The Hobby

A hobby we enjoy is hosting "star parties" for our friends and family. Bring in the friends, cocoa, cider and cookies and a few telescopes to boot and you have yourself a night of laughter, fun and oohs and ahhs. We have a great time, even if it clouds up!

We acquired a 12 1/2", F8, Newtonian Reflector telescope on a German Mount (What a monster that was!). The tube itself is 9 feet long. We built a Dobby box with wheels! so it can be transported easier to the sites. It has been a joint effort with our friend in getting this fine piece of equipment up and running. It is a beautiful piece of woodwork and a fine instrument indeed. The mirror on the scope has been compared to a much larger scopes ( in mirror size). It has superb quality and clarity. Those who have looked through it are equally as pleased. Our friend has ownership of this and he said he wouldn't take any amount of money for it and he has some good offers =) It's more pride of making something out of "not much" that makes it priceless.

Some options that have been added: Finder scope and telerad that mounts onto the tube. Various filters and several eye pieces ( 7, 9, 14, 26, 32mm).Orion Sky Wizard 3 is a handheld (or mounted) computer which are digital setting circles for the telescope that tells us the exact area to find objects.  The Sky , a computer program for windows that interfaces with Sky Wizard which gives us a graphic display of where the scope is pointing in the night sky. And..the most important, a three-legged ladder specially designed for astronomers - it has half steps which are important while looking through a telescope and provides the much needed stability for night time maneuvering.

Here it is...The Telescope

This was taken up near the base of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. After a full day of sun and warm temperatures and very hopeful for excellent viewing, our hopes were dashed...of course it clouded up at about 5:30 pm, as you can see by the picture.
Murphy's Law, don't ya know!!!

We did watch a herd of elk and some deer on the other side of the valley, and met some new friends in the process. We had a great time and laughed a lot, well that is another story.....

We bought a 4 1/2" Meade DS-114EC reflector (with the Autostar Computer Controller) so I could start star-gazing while the bigger scope is being hooked up to the big computer with all it's peripherals. It can take a little while to get everything set up =) This DS-114EC is quick and easy to set up and we don't need a truck to haul it around lol. My goal is to have some custom airbrush work done it perhaps a few nebulas and stars!!

The Rose City Astronomers (part of the Astronomical League), is an organization that is just wonderful in all areas of astronomy.  They have telescoping making classes, observing parties that are held in extremely dark sky country and monthly informative meetings. Special guest speakers are scheduled. In the past we had a scientist/engineer that helped design and make the Mars rover, a Native American story teller, and an expert on terrestrial rocks/meteorites.

If you can check out the night sky and just watch. There are many spectacular things to see. If you time it just right you can catch an Iridium Flash. The Iridium Satellites are a series of 66 satellites launched by Canada. (There were supposed to be 77 satellites which happens to be the atomic number for Iridium. They decided to keep the same name anyway.) The flash you see is from just one satellite.

The flash happens when their reflective shield catches the suns rays.  Some can be seen as a bright strobe/camera flash. You will definitely notice it!  I have seen one start out from what looks like plane lights getting closer then FLASH! then slowly fade out over a small distance. Very spectacular!

A great site to actually calculate the Iridium Flares for your area is called
GSOC Satellite Predictions.