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Lockwood
Custom Optics
Visits Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii April 2019 PART
1 - AUSTRALIA, SDM STAR PARTY
All images and text Copyright Mike Lockwood, 2019. May not be used without permission. |
Trip Planning and the Crossing of Fingers While I wanted to start writing about this amazing trip sooner, I have had other things to attend to, as a self-employed person usually does, and the words just haven't flowed.... until now. A trip is a series of (hopefully frequent) memorable moments dispersed into a timeline. The recollection of a trip is a curious patchwork and non-linear recollection of, sounds, smells, sights, people, places, light and dark, food, drink, and other things. For some reason, certain moments float to the top of our memory, and others only surface later on when doing something like.... say.... writing an article about said trip. I'll call that variable memory buoyancy, and how much something floats depends on how much it means to us, who we were with, and other factors that can't all be identified. It is one of the reasons that I write about my trips. Writing also helps me remember other things, further solidifies my memories, and forms a record that doesn't depend on my own memory. My first memory was of this trip's conception, a conscious decision to go see the southern sky, and that happened when I accepted the generous invitation of Allan Wade to visit his new 32" f/3.3 telescope in a very dark location in Australia. As I recall, this was loosely decided in 2017, it could have been at the solar eclipse or at Okie-Tex, but I don't recall exactly when. I specifically remember discussing it with Allan in person, and I found an email from June of 2018 when April 2019 was finally chosen as the date. I first met Allan and his son Jordan at the 2016 Winter Star Party. He traveled there to check out some large telescopes, their components, and their optics under good conditions. He was in the process of planning his future large telescope and observatory, and he wanted to see what large instruments could do, and if they really could perform as well as we had seen there in the past. As I recall, he was impressed due to good optics and good seeing in the wonderful Florida Keys. While not optimal for transparency, the Keys skies allow optical performance to be evaluated at high magnifications (we have used up to 2600x there!), and it is the best place that I know to see what a large instrument can really do. The trip seemed so far away, but the decision was made, and I would be heading to the southern hemisphere, a trip that I had not had time for in the past. I also had people to visit, which is always superb motivation for me to travel. Traveling by myself just for the sake of sightseeing has never been fun for me, I prefer interaction with local people and getting out of the typical tourist areas. We began planning, and I came up with a rough idea of places that I might visit, and how I might get there easily. Australia is a big place, and flying or driving were the main transportation options, just as in the US. I've never driven on the left side of the road, and I was quite concerned that, due strictly to habit, I might not stay there, especially if I was in a car by myself! So, my hope was to catch rides with others who were already going in a particular direction. This worked out well, and saved a lot of stress for me and greatly simplified things. It also provided some time for good conversations that might not have been had with other transportation arrangements. Allan had a huge amount of work ahead of him, including getting his property ready for visitors, building an observatory, and countless other projects that he endeavored to finish during one of Australia's hottest summers on record. The flight planning took quite a bit of time as I debated and figured out how many days I should spend in each destination and as I coordinated with friends and clients on ways to get to and from airports. Eventually things fell into place in a way that didn't inconvenience anyone, and I almost felt as if some magic was happening. I got my Australian visa (they require one) well ahead of time, and it was a simple online process. Yet another task was done. I ended up booking my final flights around and home from Hawaii a bit later than I wanted, but the costs weren't unreasonable, and it was a very good feeling after I booked the final flight. I ended up with eleven flights making up the whole journey, as well as three car trips in Australia, and one in New Zealand, not to mention rental cars on Maui. I crossed my fingers and hoped that there wouldn't be too many delays, cancelled flights, or other unexpected events. The Race to Vacation As for the trip itself, let's start at the beginning. Right here, before I dive into my recollections and get down to storytelling, I want to thank all of the friends and clients that I visited and spent time with, shared journeys with, shared food and drink with, and shared thoughts and conversation with. I thoroughly enjoyed all of it..... except the red-eye flight from Brisbane to Honolulu, which was on a different airline than I had planned. My back didn't enjoy that one, but I survived. Now let's travel back to late March of 2019, only a few months removed from when I am writing this, but it seems longer given all of the miles traveled. A fairly warm, unchecked, and unobstructed prairie wind was blowing - which was quite helpful, actually, and quite common for Spring - as I threw down grass seed at a frantic pace on a warm, windy Thursday morning in east central Illinois. The temperature was not too cold, and I broadcast the seed with bare hands. Spring was finally in the air. I watched the seed's path curve in the air as it was broadcast, and I thought about flying on a much larger gentle curve halfway around the world in the coming twenty-four hours. My mind was racing with things that I needed to do, and I was trying to think of things that I had forgotten to pack. I was on the cusp of a long trip, facing a short flight followed by the longest I'd ever experienced, and I would be damned if I didn't try to set things up so that if it rained in the spring as it normally did, I would have some new grass to greet me when I returned home in just over three weeks. There was a lot of mud around my garage addition, and I was tired of tracking it everywhere and cleaning off shoes. I hoped that mowing the rest of the yard wouldn't be necessary, but if that did prove to be the case, I asked a kind neighbor to cut the high areas if the grass did take off and it was getting really tall. Who knows when spring will arrive in Illinois, and as it turned out, this year it arrived late. The rest of the morning is a blur in my memory, and after lunch I was on my way to the airport. As I waited for my first flight, they announced that the plane would not have a working restroom, and if anyone had an issue, then they might have to delay the flight. I had a reasonable layover in Dallas, but this did not do good things for my stress level. After visiting the bathroom more than once, I finally boarded and managed to zone out for much of the flight, which was a bit faster than normal in an attempt to compensate for the late departure and non-functional bathroom. After a piece of non-functional airport equipment blocked our intended gate, we had to wait for an alternative gate, and I was wondering if the rest of my trip would go smoothly or be a clusterflop. Beer in a Flying Saucer Well, it all turned out fine, I got off the plane (finally), and I had plenty of time to have a snack and look for a beverage. I took the airport train to the proper termina, and I walked around with a heavy backpack on my back, crammed full of camera equipment, my laptop, and whatever else I could fit in. I wanted to stand up for as long as possible due to the impending 17-hour flight, but it was time for a break. I spotted a sign for the Flying Saucer, an establishment that normally had 40 beers on tap, which sounded like my kind of place. They were under construction, but they still had a number of good dark beers, on tap, so I had to have one prior to my flight to Sydney via Qantas, as I recall it was the "Lakewood Temptress" stout, and it was tasty. At this point the uncertainty of the earlier part of the trip was fading away, as the next flight, the big one, was on time and boarding nearby in the near future.  I talked with someone at the bar, and told them a little bit about what I do. I always have to give the abridged version of my job, because it takes too long to explain it all. It's quite predictable - I always get asked "How do you do that?", and I always respond, "Well that would take me three hours to answer." It's usually good for a small laugh and buys me a way out of a long conversation that I may not feel like being part of. I tend to reserve serious conversational effort about my career for astronomers who will be more likely to understand and appreciate what I have to say.  Soon it was after 8pm central time and time to board Qantas Flight 8, and I found my premium economy seat and settled in. I've had back problems in the past, so sitting for more than a couple of hours in a bad chair is no fun for me, and I was willing to pay for more comfort in order to avoid aggrivating the old injury. Fortunately I was given an upgrade thanks to Allan, and I was able to enjoy the very long flight even more. Leg room was plentiful (photo at right). Ambien at your own risk! I've heard that some people who take Ambien end up doing crazy things on airplanes, and though I do have trouble sleeping on flights, I didn't want to try anything that I hadn't tried before and risk messing up a very long trip. My preference is a drink or two and then to put on some soothing music or a boring movie. My plan was to stay up quite a bit later than normal and then get some sleep so that I would be closer to Australian time (nine hours behind, but the next day) when I arrived. I can stay up late quite easily, usually, but it is very hard for me to go to sleep earlier than normal. A large dinner was served, and I almost had to stop the flow of food because I just couldn't eat anymore, but it was very, very good food, and it was difficult not to finish it. Well done Qantas. I watched TV shows (lots of Top Gear) and a movie (First Man), but I was not really that tired. That's what happens to me when I have a day without much physical activity. Eventually I decided that I should really try to sleep. Earplugs alone weren't enough to block out the sounds, so I pulled down the headphones and heard the soothing, repetitive, slow, melodic Qantas music as I tried to drift off to sleep. It was a bit like the theme of a magical journey, and if you think about it, traveling this far, around 8,600 miles, in one long stretch, is really just that. Busy flight attendants strode by briskly, and I could feel their steps move my seat as the floor flexes and feel a breeze as they move by. I've honestly never seen a crew that worked so hard for an entire flight to make sure that passengers had everything that they wanted and needed, but it was keeping me awake. Eventually I managed to get a few hours of sleep and wake up before breakfast, feeling better, and feeling quite capable of facing a very long day to come. Just getting through the long flight was my main concern on this part of the trip, and the end was now in sight, just a few hours away. Coffee was most welcome, and a delicious breakfast helped me feel more normal. The thought of the coming discoveries and new sights filled me with energy. We landed at about 6am Sydney time on what was now Saturday in Oz, on schedule, in a light rain, in darkness. The little that I could see outside the windows - mostly the airport's sodium vapor lights - didn't look that much different, but I was on continent that was new to me. I carefully gathered all of my things and checked every seat pocket and other place that I could have left something. All was accounted for, and with my jacket and backpack in my posession, I headed up to see Allan in the cockpit. I Couldn't Even Order Coffee It was fascinating to see the front of a very large airplane. After a short tour of the cockpit, and of course lots of photos taken there, we breezed through immigration and customs, left the airport, and drove over the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the rain. From the road it looks so different than the typical image of it taken from afar that most Americans see, and I enjoyed the different perspective. I had last been on the left side of the road and in the left passenger seat in England in 2015, and I was getting used to it again.   As we got out of the city, I requested a pit stop to recycle coffee, stretch, and to get more coffee on our drive north from Sydney to Newcastle, and to my surprise I was bewildered by the choices for coffee. Don't misunderstand, Australians take their coffee very seriously and it is delicious, but the terminology is quite different than in the US or Europe. Allan is not a coffee drinker, so I was on my own feeling quite confused due to the myriad of strange choices, time change, and lack of sleep. I finally settled on a Mocha, I think, because that's hard to go wrong with, but "Long Black" would have sufficed. The extra caffeine got me through the rest of the drive into a cloudy Newcastle, where we stopped by a hardware store for some supplies for the astronomy site, and then unloaded our bags at Allan's. Then it was time for grocery shopping, a sushi lunch pulled bit by bit off a moving conveyor, and of course, beer shopping for the coming week. What had I forgotten? The correct power adapter for Australia, easily remedied by borrowing one, and my running shorts, also easily remedied by visiting a clothing store just before buying beer. After visiting a cellular phone store, I decided that I could probably get along without my phone for most of this leg of the trip, so it was turned off. While I text a bit at home, most of my communication is by email, which I would have access to. In the afternoon the sun emerged, we visited one of Newcastle's beautiful beaches, and we climbed a nicely constructed walkway with lots of stairs up to a great overlook of the city and the ocean. After helping remove some unwanted trees at his girlfriend's place, it was time to head into Newcastle for dinner and drinks. When ordering a beer, we were not expecting an $18 price tag for a good stout, so we decided to move on to a different location for dinner. Some delicious Indian food made us quite full, and we headed back to Allan's to do some wine and port tasting while we tried to think of the essential bands of the 1980s for the fun of it. Of course I had to have a look at the clear sky outside, a slightly light-polluted preview of what was to come. I saw the LMC for the first time, Orion in a strange orientation, Crux and Eta Carina nearly straight up, and Scorpius rising upside down, as I perceived it, in the northeast. This was going to be a lot of fun when we got to a dark site. I was just trying to stay awake until midnight or so in order to truly get on Australian time. It was a very fun evening with Allan and Kirsten, and after a shower I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.   I awoke to a much cooler morning, a deep blue sky, and strange bird calls outside. I figured out how to use the unfamiliar coffee compressor/percolator, and I worked on my Winter Star Party article until others woke up. We didn't eat too much because a significant lunch was planned. We met up with Dave Cotterell and Ed Wiley at their hotel and headed to a restaurant with a good beer offering and had some excellent food and beer. We headed to a nearby beach, then back to the same beach I had visited the previous day and climbed the stairs again on another beautiful day. This time I took note of the World War I memorial, which had engraved last names of all of those who had fought and lost their lives. I managed to find a Lockwood etched into the metal, and paused to take a photo after wiping some of the rust away. After leaving Ed and Dave at their hotel, Allan made a great lamb dinner with potatoes and veggies, and we sampled some red wine. Talk turned to astronomy and other topics as we anticipated the coming days of observing, meeting new people, and relaxing. Soon it was time to sleep, and I welcomed the next day when the dark southern sky would finally be seen by my eyes. I had started my life under a very dark northern sky, so seeing the rest would complete a type of journey.   An American in Coolah (not an Englishman in New York) Monday arrived, and after coffee and a bit of breakfast, we packed up, met Dave and Ed at their hotel, and with them following, Allan pointed the car west and we headed out of Newcastle, through the dividing range, and on to his astronomy site near Coolah. We drove a winding two-lane road with occasional large trucks that were eventually passed when there was room. I was impressed with the lack of population density, indicating dark skies.  We stopped for lunch at a small bakery and restaurant, and it was a good opportunity to try some different types of food and sandwiches, as well as some desserts. There were many tempting things in the refrigerated cabinets behind the glass. I picked up a bit of extra for later in the day. This type of business wasn't very common where I live, and it is something that Americans might see more in cities. Arriving at the astronomy site around mid-afternoon, we settled in. A recent heavy rain had given formerly brown grass a nice green tint, and this helped keep the dust down for days. With the red dirt and rocks and distinctly Australian trees surrounding us to the south, it looked like Australia to me. The observing field and buildings are shown below.  Cameras and tripods were unpacked and assembled, and everyone worked on their observing and photography plans. My plan was to shoot a time lapse showing the observatory, telescope, our group, and the southern sky rotating around the south celestial pole over the observatory roof, which of course rolled off to the south. Latitude was close to 30 degrees south, so this set up a very nice shot that showed what made the southern hemisphere and its sky special for those of us from the north.  I
don't recall dinner that night, I think it was some food that Allan
had brought from Newcastle. We did have a quick toast of a
hefeweizen, and Allan used the taster glass that I brought from Riggs
Beer Company, a great local brewery in Urbana, IL, a short
drive from
my shop. I'm guessing that's the farthest that their
glassware
has made it.The sky is what I remember most, of course. As darkness fell, it cooled off quickly and it was windy. I went inside to put on long underwear and gradually added more layers until I was wearing a winter coat and jacket underneath, as well as a winter hat and gloves. While we tried to keep warm and complained about the poor seeing and bloated star images, my camera and interval timer faithfully kept clicking off exposures every few minutes, creating the images that would form a great time lapse. The stars at night are big and bright . . . . deep in the heart of Coolah Aside from the poor seeing (which caused those "big" stars) the sky was magnificent. It was dark and transparent. What stood out most to me immediately was the exceptional brightness of the southern Milky Way from Centaurus up through Crux and into Carina. While I had seen a number of the southern objects from the Florida Keys, the brightness of this region of the sky could not cut through the Florida haze near the horizon, and the effect is lost there, where it has a fraction of its true glory in terms of its brightness. We gathered in the observatory, which is elevated from the ground by about three feet to get away from ground seeing, bugs, and snakes. After all, it is that part of the world where many potentially deadly creatures can crawl or slither around, and it is best to minimize interaction with those things. Allan's 32" f/3.3 SDM telescope, nicknamed the "Black Widow", was ready to perform. However, sky conditions on the first night would not have allowed us to notice the difference of setting up right on the ground because the seeing was quite poor. Defocused stars were a boiling disk. However, it was dark and very clear. We looked at many of the showpiece objects with low power due to the seeing, but this allowed us to appreciate them in a wide-field manner, and this was a very good way to be introduced. Looking at a small section of the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellantic Cloud (LMC), was just not the same as seeing most of it in one field. To me, it took on the form of a screaming demon, and it was a bit of an astronomical Rorschach test, I thought, and I didn't know what that said about my mental condition! The Small Magellantic Cloud (SMC) was quite obvious, but getting lower, as was the brilliant and dense 47 Tucanae, just below it. Omega Centauri is larger, but not as dense, so everyone has a different opinion of what the "best" globular in the sky is depending on what they like to see and what telescope they are viewing with. On this night Omega Centauri was "better" to me because 47 Tucanae didn't resolve as well due to sky conditions. Eta Carina high up was beautiful and much brighter and more detailed than at WSP, but it was not a good night to view the Homonculus Nebula, surrounding the star Eta itself, at high power. We could see the distinctly orange object though, but its dust lanes and lobes were obscured by turbulent air. Those would have to wait until later in the week. Still new to the time zone, we did not stay up all night. We all got quite tired and a bit cold, so we decided to call it a night. I stopped my camera, and checked out some of the time lapse frames, including the one below in which Allan and I posed for one exposure. Some port was sipped as we sat in the darkened dining room, and soon it was off to a warm bed and a sound sleep. I shared a room with Canadian Dave, while Ed got his own room in a small separate building until other guests arrived. Audio observing notes, night 1: "(Wind noise heard) Horsehead Nebula pops out nicely with an H-beta filter, probably a bit easier than in the humidity at WSP. Tarantula Nebula is as bright as Orion, and much bigger. Crab Nebula pretty low, but shows up, though seeing is too bad to note any detail. UHC filter gives the Crab some hints of structure. Just checked out Thor's Helmet, and I think the ladder tried to blow over! A planisphere blowing around the observatory! Looked at Ghost of Jupiter, brighter than at WSP, but not as detailed due to seeing. Eight-Burst Nebula is much brighter and better defined than at WSP, according to my memory of it there. NGC 3918 is a profoundly blue planetary that is just above Crux here at this time of night, but at WSP would be to the west of Crux. Not much detail is noted due to poor seeing. The Homunculous Nebula is visible quite easily and is a blazing bright orange, even in the poor seeing, when it settled, you could see the two lobes easily. NGC 2808 is resolved and is a fantastically dense and orange globular. It is on the south edge of the Milky Way and wouldn't be seen at WSP. M83 shows a lot of really excellent detail, very low in the northern sky, but still very impressive spiral structure. M104 is really bright with a very pronounced dark lane as it rises much higher than it would at home. NGC 4038, the Antenna Galaxies, really looks just like that - has a couple of ear lobes and very bright and obvious structure. Seeing is so bad that it is tough to split Alpha Centauri, a very wide, bright double obviously. It has to be 5 or 6 arcseconds at some times. NGC 4762 is kind of small but nice looking - not a lot of detail observed because of the seeing. NGC 3293, the Gem Cluster, looks nice, a bit like the Jewel Box cluster. Melotte 101 is a very nice, large cluster in the southern Pleaides."  The Scenery and the Neighbors I woke up on Tuesday morning and the cool morning air was ideal for getting in a nice run for a workout. I headed down the long, winding gravel driveway at a moderate pace, and I was pleasantly surprised to see three kangaroos take off through the bush away from me and to my left. The greeting party disbursed, I hung a left and mentally readjusted myself to run down the right side of the road so I would be facing traffic. Drive on the left, run on the right. Only a few cars passed me on this beautiful morning in very rural New South Wales. When running off the pavement to give cars room to pass, I was very attentive to anything that looked like a snake, but on the whole trip I did not see one snake, only a redback spider. After a very nice 25 minutes or so, I walked for a bit to cool down, happy that my seated elliptical machine kept me in good enough shape to go for a run without training. I enjoyed a nice breeze in the shade, but noted the rapidly rising temperatures. It was going to be a warm day. Back in the house, we noted a rather serious problem - the only coffee-making device could only make one cup of coffee at a time, and had to be cleaned out after each cup was made! Luckily I had brought it with me from Allan's house, and it was only there because another friend had left it, since Allan doesn't drink coffee. Allan clearly didn't understand the gravity of a situation in which astronomers who have stayed up late into the night are deprived of coffee and must cobble together filters from scraps of cloth and other items on hand. I showed Ed and Dave how to use the magical device and how to clean it out (careful it's hot!), and we debated what the coffee protocol would be in the morning. We settled on rotating use until each of us had had our fill. As it turned out, it was a little ritual that brought us together every morning, and also an amusing memory that makes me smile. I'll have to look for one of those little coffee makers to add to my collection of coffee-producing devices.  Allan made preparations for dinner, which was a slow-roasted lamb done in the slow cooker. With that appliance loaded and warming up, and after a light breakfast we headed into Coolah for lunch, and then out of town on a 20-minute drive, gaining some altitude, to Coolah Tops State Park to see some forest and more kangaroos and wallabies. It was nice and cool a little bit higher up, and under the canopy of tall trees. We hiked the paths and saw a nice waterfall, and after an hour or two we headed back to Allan's where the astronomy preparations once again began.   Some of the neighboring sheep and cattle stopped by the fence to say hello and check out the visitors. Soon it was dinner time and the four of us enjoyed the slow-cooked lamb with vegetables huddled around the small dinner table, talking enthusiastically about the coming night's observing and sipping some interesting beer.    We were eager
to get out under the sky, and Ed and Dave started implementing their
imaging plans. Both had goals to shoot certain objects, and
they
had done quite a bit of work planning for their time under the southern
sky. By contrast, I had a couple of ideas in the back of my
head,
but I had to see the sky first before deciding where to put the camera
and what to try to incorporate into each shot. I did resolve
to
shoot some non-wide-field images of the Carina region and of the
Magellantic clouds, hoping to get a couple of images worth printing and
putting on my wall.Tuesday night provided better observing than the previous night, but it was still cool. I started a time lapse of the rising Milky way around the galactic center, with Scorpius and Sagittarius rising upside down as they rode their giant arc around the SCP. The moisture from the previous week's rains was still present, and dropping temperatures caused my 24mm lens to fog up late in the night. We turned in slightly later, and when I woke up at about 4am I went out and brought the camera in and found the dew. Then I went back to sleep. Assembling the time-lapse later, I found the dew in the dry Australian interior to be amusing, especially with bright Jupiter in the frame, and I left it in the video. Tuesday night audio observing notes: "Night two is a lot calmer and the seeing is a bit better. Looked at a few random stars as things were cooling off. Shot some panoramas and a photo of the observatory and the sky over it. Then we observed Eta Carina and slewed around a lot, ridiculous amount of detail, not quite as bright as Orion, but far, far bigger. The Tarantula nebula looks like a demon with its mouth open and some wings or something. This is with an OIII filter on both objects. SQM reading 21.6, some skyglow showing up in photos this night and similar SQM and skyglow seen the night before. Viewed NGC 3195 in Chameleon, NGC 3211 in Carina, Blue Planetary in Centaurus, NGC 3918. Looked at the "Pencil" area in Vela supernova remnant, I have seen at WSP, but it is quite easy with a 32" and an OIII filter. NGC 3201 looks like a fainter version of M11 to me, a concentrated, but still open, cluster. NGC 4949 is a long edge-on, kind of like M82 only larger and fainter, really lots of structure. Centaurus A has a fantastically detailed dust lane, more than I have ever seen, as expected. NGC 346 in the SMC, nice nebula about 1/4-degree across. Next is NGC 121 in SMC, a small globular on the edge of 47 Tucanae. NGC 362 is a little foreground object just in front of the SMC, a very pretty fully resolved globular. Looked at small nebulae and clusters in SMC that are all close together and very pretty in when viewed in the same field. Tarantula Nebula in 17mm Ethos, no filter - can still see the demon, but there is a cluster in the middle with almost circular of arcs of stars that almost form a bullseye - very stunning and memorable view and object. Doing a tour of all kinds of little objects in the LMC, too many names to record, so I won't try. NGC 1850 is the bright globular in the middle of one field, and NGC 1855 to the right, and NGC 1858 an open cluster, NGC 1860 an open cluster, all in the same field of view - very rich field." Wednesday brought the arrival of two astronomers. The event that Allan was having was by invitation, mainly for owners of SDM Telescopes, built in Australia by Peter Read. A few other friends were also invited. With the arrivals settling in, we drove into Coolah to the local pub for a tasting of some inexpensive Australian beer and dinner. Australian food continued to impress me - I was expecting typical bar food as I ordered fish and chips, and others ordered pizza, in what looked like a typical bar. What we got was quite excellent, and the quality and presentation pleasantly surprised me. I found this throughout my travels in both Australia and later in New Zealand, and it was one of the other very enjoyable aspects of the trip. Wednesday night we enjoyed observing through Allan's 32" f/3.3, as well as some views through the scopes of the early arrivals, though they tended to gravitate towards Allan's larger instrument, of course. On this night, before more people arrived, I took what was perhaps my favorite photo from the trip, a shot through my 24mm lens of Allan on his observing ladder with the 32" and the brightest part of the Milky Way arcing over his head. I have had requests for prints of it to be made. The SDM Star Party Begins Thursday brought most of the rest of the attendees, and the field filled up with telescopes and cars. Allan had made up name tags for everyone, and he was busy greeting people and assisting with their setup, showing them where to plug in extension cords, and getting everyone to sign up for the shower schedule. There was only one bathroom, and by some miracle the septic tank didn't overflow, the septic field didn't turn into a mud pit, and the lawn survived the event! There was leftover pizza for lunch on Thursday in the midst of all of the excitement and tasks to get done, and then tacos for dinner, I believe, and then it was time for us to try to remember too many names and faces and telescopes. Allan and I became friends with Bruce "The Bringer of Port" Renowden (see his article here), and we sampled some nice tawny ports courtesy of him. (Of course Allan had his own supply, too.) Good times were had, jokes were made, and I tried to keep up with the Australian lingo. Australian rhyming slang was quite unexpected, but interesting! After darkness had fully arrived and everyone had time to set up and align their own telescopes and have a look at an object or two, many of them gravitated toward the 32" f/3.3 telescope. Allan's observatory was quickly full of happy observers looking through one of the larger telescopes in Australia, under a superb, clear sky, and everyone was enjoying all those things and a beverage if they wished. For me, that's perfection in astronomy, and the reason that I attend events. Peter Read (Mr. SDM Telescopes) and his wife Kim arrived that evening, and he enjoyed observing for a while before heading back into town where he and his wife were staying. It was great to finally meet him in person after only communicating by email and an occasional internet phone call in the past. I would visit him after the star party concluded. With the 32" heavily utilized by people who hadn't used it before, my goal for this night, other than socializing and fostering my continuing education on the subject of red wine and port, was to shoot some narrower images of the Eta Carina Nebula area and the Magellantic Clouds with my 24-70mm zoomed into 70mm, and a wide-field image of the rising Milky Way in the Scorpius and Sagittarius region with my fast 24mm lens. I managed the latter two, but I ended up re-shooting the Eta Carina region on a later night due to some strange lens distortion in my 24-70mm zoom. Two stacked images are shown below, and I am fairly happy with how they came out. At full resolution they will make nice prints, and I don't think they are over-processed. The Eta Carina shot had some funny artifacts, and was re-shot later on. Still, it looks fairly good.   On Friday morning many of us got up and assembled into a caravan to make the trip to Siding Spring Observatory, the location of the Australian national observatory complex. It is the site of many telescopes up to 3.9-meters in aperture, and we were to get a tour of the highlights. On the one-hour drive we passed the site of Oz Sky, a star party going on at the same time as Allan's event at a hotel not too far from Siding Spring, and also Coonabarabran, the only sizable town in the area. Soon our caravan of vehicles was climbing up the mountain to the observatories. Below is one view from the top.  We took a walking tour of some of the observatories, including the 2.3-meter and 3.9 meter instruments. Our tour guide, Amanda, did a superb job and answered lots of questions from very curious amateur astronomers. One of the highlights was walking around the catwalk of the massive 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope dome (photo below, our lack of smiles is because we were stunned by the great view!) Siding Spring is mostly surrounded by Warrumbungle National Park, which encompasses the other surrounding peaks and forest as seen in the background below.  After walking all the way around and admiring the view in all directions, we finished the tour inside. After leaving our hard hats behind, I took some group photos outside with our tour group in front of the 3.9-meter dome for scale - here's our group photo outside the AAT dome (below, left) and a shot of the 2.3-meter Cassegrain and part of the group as one of the staff explains how it operates (below, right). The entire building that houses the 2.3-meter rotates, and they turned it completely around for us during our tour.   Here's a final HDR image of the 3.9-meter AAT to conclude this portion of the story. Our guide showed us the instrument that was mounted on the secondary cage, which I believe was utilizing prime focus. It is a corrector and spectrograph that had hundreds of fiber optics (just out of the field of view of the image below to the right) to capture the spectra of hundreds of targets in one area of the sky. Simply amazing, you have to love science!   We picked up a few
souvenirs, and I now have a bottle/can koozie
that says "Siding Spring Observatory". Before we went back
down
the mountain for lunch, though, we got permission and I had
Allan take a photo of me in front of the Faulkes South telescope.
Way back in 2009 a kind friend arranged for a tour
of the
Faulkes North, on the summit of Haleakala,
Maui, so I thought that a photo of me in front of its sibling would be
appropriate. In the photo at right, a small black and white
sign
on the building just to the left of the dome says "Faulkes Telescope
South". These are 2-meter Ritchey-Chretien telescopes.
(It's just coincicence that Las Cumbres Observatory and
Lockwood
Custom Optics have the same acronym!)Soon we gathered some of the hungry group and headed down the mountain and up a gravel side road to the Tibuc Gardens Cafe, a small restaurant, for a very late lunch. Some went back to to Allan's property, but about half of us gathered for lunch at an interesting restaurant in a valley below Siding Spring. There weren't a lot of choices of food outside of Coonabarabran, so this was our lunch stop, and I'm guessing that it is popular with the Siding Spring staff. I was very hungry and thirsty. I had a thai dish, and it turned out to be delicious. This was yet another reason I was so impressed with the food on this part of the trip, there were really no disappointements. As we were enjoying lunch, Rob McNaught (of Comet McNaught fame) and Gary Kopff (maker of the Argo Navis) also stopped by. Rob would join us later for an epic night of observing, and it was great to meet both of them in the same place. Some of the attendees of the Oz Sky star party were also having a meal there at the same time, since it was just down the road. We stopped in the parking lot of the Warrumbungles Mountain Motel where that event is held just to see the site and say that we had been there. I think everyone was sleeping or attending a talk, and it was very, very quiet there. Greatly satisfied by a delicious and very social lunch, we drove back to Allan's and probably had a beer, relaxed a bit, and prepared for the coming night. On the field before dark, Peter Read was working on a client's telescope. Parts and tools were everywhere as he got to work and accomplished whatever he needed to do before darkness fell. Grinder in hand, some sparks flew as he worked on a part. I think he was having fun. We did our best to distract him, but he was unflappable, except for a slight smile seen in the photo below.  Due to our late lunch, we skipped dinner and went straight to observing, but first Allan and I wanted to shoot some group photos to capture the moment and see how a photo with the telescope and observatory would look. As the sun got low, we herded all of the astronomers over to the observatory and got everyone lined up for a first try at a group photo, which came out fairly well. We would do the official group photo the next night when more people were around, and it would have the observing field and many telescopes in it.  All of the typical southern objects were viewed, but I insisted on cranking up the magnification to see the Sombrero Galaxy at around 1800x. While the seeing wasn't superb, we all enjoyed the view, as if hovering over the dust lane in orbit around it. Sometimes you have to do things just because you can! The camaraderie, beautiful sky, great telescope, and delicious port all combined to make another fantastic and memorable night. I shot photos inside the observatory as people milled around. Rob McNaught summed it up nicely: "It was the best night I have ever had looking through a telescope eyepiece.... Huh, size does matter, but then so does focal ratio! Perhaps one day I'll get a telescope, but because your telescope has distorted by pre-conceptions of what is possible, I suspect I'll die alone (telescopeless). Nothing available to me could ever match it... so THANKS A LOT ALAN ;-)" Thank you, Rob, your words and sentiments mean a lot to me. It was wonderful to meet you and observe a bit with you. Observing notes: I believe it was on Friday night that we tracked down the SN1987A remnant. It was actually helped along by an oversight. As Allan stepped away to do something else, Wes and I set about finding the star field, and unbeknownst to us, the OIII filter was still in place in the filter slide because it had been used on the previous object. However, when I got my turn at the eyepiece, the filter actually helped me see some nebulosity that was present on the finder chart and the images of the area, and thus helped me find the two supernova remnants, the Honeycomb and SN1987A. So, that filter might have saved us some time! The 32" aperture was still enough to show the two SNRs even through the filter. Both objects were quite small, but appeared somewhat non-stellar. We later spotted both in a 20" without a filter after I knew what the field looked like." (Note from after returning home - I looked at some images of the area of the two SNRs and I think the two were switched on the chart that we were using. However, I am 100% certain that we saw both SNRs.)  On Saturday another attendee and I gave talks. Mine was about the mirror making process, with a few other photos mixed in for fun. After my talk ended, I spotted a redback (black widow) spider in one of the braces of the shed and shot a couple of photos. Allan promptly dispatched it with bug spray after I took photos of his telescope's namesake, as was only appropriate. The talks were followed by a pizza lunch with pizza supplied by the pub that we had visited earlier in the week, picked up and delivered by Allan. Dave and Ed were in charge of collecting the money for the pizza, and they took their responsibility seriously and finally managed to track everyone down. It was a nice gathering as most of us ate in the shade of Allan's shed and talked about food and astronomy. Beer was enjoyed by many. Allan's girlfriend Kirsten arrived with a gigantic astronomical print to hang in the house as well as her son and Allan's son Jordan. It was so ginormous (that's a tecnical term for HUGE astronomical prints) that they were laughing about it. It will take of most of one wall in the small house. The kids set about entertaining themselves. Jordan had fun on his dirt bike. Another clear night followed our dinner of leftover pizza, and I observed as late as I could. My notes on this night are brief because I was getting quite tired from waking up a bit earlier than I would have liked to due to the noise of people going in and out of the house. I was starting to see things in my dark adapted vision at about 2am when I called it a night. I have experienced this type of fatigue at Okie-Tex in the normal years when it's clear all night, most nights, and it is time to go to bed when this happens! I wished I could stay up later on this final night of the event to enjoy the southern sky a bit more, but others were turning in too, and I just couldn't go on any longer. Below, at left, Allan and I pose with the Black Widow, and below at right Allan observes with the 32" as I shoot a wide-angle shot. Thanks to a very kind attendee for his loan of a fast 14mm Sigma lens for an hour or two.   On Saturday as the sun dipped low I hopped the fence into the pasture next door with a ladder and tried to herd astronomers and telescopes into a photographically interesting arrangement. This took some time, and with every minute the sun got lower and more shadows crept in. I finally succeeded after a few tries, and managed to get some good HDR shots while carefully hand-holding my camera while rather high up on a ladder and trying to keep the aim consistent so that the photos could be aligned later for HDR processing. Peter Read reciprocated and stood behind everyone on a ladder with arms raised, as if he were the telescope messiah! I was thrilled with the resulting image, it really captured the event.  Final audio observing notes, from multiple nights, probably: "Just viewed Pallas and Iris, larger asteroids. We think we have located Proxima Centauri, just after looking at Beta Pictoris for the heck of it, just because it has known planets around it. The Bug Nebula in Scorpius is showing a lot of detail with an OIII filter, it is quite extended and you can see a sort of V-shaped notch in one side and lobes and things. NGC 6231 is a very bright cluster in the tail of the Scorpion, should be able to see it at home. Also looked a parts of the Cat's Paw. NGC 6397 in Ara is very bright, sparse, and very large, but not as dense as other globulars. NGC 6388 is interesting, when you look at it with averted vision it looks almost comet-like, with direct vision you see a little sprinkling of texture and maybe a few resolved stars, but it is quite low in the sky and may be resolved when higher. NGC 6352 is a bit fainter, but resolved, a bit sparse. NGC 5189 - really excellent planetary, 3'x2', mag 9.5, very large, in Musca, excellent with OIII filter, could be explored more on a better night at higher power. NGC 4833 in Musca is very nicely resolved at high power. NGC 6723, kind of low in Corona Australis, globular cluster, kind of sparse but resolved in the poor seeing. Barnard 86 looks very nice in Sagittarius. Omega Centauri at ~15 deg from the zenith looks amazing. Centaurus A almost overhead looks great, faint stars popping out in the dust lane as well as a bright band through the dust lane and a little bit of brightening in the center of the galaxy at the edge of the dust lane where the central bulge is. On Sunday morning people were packing up and saying their farewells. I helped Peter Read and Allan a little bit on some modifications and improvements of the 32" in preparation for Allan taking it to the South Pacific Star Party a month or so later. We were done by lunch, and said goodby to the SDM (Size Does Matter!) Star Party near Coolah. |
Clear, dark, southern skies, no worries, lamb is delicious, good luck ordering coffee or making it one cup at a time, and watch out for black widows! Part two is now posted: Part 2 - Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii -Mike Lockwood, Lockwood Custom Optics |