'Faint Fuzzies': near city lights!
View at dusk of a mountain range visible from the author's San Jose city home,
in the bath of photons that defines the Silicon Valley at night.
Don't be intimidated by perfectionists and "venue snobs"! You CAN do effective, informative, and satisfying observational astronomy even in the region of a giant metropolis -- by following some or all of the guidelines in this article. The first part will cover suggestions for finding an effective site and how to maximize your observing opportunities; the second part discusses just a few of the faint objects the author has seen in the last year, observing very close to the heart of the famous Silicon Valley.
Article Sections:
Choosing a Site with Minimal Light Pollution |
"Secret" Private Mountain Site I Use |
Alternative Bay Area Sites
Observing Guidelines |
Wait for Ground Fog |
Planning & Discipline |
Weather Indicators |
Dark Adaptation, Filters
Observe ALL NIGHT |
Repeat Observations |
Relax and Focus |
Creature Comforts |
Getting Organized
Efficient Scopes & Accessories |
Laptop Screen Color |
Suit Scope To Object |
Minimize Perfectionism |
Animal Intruders
Observations Not Far From Lights |
Your Eyes, and Diopters |
Recovering from a PVD |
The First "Fuzzy"?
Preface: where the heck can you observe?
Though I began observing the sky in 1954, during a total solar eclipse, and got my first small refractor telescope during the rush of scientific activity and educational efforts during the International Geophysical Year (1957-8), I was never a deep-sky observer until about 1975; the planets and Luna were fascinating enough in my early years. But I could not pass up the opportunity to get a "real" telescope: a 10" f/6 Newtonian, which to this day was one of the physically largest and most unwieldy beasts I've ever struggled to push around. Earlier views of, say, M-42 or M-1, dim though "cute" in smaller telescopes, paled to insignificance in the striking beam of light that poured from my 2-inch oculars with this pipe-mounted monstrosity.
But, WHERE to observe? I was, by now, a resident of the northern SF peninsula, sorely missing the pitch-dark skies of my childhood in central Iowa, and though I frequently worked as a transmitter installation and maintenance engineer at Mount San Bruno, a high peak south of San Francisco, the winds (and blinding tower beacons and strobe-lights) conspired with the ugly streetlight reflections from three sides below, to remove any pleasurable sense of a true contact with the natural "dark sky". So, I resorted to delving into intense but brief observing experiences with the telescope, during long treks my friend Rich Page and I took into the deserts of Nevada, or the astronomy sites of southern California and Arizona.
Rich's friend Don Machholz, a San Jose resident who was making a name for himself as an incipient visual comet-discoverer, had scoured the regions of the south bay and interior valleys for darkish skies. At last, he settled on a favorable spot in the mountains, less than a dozen miles from his home (as the crow flies) though a 25-mile trip through winding and sometimes scary one-lane roads. Don was kind enough to arrange permission with the property owner for Rich, and me, to join him. And so I started dragging the 10-inch to a dusty and often very windy spot, at 3400 feet altitude, with climatic conditions comparable to Lick Observatory's site at Mt. Hamilton though about 700 feet lower (and somewhat shielded by the top of the mountain range from direct view of the nasty glow of the millions of utterly superfluous lights that burn all night, wasting billions of dollars annually while they proclaim our "prosperity" as a nation.)
The composite image at right, sourced from NOAA/DMSP originals, is my cropped rescaling of the Pacific west coast region of the view of the entire continental USA at night, derived from a mosaic composited from photographs of 1994-5 (originals may be found here.) The red arrow marks the approximate area where I observe most frequently, north of Monterey bay and south of San Jose, the termination of the Silicon valley.
A deep-sky observer might be forgiven for looking at the hideous glow of the sky in this nexus of commerce, and wishing that he were really -- aside from certain, err, inconveniences -- under the pristine dark skies of North Korea (NOT!), as shown in the insert in the upper right of the image.
As far as light pollution is concerned, probably the only more depressing place on the west coast for a deep sky observer would be the LA basin extending way into the central deserts to the east -- yet, they do it! And two of the largest makers of amateur telescopes in the country are centered right there.
The deep-sky mavens of the San Jose region venerate their few "blessed dark sky sites" and talk of them with the same near-fanaticism as high end audio wing-nuts, obsessed with the residual molecules of copper in their amplifier-interconnects. Thus, if you aren't in the Illuminati inner circle of Fremont Peak users, you aren't seeing anything!
Fremont Peak is a windy mountaintop near Monterey, right on the coast. The blacktop road leading to the campgrounds and ranger station is so treacherous in the winter that accidents often occur due to black ice: once, I headed into a nasty swerve but managed to wriggle my way out of it and back into control (but another amateur astronomer of my acquaintance had a tragic accident.) Despite the winds, the light from Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Salinas, and the wicked road, Fremont Peak draws telescope owners like the pull of a magnet. Folks from way north of SF, and east to Livermore, trek to its precarious point.
I used to go, as did my associate Ron Wood, who has taken many fine pictures with the FPOA's 30-inch telescope (as illustrated by these images of M-20 and M-17, done in the 1980s.) I sometimes joined Ron and his son Ryan, visually observing with my 10" or my Astroscan richest-field telescope, while the two Woods fellows patiently guided their astrophotos. But, my attempts to go to Fremont Peak by myself have been fraught with difficulties. Once, although I had cleared my visit with the astronomy-friendly ranger, I was chased away by an indignant owner of a large aperture Dob, claiming that he had reserved the site and anybody else nearby would bother him; I left, denied an opportunity to view a Mars opposition in great weather conditions, to find out later from the ranger that this fellow's claim was not only untrue, but also he was not a member of the organization and thus had no special authority over the site. On another recent visit, during the day, my wife and I drove up with our travel trailer to investigate camping and observing opportunities -- and found that the rules have changed. Now, to observe, you have to email two days in advance! Permission otherwise is not granted, and new gates obstruct vehicles from entering anywhere near the area of the observing platforms. And you have to pay $35 a year for the privilege of being allowed to try to comply with all this annoying rigmarole (with the constantly- changing microclimates of the area, it is next to impossible to plan an observing trip, for conditions may be entirely different even a few hours before dark. Never mind "two days notice"! It is so absurd that I would not dream of trying the area now. Sad.)
During the years that I was the program director and engineer of the Monterey Bay area classical music station KBOQ, I discovered an alternative area called "Hidden Hills". It was further inland, and lower in altitude than Fremont; but convenient. The owner of the transmitter site also owned a sprawling nearby housing development, and was very enthusiastic about astronomical observing. He allowed me to bring my telescopes, and set up I did, with enthusiasm: every decent night that I visited the site in order to take transmitter readings and inspect the equipment, which I always scheduled near new Moon. I have a vivid and exquisite memory of observing all the brilliant open clusters around Auriga one crystal-clear winter night in 1986, the faint music of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony adding atmosphere to the experience. The sky could be almost as dark as Fremont from this location, aided by the usual ground fog that blankets the Monterey bay most evenings, during much of the year.
I also tried observing at Mount Hamilton, especially during the years when my wife Regina Roper was a Lick volunteer, running the "Music of the Spheres" concert series that she and Lick employee Shiloh Unruh had co-founded. A friend of ours, park ranger Sue Hall, had discovered a nifty little niche on the side of the road, over the top toward the east. I tried that spot with Rich Page, or Sue, but almost always suffered from mild nausea by the time I got there (after the 350 hairpin turns going up the awful winding road from San Jose.) In recent years, access to Mt. Hamilton has all been cut off except to residents and observatory employees. Even during the rare public events, observing has to be done on the west side of the hill, looking right down into the L.A.-like sea of icky-looking yellow streetlights.
Yet, the "Don Machholz site" was always an available, though difficult, alternative. Much of the mountaintop was devastated by a dangerous forest fire in the late 1980s, and I avoided the place until the ugly blackened gashes of dead brush were replaced by fresh new growth the next season. The road deteriorated until it was in places nearly impassible; and there was trouble with interlopers: only those of us with passes, and the lock combination, could now get through the "impregnable" gate. After a few criminals wrecked the gate and mangled its locks, I think the property association gave up trying to keep out the "undesirables". The county sheriff's deputies took up the slack, and anybody found in the area without a permit, or not authorized as a property owner or worker in a facility on the site, was arrested (which has nearly happened to me three times, as recently as early 2006: I think the deputy was actually a bit disappointed that I had permission: it spoiled his fun! But, I was fingerprinted...)
Meteor showers were always a mixed blessing: fun for us "authorized" astronomers, but a time of inconvenience and trouble when the masses, prompted by the propagandizing of enthusiastic TV weathercasters, rushed out to every possible rural area to "see the shooting stars." Once, a complete idiot parked his car right in the center of the road, at the locked gate, and then disappeared somewhere down the hilly landscape to find a good observing spot. When some of the landowners (and two of the authorized astronomers) drove up, we found an angry crowd assembled around this pitiful bashed-up compact car, like a scene of enraged peasants in "Young Frankenstein". Four or five of the strongest of us PICKED IT UP and carried it off to the side of the road, where it should have been parked in the first place!
This may have been the last straw as far as the property managers were concerned. I remember that afterwards, access was greatly inhibited. That and various other inconveniences finally "got to me", and some time in 1999 or 2000, I stopped going to the site -- and soon afterward decided to take a sabbatical from my regular observing, to concentrate on our home business (running the Roper Piano Studio and all of its demands.) I even made arrangements to dispose of my telescopes, mostly home made and well-used, viewing to their limits any objects that I could possibly scrutinize at the various sites I tried all up and down the west coast.
When I felt that by 2005 I had now "fully retired" and that our business was running like a well-oiled machine, requiring much less of my daily efforts than before, I considered observing again, hoping to achieve the same intensity as my peak of activity during the late 80's/early 90's. I had not been to the "private" site in the mountains for more than five years; Don Machholz had long ago moved to the darker skies of Colfax; and I had lost contact with the other people who had been permitted occasionally to use "the spot".
This is a somewhat altered view of the area, changed in numerous ways so that it is not immediately recognizable, since I am not permitted by the owner to promote it publicly. But, it gives you a feeling for the rural flavor and atmosphere that I enjoy every new Moon cycle.
Was it worth bothering with now? I drove up, and did some reconnoitering. Tragically, the San Jose Astronomical Association had owned property, on another hilltop in this mountain chain, a few miles away -- but had let it go, not wanting to pay the property tax (as I was told). Now, even desolate land like this was valuable! Developments had sprouted up or encroached everywhere, it seemed. There were more lights: from San Jose and environs, and especially from Morgan Hill, and Gilroy's new discount shopping malls. Maybe it wasn't WORTH it to endure the struggle.
I tried the spot, for a test run, and was let down by the sky glow in a season where there was minimal ground fog. But it seemed worth pursuing, and a winter test of the Horsehead nebula -- recounted at the end of this article -- yielded a fantastic view with my C-11, one of the best I've experienced, ever! So, I resolved to renew my use authorization and went through a lengthy, bureaucratic process over several months that has yielded a limited- time- period permit (no doubt to protect the property holder in case an amateur astronomer turns out to be a "trouble-maker". But, we aren't EVER trouble-makers: real dedicated amateur astronomers are some of the best environmentalists, the most cautious and respectful users of natural resources, and the most responsible citizens you could ever come across.)
I can read your mind. You're shouting, now, "Tell us: WHERE IS THE SITE?" But...I can't, and won't. First, it is on private property: to get to it, you have to pass through a locking gate that admits only authorized persons; second: if you do not carry a written permit, you risk ARREST. Sheriff's deputies, and even helicopters, surveil the area. Locals drive by, stop, and check you out. Various maintenance crews who work at facilities nearby make sure you aren't blocking their vehicular access. Homeowners worry that your vehicle will add to the road wear-and-tear. And you have to go through an extremely thorough "vetting" process to be allowed on to the site, which -- as usual in life -- is accomplished rather more easily than not by means of "grandfathering". Since I had authorization to use it dating back more than twenty years, this was assuring to the new owners, who otherwise would be skeptical. And I had to plead and cajole and whine, in a flurry of emails and phone calls for weeks, to establish the "rules" that would make the site even reasonably practical and useful. As it is, I comply with regulations that just about define the brand of chewing gum I might want to chomp as I observe!
So, thanks for wondering: but, no, I can't tell you anything specific about it. I cannot just put the information on the Net, for anybody and everybody to start rushing there, like lemmings. Some amateur astronomers are very hurt by this attitude, and think that people who go to a great deal of trouble to make arrangements for observing, OWE IT TO EVERYBODY ELSE to "share". Well, this is possible only if "the rules allow sharing"; and my rules DON'T.
Not that I mind, really. It is very hard to star-hop to a new object that you've never seen before, an obscure, faint, perhaps small-diameter fuzzy that might be at the very threshold of perception. Put a bunch of tipsy country yokels around you, all mulling around to try to look into your scope (but accidentally knocking it off the target, or kicking out your cables), and you will lose concentration mighty fast! It's bad enough that I have to endure the absolutely predictable car full of residents who want a "show" -- I always very pleasantly and patiently comply, as they pay the property taxes that support the road maintenance -- but it's intolerable to try to do real difficult, cutting-edge deep sky observing when you are expected to act like an entertaining Jack Horkheimer-type, teaching "cruising" interlopers the very first lesson of Astronomy 101, and answering questions like "what's dat big bright dot over dere?" or "gee, have you seen a LOT of UFO's with this thing?"
The alternatives to this private observing site are many, and varied.
There are clubs around the south bay and peninsula which have observatories (every one, in my opinion, fatally flawed by being at too low an altitude, too close to lights, and with cumbersome rules that discourage spontaneous decisions to view that one night of perfect weather.) There are sites in the Sierras, 250+ miles away, used by the astronomy clubs of Stockton and Sacramento; parks down the central California coast (with expensive fees, unbearably hot summer weather, and foggy poor seeing in the winter); Fremont Peak, of course, as described above: if you want to TRY to 'plan' your observing exactly two days in advance. I understand from observing reports posted on The Astronomy Connection site (such as this one) that Henry Coe State Park in Morgan Hill, CA., offers nights that have thrilling deep-sky opportunities; unfortunately, I haven't viewed there since the 1970s: and it was good! Any of these locales will offer opportunities for the dilettante, the non-fanatic, or the "joiner" who gladly accomodates any narrow, fussy set of demands (and who perhaps doesn't mind a little "buttering up" of astronomy club officers.) If you would just like to be able to take a few snapshots with your CCD, or to get out every couple of months with your scope while allowing the rest of your family to enjoy a scenic trip, then go for it! Try them all: some, or many, of them will give you rewarding experiences.The problem for me, however, is that there is little to offer the "quiet, solitary astronomer" a regular chance, night after night, that has affordable convenience. We are blessed with the fantastic "laminar airflow" of Pacific coastal weather, which gave Mt. Hamilton its worldwide distinction a century ago (when most other famous observatories were located in cities or even swamps -- like the Naval Observatory in Washington.) Yet amateur astronomers are these days looked on by the public as "weirdos" who do strange things at night. (The sheriff's deputy who recently came close to arresting me was really quite amazed when I showed him a magnified Jupiter: he had never looked through a telescope before, and I think that the image of a swimmy planetary globe in the eyepiece finally convinced him that I wasn't some kind of a perverted voyeur, or a potential terrorist.)
Rules and Suggestions for Effective Observing Sites and Techniques
Summarizing, the benefits of my particular, hard-won, observing site (and some of the special requirements for success there) are these:
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• LIGHT POLLUTION WON'T GO AWAY: and it won't get better. It will always, in fact, just get worse. Despite efforts of such large but relatively powerless organizations as the International Dark-Sky Association or even individual sellers of outdoor lighting -- like Starry Night Lights -- you might expect the problem to go in only one direction. We will never return to the 'dark skies of our youth'; that is, until the fossil fuels run out and conservation measures are put in place to curb the use of wasteful night lighting, presuming that we haven't switched to alternative energy processes. Don't hold your breath. Furthermore, it is utterly pointless to whine about light pollution. DO SOMETHING THAT IMMEDIATELY HELPS YOUR PERSONAL SITUATION! Travel farther; buy filters; adjust your viewing preferences, choosing (say) small diameter high surface brightness planetary nebulae, instead of wide diffuse nebulae and faint large diameter galaxies. If you're a photographer or imager, try using h-alpha filters. Don't just do one of two extreme things: grouch about it in a futile manner, or lose all interest in observing or imaging "because the light pollution is too bad."
• USE HIGH ALTITUDE: try to get above the dense, polluted air near the ground; the higher you are, the better. Even if there is some remaining light pollution, the sky will be darker and more transparent overhead -- "at the zenith" -- if you are a few thousand feet above the surrounding plateau.
• GO SOMEWHERE NEAR THE OCEAN: Such a locale can under good conditions feature "Laminar" airflow (described as occuring when the entire body of air within a confined area moves with uniform velocity along parallel lines: "unidirectional airflow".) Mt. Hamilton, 4300 feet above San Jose, is particularly blessed with this phenomenon, which aided E. E. Barnard's studies of Mars with the Lick 36" telescope in the 1890s. Using about 1300x, he saw no evidence of the "canals" being promoted by other observers using small telescopes, but instead had a steady, clear view of craters, ridges, and normal large-scale geological formations (I have held Barnard's original pencil drawings in my own hands, in the Mary Lea Shane Archives collection of Lick Observatory!) The steady air at Mt. Hamilton enabled James Keeler to split double stars of only 0.25 arcseconds' separation, half of the narrowest separation confirmed by most other visual observers of the time. I too have had the uncanny Lick experience, once viewing Saturn with the great 36" refractor after a concert given by my wife Regina: we both caught our breath, the planet appearing as crisp and sharp as a Hubble image, though more palpably REAL and colorful! This unified, laminar airflow tends to occur a few miles from a calm ocean vista, on the side or peak of mountains facing the sea. Even lower ocean-facing elevations, like Selsey in the UK (home of famed astronomical writer Patrick Moore) has the remarkable steady laminar seeing under best conditions: see the webpage of skilled imager Pete Lawrence.) I've tried observing very close to the ocean, either on the beach or within a couple of miles: but always had bad results, with poor seeing and the build-up of fog. So, go to high elevations within a few miles of the ocean, if possible.
Of course, this "rule" of being near -- but not TOO close -- to the ocean is irrelevant for people who simply don't live near a coastal region. I've achieved great, possibly even better, results in the high deserts of the southeast, hundreds or thousands of miles from the ocean. So, learn to adapt to the best conditions of topography and climate that your locale provides.
• WAIT FOR FOG AT LOWER ELEVATIONS: This is the secret of success! The best results, at any high altitude site, will tend to combine steady seeing with darkest sky backgrounds and reduced light pollution if there is fog below you. The fog will build up if the local wind conditions have died down during certain seasons of the year: from late spring to the fall in my part of the country. The sky might not have a naked-eye stellar magnitude limit much lower than 4.5 to 5 in the dead of winter, but in August or September could get as dark as the high desert of rural Nevada! The Milky Way then takes on a three-dimensional "realistic" shape, with granularity visible (the accumulated effect of thousands of bright stars whose pin-point dimensions are too small to be individually resolved.) Such nights occur, time and again, if you have the patience to wait for them -- and then, the energy to get off your duff, load the scope, and GO! (In the photo above, taken in front of my house, Pacific ocean fog is seen pouring over the top of the mountain range: the condition I love... if, however, the fog is at least five hundred to a thousand feet lower!)
• DON'T PLAN TOO RIGIDLY: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LOCALIZED CONDITIONS: Where I observe, there are three or four light domes, from various large or small communities below me. Sometimes one or more of these will almost "wink out" as the night progresses, and weather conditions vary; then the sky gets surprisingly dark in that direction, offering one a brief respite from light pollution and the chance to bag some faint objects that normally are 'washed out'. If you have made up a very fixed, rigid plan, you might not feel like deviating from it to take advantage of such occurrences.
• ACHIEVE DISCIPLINE!: If you don't go, you won't accomplish anything. Of course people with a demanding early morning schedule, family obligations, and other responsibilities may have to keep astronomical observing as a very occasional "fun" weekend sideline. But, if you can possibly fit it into your schedule, DO IT! I managed to observe several thousand hours since about 1975 or 6, during a period of years in which I was a busy on-call broadcast engineer: I've even been paged away to fix a broken transmitter, right in the middle of a viewing session. It's hard to go home, get two or three hours of a quick nap, and then resume normal activities; but if you don't manage to permit yourself the accumulated discipline and tenacity to be able to do this, then really, for all practical purposes, you don't want to take up regular astronomical observing -- unless you just stay home and (say) look at the planets or Moon in your driveway.
An encouraging companion or spouse "can't hurt"! My wife Regina, for years a Lick volunteer, likes to observe herself, and enjoys using her own telescope when we go on jaunts. She very seldom goes with me to my regular mountaintop site, but she does understand why the heck I want to do it, and gives emotional support and encouragement.
• WATCH AND LEARN TO INTERPRET THE WEATHER SIGNS: This is particularly hard for beginners to learn. "Clear skies" to the untrained eye may be hopelessly bad for telescopic observing; and sometimes hazy skies, or certain types of clouds, might even help. In the winter months, crisp and clear skies often have terrible seeing, with rough and fuzzy star and planetery images. At the same time, fabulous transparency may occur, allowing faint objects like the "Horsehead" to be visible. Planetary enthusiasts wait for slightly opaque, hazy skies -- especially during fall -- signifying very steady air; the particulates floating around and blocking the pale evanescence of distant galaxies are of no consequence to the clarity of Saturn's or Jupiter's cloud bands. Sometimes, you can observe in a moment's lull in a storm, given a partial clearing of even a smallish region of the sky. (I once caught the Horsehead that way, as recounted at the end of this article.) However, there are some practical constraints: one tends to have the best results when the barometer is rising, at least a couple of days past a storm-front, and when the local wind conditions are calm -- but you'll have no way of really predicting the high altitude winds unless you carefully study the satellite images of the jetstream, or just put a high powered eyepiece into your telescope and TRY to get a sharp focus on a stellar object.
I use many Internet resources to keep aware of the following weather phenomena: coastal fog, high clouds, atmospheric pressure, the jet stream, moisture, and wind conditions. The NASA GOES Page (Geostationary Satellite Server) is something that I consult almost every day, downloading the 'movies' showing trends over a period of hours. I have also created a customized Weather Underground Zoom Satellite view of my Pacific coast region, which works in visible light during the day, and infrared at night. I have also created numerous "Weather Underground" pages of local weather condition reports, customized for the zip codes of specific astronomical observing sites, such as this one for Gilroy, California, useful for finding out about conditions at Coyote Lake (this website also features many online personal weather stations set up by amateurs, including one that I found not more than a mile or so from my own private observing site, which gives me the current wind and temperature conditions: invaluable!) For the long-term forecasts that I find the most informative and reliable, I employ Intellicast. You may find other resources at
Todd Gross's Astronomical Weather Links, such as the customizable Clear Sky Clock.
• EXTREME DARK ADAPTATION IS CRUCIAL!: You can do everything else right, but if you fail to sensitize your eyes to the faintest possible images, wrecking them by looking at local lights, or a laptop computer screen, or even the hand controller glow of your telescope, you might diminish the quality of your observing session and miss some glorious views! Keep an eye patch over your "observing eye" any time you are not actually peering into your ocular. And, save your Lunar or planetary observations until after you have looked at the faint objects (galaxies, nebulae) that demand the best dark-adaptation. Really, I seldom do both planetary and d-s observing on the same night. The planets often look sharpest when we use the high resolution central cones employed in daytime viewing; you might get best results with some artificial lights on around you. But to appreciate the deep sky, lose the lights and adapt your "scotopic" vision, as explained in this article by Kevin Fly Hill on our website.
• USE NEBULAR FILTERS: No matter what d-s object you pursue, or size of scope you are using -- or even where your site is, and how dark the sky might be -- nebular filters will often help -- and dramatically. Read the article about it on our website, and consult authoritative webpages and amateur astronomy magazines, and you'll get corroboration of this. But remember two things: (a) use a filter that is appropriate to the "color" of light radiated by the object -- everything looks gray in the telescopic view, but this is an artefact of our own human visual perception -- and (b) employ a reasonable eyepiece "exit pupil" and magnification range, so that the filter can work effectively (consult our Eyepiece software program if you wish to calculate this accurately for your own equipment.) Even users of very dark sky sites must remember, too, that nebular filters cut down natural sky glow and can improve visual contrast.
• OBSERVE WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT, THE LATER THE BETTER!: At some of the public sites in the region, observing parties are allowed with some bureaucratic hurdles; but always the users are expected to start tearing down their scopes by about 1 am, with the area deserted and gates locked no later than 2 am. This, I find unacceptable. First, the advertising lights are often on clock-timers and stay on until midnight, but as any observer can tell simply by looking out toward the horizon, many of the lights start winking out past 12. Usually by 2 am, the sky gets very much darker, with a lot less artificial light pollution. Second, at least in my geographical area, the weather conditions change, improving almost always closer to dawn, a temperature equilibrium having been achieved. Earlier the sky can be light polluted; the winds blasting like angry Zephyrs, sweeping up dust clouds; the seeing can twinkle and boil at 12 am; but by 3, it's like another time and place! The wind is GONE. You can see a magnitude or two deeper with your naked eyes; in the scope, the background gets much darker, revealing fainter objects. The seeing steadies down so that between (say) 3 am and the start of astronomical twilight, the stars become crystal clear, steady points. The improvement in transparency and clarity is simply astounding: morning after morning, during all seasons.
It's tragic that so many 'authorities' in charge of rural property enforce an "out by 2" policy. And, to tell the truth, so many of the amateur astronomer colleagues of mine are actually happy to "crap out" by then, that it probably doesn't matter, for most of them. Time and again I would set up observing sessions with some acquaintances, and have them practically unconscious and bored by 1 am, whining about how tired and apathetic they've become and urging me to quit, ruining the event for me (I was just "getting into it".) Year after year, my BEST observing has been very late in the session, perhaps in the hour before astronomical twilight. This was when I first saw the elusive central star in M-57; when I first got a glimpse of the Horsehead nebula. Near-dawn is practically the only time that the orb of the planet Venus is anything other than a boiling mess. If you have to stimulate yourself with a little caffeine: it's worth it! STAY AWAKE and keep at it: you'll be amazed at the improvement in conditions that will occur, the weather cooperating, as the night drones on.
If you consult the December 2006 edition of Sky & Telescope, pp. 49-53, you will obtain many useful suggestions about wakefulness during night observing, and proper sleep afterwards, in the article by Daniel Caton and Joan Roberts, and the sidebar by Randall Wehler.
• OBSERVE OFTEN, AND REPEAT YOUR OBSERVATIONS: Don't go out just once per new Moon. I really in fact do not worry at all about "the night of new Moon", as observing is rather poor at dusk at my site. The later, the better: so I can use the spot more than a week after new Moon, as long as Luna is down below the horizon by midnight or so. Some observers make an absolute fetish about THE time of new Moon, without realizing that they'll get just as dark a Moon-free sky for the next seven or eight days, if they can keep awake long enough. There are a dozen new Moons per year; but for some reason, the Fates seem to have arranged it so that about 2/3rds of them occur in bad weather! No matter; just wait a few days, and stay up longer. Others of you who CAN observe effectively before midnight will have a number of days before new Moon, when Luna's rise will of course shorten the evening... but you can still get good deep-sky results for some hours. And, whatever kind of object you like to observe, you get better with repetition and further experience. Take some advice from the well-known comet hunters, who have learned to expect to build up their skills over weeks, months, and years: both Don Machholz and David Levy had HUNDREDS of hours of comet-seeking under their belts before they made their very first original discoveries of new comets: by then, they had the skills required for perceiving, recognizing, and confirming new, unobserved comets, differentiating them from known 'fuzzies'. Skills come with repetition, and grow as you acquire experience. (I always try, for instance, to repeat an observation of a new object within a day or two, weather and my physical endurance permitting.)
• RELAX AND FOCUS YOUR MIND: Give yourself time to adjust to your new surroundings. After you have endured the rat-race of traffic, perhaps a twisty, difficult rural access road, and the strain of setting up equipment, you must become calm, centered, and intellectually focused in order to do good observing. This is one reason I like to observe alone or, as an alternative, with no more than one companion at most. Even one other person, if not entirely convivial and accomodating, can ruin or diminish your mood. If you are the "second party" who is going along for the ride with another experienced observer, my advice to you is to try to make yourself unobtrusive, and agreeable. Don't get into arguments. Don't ask for "different music". Don't complain that you're tired and wanna go. YOU are not "in control" of the session, and shouldn't demand to be. If you are with a very experienced telescope user, take the opportunity to try unobtrusively to learn from him or her, time, patience, and inclination permitting. But, if you are instead the "guy in charge", then you should go into the session having "established the rules" that your companion will have to be patient and accomodating, letting the dedicated observer set the pace.
I personally find that "star parties" offer the worst possible conditions for observing. I might go to one every year or two, but NOT with equipment: I'll just attend to meet other amateur astronomers or to look around at new telescopes. I have learned from experience that whenever I have brought equipment, a confluence of events occurs to cause me to get NO pleasure at all. At worst, somebody will drop and wreck a filter or eyepiece, or even knock over a scope. At best, there will be so much tumult that I cannot "get centered" and relax into a sort of enhanced, higher consciousness that allows me fully to enjoy and appreciate the observing.
• MAXIMIZE CREATURE COMFORTS: Observing is hard. It's challenging. In my case, if I take the computer and GOTO scope all all peripherals (including big heavy batteries), it might take me well over an hour to have the gear ready for use. It's quite a demanding physical struggle. During a session, I'll get up, sit down, move around, and lift and carry things; get out books and charts; change seats: incessant activity. This will be punctuated by those periods where I sit, transfixed, staring for minutes at an object that I have struggled to acquire and see over a long period of intense concentration. So, since these activities are both physically and mentally demanding, I provide creature comforts to ease the effort. Since I view at a spot that is about a mile from the closest human habitation, I can listen to some music -- played softly. I prefer classical chamber music, in fact, and stuff that's not too dramatic. I keep a large cassette boombox sitting in the rear well of my vehicle so that it is surrounded on three sides, focusing the sound out in one direction: exactly toward me. The reason I use cassettes is that CDs have such a wide dynamic range (variation from loud to soft) that they are disconcerting late at night. My cassettes were recorded long ago from my own records, using a small amount of what is called "audio compression" to control the volume variation: they are "fair use" copies of original disks I purchased and own. Someday, the record companies are going to try to ban this, but they will have to "pry them from my cold, dead hands" as a certain actor might have said (the nearby picture of my office shows about a tenth of my 'obsolete' classical music and "old time radio" cassette collection.)
I take needed breaks from observing every once in a white, particularly after I have finally tracked down some very faint or elusive object and have a feeling of accomplishment. I drink some coffee, and have a snack, preferring fresh fruit (an apple, in the middle of the night, packs a wallop that seems like a drug has coursed into my veins!) or crackers and cheese. (It's also crucially important to bring along several containers of water: I have found that long periods of night time observing at high elevations leave me feeling very dehydrated.) If I have had to leave home without my dinner, I bring a larger portable meal with me; I've tried stopping at fast food places, but find that the greasy junk that passes for "food" often leaves me with a very sick stomach after a long, winding drive up a hill.
Even such a detail as one's observing chair can be crucially important. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a deluxe one (Orion Quick-Adjust, part no. 05939) which cost me a couple hundred smackers: the price of a beginner telescope itself! There really is no alternative to this product, and though less expensive similar models may be found from various dealers on the Net, by the time you factor in shipping costs, they are never really "cheap". With some scopes, such as my Schmidt-Cassegrain or my refractor, it is essential to be able to change the observing height easily, quickly and efficiently. Some chairs are better at this than others. After many years of using a drummer's stool, which takes a lot of fuss and struggling to change heights and then screw it down tightly so that it won't collapse, I simply went first-class and spent the necessary dollars. I wonder WHY I did not do this more than a decade ago, when such chairs were first marketed? Don't worry; just pay the price!
And remember: even during the hottest part of the summer time, with boiling days, the nights are likely to be cool -- even downright cold at high elevations. 90% of the time, I bring along my heaviest winter garb: not only a jacket, but also (a) a sweater; (b) heavy socks; (c) gloves; (d) heavy flock-lined thermal overcoat; (e) lighter zippered jumpsuit; (f) fishing lure pocketed vest (for eyepieces, but also adds one light layer of thermal protection around my chest and back); and (g) caps: the last including a big ski mask that covers my head and neck (making me resemble a bank robber); and two woolen knit caps of varying thickness. When I have all this stuff on, I look somewhat like the little kid buttoned up for the Indiana snow in the movie "Christmas Story" (or perhaps a cross between an alien spaceman and the Pillsbury Dough-Boy); but if I leave any of this stuff at home -- except perhaps when the temperature after sunset is still in the 90s -- I wish I hadn't. I even go so far, during fall and winter, to wear up to three pairs of pants! (My weight has varied over the years, and there are a couple of capacious ones kept in the garage, not only to remind me of keeping to a reasonable diet, but also to serve as extra padding for my legs at observing sessions.) There is no point in suffering and shivering while you try to look through the telescope!
If I stay home, even during winter I can use my scope in the driveway without all this regalia, as shown in the nearby snapshot my wife took. But I still always need that "historic yellow cap", purchased more than a quarter of a century ago for observing. I would feel a genuine sense of loss if I ever manage to misplace this totem.
• BE ORGANIZED!: Use a list when you pack your vehicle for an observing session. I've done this for years, and can still forget something, a weird mental oversight when checking off the items, one by one, and deluding myself into believing that I've put the item in the car. So, check the items as you load; and then check again, before starting up. If there is a chance that you MIGHT need something, BRING IT!. That means you fill the old buggy to the gunnels, but you won't be caught muttering, "Wow: this seeing is so good that I just wish I had brought that 3x Barlow I never seem to need; tonight I could have used it." And, bring spares if practical. After a dreadful experience I had many years ago, leaving my eyepiece case at home -- even with a list to make this allegedly impossible -- I now have TWO cases, one having all the good oculars, and one with the cheap ones that came with all my Orion scopes. I bring both, in two different containers. At worst case, if I did leave the good ones at home, I'd still have a few slightly- better- than- mediocre Plössls to play with, rather than no eyepieces at all! (I have to admit that my "spares fetish", engendered during my days as a radio engineer, goes a bit far. I bring TWO cassette players, PLUS two sets of batteries, just in case... I also have two different small tool sets, a spare car battery jumpstarter, a couple of first-aid kits, spare car keys; and I'd bring two scopes with me, if at all possible: but there's seldom room in the car!)
• USE EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT EQUIPMENT & ACCESSORIES: Have you ever had the maddening experience of being with another observer who couldn't seem to do anything right? I have -- it drives me up the wall; and to retain a friendship, I have to remember NOT to become a nag, offering incessant stentorian advice about doing things "the right way". But that does not mean that I won't do it HERE.
If you are not blessed with a "high visual acuity" -- a great memory for spatial relationships and shapes, and the capability of constructing a model of something in your mind, and retaining it -- they you're like me. One of my weaker observing skills, where I have a distinct shortcoming compared to friends of mine, is a very "average" talent at interpreting star charts and eyepiece star fields. Since all my scopes either change the field of view by inverting, or reversing, or both, I have difficulties matching what I see on a chart, with the stellar points seen in an eyepiece or finder. I discussed this in a very old post to sci.astro.amateur that I made years ago, when developing an article for our old "Waldee-Wood Astronomy Website"; recently I expanded it into a full article here: it's called Optimizing Your Astronomical Finderscope. The homemade "copyscope" finder I describe is pictured here, minus the correct-image diagonal that I purchased for it. I don't have that finder now, but acquired an upright/correct-view one (Orion part no. 7212) from Orion for my 10" Dob. It's not nearly as good as my old home-brew one with larger, better objective lens, but it assists me in making sense of star charts.
When I use my laptop and a planetarium program, I of course set the image aspect to agree with whatever reversals occur in my various scopes: inverted/reversed for my Newtonians, or reversed for my SCT and refractors. This helps my poor brain a lot!
Similarly, echoing the old credit card commercial, I always advise that everybody should have a TelradTM: in fact, "Don't leave home without it!" I have tried less expensive knock-offs, and found that none was satisfactory. The original, clunky, large, old Telrad 'reflex sight' was designed perfectly for its intended use. I make a couple of modifications, and save paying for a costly dew shield by adding my own "flipper" over the clear reflector; and I have put the illuminator pot on the opposite side, where it is more convenient, and changed the knob. If I have to star-hop to an object, I can do it faster and more reliably with a Telrad, whose viewing screen does not seriously darken the visible stars (a severe shortcoming of the "red dot" sights that came with some of my scopes); and the calibrated widths of the illuminated circles help me to move precisely, in specific increments.
Your star chart should give you enough stars to be able to do hopping to faint objects. Some of the "beginner" charts have too few visible stars. And some of the very old "traditional" charts -- like the Norton atlas -- are 'busy' and hard to read at a glance. The Orion "DeepMap 600" chart is a wonderful, affordable accessory, with an incredibly comprehensive list of objects: but it simply has too few stars. It looks very pretty, and one expects that it will be easy to use because of its simplicity. And, true: the bright well-known objects may be easily found, using it. But some of the faint, small-diameter ones -- like the planetary nebula NGC-7009, the "Saturn" nebula -- are quite hard to acquire using this chart, as there are no field stars shown in the region all around it. The object is small and faint, so "triangulation" from stars that are 5 to 10 degrees away is too coarse a method of location. You NEED MORE STARS.
Use a red computer screen filter, and magnification if necessary, on your laptop at night.
I prefer always to have at least the Sky Atlas 2000 on hand, augmented by the Companion volume by Strong and Sinnott; and the Uranometria (and companion) are even better. I hope within the year to acquire the new "Millenium" atlas. Sometimes, even when I am not using my GOTO scope that benefits from its computer control capability, I still bring along my laptop in order to have a comprehensive star chart program, using the stars of the Hubble Guidestar Catalogue that go down to 15th magnitude, as well as my spreadsheets of the NGC, IC, and other objects. But, this requires extra magnification and enormous effort to use, while also maintaining dark adaptation, due to the phenomenon of night myopia: see the explanations I gave in this article about astro software and computing, as well as the discussion further below. Frankly, if you can manage to observe without using a computer, your eyes are better off, and you may be able to see dimmer objects with less effort. (But, on the other hand: the well-stocked laptop offers the ability to port a huge amount of data, and some impressively effective software, allowing you to leave pounds and pounds of volumes at home. And, who knows: you might be near an open, unprotected Wi-Fi signal: presto...you're on the Net, downloading DSS images! Although I have detected the signals of no fewer than seven wireless networks at my mountaintop site, they are all password protected so that no evil minded cracker -- or even a slightly more honest amateur astronomer -- can nab a free ride on the information superhighway.)
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Chris Peterson, of Cloudbait Observatory, read my article and commented about the difficulty I describe above, and my picture of straining with magnifiers to see the red-filtered screen of my laptop. He suggested that I try a high-loss neutral density filter, or a green filter, stating that my difficulty with faint red was due to "the reduced accommodation distance of long wavelength light." (Accomodation is, in this context, defined as "ability to focus on objects at near distances.") Chris finds that dim white light is better than red for reading charts, and that a green filter is superior to red: suggestions that I shall certainly try experimentally. However, in my own particular case, my myopia (nearsightedness) and presbyopia (inability to change focus) are just about as bad now as they were 40 to 50 years ago; I merely have more difficulty in focusing at distances further than used typically for reading books or computer screens, requiring "medium distance" lenses as well as long distance ones. And, what I try to see at night, in the dark, on my computer screen is not RED per se, but BLACK text on red background. My laptop has a so-called "wide" screen format, and its native resolution has small text. Spreadsheets and database programs that do not allow room for bold black text are difficult to see clearly, whether or not the background is long-wavelength red, or other colors. And, it remains to be seen if I can use white light -- no matter how dim -- and still be able to detect galaxies fainter than 15th magnitude in the eyepiece of my C-11. The surface brightness of such objects would be at the absolute threshold of vision, requiring special techniques such as averted vision, shaking the scope, sweeping around the field, and alternating one's eyes, to be able to detect them with assurance. I do know from experience that the FAINTEST illumination setting of my red LED chart-light will not impact my ability to be able to see such objects; nor will it cause the background illumination in the eyepiece field to change quality. The thing that continues to be in the back of my mind, in relation to discusions of how to set up a computer for astronomy, is that almost all the persons who have posted on the Net, written articles, or discussed the subject with me are PHOTOGRAPHERS/IMAGERS who are not doing "profoundly dark-adapted live observing by eye".
Furthermore, the advanced visual observing expert Sue French, author of the Deep Sky Wonders columns in Sky & Telescope magazine, and Celestial Sampler --shown at left with her husband Alan and their huge refractor -- recently wrote to me that she, too, prefers red: on her laptop she uses "MegaStar in dark-red night-vision mode with two sheets of red Plexiglas and three medium red Roscolux filters over it. As you know, this makes labels very difficult to read, but I can set the size and style of the label type." I still have not read recommendations for green or white dim light by traditional old-time visual astronomers who make a specialty of observing the faintest possible objects. However, the esteemed expert on visual astronomy -- Dr. Roger N. Clark -- has an intriguing alternate suggestion. Unlike the users of laptops, or digital sky imagers, he does what I do: the deepest possible visual observation of faint objects. Here's his procedure (excerpted from a post to the Yahoo group Amastro):
The flashlight I use when looking at star charts or doing my drawings is so dim I almost need averted vision to see the chart. Even then, when I am trying for the faintest details, it takes me about 5 minutes to recover from using the faint flashlight. Also, I do not use a red flashlight. I find it warps my color sensation and gives a strange optical effects looking at faint objects, even dim ones that don't show visual color. I use a flashlight with a bulb that is for a 4-cell flashlight but in a 2-cell flashlight, so 1/2 the voltage. Then I add several layers of brown paper bag over the lens to dim the beam. And finally, I added a rheostat to reduce the light more. The color ends up a dim orange or yellow-orange.-- Roger Clark [emphases added by SRW; updated 15 January 2008] |
UPDATE, August 22, 2006: Testing proves that green is not for me. It impacts deep dark adaptation more than red light. And white light, no matter how dim, reduces my eye's sensitivity. I believe that I am working with a higher degree of dark adaptation, for visual observation of supremely faint objects, than many others who are primarily doing imaging.
Telescope design may aid or hinder your viewing efficiency. Scopes with German equatorial mounts are hard to learn but easy to use with a star chart. Beginners might think Dobsonian scopes, with their simple altitude-azimuth mounts, are foolproof; but I often find them very frustrating! Observing near the zenith is fussy and difficult -- while it's equally hard to look near the poles with a German equatorial.
The fork-mounted Schmidt-Cassegrain scope, on a motor-driven alt-azimuth mount, often improves object locating and viewing efficiency: the eyepiece conveniently travels across less distance than the other scope types. It is relatively easy to find objects at the zenith, though motor slewing rates may be very slow (as they are in that direction with my Celestron GPS 11.) But this type of mount is unsuited to long-exposure astro-imaging due to field rotation; for that application, an equatorial is required.
Long focal length telescopes, like the C-11 at right, have intrinsically narrower fields of view, with a given set of eyepieces, than short-focal length scopes (like the 80mm f/5 refractor, piggyback mounted on top of the C-11.) If you want to study, say, the Rosette nebula, you will see only a part of it with the Schmidt-Cassegrain, for -- with, say, a commonly used 26mm Plossl eyepiece -- the scope produces a field of view of about a half-degree of arc. That same ocular, in the 80mm f/5, yields SEVEN times the field width: plenty of 'room' to see the nebula in its glory -- but at a much-reduced brightness and resolution (in addition, I use an upright/corrected diagonal mirror attachment in the 80mm refractor, so eye views resemble the orientation of the sky, and my charts, making identification of star fields as easy as possible.) Though it's relatively inefficient, this small scope allows me to be able to see large-diameter objects that aren't 'framed' properly in the high powers of the C-11. When I want wide field and bright views, I use my 10" aperture f/4.7 "fast" Dobsonian, which is very close to the C-11 in light gathering power, but allows fields of view that are as much as 2.5 times wider, using my same set of 1.25" barrel eyepieces.
No one single telescope design, and mount, can be ideal for all uses. Suit your observing program to the instrument immediately at hand.
In October 2006, I found these two helpful articles on the Net which cover much of the same ground with more specificity: How To Find Deep-Sky Objects Rapidly by Jay Reynolds Freeman; and Using a Map at the Telescope by Alan MacRobert, on the Sky & Telescope website.
• TRY NOT TO BE TOO 'NEGATIVE' OR PERFECTIONISTIC: I have a good friend who is an excellent observer, though he is by nature a very scientifically skeptical person and (to tell the truth) something of a pessimist. He would probably reply: "I am not a pessimist. I am a realist." For, as we all know, if you have an appreciation for the most exquisite nuanced experiences of life, you will -- by definition -- encounter them only rarely. Many amateur astronomers today, it seems to me (from my years of involvement in the marketing and sales of optical products as well as my membership in various astronomy clubs), have drifted away from observing "because conditions keep getting worse." Some of them just buy equipment, fuss and fiddle with their telescopes and accessories, and attend in-town star parties to joke around and kibbitz, rather than enduring "the bad skies, the light pollution, the lousy weather."
If you don't go out with your telescope, YOU WON'T SEE ANYTHING!
Think of all those thousands of d-s objects that were discovered in British skies by William Herschel, using an unwieldy 18" speculum metal mirror telescope that did not perform much better than a modern 15" aperture Dob -- and in skies that have a yearly 60% cloud cover. Many telescope owners I know, blessed to be living in the local California Pacific coastal climate with vastly superior potential weather conditions, don't think it is "worth the bother" of trying to spot these easily-seen objects "that can't be seen around here." Yet, in a wintry night where high altitude winds made stars so fuzzy and erratic that I was almost tempted to put my scope away, I soon was enjoying the most spectacular views of M-78 and NGC-2024 that I ever experienced: a brilliance and contrast effect, in an 8" scope, that I have never before nor since seen even with a 17.5" scope. One of the most satisfying views I had of the great comet Hale-Bopp -- ion tail and all -- was on a morning with low-lying puffy clouds that I had to dodge. I have had almost perfect steady seeing, viewing delicate traceries of shade and light on Mars, in brief glimpses of the planet when an almost completely cloud-covered sky had closed down overhead. On some occasions, weather has deteriorated, cutting short a viewing session; but just as often, mediocre weather has wonderfully cleared up, vivifying the sky and settling the local air into a state of almost mystical calm. Shimmery stars and wobbly planets at 10pm were replaced by crystal-clear pristine stellar points, allowing one to split 0.6" doubles, at 3am. The lesson: perfectionism and skepticism are merely often mental excuses for not going to the trouble, or taking the chance of having a good time.
• FINALLY: AVOID BEING EATEN BY THE MOUNTAIN LIONS!: Sounds like a joke, right? Well, not exactly. Observing at this site over the years, I have had my share of encounters with strange creatures. A bat once dive-bombed my head (don't those things have RADAR?) and, if memory serves, a small rodent of some sort once jumped up on Rich Page's boot and possibly tried to crawl up his leg -- I can tell you that the normally unflappable Rich gave a pretty significant jump, shaking it free at once! And, in the last few months, I have had two (distant but still too close) encounters with a mountain lion, whose vicious and appallingly frightening cry erupted out of the silence and bounced all around the nearby hills, leaving my heart pounding. The first time this happened, the poor hungry foraging creature was probably just a few hundred feet away; I jumped in the car and waited... and waited. Finally, I got out and made a lot of noise, and tossed some rocks around. I growled loudly, and barked "like a dog". There was one more snarl, from way off in the distance, and then, blessed silence. A few weeks later I had a repeat performance, and got FAR more aggressive, having taken the suggestions in this article, as well as this more detailed discussion. One of these days I shall make a cassette recording of some vicious barking dogs, and have it ready, cued up and primed to "answer" in case I have another such disconcerting visitation. But, as various webpages explain, there are really very few actual human physical encounters with such creatures, and people can and do fight them off if they don't lose their presence of mind. I now have a blinding spotlight at hand: better to lose a bit of dark adaptation than a few fingers. There are rocks and pebbles all around me that I can pick up and throw; and as I said, I do a mean impression of a snarling beagle!
UPDATE, Nov. '06: my Finnish cyber-friend and fellow-observer Jaakko Saloranta -- pictured here -- writes, "3 wolves were spotted just 200 meters from my dark(er) observing site yesterday. Wolves are fairly uncommon here in Southern Finland but seems not that rare. May be I should arm myself the next time I visit there? At least the observing will be more interesting the next time! A few years back I was ready to run away when a moose came like a few feet way from my telescope -- I thought it was a bear at first. Then I just realized it probably just wanted to see something with the telescope! In here you don't have to worry about snakes and all that but I'm sure you have some nasties in California, correct? How about mosquitoes? I hate those, we're swarmed!"
Yes, Jaakko: sometimes we're swarmed, too. Your story reminds me of the one E. E. Barnard told about the rattlesnake who lived under the wooden floor of the observing platform for (what I seem to remember was) the Bruce Telescope. They managed to co-exist without any problems though Barnard wasn't exactly happy about the proximity of his unseen, but heard, companion!
Some recent observations of Faint Fuzzies, near a city:
In the last year that I've resumed observing, following my 5-year sabbatical beginning at the turn of the century, I have had to recover some lost skills. Five years of not doing any star hopping caused me to forget about the shapes and locations of some of the rambling, obscure constellations, and bright guide stars therein, as well as a bit of the kinesthetic eye-brain-hand skills that helped me for years to operate my telescopes at high efficiency (high for ME, at least.) I changed telescopes, which necessitated a long break-in period of getting used to their nuances, complexities, and -- yes -- defects or shortcomings. I adapted to the new technique of using a laptop at the night observing session, trying out ways to be able to see the screen but not ruin my dark adaptation. I had a long shake-down of both software and hardware, detailed in another article and followup. In fact, the first nights that I found myself alone under dark skies with my brand new equipment, I felt LOST. It took me a number of months to get comfortable again; now, I am close to the skill level I felt I'd achieved by the end of last century.
Most of the time, I've been observing at "the site", and not trying to go 200-300 miles distant, unless my wife and I were taking an excursion (possible only during two or three short windows of time when her teaching schedule is on a break.) So, I have attempted to hone my techniques to maximize my chances of doing satisfying d-s observing at a spot that is no more than about 10 or 12 miles (as the crow flies, if the mountains weren't there) from my home in central San Jose. The picture at the top of this article shows the distant top of the mountain range, which is a bit lower in elevation from the angle shown in the photo, taken from across the street from my house. If it weren't for some trees, and for the mountain itself, I could look with my telescope and SEE the spot that I use for observing. It's on the other side of the mountaintop, shaded from the direct shine of the billions of candlewatts of Silicon valley streetlights and advertising signs. You can see the light dome, over the hill; but the lack of ability to see DIRECTLY those uncountable myriads of light points help one feel at least somewhat isolated from all this teeming humanity.
I set up my telescope behind a tall bush, cutting off other direct lights in an opposite direction. The less blinding points of lights I can see, the better. If I get to the site and it's already dark, when I get out of the car and cut the headlights, the sky seems pristine and pitch dark: this is a human visual artefact, caused by a small entrance pupil and lack of dark adaptation. Within ten minutes or so, I'm all too aware of the light pollution around me. So, I put on an eyepatch over my "good" observing eye (I use my right eye to look into the scope, and my left ear for using a telephone, and I'm right handed. This seems a consistent pattern with many people, and is explained by "brain bifurcation." My wife does these exact same things too.)
I am near-sighted and always wear glasses.
At my age (I won't say what it EXACTLY is, but you can see from my photo below that I'm gray-haired, paunchy, and pretty much 'over the hill'!) my eye's "entrance pupil", with dark adaptation, is between 4 and 5 mm, not the wide 7 mm of younger persons. So I no longer try to use the very lowest powers of my short focal length telescopes, or even binoculars with 7 mm exit pupils: this causes a slight loss of light, which spills out AROUND the entrance pupil of my eye, not entering and falling on the retina. And, with my amount of astigmatism and myopia, the lowest powers bring with them optical aberrations: stars look "messy". High powers look "cleaner".I discovered some years ago, since I am a glasses-wearer, that with naked eyes, stars always looked sharper RIGHT AFTER I got new glasses. But, until I read the articles "Vision Quest: Optimizing Your Eyes for Astronomy" in the September 2005 issue of Sky and Telescope, I had no idea of the exact mechanisms involved. Joshua Roth, author of the first article ("Spectacles for Spectacular Skies") explains that the problem is due to something called "night myopia"; and there was a URL for a company selling "flippers", or diopters, used by professional opticians. I showed this article to Regina, who for years has complained to her opticians that they never got her prescription just right, and that she had trouble seeing at night. Regina got very excited, and encouraged me immediately to call the company in Canada, and order the product: so, I contacted Optego Vision, Inc., in Ontario, by calling them at 877-OPTEGO-4, and ordering a set of four diopter lens pairs in two flippers (which cost me, at the time, about $35.)
I asked my wife to do the posing, so that all the pictures in these articles weren't of me;
but she refused, as "her hair didn't look perfect." Oh, well...
Here's a photo taken by Regina of the flippers, and one of Yours Truly testing them in our patio. I have found, over several trials in the night sky over the course of six months, that the exact setting for my sharpest vision of the stars does vary somewhat. Just the week of writing this article, I verified that I need to increase the diopter setting of my glasses by +0.25 diopter for the dimmest stars to be visible, and the brightest stars to get sharper. I can even press this further, and go to +0.5 diopter but it causes a slight amount of eye-strain. So, I need to have my optometrist give me a prescription for "night glasses". Is this possible? The S&T article suggests that it's so.
But, when I went for my last eye examination, the oculist was not only highly skeptical of this, but also was a bit "professionally insulted", or so he acted. He is a physician at a nearby large HMO, not merely a low-paid tester at an eyeglass store; so his "scholarship" has been challenged -- by me! I took the trouble to bring the magazine, and showed it to him, along with the passages quoting a prominent NY optician who is a consultant to a famous eyepiece maker. The doctor was monumentally unimpressed, telling me that he "did not agree at all about the mechanism of night myopia" and that he did not want to change the numbers of my prescription for a THEORETICAL night value "under the stars" -- even one that I had personally measured and verified with the flippers!
The long and short of it was simply that he refused to prescribe "night glasses" for me, or for my wife. I know, I know: "get another opinion" is what people will suggest. Well, until then, I have the flippers. I can use them, easily, while looking at faint stars. But, most of the time I don't bother to get them out, unless I want a really glorious, sharp, clear, aesthetic experience of a crystal-clear starry realm, or to measure the faintest naked eye stellar magnitude limit (hard to do anyway, with any reliability; at least I can say that the flippers used correctly will increase it, in my case, by about 2/3rd magnitude.)
I actually discovered, the last time I tried them, that -- to my surprise -- the optimal darkest visible stars at my site were better than I had imagined: close, in fact, to what I've tried to estimate at more distant sites. The stars are best during foggy weather at lower elevation as I've explained above; and the faintest ones are visible at the zenith. Under great conditions there, not really rarely experienced, I can see stars that are between 6th and 7th magnitude. Hooray!
A Terrible Temporary Setback: a "PVD" Event
No sooner had I purchased a nice complement of new telescopes -- short and long focal length ones for wide and narrow field use -- and some eyepieces, filters, and accessories to start viewing again with renewed vigor using fresh, new, good commercial equipment, than I had a dreadful experience, waking up one morning with a severe headache and immediately discovering that I had a visual disorder -- in my "good" right viewing eye! A humongous floater had appeared, rolling around in the center of vision, accompanied by a thick, viscous, fuzzy lump that made everything dim and out of focus. My first thought was a horrified exclamation to myself that I might have a detached retina! I went immediately to the emergency room of my local HMO, and soon found myself being examined critically by an optical physician. After subjecting me to the brightest light I have ever experienced, which he focused on the interior of my eye and swept around for what seemed like hours, leaving me limp, exhausted, and in severe pain -- indeed, my eye was almost completely blind for two days afterwards -- he announced in a reassuring tone that I had "only" experienced a PVD, or a posterior vitreous detachment. You can read about this on the Net (there are many articles, and one may as well start with this one for more in-depth information.) Apparently I was "just about due" for one, he said, and sooner or later would probably have one in the other eye. (Why, oh Lord, I wailed to myself, did this occur in my "good" eye, which I use at the scope? Why not have it happen in my fuzzier one instead? Oh, well: "sooner or later"...) This "common" condition is caused when some of the vitreous substance in the eye degenerates or changes a little bit. And, the doctor said cheerfully, "it will go away in time, or at least get a LOT better. Perhaps in a year."
As soon as the discomfort and "overload" caused by his exam had passed, I tried, with dread, to observe with my brand new C-11. Hopeless! The floater would lodge right over the center; in the background of any bright region I could see a filmy, swimming medium of thousands of tiny bubbles and swirls: a truly appalling, ugly apparition that RUINED looking through the scope. And, things were now dim.
At least I had not suffered a detached retina, with all the dangers of blindness that this entails. So, I philosophically adjusted, and started training myself to use my "bad" left eye. This is not quite as hard as writing with the "wrong" hand, but it is disconcerting, uncomfortable, and strange. It took me several weeks to adjust to it, so that the observing session could give me any pleasure at all. Comparatively, I lost about 3 magnitudes of sensitivity in the right eye that had suffered the PVD. But, the left eye did not look "smooth". The background of the sky, in the absence of stars, was grainy, shimmery. I could see faint galaxies; but they didn't look right. Better than nothing, however...
By now, eight months later, normal acuity and perception have returned to my right eye; the floater has almost completely disappeared; the bubbly jellied swirling stuff is gone. Thank goodness! I can observe just as well as before; and -- yes -- the "good" eye does provide views that are and aesthetically better, more realistic, smoother, on galaxies and nebulae. The last time I observed, I could even detect slightly fainter things with the right eye, than with the left one that had not had the PVD. But, it reminds me that "it's important to have a spare" -- and in this case, A SPARE EYE is more valuable than any of the other spare parts I take with me on observing sessions!
Faint Fuzzies -- not far from a huge city.
According to my historical research, the first recorded use of the term "faint fuzzies" occurred on April 14, 1892, in the rural garden of one Mr. Abe "Snuffy" Zinkenfuss in Glorioski, Indiana. He was attempting to focus his new Sears Roebuck 2" telescope on Saturn, but instead found something strange and unknown... "Jeepers, Ella Mae: come on o'er here: ah think I've got me a sort of, err, FAINT FUZZY!" he is reputed to have cried to his wife, in amazement. According to calculations I have made with "cutting edge" astronomy software, it is most likely that Abe mis-aimed slightly, and found NGC-3627 in his pristine dark sky, an object that would be invisible in a small urban scope today, but which was clearly detected in the glorious heavenly vault, unpolluted by electric lights at 2100 hours on that evening. The galaxy would have been 11 degrees, 44 minutes, and 4 seconds away from Saturn; from this we can infer that (a) Abe wasn't a highly skilled observer; (b) his finderscope was badly misaligned; (c) that moonshine was not unknown in this time and place; or (d) all of the above. Yet, astronomical history had been made!
Continuing this legacy of greatness and achievement, I proudly present below just a few of the "faint fuzzies" that I have been able to see, in a place where I shouldn't have been able to do so! Just a few thousand feet away, on the other side of the hill facing the San Jose valley basin, Saganesque "billions and billions" of streaming photons from low and high pressure sodium vapor lamps were coursing through space. They bounced down again all around me, scattered off hills and particulates in the air, mingling with all the other photons from Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Hollister, Santa Cruz, and Los Gatos... and fainter ones trickling from the SF peninsula, Fremont, Milpitas, the whole mess of the human stew and its environs that populates my region of the Universe.
Having at last snatched a moment or two of low wind, quiet foggy nights in the valley areas, and clear, cloud-free skies -- and observing all the anal-retentive and obsessive compulsions outlined above -- I lay in wait, my apertures wide open, eyes at the ready, aimed for "the kill". Here are some examples of the hapless quarry that have been netted; and unlike living game, they will endure almost forever, to be caught time and time again!
To continue reading the second part of the article, with pictures and descriptions of many challenging deep-sky objects that the author has observed near San Jose, California, click here.
Included are many celestial wonders not often sought by visual observers, such as Barnard's Galaxy and Loop; Sharpless nebulae; many obscure and faint IC objects; Minkowski and Abell planetary nebulae; Arp galaxies; the 'eyes' of the Owl Nebula; Stephan's Quintet; Palomar 10 globular cluster; nearby faint galaxy Leo 1; and the elusive dark nebula, "The Horsehead".
Conclusion
If the faint deep-sky objects shown in Part 2 can be found by me, just outside the perimeter of the light-polluted Santa Clara valley, then YOU TOO have very good hope of seeing most of the objects being talked and written about in newsgroup discussions, books, and observing guides.
Persist: and you will be rewarded by success! -- srw
This article is dedicated to my friends Richard Page and Donald Machholz, without whom I (a) would not have had a hope of ever becoming a good deep-sky viewer; and (b) would never have had the opportunity to find this remarkable mountaintop observing site!
For the second part of this article click here. Or, press BACK key, or return to the Full Moon Essay Menu.
Last edited: Thursday 21 February 2008 at 9:49 am. Copyright © 2006-8 Stephen R. Waldee - All Rights Reserved. All Trademarks or Copyrights are © or Property of Their Respective Copyright Holders.