Your Mind's Eye

Took my big, dumb telescope out to a state park early this week for a very satisfying stroll around Sagittarius and Scorpio. This is right where the center of the Milky Way galaxy is, which is part of the allure of that bit of the sky: a black hole millions of times the size of the sun is hiding behind all that dust. You can't see it (and there's a metaphor there I won't bother exploring about the most massive thing in the galaxy being utterly invisible to the human eye). But because you're looking toward the center of things, it's more dense, there's more stuff to see.

Like this.

It's the Omega Nebula. It didn't look nearly as defined in my own scope; I could only see the inner bit that looks like a sitting duck (this is also called the Swan Nebula, for that reason). But that's much of the joy of amateur astronomy, so much of it happens in your head, sketching in the details, seeing it in your mind's eye.

Here's another critter I saw that night. The Triffid Nebula, which brings to mind the great John Wyndham novel Day of the Triffids.

It didn't look quite this clear in my own scope either, though I could just make out the dust lanes. But there is a wealth of activity going on in there, stars in their first birth throes, flinging out tremendous amounts of gas and dust, forming spheres, pillars, small dark knots called Bok Globules (love that term). A detail of this nebula, taken by the Hubble:

So yeah, what you're seeing in your eye is a smudge of white and gray, with a few discernible dark lanes inside it, the barest hint of color. But in your mind you know there is so much more lurking deep in there, waiting for your inner vision to discover it.

For those of you keeping score at home, I also found M22 (a globular cluster, very pretty, picture below), M25 and M28 (open clusters, and disappointing), and the gorgeous Lagoon nebula. My electronic starfinder has been broken for a year, so I found these all the good old fashioned way, pointing it up at the sky and poking around til I found what I was looking for.

In Your Head

I brought enough beer this time.

Bug spray too. And a long list of stuff to look at.


I started out with the young crescent moon, 4 days old, while the sky darkened around me, the birds chirped their goodnight songs, the bats began to swoop. I've had the telescope for a couple months now, but for whatever reasons have never looked at the moon before. Gorgeous. Very detailed view. In low power (I don't know the exact power I'm using yet; figuring it out involves the focal lengths of the scope and the lens and math I have little interest in doing), the whole disc of the moon fits neatly inside the field of view. That may be by design, as it fits so perfectly. I don't know many features of the moon, but learned one: the Sea of Crises. It's the circular thing (a "sea" of hardened lava), low center in the photo. It looked quite dramatic with those long lunar shadows falling across the crags and crater rims.

I also realized how much light an 8 inch mirror gathers. I walked behind the scope and the image was thrown onto my shirt, and then my hand. Bright as a flashlight (okay, an exaggeration; a keychain flashlight then). Can't wait to show El Huquito and the girls how to catch the moon in their hands. Full moon is next week!


This is a pair of galaxies in Leo, M81 and M82. Very cool because you can get them both in the eyepiece at the same time at low power. The one on the right was kind of an amorphous blob of light, but the one on the left was elegant, symmetrical, with hints of the spiral arms and dust lanes. Nice.

I've mentioned before, but will reiterate, that what I see in the scope is not nearly as detailed as these photos (which are mostly from NASA). Astronomy, I'm learning, takes place largely in your head. At first glance, these things are just fuzzy blobs of light. You tease out details like arms and dust lanes with patience and imagination, filling in the details implied by what you can physically see. The mechanics of what is happening, the vast distances involved: also in your head.


The thing above is not a galaxy, but a star cluster in our own galaxy: M13, in the constellation Hercules. It's composed of about a million stars, all buzzing round a gravitational center like bees swarming a hive. These stars are very old, not much younger than the universe itself. This was actually almost as bright and detailed through the scope as it is in the picture.


Another star cluster, M93, also in Hercules. This one was not nearly as impressive, and detail could only be seen at high power.

I set my sights on the Virgo Cluster of galaxies after that, with little luck. Too much light, from both the moon and nearby campgrounds. I saw M87 and M100, both Virgo Cluster galaxies, both disappointing blobs with no detail. The Sombrero Galaxy, M104 (pictured below), was a little better. You could just barely make out the giant dust lane in the middle and the central bulge (heh, heh).


So, I'll leave my musings on the Virgo Cluster (and the larger Virgo Supercluster) for another day, when I get a better look at them. There's some seriously weird stuff going on in there, amid all the dancing galaxies.

Curiouser and curiouser

Took the big, dumb telescope out again on Friday, to use it for what was it is really designed for: galaxy hunting. So far I’ve only used it as a backyard scope for planets and the splashier nebulae, but this time I drove out to a state park for maximum darkness, and went by myself so as not to have kids pulling at my shirttails every few minutes and dropping tiny pieces of cookie into the telescope. Again. I’m learning that astronomy, like writing, is a rather solitary pastime.

Not that I’m complaining.


Warmed up by looking here, at the middle star of the handle of the Big Dipper. It’s actually 2 stars, Alcor and Mizar (actually, it’s six stars*; but keep reading). I’ve read that American Indians used to test the eyesight of warriors and hunters by seeing if they could see both stars separately. I can’t. Peer down into the rabbit hole and you’ll see that it’s not a double star but TWO double stars, four stars altogether, and I was able to make out three of the four stars very clearly. Pretty cool. The colors are very pretty.

*I just read while looking for the picture that it is a six star system, not four, as both Mizar and its companion are double stars too. That rabbit hole goes down as far as you want to travel.

About then the wind blew down my collapsible chair, and dumped the beer in the cupholder, leaving me with only one left. I almost cried. Thus I learned Clowncar’s First Rule of Star-Gazing: Bring Extra Beer.

The two galaxies below were the find of the night (M51 and NGC5195). I tried to find then on my own but gave up after a frustrating half hour or so, and plugged in the star-finder (my telescope is dumb, but still smarter than I am). It doesn’t move the scope, but after you align it to 2 stars (you center it on the star and then tell it what star you’re centered on), it will guide you to whatever you wanna see with two arrows and the number of degrees you have to move the scope. Zero out the two arrows and you’re pretty close.


This is the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and a companion galaxy (NGC 5195). They are gravitationally bound, meaning the Whirlpool is slowly eating up NGC 5195. You can find this just below the handle of the Big Dipper, and if you have dark skies can find them pretty easily with binoculars. In a telescope they are truly spectacular, filling up the entire field of view at high power, with hints of the filaments and dust lanes clearly visible. Wow. I should point out the detail was nothing like the detail in the photo I've posted, which was taken by the Hubble.

Next up was the Black Eye galaxy. Not quite as stunning as the Whirlpool, but still pretty freakin cool. The Black Eye part is from dust clouds. I couldn’t see much detail, but was able to make out the “black eye” in the middle.


Down the rabbit hole again: the inner ring of this galaxy revolves in one direction, the outer ring in the opposite direction. The closer you look at stuff out there, the weirder it all gets. Or, as Alice once said, knee-deep in Wonderland, ”Curiouser and curiouser.”

First Light

My big, dumb, cheap telescope arrived last week. So last weekend I did a surgical strike, driving into the Big City, and right back out again, through a snow squall no less, to get it.

It was cloudy the next 2 nights. Sigh.

Monday night, after the girls were in bed, Hucky went to the office to tame her monstrous and ever-growing to-do list, and I took the baby monitor and a beer and the telescope into the backyard. Shockingly simple to set up, and to align the viewfinder. Which is, of course, the main advantage of big, dumb and cheap.

The first thing I pointed to was the Pleiades, the seven sisters driven loony by the light of the moon, left to dance high in the sky through eternity. Found it right away. It was a tad disappointing - didn't have a big enough field of view to get the whole structure in the eyepiece. Did see a wisp of nebula around one of the stars, which was kinda cool.


Next up was the Orion Nebula (pictured above), which nearly always takes my breath away, and it was no disappointment (it's in Orion's sword, just below and to the left of the 3-star belt, and big and bright enough to see with binoculars). It's a stellar nursery, a great swath of molecular cloud lit up by the stars being born inside it. The four stars of the Trapezium were clearly visible (the Trapezium - diagrammed below - is four gravitationally bound stars, and their orbits around each other are so complex they have never been successfully modeled). I checked it out with both eyepieces, then the area surrounding it, and am pretty sure I found de Mairan's Nebula (in the lower left of the picture above), which is part of the same molecular cloud, but separated visually by a dark lane of dust (which was as impressive as the nebula itself).


Spent 5 or 10 frustrating minutes trying to get Saturn into view (remember, I'm still pretty new at this), then gave up and went inside to get another beer and check on the girls. And that second beer did the trick. I went back outside and realigned the scope and found Saturn almost immediately. It was the sight of the night. Rings clearly visible, the shadow of the rings visible on the planet itself. Wow. I think I found the moon Titan too, big and bright and hanging off to the left (I don't have enough game to positively identify moons yet). Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis have probably figured out I have a fascination with the moons and rings and other weird crap orbiting Saturn. I spent a half an hour or so looking at it with both eyeieces, playing with focus, trying to discern as much detail as possible.


That was the highlight of the night. Went to the Beehive Cluster, which, like the Pleiades, was too big to see well through the eyepiece, and then to Mars, which was just a feaureless orange ball. But my night had been made. First by the Orion Nebula, then by Saturn.

I get a powerful feeling when I look at the stars that I cannot entirely explain. It's a visceral, almost frightening thrill, like something immensely important is about to be revealed to me. I'm not exaggerating the intensity of the emotion. I think of it as a pre-religious reaction, meaning it's the impetus to religion, the feeling that lures one to belief. Not the belief itself, but the impetus to the belief. That distinction is important to me, though I don't know why exactly. I don't believe in a God that has any day-to-day control over human events. But there is no denying the feeling coursing through my blood, tickling my nerve endings, flooding my brain, lurking in my dreams.