Have you ever been far away from city lights and noticed the stars like diamonds in the sky? Many people have, and have been deeply moved and amazed by the experience. Touching the Universe chronicles the adventures of author Steve Coe as he shares his love of the night sky. Coe is willing to travel far and wide to view new vistas of the universe. Each chapter in Touching the Universe contains Coe’s observations of the night sky on each of the twenty nights he recalls in detail here. To set the scene for each of the nights, he discusses what led up to choosing each night; then he explains what he observed and learned as he perfected his observation skills. Share with Coe the joy of getting away from the city lights and setting up a telescope under dark skies. Follow a comet as it brightens and forms a tail; see a star cluster or nebula that will take your breath away. Viewing the stars and galaxies that inhabit the night sky provides peace and calm in a way that isn’t available anywhere else.

Touching the Universe

My Favorite Twenty Nights Viewing the SkyBy Steven R. Coe

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Steven R. Coe
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-0247-4

Contents

Introduction................................................................................1Chapter 1: November 10, 1979 Getting Started...............................................4Chapter 2: September 26, 1981 Twin Arrows, Arizona.........................................15Chapter 3: May 26, 1984 Riverside Telescope Makers Conference..............................27Chapter 4: April 11, 1986 First Australia Trip.............................................40Chapter 5: June 27, 1987 Sedona: Maynard and Jean Clark's House............................54Chapter 6: September 17, 1988 Lowell Observatory...........................................64Chapter 7: July 2, 1989 Saturn Occults the Star 28 Sagitarrii..............................74Chapter 8: March 9, 1991 Buckeye Park: Observing Herschel 400..............................82Chapter 9: June 18, 1993 Grand Canyon North................................................91Chapter 10: July 18, 1994 Jupiter Struck by Comet SL9......................................103Chapter 11: December 29, 1994 Sentinel with Pierre's Twenty-Inch f/5.......................110Chapter 12: March 27, 1995 Comet Hyakutake.................................................122Chapter 13: October 22, 1995 The Ultimate Star Party.......................................129Chapter 14: April 12, 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp Public Viewing..................................141Chapter 15: February 26, 1998 Eclipse Cruise: SS Dawn Princess.............................148Chapter 16: October 17, 1999 A Night in the Observatory....................................159Chapter 17: November 18, 2001 Leonid Meteor Storm..........................................166Chapter 18: April 14, 2002 Messier Marathon................................................171Chapter 19: September 27, 2003 First Five-Mile Meadow Trip.................................179Chapter 20: April 1, 2005 The Second Australia Trip........................................192Chapter 21: 2010 My Telescopes through the Years...........................................205Chapter 22 The Five Things It Has Taken Me Thirty-Three Years to Learn.....................226

Chapter One

November 10, 1979

* * *

Getting Started

The night sky has always interested me. Even as a child those points of light in the sky were a source of fascination. Some of my best memories from childhood are of going fishing with my grandfather, Fred Rainey. "Pop," as I called him, taught me that the constellations would show me which direction we were traveling in. There was a "North Star," and it even had pointer stars to make certain you knew where it was located. There was also a "South Star"; it was called Antares, and it resided within a giant fish hook that also looked like a scorpion. When Antares moved beyond the western horizon, a giant hunter (Pop said he was a fisherman) called Orion rose up in the east to take its place. Pop was my hero; he could use the stars to steer the boat home. That was amazing stuff to a six-year-old boy.

I learned more stars and constellations when I joined the Boy Scouts and went after an astronomy merit badge. It took a while to get used to the strange names for the stars. Many of them are Arabic in origin, and it took some time to pronounce and use those names correctly. But I managed and eventually got the merit badge.

By this time it was the sixties and the space age had begun. I remember going outside at the time given in the newspaper and watching a Gemini capsule travel overhead. That tiny dot of light contained two men. Truly amazing! Like so many other people, I remember exactly where I was when the first landing on the Moon occurred, watching on my parent's television as those distorted black-and-white images showed humanity traveling out into the solar system for the first time. It was an amazing feat, and I believed that it would change the world for the better. Ah, the naiveté of a teenager.

Because my draft board insisted, I joined the navy in 1970. My father was a career naval aviator (I was born in Pensacola, Florida, the largest naval air station in the world), so I knew what I was getting into. Just because I was curious about it, I decided to become a submarine sailor. The good news is that the navy kept their part of the bargain and I got a good education as a nuclear power technician and a chance to see the world. I was stationed in Pearl Harbor, and we traveled to the West Coast, Guam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. After all, we did need to keep an eye on the Russians. And they felt likewise about us.

After six years as a sailor, I decided to muster out and get a college education. Arizona State University was my choice for two reasons. First, the state of Arizona is covered in telescopes. It is dry and clear, so the stars are beautiful and there is a lot to see. Second, two of my shipmates, P. J. Boyle and Ray Frazier, were going to attend that same university and we could share expenses. Oh yes, and we could also party together. One of those was more important than the other, but I don't remember the order right now.

I started out at ASU to be a professional astronomer, but it did not work out as planned. I quickly found that many astronomers were mathematicians who wanted to measure the universe, not look at it. Twice I traveled to Kitt Peak National Observatory, near Tucson, to help one of the professors. It was made clear to me that there was no place to look through those instruments; they simply gathered data for later analysis. But I did not want to take measurements; I wanted to look for myself.

The most fun I had with astronomy at ASU was as a teaching aide in the astronomy lab. We set up telescopes and showed folks the sky from the top of the physics building. It certainly was not dark, but we could view the Moon and planets. It helped to introduce other students to what they were learning about in the beginning astronomy courses.

But I was frustrated, so I changed my major course of study to communications. This included courses in journalism, radio, and television. It all turned out for the best. Learning to write clearly and concisely is a skill that proved worthwhile almost right away.

Answering an advertisement in the Sunday paper, I wound up with a job at the DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix. As a professor there for twenty-six years, I trained many technicians. These students graduated from DeVry and had their opportunity to travel around the world, raise a family, and enjoy life. I am proud of that. Many of the astronomical adventures in this book were undertaken while I was a professor at DeVry. The money I made and the time off I enjoyed made it all possible.

My first telescope was an eight-inch Newtonian, a simple scope that is easy to care for and I found fun to use. It uses a carefully polished mirror at the bottom of a tube that reflects the light to another mirror that bounces the light out to the observer's eye. This mirror configuration was invented by Isaac Newton over three hundred years ago, but a good design is still a good design.

The other thing that got me on the track toward really enjoying my time out under dark skies was joining an astronomy club. The Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) in Phoenix is filled with people who just love to get out under dark skies and view the universe. It was great to have a chance to discuss telescopes, eyepieces, objects to view, and places to travel with my fellow club members. Many of them became lifelong friends and observing buddies.

Writing some observing articles for the Saguaro Astronomy Club newsletter started me down a path that led to this book. I called the articles in the SAC newsletter "What's Up." The name was both a pointer to the sky above and a tribute to Bugs Bunny.

David Eicher was a teenager in the Midwest, and his enthusiasm for observing led him to start Deep Sky Magazine. I was fortunate enough to write and publish many articles for Deep Sky. Also, Bob Kepple and Glen Sanner started a set of magazines that covered one constellation per issue, exactly the way I generally keep my observations and logs. Years later they published the Night Sky Observing Guide, a set of three large-volume books that cover most of the objects an observer would see with a modest telescope. I am very proud to be the largest contributor to that project.

Tom and Jeannie Clark started Amateur Astronomy Magazine to provide information about what was not being covered in the major magazines. I revived the name "What's Up" to use in this magazine, and the articles were well received for over five years.

Springer Publishing contacted me during this time, and we discussed my writing a book. After a year of putting some observations, tips, and techniques together, my first book was published. It is called Deep Sky Observing, and it hit the market in the year 2000.

At about this same time, I completed my largest observing list. When Burnham's Celestial Handbook became available in the 1980s I bought my first set of these books at the Riverside Telescope Makers conference. I immediately saw what an excellent job the late Robert Burnham had done by compiling a list of great objects to view and plenty of data about them. I started using Burnham's as my observing list. After fourteen years of dedicated effort I was able to say that I have viewed all the deep-sky objects in those books.

Springer Publishing contacted me about doing a second book, this one in their Advanced Amateur Series. That book took more time than the first, as I had to figure out how much scientific information to include and how much would be purely my observations. After nearly two years, Nebulae and How to Observe Them hit the market in 2006.

Most recently, I have been writing yet another set of "What's Up" articles. They are available on the Internet on the website www. cloudynights.com—just look under the menu "articles" and then "monthly." I have made my way around the sky once, so there are over sixty articles. They cover many of my favorite deep-sky objects, and I am starting to go around again and write about things I missed or did not have room for the first time.

Many would say that writing two books and over 150 articles should be enough for one lifetime. I would agree if I were not obsessed, and I am willing to admit that I am obsessed.

Okay, I am bragging ... enough is enough.

Each chapter within this book contains observations made on a particular night. First I will discuss what led up to that night and what I saw and learned as I made progress toward being a better observer of the sky. I hope that my story will show you some tricks you might not understand right now and will still be entertaining. We do live in a world that must be entertained.

The first night I will discuss is November 10, 1979, very early along my pathway to the stars. I was using the eight-inch Newtonian at Four Peaks Road, about fifty miles from central Phoenix, near Saguaro Lake. It was not dark, but conditions were good enough to see some Milky Way.

Bill Anderson was along for the evening and was taking some photos while I did some visual observing. First up was the Double Cluster in Perseus. This famous grouping of two bright clusters was perfect for using my new eyepiece, a 40mm with a wide field of view for that time.

The designations for the two clusters are NGC 884 and NGC 869. On this night they were easily seen with the naked eye and elongated east-west. Using the 10X50 binoculars I could see six stars resolved in the two clusters. The wide view of the binoculars showed a curved chain of stars that trailed off from the north side. Moving to the eight-inch scope with the wide-field 40mm eyepiece showed twenty-eight stars counted in NGC 869. It was very bright, very large, and pretty compressed. An easily seen dark lane ran through the cluster and cut it into one-third, two-third parts. The other cluster, NGC 884, showed twenty-seven stars counted and was bright, very large, rich in stars, and compressed and displayed several orange stars involved.

During this time, I was just starting to find my way around the Messier list. Charles Messier was an eighteenth-century French comet hunter. He began a list of objects in the sky that looked enough like comets in his simple telescope to be confused with a new comet. Because his scopes were pretty modest instruments, all he could see were the brightest objects in the sky. So an "M" object is always going to be bright compared to other clusters, galaxies, or nebulae.

Messier 52 is a star cluster in the constellation of Cassiopeia. With the eight-inch and a 20mm eyepiece it is bright, large, rich, and not compressed. I saw it as well detached from the Milky Way background. At higher magnification with a 12mm eyepiece I counted forty-five stars in the cluster; the brightest star on the west side was light orange in color. This cluster included a ring of pretty bright stars that made this cluster interesting.

I was getting interested in double stars, an interest that would grow quite a lot over the years. This night I was searching for Eta Cassiopeiae. I spent some time with the star map so I could find its location within the stars of Cassiopeia. Once it was in the field of view of the telescope, I raised the power to 135X to split the pair of stars. This higher power let me see that this was indeed a double star. After observing for a few moments I saw that the colors of the two stars were yellow and light orange. This pair had good color contrast, and I found those colors very interesting.

The colors of stars indicate differences in the temperature of the star. In the same way that a piece of metal changes color as you heat it—red, yellow, and then blue-white as the temperature goes up—the color of a star is determined by the temperature. Red and orange stars are cool, blue stars are hot, and yellow (like our Sun) falls in the middle.

This is just the first of the evenings (and one day) that we will explore in this book. At this point in my time as an observer of the universe, I was just learning the skills needed to find my way among the stars. Many of the names were still difficult, and determining where even bright clusters and galaxies were located could take some time.

In the face of all that, when I did find a new object to view it was thrilling. I wondered if double stars contained other observers looking back at me. How would the sky look from inside one of those clusters of stars? If you could stand the cold, how huge would Jupiter be from one of its satellites?

Between the human imagination and the facts about the universe, there was much to see and learn. I was anxious to get on with it.

Chapter Two

September 26, 1981

* * *

Twin Arrows, Arizona

The eight-inch (200mm) Newtonian was an enjoyable scope, and I saw a lot with it over the three years I owned it. Then I caught a disease called "aperture fever." This is the incessant need for a larger telescope. One of the symptoms of this fever is the illusion of a little voice in your head that says, "If you had a bigger scope, you would see so much more." Okay, I listened to the voice. I sold the eight-inch and shopped for a way to build a larger scope.

I had a chance to visit the Coulter Optical workshop and see rows of automated grinding machines making mirrors by the dozens. In my opinion, it is a noisy and difficult task that I have never taken on. I am more than willing to work for the money so that someone much more qualified than me can grind and polish the mirror in my telescope.

With that in mind I ordered a 17.5-inch (450mm) mirror from Coulter Optical. During the wait for the mirror to be available I started planning how to put that big mirror into a workable telescope. I settled on a simple mount that is similar to a navy gun mount. It moves up and down or left and right. Many people apply John Dobson's name to this design and call it a Dobsonian. The good news is that they are easy to build and maintain.

I bought a large piece of tubular cardboard used in construction as a concrete form to make pillars. One brand name is Sonotube. This large tube would be contained within a plywood box that held the scope together with the mirror resting on a trap door at the rear end. First I needed to get the tubing within the box. This proved more difficult than I first thought.

Once the hammer proved to have little effect, he started using his foot to pound the tube into place. I never did convince him to stand on top and jump up and down. Eventually the tube was in place within the plywood box. I have no doubts that my neighbors were ready to call an ambulance.

At one point I opened the trap door at the exact angle to hit myself in the face with a hot beam of Arizona sunlight from that very shiny mirror. It took at least an hour for my face to cool off. I cannot recommend it as a quick tanning device.

Notice the elongated hole that the focuser sits into. We made a poor measurement of some kind and had to widen the opening to get the focuser in the correct location. I later added a black piece of cardboard to cover the embarrassing hole in the tube. Other than that, the scope turned out just like I hoped it would.

The good thing about owning a large telescope is that it will show you lots of detail within deep-sky objects that are difficult or impossible with a smaller scope. The obvious disadvantage is that it is a larger device and that makes it tougher to move around and set up for the night's viewing session. The other problem is light pollution.

Light pollution is the glow of light that all cities create. Porch lights, athletic fields, advertising, and street lights create a dome of light that can be seen for many miles in all directions. The only way to see clear, dark sky is to drive far from the lights of the city.

Paul Maxson was a SAC member for many years and today takes excellent images of the Sun and planets from his backyard in the little city of Surprise, Arizona. In 1981 his parents owned a parcel of land about thirty-five miles from Flagstaff at an area called Twin Arrows. There was nothing around in any direction that would shine direct lighting onto our observing site—just what you want. It would be my first trip to truly dark sky.

The weather for September 26, 1981, was perfect. There were no clouds, and the sky was clear and dark. The phase of the Moon was new, and New Moon means no Moon, just what is needed to see lots of stars far from the city lights. Paul and I dropped off sleeping bags and other necessities at his parents' cabin nearby and started setting up the telescope in a field that would give us a clear view of the night sky in all directions.

We got all the equipment ready and sat down to eat a sandwich just as the Sun was setting. Once we finished the sandwiches the sky started getting dark and stars were filling the sky from horizon to horizon. The bright swath of the Milky Way was more and more obvious as the twilight gave way to dark sky. The Milky Way is an edge-on view of the galaxy we live in. Lots of stars, star clusters, and nebulae are visible within our beautiful galaxy.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Touching the Universeby Steven R. Coe Copyright © 2011 by Steven R. Coe. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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