DOBZILLA - Pat Ray, president of the Sunset Astronomical Society, left, stands beside “Dobzilla”, a huge 25-inch Newtonian telescope owned by the society. - Photo by John Morris

Saturday was a stellar night in the Tawases
by John Morris

TAWAS CITY - The dark skies over the Tawases opened up for celestial viewing late Saturday night while Dobzilla slept.

Through a pair of eight-inch reflecting telescopes - a Dobsonian owned by local amateur astronomer Russ Besancon and a Newtonian owned by a member of Sunset Astronomical Society (SAS) who drove to the Tawases from Bridgeport - and a good pair of binoculars, a handful of people viewed several objects from the far corners of the universe.
We gazed at the Orion Nebula and its four Trapezium white-hot stars. We viewed the Crab Nebula, globular and double clusters and the Andromeda and Whirlpool galaxies. The dark skies also gave up an exceptional view of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Did you know you can see Andromeda Galaxy and Orion Nebula through binoculars? Or better yet, if you know where to look, they’re also observable with the naked eye.

Saturday was indeed a stellar night.

One word of warning, however, don’t expect to see colorful images through a telescope such as is shown in magazines. In a telescope, the images look grey as the eye can’t pick up detailed colors like a camera can. Some images, such as distant galaxies, look like small smudges or “faint fuzzies.”

Sponsored by the Iosco-Arenac District Library through a grant from its adult education program, members of SAS, a Tri-Cities area amateur astronomy club, gave presentations Saturday at the Tawas Area Elks Lodge on “Starting off right in Astronomy”, “How Cold is Outer Space?” and “Comet Composition.” Alabaster Township’s Patti Casey spoke on celestial navigation.

But the major attraction was SAS’s massive portable 25-inch Newtonian telescope, dubbed “Dobzilla.” Club members trailered the huge telescope up to the Tawases for two nights of public viewing, weather permitting. Members of the club, as well as other local amateur astronomers, had about a dozen different types of telescopes on display.

However, heavy clouds and rain on Friday and Saturday kept Dobzilla indoors. But by 11 p.m., strong winds blew the cloud cover away, opening the dark night sky, a couple of hours after nearly all of the more than 50 persons who attended the free event had left, including all but one SAS member.

Presentations began at about 3 p.m. Saturday as author Tom Trusock spoke on getting started in astronomy. Trusock said there’s two ways to get started in the hobby: joy or frustration.

“Don’t over complicate things,” he said. “A good way to start is with a pair of binoculars.”

He offered several tips: take time to learn the sky, become education and lose your ego, join a club, have a budget and stick to it and most of all, have fun.

However, heavy clouds and rain on Friday and Saturday kept Dobzilla indoors. But by 11 p.m., strong winds blew the cloud cover away, opening the dark night sky, a couple of hours after nearly all of the more than 50 persons who attended the free event had left, including all but one SAS member.

Presentations began at about 3 p.m. Saturday as author Tom Trusock spoke on getting started in astronomy. Trusock said there’s two ways to get started in the hobby: joy or frustration.

“Don’t over complicate things,” he said. “A good way to start is with a pair of binoculars.”

He offered several tips: take time to learn the sky, become education and lose your ego, join a club, have a budget and stick to it and most of all, have fun.

“Remember, it’s a hobby,” he said. “One thing you’ll find about astronomy is that it will teach you the universe at your level.”

An administrator, editor and writer with the popular amateur astronomy Web site www.cloudynights.com, Trusock is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews and has covered other topics from astronomy outreach to the popular “Small Wonders” series, a semi-regular tour of the night sky.

In picking out that first telescope, Trusock said the most important aspect is aperture - a measure of light-gathering power. “Aperture is far more important at magnification,” he said. “You want to get as much aperture as you can afford.”

But not too much aperture, he adds. “The best telescope is the one that gets used,” Trusock said. “Take portability and price into account.”

He said there’s three main types of telescopes: reflectors (use mirrors to reflect and gather light), refractors (use lens) and compounds (use mirrors and lens).

Reflectors come in two varieties based on their mounts: Dobsonians and German Equatorials. He said Dobsonians are very economical, are easy to use, they do not track celestial objects in the sky and must be collimated (aligning the optics). Equatorials track objects across the sky, are not generally as sturdy, are more complex and also must be collimated.

Refractors are the more traditional-looking telescopes with the eye piece at the end (as opposed to reflectors which have them near the top). Trusock said the advantages are they are easy to use and don’t need to be collimated while the disadvantages are they’re bulky in larger sizes and they give false color in expensive units.

He said advantages of compound telescopes are comfort and portability and disadvantages are they require collimation, have narrow fields of view and complex optical systems.

Trusock also recommends budgeting for other accessories such as eyepieces (two magnifications), covers, dew equipment, a red-light flashlight, a good celestial map or sky atlas. He said suggested reading the many good astronomy books out on the market, which copies are available through the district library.

He said a very good first telescope can be purchased for under $500.

Kevin Dehne, associate professor of science at Delta College who also teaches astronomy, demonstrated how cold outer space is by using liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen has a temperature of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, Dehne said.

“This is the challenge scientist have in sending missions into outer space,” Dehne said while smashing a carnation into small fragments after pulling out from the liquid nitrogen. He also demonstrated the same thing with plastic tubing, a hot dog and a racquet ball.

“Yes, Pluto is a planet,” Dehne said of the decent decision by members of the International Astronomical Union.

Dehne also made of “comet” from four cups of water, four tablespoons of dirt, a dash of ammonia, a dash of Karo syrup (to demonstrate organic matter) and four cups of ground up dry ice. He packed the materials in a plastic bag producing a large cantaloupe-sized ball of ice and dirt.

Lastly, Casey spoke on celestial navigation by sailors who used an instrument called a sextant.

A sextant, Casey said, was used by sailors from the 1700s until about the 1980s, when Global Positioning System (GPS) units first hit the markets.

“Navigation by stars has been going on since the beginning of history,” Casey said.

Casey said a sextant is a device that measures the angle between two objects. It uses two mirrors, one of which allows some light to pass through. In navigation, she said you look at the horizon with an eyepiece through the mirror.

The other mirror, which is attached to a movable arm, reflects light from an object off of it. The angle between the two objects (for example, the sun and the horizon) is then read off the scale at the bottom of the sextant.

She said what makes a sextant so useful in navigation is its accuracy. It can measure an angle, through complex trigonometry, a series of tables and the time of day, to find latitude and longitude with precision to the nearest ten seconds of a degree.

Casey, who is a member of the U.S. Power Squadron, taught celestial navigation for several years and has taken advanced classes which are two years in length.