giant scope that can show every object plotted in the Uranometria, you will surely prefer the program that has PRECISE positions, icons, and coordinates. I tried to explain that issue in my analysis of different programs, thinking that the logic of this would be understood by any reader of sense.
But, no. My adversary found my reasoning entirely specious. He said that the program was surely not at fault; the error was entirely in its databases and had NOTHING to do with the program at all! It was irrelevant, and inconsequential.
But, dear reader: what do you do when you buy a VERY expensive, "delicate" star chart program, which does not easily adapt to outside data and can choke or crash if the import process is not perfectly executed, and you find that ALL the data SUPPLIED with it are -- to be blunt -- very badly flawed? What do you do when, year after year, these data are NOT corrected or updated substantially, and continue to have the same errors? What do you do when the import function is SO abstruse, complex, and poorly documented -- and unforgiving -- that you risk wrecking the program so that it crashes, or won't even RUN at all, if the import process is not 100% satisfactory? What do you do when your attempt to import CORRECT data causes the software to choke and die, and then the program simply will not open again, so that you can remove the data file? You simply MUST hold "the program itself" to be entirely responsible for this state of affairs. Its developer has created the situation. He has supplied bad, sloppy data sets. He has created a messy, complex process of data importation, which is "delicate" and buggy. He has set up a program hierarchy that is fragile, so that if the syntax of an imported data file is not precisely correct, his program chokes instantly and crashes -- leaving the user without the option merely to "click off" that data set. In order to run the software ever again, "hard drive magic" has to be performed by a computer geek who can intuit how to restore original file settings in the Windows registry and in the configuration files of the program (yes: I've learned all this from sad personal experience.)
Computer programs are reasonably predictable, if they are written with debugged code that executes reliably and repeatably in the OS. In this case, the core operating code of the program was solid; but the program relies on data files to create vector graphics. And those files are NOT obtained -- elsewhere, separately -- by the end-user; they are a part of the package supplied by the developer. Outside "alien" data sets are a big risk, and the developer is not particularly interested in them.
Other programs of this type are less "proprietary" and are more friendly to the "outside world", and accomodate other databases and lists with more flexibility.
But, in my pointing this out, once again I was criticised and rebutted by somebody who (apparently, I guess) had not done the same experiments or looked at the same objects, and made careful checks: the FACTUAL matters of the way things are -- in the real world, in actuality -- were negated by a "reviewer" who looks at an apple, and sees an orange.
It's one thing to prefer, say, a right angle finderscope over a straight through finder, or to like Plössls more than Erfles. Or to have your own private and personal set of values that infuse the whole way you want to go about doing your hobby of astronomy. But to fail to recognize the POSSIBILITY that another investigator might have done careful, systematic work to run down details, correct flaws, and find best ways of solving problems, is simply intellectually unforgivable: it says to the rest of the world, "Hey, guys: I define the possibilities, the needs, the goals of amateur astronomy. What I want to do is all that you need worry about. My way is the only practical approach; never mind this crank who rants about his petty little nonsensical, fussy natterings..."
I'll allow that I may be a "petty little guy with personal eccentric and idiosyncratic goals." I don't have a book published somewhere, and don't distribute a newsletter. I don't organize an astronomy club, and am not the hub of a social scene. But, I want to do MY kind of astronomy and, as such, I have made investigations and know (a) what tools I need; and (b) what they must do for ME. And, I've discovered over the years that there are plenty of amateur astronomers that have similar ideas and goals: people like my friends Sue French and Jaakko Saloranta, deep sky observers who respect and appreciate ACCURATE DATA, and know the difference between one star chart program and another, and who can tell instantly, irrefutably, if the NUMBERS are not right.
The astronomical gadfly-entrepreneur who sweeps this all under the table as being so much inconsequential, eccentric nonsense has a right to his opinion and entire gestalt. I have no problem with him, or his orientation to the hobby: I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy: friendly, eager, helpful. BUT...he's not respectful of other amateur astronomers who aren't like him.
And since, when you as a fellow contributor to a forum, get anywhere NEAR the topics that are near-and-dear to his heart, and face his "negation" as an inevitable consequence of posting your carefully-reasoned ideas, then you can either argue with him, or go away (if you can't ignore him.) I know which course I'll take.
Thursday 2 August 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
It's SO Predictable!
The other day, on the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur, there was a discussion initiated by a contest held by Celestron, involving the International Star Registry. The very association of a serious astronomy products manufacturer with a "seller of star names" sent some members of the forum into high dudgeon, especially some public-outreach employees and operators of planetaria. Often, they explained, audience members would ask to see "mother's" or "auntie's" star; being told that it was not in the instrument's database, or perhaps not seen from the residing hemisphere, could cause great consternation. An individual indicated that he'd been in a heated argument from one "star seeker" who thought that the planetarium was being downright uncooperative. A few persons indicated that they had tried to "set the public straight about the 'scam' of selling non-official star names." Generally, almost everybody who commented seemed angry and annoyed about the ISR; but there was one notable dissenter.
A very learned, serious, and intelligent gentleman -- who happens to be a degreed physicist, advanced amateur observer, and developer of fine, useful programs for telescope users -- demurred. He thought everybody was being silly. It was 'no big deal' and one should have patience with the unwashed public, and not insult them by being a humorless Cassandra, hurting their feelings. Many contributors to the thread disagreed strongly, however: and the arguments flew fast and furious, rising to the level of personal insults.
I somehow blundered into this mess. At 3 AM (stone cold sober as a judge, I might add: I'm a non-drinker and not ever prone to "tippling", getting riled up, and shooting my mouth off in the middle of the night on forums -- which, I might add, is not always true of every contributor!) I downloaded a few headers from the group, got the first TWO in the topic, and (without seeing the rancor that had broken out) added a very short post of my own which, essentially, expressed my amusement about this, and mentioned my own disapproval of the Celestron ad that I have parodied in an earlier article here.
But, the next day, I was attacked: accused of being a 'witch hunter', and doing something very "wrong".
Apparently, I had been associated with the persons who had "ganged up" on the one prominent individual who took the side of Celestron. I was dismayed, as my comment was only intended to be a casual, flip, remark: I really did not have a 'horse in the race' nor care much about uninformed people who get "taken" by scams: to me, it's an "intelligence test" -- and they failed it. If you don't know ANYTHING about a subject, don't invest your money in it.
So, ironically, I actually agreed MORE with the fellow who thought I had taken the "side against him".
I knew this person, and sent him a couple of private emails to clear the air; and then posted a long, bathetic explanation of my point of view, explaining that I could see both sides of the dispute and respected the opinions of ALL. "Buying star names" is not for me; but I would not insult a person who had been naive about doing it. If I were in the uncomfortable position of a planetarium operator, confronted with this problem, I'd be diplomatic. And: it's a good idea sometimes to separate oneself from a humorless, "outraged" reaction, when perhaps a more measured, patient one might be better.
But, on thinking over this -- and many other disputes on usenet that I've experienced -- it occurs to me that it's all very PREDICTABLE. It might be reduced to a mathematical formula, or a computer program algorithm. You have (a) the people at the extreme opposite ends of the issue, the outliers. They take the most extreme, idealistic, "purist" point of view from either direction. Then there is the larger group (b) which exhibits notable similarities between individual responses, plus distinct nuances and differences: just about any that you could imagine. Finally there is (c) the troll-like, non-serious respondent group, which comprises anti-social people who like to make more of the trouble that already has broken out.
This is very reminiscent of the Chomskybot. It is a program, originally conceived in LISP, that generates a random assemblage of turgid, meaningful-LOOKING phrases from the works of linguist Noam Chomsky but which, in their clever structural reassembly, are ultimately meaningless (though superficially they seem like something you'd read in an advanced paper.) Physical scientists make fun of this kind of "academic-speak" and love to play with the program (which Professor of Linguistics John M. Lawler has implemented for your use on
this webpage.) Want to try it? I just did, and received the following gibberish:
Analogously, the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial delimits the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)). In the discussion of resumptive pronouns following (81), a case of semigrammaticalness of a different sort appears to correlate rather closely with a corpus of utterance tokens upon which conformity has been defined by the paired utterance test. It appears that the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition may remedy and, at the same time, eliminate an abstract underlying order. For any transformation which is sufficiently diversified in application to be of any interest, the systematic use of complex symbols raises serious doubts about the system of base rules exclusive of the lexicon. From C1, it follows that this selectionally introduced contextual feature suffices to account for the extended c-command discussed in connection with (34).
Marvelous, isn't it! What utterly pointless drivel (even including spurious footnote references)... which sounds like there's a hidden meaning, just out of your reach!
I call on all clever LISP and Java programmers to create the sci.astro.amateur simulator. It should not be hard for somebody like Dr. Jay Reynolds Freeman, the computer scientist. And, we already have a huge body of richly effusive material to draw from (ahem: my posts, for one...and those of many other verbose contributors to the group, as well as the powerful invective that already exists in the archives.)
It is only necessary to generate the most extreme negating pro-con, black and white, opinions about any topic, and then to fill in with almost every possible reaction, and variation.
Here's a topic to star with: the "plug" done by Sky & Telescope of the "Moon and Pleaiades event" that occurred this past week, on August 6 and 7, 2007. In a post to the newgroup, the magazine linked to an article that informed viewers that "The waning Moon shines near Mars and the Pleiades in the early hours of Tuesday morning". I happened to be up at 2 AM that day, trying to keep a nocturnal schedule to be wide-awake for observing a few days later during the new Moon. I saw the notice, and opened my garage door. Yes: the partially illuminated Moon was rather close to the Pleiades, somewhat higher in the sky. I walked down the street to avoid a tree, and saw something that looked a bit like this (my simulation; I did not take an actual picture):
 With the brilliant light of the Moon, and the streetlights around me, having almost blinded my vision, I got out my 10x50 binoculars (which have a field width of 5 degrees.) I could position the Moon just at one edge, and manage to get the dimmer Pleiades almost all into the opposite one. Yet, the picture on the S&T article showed the two objects about a DEGREE apart: twice the Moon's diameter. I also noticed the following things, which I found very interesting: (1) I could not get a focus on both objects. If I focused on the Moon, the Pleiades were very fuzzy, and vice-versa. (2) I could barely see many of the Pleiades stars with the Moon in the field. It was disappointing to try to look at both objects at the same time, in the same field of view. (3) Since the objects were so far apart -- my guess was about 4 degrees -- I had no telescope that could show them both together, not owning one (except for my mediocre finderscopes) that will go down to 9 or 10 powers of magnification with the eyepieces I own (never mind the over-large exit pupil); likewise, I could not image them with my webcam. The only way I could have taken a picture was to do BOTH objects independently, with optimal exposure time, and then try to paste two separate pictures together into a large field, attempting to get the proper distance. It would have been a futile exercise. (4) All in all, the "event" was unimpressive; even pointless to try to view. It wasn't satisfactory by naked-eye; and was even less so in binoculars.
This often is my reaction to the publicity of easily seen "celestial events" that may be allegedly enjoyed by the general, astronomically non-specialist public. To me, they're washouts and not very significant.
NOW: fire up the "Newsgroup Simulator", or argue amongst yourselves. I can imagine every single response I'd get, ranging from the outraged persons who castigated me for being so indifferent to the "needs and wants of beginners", to those who thought I'd "demeaned the scientists at S&T", and the devotees of doing wide-field prime focus camera lens astrophoto shots, to the persons who complained that I did not buy an appropriate rich field telescope and 2" oculars -- such as the $600 Naglers that they owned and enjoyed. Perhaps you can think of a few choice invectives to be hurled at me. It's all SO predictable...
Wednesday 8 August 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
Instead of the Perseids...
About Methods and Nuances Of My Observing Techniques
My wife Regina and I were wrapping up our day, and fixing the picnic lunch. The dogs had been walked and fed, the chores finished, and I was preparing to load up our car: my 4-inch telescope and binoculars, the big folding camp recliner chairs, the blankets, coffee, and cassette machine with old time radio shows to listen to. This was the second night, the peak night, of the annual Perseid meteor shower, and according to preliminary reports of sightings by Dave Mitsky at Stellafane, it was going to be good.
I had completed checking my mountain weather station report, looking at the satellite picture for fog, and considering the temperture and barometer setting to determine what clothing we'd need: at 3,400 feet altitude in the mountains, right by the Pacific ocean coast, summer nights can be balmy -- or frigid. Wind can gust up to 30 miles an hour, or the air can be as meek and calm as a lamb. Satisfied that I'd thoroughly planned (as my wife tends to be easily chilled and even more easily bored if the meteor showers she enjoys turn out to be duds) I made one final check...a BIG blunder. And so, I'm sitting here, at ten minutes to 1 am, at home in my office, far, far away from the dark sky and the meteors.
I shouldn't have checked my ISP's web mail.
What made me do it is a mystery. I block email because I need the web space that Earthlink provides me for my website articles that are split between my wife's piano teaching site, and several astronomy sites I maintain. Mail coming in is junked automatically after a day or two, and a return notice is sent out that the boxes are closed and not used for communications since the server space is required for our web pages. I checked, merely to see how well the spam filters had worked that week: and saw that I had a message pending at a forum I once joined months ago and had forgotten about. Oh, dear. I clicked over and read something that made my heart sink.
A reader of the "Faint Fuzzies -- Near City Skies" celestial object reports was very upset. It seems that he had done a web search for his name, and it turned up in one of my articles, which sometimes include public domain, uncopyrighted reprints (as well as fair use brief excerpts) from some amateur reports of the objects I too have studied. In this particular case -- and I won't mention which object, for reasons that will become obvious -- I had recorded in my logbook by now not just one, but THREE good views of a nebula (a faint and challenging one) and made drawings; used two different telescopes; matched my drawings to both star chart deep plots and DSS pictures. I wrote up two of these three sightings in my article, documenting them as well as I've done any of the other reports in this series (including information about the object; the date and time; site; scopes; magnifications: complete with drawings matched to survey photos.)
But, this reader says he had an entirely different experience with his attempts to see the nebula, differing in virtually every respect one could imagine. He demanded an explanation from me. WHY did this situation exist? I was not quite certain if there was a hidden suggestion that he thought I was simply lying. But, he explained, he was very experienced, very thorough, used every proper technique and fine detailed charts -- and could not, in fact, be in error. WHAT was the reason that my experience was different? Why, WHY??
I made an attempt to reply, explaining that it was lucky I had even a chance to see his letter, which would have been automatically dumped by my ISP's web mail blocker the next day; apologized for that; and then did my best to try to intuit a logical and reasonable explanation. I took some of the reply I sent him and incorporated that into this much longer exploration, as follows.
First: we are viewing in such different geographical areas that the dissimilarities could not be much greater. He was in a dark sky site; but I have done astronomical observing in his region and -- frankly -- was rather appalled at the mucky sky conditions, lack of transparency, and flickery seeing that plagued me all week as, night after night, I tried to use my scope. I also have had many opportunities of observing in other parts of the middle of the United States. The common quality of the skies, even when fairly dark, were the comparative lack of transparency when contrasted to the high desert skies of Nevada or New Mexico, parts of eastern southern California desert range, or the Pacific coastal regions. Shockingly so, in fact! The skies here where I'm blessed to live have features of a Mediterranean climate type, and laminar airflow: steady and transparent. The seeing at the site I use in the mountains often provides occasions of Pickering 8 or 9 -- and not infrequently, at least for a while, the magical 10!
Second: I use not a giant Dob that one has to stand up to employ, but a sit-down scope. If I am running my GOTO C-11, I can leave the object on the desired field, untouched, for hours: the tracking is quite good. This enables me to look and look without fiddling with the instrument; and in some cases of demanding objects, I've studied them for two hours, or longer. I have tweaked the bearings of my 10" Dob so that they are so smooth (with the modifications described here) I have absolutely no difficulty in observing at 322x (with my 3.7 mm Orion "Epic" eyepiece); and I've even observed objects successfully at 478x (using my Orion 5 mm "Stratus" eyepiece, and a 2x Barlow.) I can get up; go to my observing table nearly 20 feet away, down a small but rather difficult rocky hill; make a sketch or check references; walk back up to the Dob; and move the scope easily and quickly back onto my object again: even at 322x. Despite the fact that the Dob is on an alt-az undriven mount, I have thus observed the same object, trying to to see detail critically, for 90 minutes or longer, in relative comfort.
Third: I am patient, and having gone to so much preliminary trouble to prepare charts, and "settle" myself into the routine of deep study, I can concentrate very profoundly (and have, while observing by myself, intense powers of mental focus that I don't relax until satisfied.) I observe without distracting companions. At the end of a session, I am usually quite mentally drained -- but elated.
Thus, I'm not standing up at some big, unwieldy scope; pushing it around all the time; and finding that at the highest powers its shaking and twitching impact my concentration (thus, I have seen the central stars of some planetary nebulae that my "betters" -- such as Steve Gottlieb -- have not reported being able to detect.)
Fourth: I undertake to achieve the highest possible level of dark adaptation, going to great pains to shield my observing eye from even the faintest TRACE of extraneous light. I put a dark hood over my head. I seldom do a critical observation until I have been sure to be fully dark adapted for about two hours. I keep my observing eye under a patch EVERY INSTANT it is not looking into my eyepiece. If there is a chance that my scope will slew past a star of 3rd magnitude or brighter while finding an object, I use my OTHER eye, and reserve my preferred observing eye until I am through getting the position. I try to avoid looking even at 4th or 5th magnitude stars for more than a moment, and keep them out of the area of my retina where there is best averted vision for faint objects.
Fifth: I have trained myself to use VERY HIGH POWER, whenever it is at all possible or practical. I regularly employ 466x with my C-11, and 200 to 322x with my Dob. I have tested my visual ability to detect faint stars (and can go to about magnitude 16.7 or so with my C-11.) I have trained for years with observers like Don Machholz, the legendary eagle-eyed comet hunter, and in my earliest days as a deep sky observer with the gifted, thorough Rich Page. In addition, I have conducted MANY tests using similarly trained observers during the years I worked in the development of astro software and in the marketing, development, and sales of astro products. My Horsehead nebula observing tests, in 1989/90, were conducted with four observers using best techniques, at this same site, and are documented in the third of the articles on my Horsehead Project website.
And, like many other amateur observers, I have complementary instruments, not merely one "big light bucket". I use a low power, wide field, high contrast refractor for objects that have a huge angular diameter, with 2" eyepieces and appropriate filter, so that I may find nebulae that are large and very faint. Often these objects are not well spotted in a long focal length, large aperture Dobsonian of 18" or larger primary mirror; a low power refractor may do better, permitting a 3 to 4 degree field of view at the largest practical exit pupil.
Sixth: I've considered and tried to optimize conditions of my own health, for best observing results. I've never smoked, and am a non-drinker. I tend also to stay up VERY late, run my own home business, and can set my schedule. I'm bright and well awake for most observing sessions, due to long habit: for years before I retired from broadcasting, I maintained a nocturnal schedule, repairing or installing radio transmitters and antennas in the middle of the night, and for five years I conducted an all-night classical music radio show. So, for the last forty years I have been a night-owl! I simply am likely to be wider awake than many casual -- and even some very dedicated -- amateur observers, at 1 or 2 am. Usually, I observe all night, right up to dawn.
I take care of my health, as I am somewhat beyond "middle age" and want to make sure that my observing years are not cut short by the typical problems of the aging population that are pandemic today (such as diabetes, a sure destroyer of your ability to observe properly, which afflicts some of my own amateur astronomy friends.) I am free of this problem, take a reasonable amount of dietary supplements, and eat lots of vegetables (especially the ones that are beneficial for the preservation of sight.) I have even had my blood oxygen level tested to make sure I am not suffering from any deficiency: the test results were ideal values.
Seventh: As to training and preparation for observing: well, not only have I been mentored by people like Page and Machholz, but also I have used the reports of such world-class observers as O'Meara, Gottlieb, Coe, and Freeman as my guides as to what is possible. In recent years I have cultivated a mutually rewarding friendship with an exceptionally talented deep sky observer who lives in Finland: Jaakko Saloranta. His website records his sometimes amazing observing feats, and a service that he helps to maintain, the Finnish Deep-Sky Archive, preserves the evidence, in very careful eyepiece drawings and fully documented details, of the remarkable things achieved by these exceptional, careful people. Jaakko makes a big astronomy trek every year, and often goes to Tenerife, armed with his little 3" aperture f/5 Konus refractor. With it, he's seen multitudes of faint Abell planetaries, faint galaxies, nebulae, and obscure star clusters. He is interested in determining the "minimum aperture" for these objects, which are often mis-stated by old fashioned, out of date observing guides as being catches ONLY for, say, 8 inch or much larger scopes.
The local northern California observer who is one of my own rôle models, Dr. Jay Reynolds Freeman (an advanced computer scientist and optical expert) has been professionally trained in the field of astronomy; he's made more than 22,000 recorded observations of more than 10,000 deep sky objects. His reports are the stuff of WONDER. And, since I know this gentleman personally, I can vouch for the validity of his work: you can take it to the bank. Read some of the eloquent, beautifully phrased, and entertaining observing reports here, on the astro page of his website. In fact, Dr. Freeman and I just exchanged emails this past week and one topic was MY inability to verify and duplicate his own repeated and numerous observations of the Merope nebula. Jay has seen it more than 31 times (reported several years ago; by now certainly even more often) and in his equipment, to his eyes, and under his observing conditions, it is often "easy". To me, it's been very hard; one reason I've intuited is that I have telescopes that are either SCT's, or Newtonians with standard four-vane spiders, which are not nearly as free from optical reflections and light scatter as, say, his superior Astro-Physics 10" Mak, a premium instrument. But, Jay also uses small high quality fluorite or APO refractors: again, better in the aspect of contrast and low loss and lack of reflections than my scopes.
Jay also tends to use classic old Brandon eyepieces; I use often "cheap" ones that may be wider field, but aren't as well designed and manufactured. Furthermore, Jay is simply a wonderful observer (though he hates for me to say it, and objects every time!) For, he believes the reason for the success of many observations is just good old plain diligence. Finally, his research into the limiting magnitude ratings of many deep sky objects has proved that often the "standard" or traditional values are woefully wrong, and generally too low (see this very illuminating article he's written about the Herschel list.)
One other observation of Jay's that I, so far, haven't been able to duplicate with my current telescopes, is the viewing of the jet in M-87. I saw this once, briefly, more than 20 years ago (at the site I currently use) in a friend's huge reflector. But I have not yet been able to detect it reliably and satisfactorily in either my current 10 or 11 inch scopes; and my logbook records MANY pages of work done on it, for a total of at least six or seven cumulative hours of observing time spread over the last two years. I have not given up. Eventually I may get it; Jay has done it with his 10" AP Mak. After reading all his observing articles and reports available on the Net, I've found that I can duplicate some of his experiences; get at least a partial appreciation of aspects of certain objects; and have found instances where differences in our totality of work and perception have resulted in my absolute failure to match his achievements. I think this is simply a normal consequence of the great differences between individual people, their processes of cognition, and the nuances of neurophysiology; and I have some confidence in this judgment, based on my other (rather extensive) work in comparative psychoacoustical perception, which was an imporant part of my professional career in the development and testing of audio equipment and broadcast audio processing products. If you would like to read further about my speculations and conclusions, I have derived some hypotheses about these factors, applied to amateur astronomical observing, that are explored in this article.
Eighth: what about the specific issue of "Waldee seeing something that somebody else can't/hasn't seen, and explaining WHY or HOW this can be?" I can assure everybody that it's a hit-and-miss process, and I am in fact absolutely certain that I don't have a generally "superior" track record. I read the reports on the Yahoo "amastro" observing list every week and am constantly confronted with amazing feats done by 'the usual suspects' including Pensack, Wallace, Snyder, Banich, Crayon, Coe, Polakis, and many other fine, tireless, dedicated observers. I simply cannot see many of the things they talk about, no matter how enticing they might be -- because they are objects fit for 17 inch or larger scopes, not ones of my aperture size. It's sometimes frustrating, knowing that it won't be worth my while to try for some 'new' obscure tiny Bok globule that somebody has uncovered, or a galactic nebula that can only be seen in a sky with 7.5+ NELM and a 25" scope. But, in a way it's fun to read about the observations, and to share the elation of the happy viewers who have nabbed the objects. I don't become annoyed, or envious: on the contrary, I revel in such achievements! They spur me on and serve to INSPIRE me to keep plugging away.
Ninth: yes, it is true that on some occasions, I have seen faint PNs with my 11 inch scope that several good observers have failed to see with an 18-20 inch. Why? (Am I lying, or so pitifully self-deluded that my articles should be shunned?)
The answer has to do with the personal equation. In tests I have done, and comparisons with other viewers, I have found that for sheer "dimness detection" I am a pretty darned good observer. One of my proudest moments was an observing session with Don Machholz and Rich Page at the site I still use, years ago: there was a new twilight comet and the three of us tried to find it. I was the first! I got it in the field of my 10" Newtonian before Don or Rich managed to do it. I will never forget my feeling of "having arrived"!
But, I am very sad to say that as an observer of complex fields, or star arrangements, I am "average" -- or even below average. For, I get confused very easily; can't seem effectively to count stars in clusters because by the time I've done two dozen (or even fewer) I will forget which ones I've counted (for this reason, I have failed to discern the "Goldilocks" variable star in the Dumbbell nebula, as I explain here.) I have to check scope directions very carefully, for I'm prone to getting N and S reversed. I am not the best chart reader in the world; so I have to use an upright/correct finderscope, and when doing a very challenging, faint, small diameter object, I will prepare a chart printed out in the exact optical orientation of my scope (mirror image if necessary) so that I can be sure of what I'm seeing; I am almost INCAPABLE of mentally reversing a star field in order to compare a conventional E-W printed chart with the view in my reflector scopes' eyepieces.
I also am not the best observer of DETAILS. I have to work at this very diligently. As Sherlock Holmes said to Watson, "You see...but you do not observe"; and it's true that if you compare MY reports of objects, to the similar ones by Gottlieb, I won't be very detailed. I can SEE them...but to get a detail actually noticed and properly perceived, looking isn't quite enough. I will have to sketch it. Other great deep-sky observers can rattle off into their pocket cassette recorders an amazing plethora of details, shadings, boundaries, directions: they are there in front of my eyes, but my brain just does not take this in and convert it to concepts, models, mental constructs, and verbalized abstractions very efficiently.
So, I have to use various 'tools of the trade' to make up my deficiencies, including making sketches as well as going back several times to an object, later in the same observing session; and most importantly, OBSERVING THE OBJECT AGAIN AND AGAIN BEFORE SUBMITTING A REPORT. Most of the reports I have printed here on my web articles were based on two or three separate observations, even with alternative scopes, done on different nights. I use another eyepiece, a different exit pupil; vary the viewing techniques; even vary the EYE that I use for observing. This all helps to verify (to myself) that delusions are not likely to be experienced.
Tenth: the site that I use is, frankly, remarkable; but I don't wish to have you think that I'm trying to brag about it, as there are plenty of comparable sites used by the observers whose reports I study. As I have explained in this article, it is a private site, on a secured non-public access road, which allows no regular traffic. A permit is required from the landowner, which took me much effort to renegotiate a few years ago. I have been harrassed there by county sheriffs, who thought I was a "squatter" or even a criminal (not understanding who the heck an amateur skyviewer was, never having seen one in their lives.) Once, a sheriff made me give him a set of fingerprints; luckily I had my permit, or I would have been hauled down to Los Gatos, California's jail (as happened to a friend of mine once, LEAVING the observing session and driving down the road.) No: I am not permitted to tell people how to get to or how to use the site. But, it's a good one and when fog comes in below me, at 3,400 feet altitude, it's world-class, with wonderful seeing, transparent air sometimes all the way down to the horizon (enabling me to see faint PNs in Scorpius and Ophiuchus that are hard for other observers even at similar latitudes in other No. California public sites.) Jaakko Saloranta has compared my reports and drawings of objects with similar ones he's done in Tenerife: and has concluded that these two sites must have much in common, judging from our individual results. It's also significant to note that when I looked for Abell 48, which I do believe I've seen (and have written up here) a corroborating tentative observation with a similar sized scope was found by me on the Net: done at Valencia, Spain, very close to the ocean, at a site that has similarities to the one I use.
If an observer thousands of miles away, in a totally different climate, different altitude, and under entirely inconsistent jet stream conditions has a different result compared to mine -- apparently worse in some cases -- then this does not mean that OTHER types of objects can't show up better to him, than to me. Because of the size of my scopes, and the residual light pollution that is present if I'm not above total fog and cloud cover, I cannot see the faintest galaxy details such as dust lanes as well as some observers can see them, with larger scopes in darker skies. I also am sometimes hampered in using rich-field views to see the widest angular diameter objects with good contrast. Viewers in dark skies that may not always have my transparency and latitude could still outpace me in many ways, with other types of observing, and different kinds of objects. But often the particular additive benefits of my site and techniques allow me, for instance, to detect the EXISTENCE of a faint PN outer shell or halo, which some other observers, elsewhere, might do -- though somewhat larger scopes might be required.
Eleventh: As I have said on my website before (writing in my "Introduction" to the Faint Fuzzies observing reports) I consider these challenges not ones that pit me against other people, but against MYSELF: against apathy, fatigue, and negativity, as well as struggling with the great physical conditions of weather and seeing that are beyond my control -- though I must know how to maximize my chances. One way to do this is to observe often, and systematically: and I have been using this same site for more than two decades, for thousands of accumulated hours. I am used to it; know the weather patterns and the expected nights of greatest darkness and best transparency and seeing, and drop everything else to go there because I can do that, as a person in charge of my own life and employment. I don't merely go to a site once in a while. I don't "save up" my enthusiasm to expend it a very few times a year in an orgy of eager looking, from a site hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, after a long and stressful trip. I look regularly, constantly, and consistently: and thus hit often "the great nights". This also tends to even out the variations in my own state of being, since none of us is at his or her best on every occasion.
Because I am not "competing with other people" I tend to learn about what others have done, AFTER my first attempts to see an object. In the case of the observation that prompted the demanding letter to me, I looked FIRST at the object before I knew what others had achieved; then, later, I studied prior work; and looked again. Often I will not know what an object looks like in pictures, avoiding them before my observing sessions. I observe many obscurities and can't recall the details of seeing photos in years past: this is a good way to maintain objectivity and to prevent bias (which I have talked about, for example, in this discussion of discovering, to my delight, that a spontaneous and unprepared observation of a detail in Arp 140, which I noticed without preconception, was confirmed by me later when consulting the observing reports of Steve Gottlieb and Tom Polakis.)
As I said, I'm sitting here thinking and writing about this INSTEAD of watching the Perseids, because that letter I saw this evening caused me great consternation, disappointment, and a sense of futility. Am I a "liar" because, in the case of one object, I seem to have seen something that another chap hasn't perceived? No, surely not: we'd need more evidence than this to show deception (or, in a less pathological view, delusion or systematic error.) But, when I pour myself into these experiments, and doing the research that sometimes occupies two or more days to finish a full report, and complete all the photo detailing, and other myriad jobs of creating the web pages by myself: is THIS to be the response from my reading public? That my work, documented as carefully as I have tried to do, is bewildering, suggesting some possibilty of deception or incompetence or gross exaggeration? That's the extent of the comments I shall get from readers of these articles? Do they not educate a few persons? Do they not stimulate someone, somewhere, to try something new and challenging? Are other people as excited as I may be by the successes of their fellow observers -- or are they just dismayed, annoyed, filled with grouchy skepticism?
I was, in fact, so perturbed by that letter that I spent a long time tonight editing the particular article involved, removing all references to the one other observation I had found on the public net, and putting in a mention of the skepticism and bewilderment of my reader. I did him the courtesy of that, out of respect for his feelings, his experience, and his dedication; and I left out his name in case he might not wish to "associate" himself with a person -- me! -- whose viewing reports he so greatly doubted. Then, I cancelled at the last minute the trip that Regina and I were to take up the mountain, to see the Perseids. I had a dark moment, feeling very discouraged and dismayed, finding it not worth the trouble to do now. Why bother? What will I say about it? If I do get to see a lot of meteors, and others around here don't, will an enthusastic report by me just annoy them?
By finishing this whole essay -- it's now 3:10 am and the meteors are probably past peak display -- I believe I have set my mind at ease, and put this matter back into perspective. It's NOT futile. Not everybody will react with mere knee-jerk skepticism and a biased denial that anything of the sort could be done, feeling horrible dismay or even indignation, when encountering my reports. Not everybody will think that they are some kind of "bragging" (for, so many of the amateur observers I know are really good ones who have amazing experiences all the time, and love sharing them -- this is not unhealthy "bragging".) Furthermore, skepticism will be healthy if it prompts the reader to TRY THE EXPERIMENT that I've done, their own way. I don't simply 'believe everything' that another observer reports, on the face of it; but on the other hand, I don't write off particular observers who have taken the trouble to report extensively, with evidence, having established a body of work. I address their reports with an open attitude, not a closed mind.
Regina was disappointed that our Perseid session had evaporated due to my onset of funk, but she was also very dismayed at this unexpected and strange letter's tone, and issues, and my reaction to all of it. My wife is a piano teacher, specializing in youngsters; and she's a renowned author of pedagogy books, guest lecturer, and expert on child learning (as well as a concert artist on the piano and harpsichord.) In her field, the "positive reinforcements" that come her way, on a daily basis, are huge and unceasing. In my field -- quietly running our business, and writing these little articles -- the reinforcement from the outside world is nil. When something comes in, it's likely to be critical or negative (as when some crank INSISTED that I remove the name of Damian Peach from this article on telescope optics, because of an utterly untrue, outrageous, vile slander against that great British imaging expert that appeared -- for but an instant -- on a blog somewhere, posted by a clueless, ignorant moron, that this silly person believed, thinking, then, that Damian was NOT really one of the world's greatest planetary imagers, and therefore not worthy of mention by me. Sheesh!) I do hear, from time to time, from nice people, appreciative readers, and those who found my work useful. It isn't often, though: especially on forums and usenet, where persons of slightly heretical (or, at least a tiny bit unorthodox) views often have their heads chopped off (if the trolls don't get to them first.)
So, just as I have been inspired by some remarkable amateur astronomers to work hard, learn, and try to live up to their standards of excellence, I must merely, once again, dig deep into myself for the courage to find this work meaningful, even if it upsets or bewilders someone else. But, I'll keep these reactions of skeptical dismay in mind as I continue to observe and produce my reports. It will help me to try to improve their accuracy and relevance.
UPDATE: I did a little Internet "detective work" to try to find out about my 'doubting correspondent' who had cast such skepticism on my planetary nebula report. It turns out that he observes in a forested area in the southeastern USA that, according to Wikipedia, "has a distinct southern flavor of mist-laden hardwood swamps" and "pitcher plant bogs"; furthermore, most of the area is only 100 feet above sea level! Now, his sky may be dark; but it's in a swampy region that is thousands of feet lower in altitude than my Pacific coastal site near Lick Observatory's Mt. Hamilton. I have been observing for many years longer than this gentleman has lived; indeed, my age seems to be close to three times his. In September 2007, he reported that as of that date he'd observed the deep sky for 33 hours that YEAR; that is about what I accomplish in six weeks' time. Adding up all the observing I've done in 2007 between only July through September -- a three-month period -- yields 80 hours according to my logbook; now, extrapolating that back from the 1980s will give you an idea of my comparative experience at an excellent high altitude site with splendidly transparent air and reliably fine seeing. I feel much better, and more confident, now! -- 9/28/07
ANOTHER UPDATE: Recently I had a discussion with professional astronomer Brian Skiff about the possibility of seeing the heavily obscured globular cluster HJK2000 GC01 in Sagittarius, a faint object that was discovered a few years ago from infrared images. It was included in the Uranometria atlas, and during an observing session I thought I might be seeing something at the appropriate spot. Skiff found this utterly impossible, saying that my claim of seeing a stellar limiting magnitude of 15th-16th in my 10 and 11 inch scopes to be unlikely at the cluster's low declination. I certainly accept that, but during an observing session on the night of October 18, 2007, I was able to see -- and sketch -- stars at a position in the constellation of Aquarius, only 4 degrees higher than HJK2000 GC01's declination, that were fainter than those of the Hubble Guidestar Catalogue used in my star chart software, including some stars not shown in the USNO 2.0 deep database employed by the website Messier45.com for its "Deep Sky Browser" charts. This fact signifies that indeed I am working at an observing site with exceptionally clear, transparent air: impacting positively my ability to detect faint planetary nebulae such as the one discussed above that my critic -- observing in a "swampy" low altitude eastern region -- was so skeptical about. -- 10/25/07
FURTHER UPDATE - Conclusive Proof: Recently in January 2008, on a particular astronomy forum I peruse occasionally, I found two posts by a close personal friend and co-observer of my 'accuser' (the person who cast such doubts on my observation of a planetary nebula that he found difficult at his apparently "swampy" location.) These two posts gave me an amazing and revelatory insight into the place where my critic observes: it has such bad seeing that, apparently, most of the time star images are so bloated and fuzzy that one cannot tell the difference between a small diameter planetary nebula and a star: "The frequently poor seeing here in [...] is why I usually don't bother with the really small planetary nebulae. When the seeing's poor, they are impossible to tell apart from surrounding stars." Well, then: is there little wonder that MY observing locale, in the laminar airflow of the mountaintop region overlooking the Pacific ocean, offers superior transparency, at 3400 feet above sea level, compared to a low-altitude "swamp"? In the picture above, I have parked my car about 2/3rds of the way up to my observing site, so that I could get a photo of the deep fog bank that is visible well out to sea, just off southwestern edge of the mountain: you are viewing the fog and cloud tops in the distance, which marks the inversion boundary; above that the air is still, and vividly transparent, and free from light pollution. But I drive up more than a thousand feet higher in altitude to observe: which is why I can view faint Abell PNs using a 10 or 11 inch scope, seeing them with clarity that many observers at low altitude sites can't achieve with 17 or 18 inch scopes. It's merely a matter of location, location, location! Had I known earlier the truth about the observing site used by my 'accuser', I would never have given a moment's worry about his unfair criticism and challenge of my honesty, accuracy, and probity. -- 1/10/08
Other Examples: I have continued to read this particular observer's reports with great interest, now that I've had my little experience with his reaction to my articles. Just yesterday I was alerted to a discussion in a CN deep sky observing thread in which he expressed considerable amounts of consternation when his particular experiences with a faint object were not in absolute agreement with other credible observers. His expressions of alleged 'worry' about his vision or competence or experience seemed very hollow to me; rather, I suspected that his skepticism is not so much that he failed to see something, but that others had erred or exaggerated. This is the problem of what I call "being too self-referencing": you validate your own perceptions merely because YOU have them and trust them; but since you don't have anyone else's physiognomy or cognition, all you can do is 'take their word for it' -- and you'd rather not do so. This attitude unfortunately leads one to doubt practically everything anybody else says that does not agree with your own personal physical experiences. Perhaps in some contexts this is rational; but in amateur visual astronomy, I argue that it is not. There are too many variables, the most significant one being momentary sky conditions, to allow for any possibility that there will be reliable consistency when examining the boundary observations of the faintest possible celestial phenomena. I myself recently experienced this situation 24 hours apart, with my scope set up in exactly the same place, at the same time of night, while trying to verify an observation of the planetary nebula Abell 38. It was almost certainly seen on one night, but I like to have a confirmation before writing up unusual or rare observations; and I could not do it the next day: now, the sky barely showed 13th magnitude stars, though there was not a cloud in sight, and the previous day had seemed perfectly clear. So I felt that perhaps I wouldn't even trust MYSELF, if I were too skeptical and demanding. Yet, I'm sure that eventually, if the observation was at all possible, I can duplicate it under other circumstances, sooner or later.
It is far too much to expect everybody, anywhere, to have the same experiences with (say) the faintest filamentary detail in a faint supernova remnant, or the diffuse nebulosity of a 15th magnitude planetary. To do so, I feel, reveals that one is unsophisticated, inexperienced, and untutored in the complexities of neurophysiology and psychological variations. When I received the original letter of complaint from this observer, I had really no idea who he was. I did not realize that this articulate and seemingly authoritative person was about a third my age, having only a relatively few years under his belt as a deep sky observer. In that short period he HAD achieved distinctive attainments; but he still demonstrates in his interactive discussions and arguments a lamentable tendency to ignore the obvious: that visual observing is a particularly idiosyncratic enterprise, being profoundly affected by the totality of the personality doing it and the unique conditions of the moment. -- 5/09/08
Monday 13 August 2007, updated Thursday 10 January 2008, and Friday 9 May 2008: Copyright (c) 2007-8, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
Martha Stewart, and Amateur Astronomy
Today before lunch I picked up the lastest issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, and -- after pulling out ounces of inserts, cards, and advert brochures -- relaxed (being able now to turn the pages) and read through the articles that interested me; looked at the lovely domestic layouts; read about products and home care techniques; and perused the recipes. I like Martha Stewart Living, and I like Martha Stewart. So does Regina: we subscribe, and leave the magazines in the piano studio, so that parents may leaf through them, too. When we accumulate too many for comfort, we donate them to Regina's hairdresser, who puts them in her lounge for the customers to enjoy.
Martha Stewart is loved, and hated. She is admired by people who aspire to be elegant, or who enjoy elegance. She has espoused a standard of excellence that many find admirable. Others -- perhaps a larger group of persons -- dislike the Martha Stewart ethic. She has been described with the "b word"; ridiculed as an obsessive-compulsive who has bizarre, inhumanly rigid ideas; said to be the ultimate "control freak". To the federal government, she was a dissembler: she did a short prison sentence because of the differences between what she said she did, and concrete evidence to the contrary.
Some felt that she became nobler due to her prosecution and sentence. Some disagreed, finding that she had been "exposed", her 'evil' now naked and visible to all in perfect clarity. What is very clear from any cursory look at social analysis related to Martha Stewart's impact on our times, is that the opinions about her personality, actions, and influence cover the gamut. There are persuasive arguments to be made for almost any point of view. Reasonable people -- and the unreasonable, too -- differ greatly. That's a "normal" situation in a large population of complex humans.
How does Martha relate to amateur astronomy? Well, I have no evidence that she owns a telescope (though as a devotee of nature, botany, and country life, is it unlikely that she might enjoy an occasional glance at the night sky?)
The connection I feel, though, is not direct. It is in what I perceive as parallels between the propagating of the Martha Stewart ethic -- surrounding yourself with a controlled, carefully arranged environment, replete with articles possessed of objective excellence as you strive to attain the standards of bourgeois elegance -- and an attempt to define and structure an orthodoxy in the hobby and practices of amateur astronomy.
Sky & Telescope is the long-standing, traditional purveyor of this orthodoxy. As a commercial publication, it veers between pillar and post: on the one hand, having to attract a readership and attain popularity and financial success, it has to entertain; on the other, being grounded in the scientific principles of genuine professional astronomers, working largely in an academic environment but also in government subsidized "big science", it must be precise, accurate, valid, and scientifically sensible. Often these two sets of goals are in direct conflict. The magazine that comes out every month is a sort of practical working compromise.
In the Internet age, however, the Grand Old Lady of astronomy publications, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been pushed aside at least a little bit by upstart forums and cyberventures.
They too vary in orientation, some being adjuncts to out-and-out retail astronomical products sales organizations (running forums for the discussion of related topics, and reader-contributed product reviews, as a sideline.) Others are less overtly commercial and have become, in essence, similar to the articles in astronomy magazines, sans most of the ads.
One, in particular, is quite well advanced and has now developed a big following. I read it, but it annoys me greatly. It is the Martha Stewart Living web medium of amateur astronomy. Why, if Martha Stewart's own magazine is something I admire, do I find myself skeptical and often put-off by the "Martha Stewart of astronomy websites"?
The reason is that, I think, they don't know it, or at least don't ADMIT it. But they have the same goal: to proclaim an orthodoxy, a set of "standards", and to promote an incessant craving for perfectionism. But, since most of the content is contributed by its audience members, the standard of literary and technical quality is sometimes abysmally low, and is -- at the very least -- inconsistent. I can almost imagine that if the real Martha were sitting in the editorial chair, she would be constantly screaming, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" Then, she'd take up the word processor, and do their articles over, end to end: better in every possible respect ('after all: we have a standard to uphold: and that's a Good Thing.')
The forum sometimes seems to have more reviewers than readers. The reviews run the gamut, from embarrassing ones that would not be acceptable for 'show and tell' days in middle school, to what purport to be (nearly) scientific treatises.
The forum seems to exert no editorial control or oversight, whatsoever. So, there are "reviews" that (to be unfair and give only one example) misspell one of the most familiar devices known to amateur astronomy, a type of eyepiece that was developed by its inventor only a short time after the deaths of the famous composers Beethoven and Schubert (that's a LONG time ago, in the early decades of the 19th century.) I was amazed to discover that one "review" uses this spelling of that famous optician's eyepiece type: Plossel. It does so not once (which of course could surely be merely a typo), but three times.
Georg Simon Plössl would not be happy to see how he has been remembered.
Don't bother to Google this gaffe; it won't show up. The page does not seem to be indexed, or it has been crowded out by all the ads that search engines typically stuff in front of the educational and scientific resources.
I mention this particular mistake because it epitomizes one contradictory aspect of that forum: it has pretenses to be holding up a kind of Martha Stewart quality standard for amateur astronomers, but it does not quite deliver on its promises.
This is mere symbolism; there are surely mistakes of this type in MY articles, and I'm constantly weeding them out and fixing them, almost daily (and am always embarrassed by them.) What worries me even MORE are the mistakes I don't know I've committed. But, as Jaakko Saloranta wrote to me recently, "Isn't this hobby supposed to be FUN?" And, yes: it is. So none of us should take ourselves too seriously.
That forum does take itself seriously, though. It presents a façade of orthodoxy, in the reviews by amateurs who DO take themselves very seriously. They seem all to be trying to write the "serious scientific papers" that they never quite managed to do when in school. So, eyepiece "reviews" have been decked out with cumbersome made-up acronyms; charts that purport to structure the "data" taken during "experimental tests"; and -- of course -- all the authors are very proud of their nifty digital cameras, so we get to see shots of their bedroom or garage, containing their "optical benches".
I have at this very moment, an old focuser and a spare eyepiece -- a sort of junk Plössl that came free with one of my scopes, of which I now have collected (I think) six, all pretty much useless -- sitting on a bench in my garage, along with a few handtools, an ethernet switch, a roll of solder, a floppy disk, and a PC monitor. Do I now have "an optical bench"? I must, for there are optics sitting on it.
The use of buzz-words or phrases like "optical bench" comes straight out of old books that the reviewers once read, books written in the forties or earlier, influenced by the amateur telescope making articles in Scientific American. In those bygone days, boys were encouraged to "roll their own" and learn how to do experimental science. None of us has to do that now, as a Chinese eyepiece for $29 is available at the click of a mouse, luring us with that irresistible siren-call.
But the "tradition" lives on. We have our "optical benches" well stocked. There's a caliper, and a very finely-divided metal rule, both given to me by a retired engineer who used to do very precise metal work. So, I have CALIBRATION DEVICES on my optical bench!
Boy, am I equipped to do reviews now. I have optics, I have a bench -- an optical bench by definition! -- and I have "scientific calibration equipment".
This all sounds silly, but if you read some of these reviews, and note the actual lack of data given, beyond somebody's rudimentary measurement of a field-stop diameter, you can begin to look between the lines. Would Al Nagler have written a review like these, years ago before he started his astronomical business and was designing military optics? Somehow, I don't think so...
"Strehl ratio". That's a very new buzz-term. You find that a lot in the telescope reviews. It's such a complex subject, way over my head, that I cannot really grasp all of the scientific article cited in the link I just gave; and it's been decades since I took pre-calculus. I could not do a Fourier transform now to save my life (though I used to be very much cognizant of Fast Fourier Transform analysis in developing filters for audio equipment.)
There are indeed professional opticians who understand Strehl ratios, as well as some amateurs. A few of the articles on that forum SEEM to me to be bordering on serious discussions of such complexities (but I can only infer that, as an amateur. For all I know, one of my friends in the optics lab at Lick Observatory would split a gut laughing, slapping their knees in amusement, if they deigned to read them. But I can only read them and accept "argument from authority".)
Aside from these few instances, virtually all of the other "reviews" of telescopes are pitiful. I'd much rather read the comments of a "corrupt" paid reviewer for Sky & Telescope ('corrupt' only in the pathological turn of mind of some suspicious newsgroup detractors.)
I tell you one thing: I'll notice if one of those reviews appears with the spelling "Strhel ratio". THAT much I can understand.
Other aspects of the reviews have a commonality that bothers me. Many of the reviewers -- the inside guys who publish the most articles -- are awfully friendly with astro products makers. They get "review products" at shows, and then share their considerable experience and judgment with all us lucky folk.
Some of them are, I am sure, VERY intellectually honest and honorable gentlemen, and they are probably (I repeat, probably) to be trusted. Occasionally you'll read that the reviewer "bought the demo for himself" and this says a lot to convince you of their sincerity. (But, I wonder: did they pay the SAME price that I would pay at my local telescope store?)
Other aspects of their "considered advice and analysis" put me off. Recently I looked at a review of a very well received observing book. ONE example was given of a small alleged "mistake", and much was extrapolated from this of the reliability of the work. The way I look at the example, it might be explained as being an editorial error (the wrong item ended up in the wrong place, a mistaken mix-up of designation numbers being responsible.) Or, somebody might have made a mistake in judgment in looking at, and describing, what he saw through his eyepiece.
Before I would call the book sloppy or lacking in authority, I'd probably feel compelled to provide a considerable list of mistakes, something on the order of this: "It is difficult to consider this a thoroughly reliable and authoritative book, considering the errors of fact I have found in the articles about such well-known objects as NGC-2022, NGC-2359, NGC-6380, IC-10, IC-342, Arp 94, J320, and PK 8+3.1". If there were a book with many mistakes of fact -- or visual description -- for a significant number of objects, you could cast a disdainful eye at it. But, one example does not signify the proportionality of errors in a large scale work of nearly a thousand pages. (What it does do, is tell you that the reviewer noticed one thing. It suggests he's an "expert", and very picky and detail-obsessed, and unforgiving of differences of opinion or interpretation of fact. It does not say much more than that.)
As Inspector Renault said in mock indignation during an unforgettable, wry scene in the movie Casablanca: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on here!" Imagine that: a mistaken impression by an amateur who allegedly (according to the reviewer) mis-described one object. I'm shocked. Forget about the other thousand pages of this weak work. The omniscient reviewer, surely free from human errors of judgment and having faultless, catholic taste, guides us away from this flawed accumulation, as it does not live up to the Martha Stewart Astronomical Standard.
As I noted in an earlier commentary, if you aren't following the developments in the ever-changing landscape of cutting edge 80 mm refractor craftsmanship, then you don't appreciate the Martha Stewart Telescope Types. You are too lowbrow to benefit, probably; stick with your lowly achromats and pseudo "APO-like" bargain basement Chinese junk.
You can't post in the public commentary forums there, if you have the slightest difference of opinion with one of their regular "reviewers". Even an innocuous post that does not toe the Martha Stewart Observing Technique party line will result in a long "negation" by one of the regular in-crowd who have already said their point of view (sometimes in THOUSANDS of prior posts.) This has happened to me, and to some of my friends, and we've gone elsewhere as a result of the thought-control being enforced. (Now, friends: this is not some wacky issue like "We never went to the Moon". These comments that have so riled up the "reviewers" have to do with differing opinions on the operation of GOTO scopes, or the use of filters. Regular ideas, within the range of plausibility and reasonableness. But, they differ with those of the reviewers -- who like to point this out with their 'warnings', saying, in effect: 'Nothing to see here folks; move along.')
The Martha Stewarts of amateur astronomy have got all this stuff FIGURED OUT. They have set it all out for the rest of us. Don't like that? Well, you are probaby just a contrarian, somebody who suffers from oppositional defiant personality disorder. The astronomical misfit with this malady (your present writer, perhaps?) resists the sensible blandishments of Martha Stewart Astronomy. As I understand it, this disorder is treatable, and with rest, medication, and re-education, some patients make great progress, eventually coming around to orthodoxy, and improving their social adjustment and integration.
At the moment, though, I need an "intervention", because I'm still not convinced that I require this particular "cure". So, I look askance, and with great skepticism, on the Martha Stewartesque orthodoxy and "standards of excellence" espoused by the collected experts of this particular forum, and go my own stubborn way.
ADDENDUM: Recently in this "website I love to hate" I found a review that was SO bizarre and badly written that I can't help but give you some excerpts. It manages in one article to combine the two most irritating traits of the website: illiteracy, coupled with obsessive-compulsiveness. Here are some samples; the only changes I've made are the additions of some ellipses (...) to indicate edits; all the appalling errors of usage and spelling are the original author's:
I have used a very wide range of telescopes, from small 60mm refractors up to a 25 inch cassergrains.
My plan was to order the optics about 16 to 18 inches and build a Dob. But due to a career change...and no wokshop for this time...I decided to cheat and buy a pre built Dob for now...
Each box was filled with the expanding foam which stuck like glue to the boxes, the tube boxes where destroyed while getting the contents out, but well packed...
Having often used truss Dobs in this size and allot bigger but never a solid tube in this size, nothing prepared me for the size of this thing.
This telescope is nothing fancy it is just a basic nicely built and finished Dob.
Time to install the main mirror, The mirror came in a cardboard box filled with expanding foam, I did not like the look off this.
I am very fussy when it comes to collimation, a well collimation scope is very important to me...the primary needs to re collimated several times through the night, usually 2 – 4 times in a 8 to 10 hour observing session. [!! Wow - talk about obsessive-compulsive! I've never heard of doing such a thing. - srw]
Let me start by saying this is a damaged mirror, I did not expect textbook star images, but this is what was seen...
Three holes for the mirror cell bolts where drilled in the tube one inch forward of the current ones... Once the mirror was moved forward the optics appeared to be excellent, there is a little, got to look for it, coma on the very edge when using a high power, eyepieces, apart from that the main mirror has delivered near text book images, what more can one want. Eyepieces that are proving popular in this telescope are a 5mm XM Pentax, 7.5mm Tak LE, 9 & 12mm Nagler, 25 and 40mm UO MK-70 Kongs. [sic -- I suspect he means "Königs"]
The next day, the website posted a well-written comparative review of two 9 mm eyepieces; but the writer admits that the telescope used -- an 80 mm refractor with only 560 mm focal length -- was his very first; and -- oddly for a scope that could deliver only 62x magnification with either of these oculars -- he chose to critique their views of Jupiter (which would require much more magnification to show details with clarity.) AND...he observes in Louisiana, where (the author admits) the air is usually murky and unsteady. Finally, he illustrates his utter lack of practical experience, understanding of optics, and comprehension of seeing variations by coming up with an absurd explanation for the superiority of one eyepiece over the other: that it might be "more sensitive to humidity in the seeing conditions". Really, gentlemen: is this a USEFUL review? You have the user of ONLY ONE telescope, ever, commenting on very low power views of planetary images seen in bad air. Hmmph!
I noticed also that many articles are filled with strange characters in odd, inappropriate places: lots of question marks or repetitions of ä, É, Ò or other high ASCII characters. Thinking the HTML pages were written for a peculiar character encoding, I tried altering the encoding with both Firefox and IE; yet the pages always read the same. Finally I looked at the HTML source code: yes, these characters were simple ASCII values IN the text parts, signifying that they were encoding errors that had occurred, likely when submissions were made in formats such as MS-Word (or in emails that had Unicode anomalies: see this article for a detailed explanation.) Why hadn't the editors noticed, and corrected, these text problems? Sometimes they make the articles seem almost senseless, as in this: "The book is an over-sized paperback and not all that long ? just 169 pages ? printed on sturdy, glossy stock..." One first assumes that the reviewer is asking questions, until the erroneous question marks turn up elsewhere, pointlessly.
I had to laugh when one pretentious reviewer, who identifies himself as a "writer", left this howler in place: "The author of this review has no financial connection with or interest in Sky Published". Sky PUBLISHED. Not Sky Publishing! He also included this absurd sentence in another article: "But I have this habit of finished why I begin, especially a book, and flipping ahead I saw things that intrigued me." Forgive me, but when I read mish-mosh like that, I can't take the the rest of the material seriously...
One particular issue that bothers me about MOST of the articles published on this website is the improper use of the contraction for "it is" (it's) used in place of the possessive (its). This mistake seems to be made by almost every writer; either that, or there IS an editorial process going on, and it's always wrong. -- 9/19-23-24/07
Just found in a new review on the site (this is an EXACT quote, original spacing preserved):
I wanted a first class retractor( that scopes I favored)...
I wonder WHY, for heaven's sake, the website's administrators can't take the time to clean up junk like that? - 2/27/08, updated on 5/04/08
Wednesday 15 August 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
Stupid Little Jobs
The other day I was surprised to receive a message, via my wife's email, that a certain dealer of products was offering me a job in their retail outlet. I won't say which company it was, except to admit that it was within about 100 miles of my home, and that among other products they sold some optical gadgets, and wanted my expertise. They gave me "first right of refusal" of the job, before listing it publicly, due -- presumably -- to my website articles, reviews, and commentaries.
I thought about it for a day or two and considered it -- and then came to my senses.
My wife was initially enthusiastic. "It will get you out of the house; and you can get employee discounts!" But a careful examination of the details showed the impracticality of it. First: my freedom of speech would be GONE, with respect to my astronomical activities. I could no longer post reviews and commentaries, and presumably not even reports of observing activities: because they were in some cases "news". For the company was also involved in communications and did not allow its employees the right to post on the Net.
Second: the wage was abysmally low. By the time I subtracted taxes and the gasoline and wear-and-tear travel expenses, I would just about break even. My time is better spent here in our piano studio home business, doing the necessary managerial work that assists my wife's teaching activities.
Third: the rules to be obeyed by employees were now, in this modern era of globalization, complicated by the international corporatese and governmental bureaucracies that hover over almost any thought or act of an "employee".
This is hard to take -- at least by me, a self-employed entrepreneur for the vast majority of my professional life, dating back perilously close to 50 years. During most of that time I have been paid "for the job" or as an outside consultant, primarily in the field of broadcasting, advertising, or marketing.
It's hard to adjust to the position of being "the bottom underling" at any company, after one has been (as in my case) responsible solely for the engineering decisions and practices of businesses worth cumulatively about a hundred million dollars, and even acting as responsible party to interface with security agencies and local and national government in maintaining facilities used for some small aspects of national defense. As such, taking the pompous instructions of a glorified clerk who gets paid a dollar an hour more than you are, is not a delightful prospect.
But, this complaint of mine is not merely an ill-tempered grouse expressing an old codger's affronted ego. It's based on real experience. When I was transitioning out of my career in broadcast engineering -- tired of decades of on-call emergency work -- into sales and marketing, fifteen years ago, I took some jobs in retail sales of high end audio equipment, optics, and science products: things that I had a hobbyist interest in, and which I thought it might be fun to indulge myself with some part-time work. But I found that many small businesses in these and related fields were appallingly managed: as one owner put it to me in a confidential admission, "Steve, I've discovered in twenty years of running this business that it can work even when it is THREE-QUARTERS BROKEN. More than that, I do have a problem..."
3/4ths "broken" means that although the owner doesn't seem to perceive a "problem", the employees (and customers) assuredly DO. In some of my attempts to manage or work as a salesman or consultant for a few companies selling optical and hobbyist products, I discovered the ugly truths about these shaky enterprises, hidden behind their advertising and marketing facades.
First: management is bad (sometimes often utterly incompetent.) The "mom and pop" businesses generally suffered from instability due to the blinkered perceptions of the bosses, who saw only "what they wanted to see" in a narrow area. The focus would be ridiculously tiny -- for a short while. Then they'd lose interest, and go searching about for another issue to delve into, leaving a wake of trouble that they'd stirred up earlier while trying to "solve" alleged problems that had been exposed. Defensive employees learn to steer clear of such managers, ignoring them as much as possible and using passive-aggressive responses. Otherwise, their lives are miserable, and they can never keep up with the short-term demands of their bosses, who don't provide the resources and long-term support to REALLY SOLVE such problems.
Second: the employees (at least some of them) are often incredibly bad. Ones who don't move up the ladder of responsibility but who stay on for years have learned to do very little; what they actually accomplish is marginal at best, and often shamefully inadequate (frequently they're also paranoid of 'competition' for their near-minimum-wage jobs.) At one company I was asked to manage, laconic employees responsible for telephone orders didn't even bother to write down accurately the phone numbers and addresses of clients. When I was hired I was shown a hornet's nest of problems to be solved: for instance, orders to Europe that couldn't be completed, because area codes and phone numbers were wrong, and addresses were incomplete. How could we CONTACT the clients, if their documentation was incorrect or incomplete? And when I tried to call the company's vendors, I discovered that their phone numbers and department heads weren't collected in a Rolodex, file folder, or computer file: they were scribbled helter-skelter on the margins of scraps of paper scotch-taped to table tops, or written in marker on walls and woodwork in a back room. I was required to remove piles of junk to try to track down obscure ones. No one seemed to be the slightest bit interested in organizing these important data.
A friend of mine was delighted that I was offered this position, telling me his own horror story. He had taken a product purchased from this company back to the factory to be reconditioned. After six months, hearing no word from them, he finally called. "We have no record of your order, and can't find your product" was the response. I found out why: they had no 'system' for taking back products for servicing, and no 'recall' procedure. His unit was shoved into a corner, and eventually the scrap of paper that bore his contact information was discarded; no doubt his product was either eventually relegated to the spare parts bin, or tossed into the trash.
When I tried to make organizational changes to prevent these problems, the owner blew up at me, and gave me "a severe talking to" to remind me I was just a "rookie". (A "rookie" with a background in management and operations of multi-milliondollar corporations. and a college minor in relevant marketing and administrative fields.) Later, when I made a suggestion that we spruce up the dirty, dishevelled 'showroom', putting up prices and straightening crooked pictures, he looked me straight in the eye and replied, "Steve: the Japanese have a saying that 'a garden must never be too neat; you must always shake a few leaves from the trees.'" Then he walked away, indifferent to the mess that had collected all around him, which not only shocked customers but also demoralized the employees.
At the end of my first week of work I decided to quit. A certain employee -- who obviously resented being passed over for management -- was starting to make my work extremely difficult and uncomfortable. Overnight, the entire company database was unaccountably "corrupted". The alleged "network administrator" who ran the computers was not, I found, familiar enough with a PC to do a DOS directory command in order to see what files were on the hard drive.
I saw the handwriting on the wall, and decided that I did not want to go down with this leaky 'ship', and immediately resigned in dismay. A few years later, after a long, inexorable decline, the business closed.
Another company offered me a management and sales job in a business that sold lab chemicals, science products, optics, and toys. Two days after I'd been hired, the owner took me into his office for a "private conference". He told my shocked and disbelieving ears that the organization was actually a STING OPERATION for law enforcement. Some years before they had been prosecuted for selling precursor agents in large quantities to drug dealers. In a plea bargain, they agreed to continue doing this: under the supervision of the police. So, large 55 gallon drums of reagents were being peddled to questionable persons, who were constantly under the surveillance of local authorities, parked discretely outside, watching with binoculars. I stayed for a few days more, but when one of my fellow employees frightened me by taking me aside -- only a few feet away from a very nefarious looking and dishevelled 'customer' -- stage-whispering to me that I should 'watch out for that creep', in a voice that could certainly be heard all the way through the entire facility, I decided it was prudent to give up selling little refractor telescopes and children's science kits under such dangerous circumstances, and immediately LEFT THE BUILDING, never to return. (Yes: it was soon shut down entirely, and now -- many years later -- I feel that I can reveal the story, though I won't be more explicit than this.)
I also found that owners or managers were sometimes "secret drinkers" who kept liquor on the premises, and would retire to their offices to imbibe. The decisions that they made under the influence were not rational ones, and their altered state was always evident to the stone cold sober employees. (I wonder also about other chemical influences -- especially since I had been involved with many big time rock broadcasting stations in large markets, and heard my share of drug horror stories about managers, employees, and even owners.)
One company had a decidedly-misfit employee who after years of service became the store manager; but he had a severe substance abuse problem (and hated his supervisor.) He started calling me up at home, in his cups, ranting and railing about the "humiliation" he was suffering. Finally, after a series of harrassing calls to my wife late at night (while I was away from home, doing maintenance on radio transmitters) I complained in writing to the ownership of the company, and demanded action to cease this disruption. Not only did they do nothing, but also the company refused even to acknowledge receipt of my written letter of complaint. I resigned from my contract services, feeling only disgust at the apathy of owners who would allow such illegal and unethical behavior by their employees.
For nearly twenty years, I've been working from my own home, running my wife's piano instruction business quite happily and peacefully. The decisions we make are not hard to arrive at, being the collaborative efforts of two experienced people with identical goals and complementary backgrounds. But in the workplaces of today, ALL decisions are now being made 'elsewhere' -- in corporate offices thousands of miles away, maybe not even IN THIS COUNTRY.
When I worked in broadcasting as well as retail sales and marketing, I could talk to the owners immediately, and go to the top of the chain to put my case before the decision makers themselves. Now, it's impossible.
And, the products being sold today to telescope hobbyists ARE ALL MADE IN CHINA. They are just "re-brands" with a given company name printed on the product and container. The same eyepieces, filters, telescopes, mounts, and accessories are sold all over the world by diverse, unrelated companies, with unique names and logos: but are really THE SAME IDENTICAL PRODUCTS. You never get to the "decision maker" in order to affect a needed change or improvement. So, even though you know about the flaws and shortcomings -- easily addressed by slight alterations in fabrication or assembly -- you can't point them out to customers, or you'll be undermining the company (and will get an immediate reprimand from your superiors, or possibly be dismissed for insubordination.)
Some of the American companies that still continue to manufacture hobby optics are so sloppy and disorganized that dealers were constantly let down by mis-filled or lost orders, and products that were broken right out of the box. Years ago when I worked for one dealer, I was sent to the supplier's factory to see what was amiss. During my tour of the huge, allegedly 'state of the art' facility, I could not help noticing gigantic palettes of complicated scopes, thrown on top of each other, marked with signs that said "Re-Work Before Shipping"; assembly tables were strewn with parts and tools, empty and unattended because the shoe-string work force had been moved to other, more pressing projects; and that the spare parts "department" was a disorganized junk-pile with nothing in proper or sensible order. Little wonder that their heavily-advertised products were often derided as "vaporware" by customers who were tired of waiting years for their latest whiz-bang machines to appear IN REALITY on dealers' shelves.
Stupid little jobs. Stupid management, stupid bosses. If it weren't for the fact that many of the customers are equally stupid about the shoddy and mediocre qualities of the products they were buying, these companies would fade into history (as most of the small businesses I've tried to work for, over the years, have done.) -- 10/30 - 11/2/07
Tuesday 30 October 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
QT is EVIL!
I've been a Windows™ guy since version 3.0 was released; really, earlier than that because at least one of my earliest desktop publishing programs used Windows 2.0's runtime module, if memory serves. I've never owned an Apple computer, though I've occasionally used them. Since I am a tinkerer by inclination, I like to "look under the hood", and took up computer programming in the days of DOS and early 16-bit Windows (and thus looked askance at an OS that wouldn't let me do much snooping.) I know my way around the Win registry and can perform maintenance and repair tasks that cause some friends and acquaintances to gape in disbelief ("How'd you DO that?! I couldn't get it repaired by the shop that sold it to me!")
But, I have to confess that the early Macintosh machines impressed me greatly, due to the wonders of the first color multimedia astronomy programs that came out in the early 1990s. Windows wasn't able to offer such sophistication and beauty. But, primarily I'm a minimalist at heart: all I need is INFORMATION. I can do without glitz. DOS and Windows gave me all the data I could digest. My wife does fairly rudimentary desktop publishing and music writing on her Windows systems, crude by 2007 Apple standards but good enough for our business and leisure needs.
My astronomy programs need only supply me with databases and readable sky charts. I don't find a photorealistic sky display necessary, nor even desirable (especially on the decrepit old machines I manage to keep alive.) The thought of buying a 30 inch plasma monitor makes me shiver...
As such, I have been perfectly happy NEVER to install QuickTime™ on almost any of our PCs. The only time it appeared was when a program INSISTED on installing it -- then, usually, I found out later that it was never really needed at all, or perhaps used for one or two video files that I never bothered to look at. For audio purposes, I use "Media Player Classic", a free open-source player developed in Europe; it will also render most video formats, so I generally haven't even bothered to upgrade the version of Win Media Player that came with the flavor of the MS OS on my various desktops.
So, I was happily used to quick and foolproof rendering of the GOES satellite movie file that could tell me what the wind and cloud patterns were on the day of a planned observing session. I'd merely click on the webpage icon for the movie, and MPC would open and show it instantly; furthermore, I could slow down or roll backward the video to see exactly what the wind was doing with perfect clarity.
But, one fateful day all that functionality was GONE. Instantly. For I made the terrible mistake of trying to install "Starry Night" on my most-used desktop machine, not realizing in advance that the video card in this particular computer was incompatible. SN installed QT version 7, along with gobs of other files adding up to hundreds of megabytes; but the program stubbornly refused to open or run, telling me to "replace the video driver". Problem was: it was the LAST and ONLY available video driver for this particular computer's onboard video system. I had no choice but to uninstall SN. However, QT lived on, staying on my computer.
I did not mind the fact that a few useless megs of disk space were being taken by this pointless, dead appendage: but what I did mind was that QT had "sucked up" the file format registration, and prevented MPC or WMP from running the GOES satellite file. Now, I had to wait while the big Apple QT logo sat onscreen, mocking me; then the video FINALLY opened, but the functions to slow down, speed up, or reverse the playback were GONE. I could no longer use the video in the mode I'd become accustomed to. And for some reason, now I could not open the link directly in MPC: it simply stalled.
I installed the Firefox browser "Media Player Connectivity" extension, ran its wizard in "advanced" mode, and tried EVERY conceivable setting. No good. QT still stole the show.
I tried removing the file registration from QT in its "Preferences" setting box. No go.
I tried EDITING THE WINDOWS REGISTRY. QT seemed to 'know' this, and dutifully and stubbornly REINSTALLED the file format registration in the system, after I had made the manual changes and deletions. I double checked by doing this several times. It always reappeared and re-activated QT.
I attempted to uninstall it, and then install an ancient version of QT (version 4, I believe, whose installer I found on a very old machine on our network; I remembered that this edition was much more 'agreeable', less invasive, and willing to co-exist with other media software.) But the only thing that happened was that now almost ALL my use of media were invalidated, with ANY of my players: I kept getting a "codec error" message. Apparently, once you've put QT 7 in place, you "can't go back" -- my assumption is because it contains some DRM that Apple insists you must now have, forever. To play the video at all, now, I had to look on the web and find an old stand-alone version 7 of QT, and reinstall it again.
I got my codecs back; but I tried a little stealth to disable QT by attemptling to delete the QT player file: "DENIED". I attempted to rename the QT player file. Couldn't; it was write-protected. I UNDID the write-protection; renamed QuickTimePlayer.exe to AnnoyingPlayer.exe: but the registry ADAPTED to the new silly name I'd given it -- and QT ran again, in place of MPC.
If memory serves, I removed the read-only attribute and then deleted the file; but QT's player REAPPEARED! I gave up, and went on to deal with other issues.
By now, I'd worked on this annoyance a few times, over the space of several months. It rankled me every time I planned for an observing session and used the satellite image on the GOES page. Today I vowed my REVENGE.
I opened the Control Panel and removed QT by doing a Windows uninstallation process. Along the way, I was given a stern warning by Windows that "Removal of this program will cause OTHER PROGRAMS NOT TO WORK; continue Yes, No?" I continued, Yes. After that was done, I found that -- indeed -- the QT folder and files were STILL ON THE HARD DRIVE. I carefully removed the write-protection; deleted the folder; emptied the recycle bin; rebooted -- AND QT WAS GONE, finally, irrevocably. I went to the GOES page, clicked on the mpg movie file showing the cloud pattern, and -- voila! -- MPC opened and immediately showed me the file, as I'd preferred. I ran it back and forth, fast and slow: absolutely delighted and pleased. As far as this particular PC is concerned, QT IS HISTORY, no matter what happens to file formats in the future. And I'll be careful NOT to buy ANY program that INSISTS on installing it!
I did a little checking on the Net. It seems that now, you can't simply get QT as merely a media player; when you download it, you are forced to endure the bloated installation of iTunes, whether you like it or not. AS LONG AS I LIVE, I will never buy anything from iTunes! I have more than 10,000 classical music CDs in our library; don't have an iPod; couldn't care less.
For years, as a Windows guy, I've had to endure the sneering condescension of the Mac-addicts, and their incessant attacks on Bill Gates and Microsoft as "the evil empire" and the villains of mind-control. Hmmph: now I know the truth. If BG and MS are guilty of that, well: so is SJ!
Perhaps my own derision of Apple products has dated from the late sixties when, at the Sunnyvale computer shop, I met a sort of down-and-out and very slobbish person -- now a 'hero' and legend -- who insistently (but unsuccessfully) pestered me to buy from him one of his home-made HP 35 calculators cobbled together from parts he had, err, somehow managed to acquire. I just could not feel comfortable about taking him, and his later company, seriously after that. I had to chuckle privately to myself about this, twenty years later, while I was supervising and engineering Larry King's Mutual Network radio show during a Monterey, California remote: when this same dishevelled guy, now a 'celebrity', was interviewed by the Great One. He certainly did not remember me, and I wondered if indeed recognition would bring embarrassment and consternation -- but I doubt it, as his raffish activities back then are now part of the 'legend'. I know that Apple has come a long way from its humble (and peculiar) origins, and makes fine products. But: I DO NOT WANT THEM. Nor do I want stealth installations of their software on my computers; but if it happens, I want to be able to take control of the way I use my system, and open and view files in the manner I prefer. Since they apparently now "know better than I do" about what I might want (or THINK they know), then any inclination I have, in the future, to be sympathetic to their products has just taken a big nose-dive. I'll stick win Windows and MS, Steve: no thanks. -- 10/30/07
ADDENDUM, 11/29/07: A correspondent named Eric V. sent me the following reaction to the rant of mine, above. "Just two weekends ago I had to wrestle with this ogre on my brother's computer (Windows XP like mine). Seems I had installed it on his computer for some website that would only work with QT, and it basically took over all the other tasks that other plugins and programs were supposed to be doing. So to view videos in You Tube, he had to switch from Firefox, his preferred browser, and open it in MSIE because QT had taken over Firefox as the default media player and it wouldn't run the videos. It insisted it was the proper program to run the videos, yet it couldn't. It took me close to an hour to get that thing to release its stranglehold over Firefox, but I finally did it."
ADDENDUM, 05/23/08: For the past several years I've been a regular and faithful reader of BBC's "The Sky at Night" magazine, which I purchase here in San Jose (at Barnes & Noble, by the way) for $8.75 per issue: primarily to be able to have the monthly CD-ROM disk, containing one or two of the famous Patrick Moore "Sky at Night" television shows (often the disk contains the recent one concurrent with that month's issue, and an old program from as early as the late 1950s.) The files are generally encoded in MPEG-2, I believe; they play perfectly in "Media Player Classic", even on an old Win 98 computer, on Win ME, XP, etc. That is, they DID play. Now, starting with disk no. 36 (with the May 2008 issue) the BBC production team have changed to MPEG-4 (with the H.246 codec) which is only obtainable with Win XP and above, by installing QuickTime in those operating systems. I purchased the issue today, and sat down this evening to enjoy the program. NOPE! I then spent hours researching the problem, looking for a codec that could be set up with Win ME or 98, or even XP -- without QT! -- and found that it could possibly be achieved with an application called VideoLAN. This requires downloading something called The Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems. After hours of fiddling, I found that I could get the "Sky at Night" program to START...but it immediately stuttered, choked, and then after a few seconds stalled...followed by a complete crash of the program. I sent a harsh email to the "Sky at Night" website, importuning them to return to a COMPATIBLE codec that would work on all modern versions of Windows. I have absolutely no hope that they will have the slightest interest in my comments; but it is just possible that a lot of other folks will complain, too, and that -- eventually -- they will come to their senses. To demand that you must use only the latest OS and hardware to run the show, after putting out 35 disks that worked with a prior codec, is (in my opinion) an unfair imposition on their readers and subscribers. Once again, the culprit is QT, and its closed system. This hardens my attitude toward that program, and to Apple Computers. Any company that ever tries to sell me software for Windows that FORCES me to install QT or its codecs will lose a sale; and I shall complain to websites that ignore any user except those who have compulsively upgraded every scrap of hardware and software on their systems. This is madness: where will it end? At some point, nobody will be able to get media to work on their computers, and we'll all turn away from the PC (as, today, television watchers are abandoning the networks.) Everybody in the computer industry will shrug their shoulders, and wonder why. I'll know why: there is a limit to what you can shove down the throat of the public.
Tuesday 30 October 2007: Copyright (c) 2007, Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved
Averted Imagination: Do You Trust Yourself?
An amateur astronomer friend of mine once hurled a criticism my way that I have found quite fascinating (in a way he didn't intend): he called me "Mr. Hyperbole". (The term is derived from Latin, via a Greek word, and entered the English language probably in the 15th century. It means extravagant exaggeration: the Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives an example, as in “mile-high ice-cream cones”.) The only problem with that cr |