May 19

First Light at the Peak

by Jason Newquist


Logistics

I received my new 10-inch Discovery Premium DHQ reflector earlier this week, and spent the last few days assembling it and performing eyeball collimation. The only "modification" I performed before taking it out for first light was to apply Armor-all to the altitude bearings, since altitude motion out of the box was very stiff. I would see how this would perform in the field.

Getting the 50+ pound, 60+ inch-long tube from my apartment down the stairs into my smallish car (a coupe) was an adventure, but not too difficult, even for a decadent soul like me. Surprisingly, the most difficult aspect of the loading up was getting the base to fit into my trunk. There's *one* particular way it fits, and it took about 5 minutes to find it. This struggle aside, it wasn't too hard. (Note to self: increase upper body strength.) Add in the eyepiece chest, my roll-up table, my box of various odds-n-ends, the Sky Atlas 2000, and some snacks and drinks, and I cast myself out of urbania.

Many of the local observing crew chose Fremont Peak's southwest lot, so that's where I headed. The drive down from Santa Clara was sunny and clear, although it was very windy around Gilroy, and further south. The wind almost completely subsided along the 11 mile drive up to the Peak.

Conditions at the Peak were pretty good. There was an occasional gust of wind that, sometime after midnight, turned positively warm. It was a one-sweater night that did not require gloves. The marine layer stayed well below the Peak, but the light domes would render a surprising amount of the western sky useless.

The lot filled up very quickly - before sunset. There must have been 15 scopes set up, or more, and I heard that some observers were set up in other places.

Setting up the scope was straightforward. I shimmied the scope out of the car and placed it on its base, and that was that. I was concerned about collimation, and got some help from Bob Baldwin's cheshire eyepiece and dot laser, and Bob Czerwinski's holographic laser, as well as some much-appreciated instruction in the art of collimation from the Bobs themselves. Thanks, guys!

In the fading light, I applied the Telrad to the scope and aligned it. remarkably simple procedure. With lawn chair set up next to the SA2000 on the table, and the Starbound chair around the scope, I was ready to go on tour of some of the highlights of the spring sky.

Observing Notes

Jupiter appeared in the muck to the west, and provided first light. I stuck in the 12mm Nagler and got a reasonable view, considering the boiling atmosphere. The moons appeared to be fairly sharp.

First stellar light was Mizor and Alcor. I racked the Nagler out of focus to check the diffraction rings. When far out of focus, you can see the chunks of the airy disk of the star taken out by the obstruction of the spider vanes and the secondary. But when just out of focus, diffraction rings around the star were very nice. I counted several, but didn't do a rigorous examination except to check their alignment - they were perfectly circular and concentric. Very nice.

Bob Baldwin came over to check out the optics and pointed it toward Castor. When he went to the eyepiece (still the 12mm Nagler in which I would spend almost the entire evening), he exclaimed that the view was exceptionally sharp. "You've got yourself one hell of a scope here! This is just like a refractor!" Tall words, and high praise. Castor split very easily, and the view in the darkening sky was great. Stars were as sharp as I have seen them in my TeleVue 101 - and that's no joke. Like Bob, I was floored.

First cluster light was M13, the Hercules Cluster. My jaw dropped. I stayed on it for about 20 minutes, soaking up 10 inches worth of these gorgeous photons. It seemed like the whole thing was resolved. Gazillions of tack-sharp stars hanging together in the sky, 21,000 light years away, like a patch of the Milky Way. Amazing!

Bob Baldwin came back and aimed the scope at NGC 4565, a remarkably knife-like edge-on galaxy, providing first galactic light. It was large and visually interesting, though not a lot of surface brightness.

M5, the Beehive Cluster, was another remarkable sight. Composed of easily resolved stars, each one sharp and clear.

But the Beehive would be swept aside by the highlight of the night, and a view that made me know, deep in my soul, that I had made the right decision to face the lurking demons of collimation, the terrors of mirror cleaning, and the horrors of transporting a telescope within a few inches of the cargo capacity of one's vehicle.

The Whirlpool Galaxy. M51. A sight I'd not yet seen in my TV101, nor in anyone else's scope. This is not a view I treasure as a growing body of evidence that the Discovery telescope is particularly fine, but for the absolute knock-your-socks-off-and-take-your-breath-away impact of seeing something like this at the eyepiece for the first time. Actual spiral structure! Right there. Staring at me. Not imagined at all, just hovering right there in the sky. But not only that, there was NGC 5195 plainly interacting with its larger sibling. The whole expanse was a wonderful, glorious, exquisite sculpture. I can't begin to guess how long I sat nudging the scope every once in a while, taking in the view.

First nebulous light was M57, the Ring. Wow! There it was: bright and amazingly compact, like unto the deliciousness of a Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut! Its brightness really makes up for its small size.

I then panned over and spent a while hunting down M97, the Owl Nebula. Large and puffy, I couldn't make out a lot of internal structure. It was now that I noticed that seeing was dicey. It was never better than good, but was mostly mediocre.

I then moved onto M27, the Dumbbell. Finding this was a bit of a trick. One thing that small wide-field refractors offer is, well, wide fields. With my 35mm Panoptic in place, the TV101 boasts a truly vast view that serves very much like a finder. Not so with the Discovery (obviously). In hunting down M27, I received a concrete illustration of just how much the fields of view differ from my first scope to my second. The TV101 is very forgiving in this regard - just aim in the general direction, hop around into the general area, and so on. The world of the Dobsonian reflector, and its higher apertures and longer focal lengths, is different. With this little piece of experience under my belt, I read the Sky Atlas 2000 with a little more care and soon bagged the object, which was huge and bright, with what appeared to be two nodes.

I spent some more time chasing down a few other targets - but these were the highlights. Right next to me in the parking lot, a fellow had invited a group of astronomy newbies out to the Peak and seemed to be teaching a class, and then went on to some of the same highlights I was chasing down. His largest scope was a 8" Portaball with a Zambuto mirror, but also had a Vixen 4" apo and some binos set up. I offered up views of some of these objects to some of the people up there - many of them couples, or fathers with children. It was the first time I played "Astro Expert" to a stranger, and it was a lot of fun. At one point, all these scopes had the Whirlpool lined up in it, so you could see the difference between the 4", the 8" and the 10". The 8" was a nice view, every bit as sharp as my scope, with plenty of contrast, but didn't have the outstanding spiral structure that impressed me so. I am certain that I would have been blown away even more by Bob Czerwinski's 12.5" Starmaster even more, but for this one night I let myself enjoy being king of the aperture hill.

Final Notes

I enjoyed the views from some of the other guys, including setup neighbor Eric and his imaging adventures with the coffee grinder. :-) The last two hours of the evening were very quiet, with Bob Baldwin asleep in his truckbed, and every one at their own scope. At once point, I just sat down in my lawn chair and enjoyed the ambient, voice-less noises of the amateur astronomy party. Very peaceful and respectful crew.

The only hitch in the whole thing is that the Armor-all I had previously applied to the altitude bearings seemed to wear off by night's end. What started as comfortable and smooth motions in the beginning of the evening became sticky again after a few hours. By "sticky" I mean that you really need to apply pressure to the scope to get it moving along the altitude bearing, but once it moves, be careful, or it'll move too far. I might try a silicon-based wax before I investigate prying off the Teflon pads and relocating them closer together.

My list of observed objects was very short, but the evening was a joy. Not needing to wear gloves was an amazing luxury.

The scope is calling out a couple possible names for itself, but I'll live with it for a while and make sure. If first light was any indication, though, I'm going to be very happy with him. Her. It. Whatever.