by Jay Freeman
I took Gillian, my Astro-Physics 10-inch Maksutov-Cassegrain, plus two giant pizzas from Pinocchio's no 2 in Gilroy, California, to Fremont Peak on Saturday, 13 October, 2001. Large quantities of edible foodstuffs together with whizzy optics make one popular. I explained that I couldn't set up my telescope until we had cleared the pizza off the top of the case, and in no time at all there was none left.
I hadn't had the big Mak out in several months: The developing Mars dust storm put an early end to Martian observation during the opposition just passed, Jupiter and Saturn were difficult targets for the lazy in the morning summer sky, and my deep-sky program has run out of steam, or at any rate, out of objects, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, I was anxious to try a few special objects.
Prominent on my list was gamma Andromeda. The wide part of this well-known multiple star are a well-known and easy white-and-blue double, but the blue star, gamma-two Andromeda, is itself a close binary, and has been closing during the last few decades. Sky Catalog 2000.0 suggests that its current separation is perhaps a bit less than 0.4 arc seconds, but the ephemeris there rounds separations to the nearest tenth of a second. I have split the close pair with Harvey in prior years, when it was wider, and I was curious how well the big Astro-Physics would do now that it has closed in. The two components of gamma-two are not of the same brightness. They differ by 0.8 magnitude, so are more challenging thereby.
Gamma Andromeda was high overhead when I observed. Seeing was far from perfect -- the Airy disc was generally visible, but the rings were nearly always broken up. Nonetheless, there were intervals of sufficient clarity to permit studying the detailed shape of the Airy disc, and that is what it takes to study a close binary. I worked up through several eyepieces to my 8 mm Brandon (464x). It did not take long to determine that the image of gamma-two was elongated and necked down, resembling a fat pear or a lopsided peanut. The position angle was right on, and I did not look up the "correct" value in the ephemeris until after I had made my observation. I increased magnification to 742x (Pentax 5 mm SMC-ED Orthoscopic), for a better view. A few times, I thought I could see a faint dark thread across the neck of the peanut, but the seeing was such that the effect might merely have been due to seeing jitter.
I showed gamma Andromeda to several people, and three out of five detected the elongation of gamma-two, with correct position angle, without me telling them what the position angle was. The performance of the AP-10 is once again seen to be impressive.
Saturn was the other target of interest. Using somewhat less magnification, the brightness minimum at the middle of the A ring was as clear as I have ever seen it, the Cassini division was wide and dark, the B ring varied in brightness radially in an obvious manner -- brighter toward the outside, and the Crepe ring was easy. On the disc, the brownish temperate-zone belt appeared at times double, or at any rate, it did after someone else had mentioned that it might. There was also a circumferential variation in B-ring brightness visible in the ansae of the rings; I would have said that the dark, inner zone of the B-ring had an outer boundary that was somewhat wavy -- but no spokes.
One other telescope present was of particular interest. A couple had an 8-inch f/13.4 D&G refractor, that towered over the southwest parking lot when pointed at the zenith, on an obelisk-like pier that made an AP-1200 look positively wimpy. I made the obligatory remarks about how it was a shame that some of the TAC refractorholics weren't there with their little telescopes for comparison purposes. :-) I had several looks through this instrument, but all were low-magnification views of deep-sky objects; I would be most curious how well it does on the moon and planets. One of the deep-sky views was through a four-inch eyepiece -- that's four-inch *diameter*, as well as focal length. This unit was used with no star diagonal; I made sure to ask several times whether it was fastened securely in place before I inserted my head between the field lens and the pavement.
In answer to the obvious question of how one transports such a gargantuan setup, they had a trailer. I did not observe setup or take-down, though I doubt it is a one-person job. Oh well, maybe that's a reason to get married.