by Paul LeFevre
"This is what I was taught that astronomy is all about."
Wise words from Wagner during my night at Houge Park last Friday...he was referring to sharing the sky with the public, and I'd forgotten how enjoyable that was. I took advantage of a quick business trip to the Bay Area (I'm in San Diego), and arranged an overnight stay Friday so I could get out and see some TAC friends. After a quick stop at the BP's place, we were off to Houge, and loads of fun.
First things first: spending time with Mark, Paul Sterngold, Phil Chambers, Rich N., Peter, and all the others (as well as the faces I finally put to names) was the best part of the trip. Worth any amount of flying and driving time. Jay Freeman even wandered by, pizzaless! You folks are the best.
I was in complete mooch mode, having no optical aids other than what I was born with, and mostly shared time with Mark on his 8" SkeleScope. Despite some comments to the contrary from a few present who doubted my star-hopping after GOTO and imaging for so long, it was satisfying to put the aluminum wonder onto some old favorites with nothing more than a Telrad and my memory. Yeah, I can still starhop. Probably not as well as I used to, but I can make do in a pinch :)
That brings up the point of my musings...at one point, I put the SkeleScope on M1. From the city park, it was a fairly faint but easily discernable wisp in the eyepiece. As we were eyeballing it, a pair of pre-teen girls walked up, and we offered up the view. I think they saw it, they said they did with some prompting...how to get them excited about it? I started with the standard line, "It's called the Crab Nebula. In 1054, a star exploded -- that's called a SuperNova -- and it threw off this shell of gas and debris that's been expanding ever since. What you're seeing is the remains of that explosion." Now, the Crab is expanding at about 7 million miles a day. That sounds pretty impressive, but over the vast distance we see it from, it takes a LONG time to see any movement from that expansion. Even images taken years apart of the Crab show little difference...it takes images maybe 15 years apart to see a visible sign that the standard line holds water. That's a feat!
most visual observers can't pull off -- remembering enough detail in a visual observation to note certain differences fifteen or more years apart! The imagers who record snapshots of the Crab do a service by giving us a reference to rely on, one that can easily be compared years later to note the changes.
All this was going through my mind on this evening, brought on by machinations between various friends and acquaintances regarding an apparent rift between observers and imagers. As I did my best to share the wonder of the visual skies that night with newcomers, I couldn't help but feel how silly the whole debate had become. My take? Most of the imagers started out as (and many still are) visual observers; in some cases they've forgotten the simple pleasures of purely visual astronomy, and in their mostly solitary pursuit of image excellence, they've distanced themselves from the observers...and some in fact see them as a nuisance with their red lights flashing all over the place and their lack of discipline. Some of the observers, on the other hand, have forgotten how much images of the objects they observe add to our basic knowledge, and show a level of detail and depth that is impossible to see with the eyes alone. Some observers, in fact, see the imagers as a nuisance!
with their insistence on no lights, their mass of cables and computers, and their cries of anguish when somebody merely walks near an imaging setup. Fine. But enough, already.
Myself? I'm born, bred, and trained as an engineer. My imaging activities bring out the tech geek in me to its fullest extent, allow me to debate quantum efficiencies of CCDs at various wavelengths, and let me practice my disciplined technique to guide a mount to sub-arc second accuracy and keep those FWHMs down to their smallest value. Visual observing, though, touches my soul. My sense of wonder and oneness with the universe are rekindled every time I put eye to scope, and the experience never fails to stir a poet (not necessarily a good one!) lurking inside that technical shell. And doing a share-with-the-public night, where I can expound on the constellation mythos, enjoy the smile on a person's face as they see Saturn's rings for the first time, or answer basic questions about what kind of telescope to get, magnifies my pleasure considerably.
There's no rift. We're all part of the same puzzle; the disciplines complement each other in untold ways, and in the end we all have the same
Houge Friday night was pure heaven. A night under the stars with friends I don't see often enough, shared with newcomers getting their first glimpse of the wonders above. You folks in the Bay Area who have the chance to get together with each other much more frequently don't appreciate how good you have it -- there is such talent, willingness to share, and fraternity in all the astronomy disciplines among you. Perhaps my distance has increased my appreciation of the group of friends I miss...please don't let your own familiarity breed contempt.
And thanks for sharing a marvelous Friday night with me.