89mm Questar takes on 206mm Astro-Physics at Mars Skywatch!

Howard County, Maryland, Nov 5, 2005 -- The Howard Community College
(HCC) Science Department and the Howard Astronomical League (Howard
Astro) http://www.howardastro.org presented "Mars Skywatch 2005" at
the HCC's Belmont Conference Center on the evening of Saturday,
November 5. Several hundred members of the public came out to get a
look at Mars (and the crescent Moon and Venus earlier in the evening.)
I was too busy to get around to count the number of Howard Astro
members who brought telescopes, but it could easily have been 40 or
more.

The forecast had called for partly cloudy weather, but light clouds
dissipated before dark and seeing was very good, particularly
considering that the event was held between Baltimore and Washington,
D.C.

Martin Cohen of Company 7 http://www.company7.com, aided by
volunteers from Howard Astro, brought the legendary 206mm Astro-Physics
Starfire EDF from his showroom. This remarkable instrument (which is
not available for purchase*) was the undisputed star of the show, and
there were long lines of people waiting to look through it.

Next to Martin was Louis Mamakos with his exquisite 155mm Astro-Physics
Starfire 155EDFS. Louis remains a member of Howard Astro, even after
moving to New Jersey to take the position of CTO of Vonage, Inc. See
http://www.vonage.com/corporate/aboutus_mamakos.php and
http://www.transsys.com/~louie/louie.html.

I was next to Louis with my 1982 3-1/2 inch (89mm) Questar Duplex
("Q"). As far as I know, my Q was the smallest 'scope present -- the
largest being a 20" Dob. The Q was mounted on a modified Meade standard
wedge, which was, in turn, mounted on a Meade standard tripod**. In
addition to direct visual observing, the Q was equipped with an Orange
Micro iBot FireWire webcam mounted behind a Questar 2X Barlow. The iBot
was connected to a 17" PowerBook running Astro IIDC
http://www.outcastsoft.com/ASCASTROIIDC.html. Astro IIDC supports
astronomy and microscopy imaging with FireWire cameras under Macintosh
OS X (BSD Unix). Everything was powered by a large marine deep-cycle
battery.

Louis and I are seen setting up in the first photo at
http://www.howardastro.org/Mars2005/event.html.

I have found that displaying live images of Solar System objects with
the Questar-iBot-PowerBook combination is extremely popular with the
public at outreach programs. Telescope eyepieces are often too high for
children and too low for adults; first-time observers may have trouble
seeing anything at all through them, especially if forced to stretch or
bend in an uncomfortable position to get to the eyepiece. Under good
seeing conditions such as we enjoyed on this occasion the
Questar/Barlow/iBot combination provides a considerably larger image
than is seen in most telescope eyepieces.

Even experienced observers were amazed at the quality of the displayed
image under such good conditions. Venus (at half phase) was lovely, of
course, without the color fringing that nearly every other telescope
that I looked through showed. Some members of the public remarked that
my Q was likely "too small to show Venus' red and green areas." ;-) A
number of people put their hands in front of the Q's dew cap to prove
to themselves that the image on the PowerBook was live.

The Main Event: Viewing Mars, and the Q and the big A-P going
toe-to-toe.

The public put it best: "Why do they need such big telescopes when you
can see Mars like this with such a tiny one?***" Contrast (always a Q
strong point, even causing the Q to seemingly outperform for its size
on faint deep-sky objects) was superb; terrain features were easily
distinguished. Some turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere was evident,
of course, but the bluish haze over Mars' north pole was consistently
prominent, and drew the attention of even those who had never seen a
planet through a telescope. More experienced observers said that they
caught glimpses of the polar ice cap. I thought I saw it, too, but I
would not swear to it -- it might have just been a random brightening
of the haze caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. The
brightening appeared in the right place, however, on the planet's rim
inside the haze, not outside.

The winner, as judged by both the public and many experience observers:
the Questar, based on the larger, easier to view image on the PowerBook
display, the excellent terrain contrast, and the prominent polar haze.

Since the public were so fascinated with the PowerBook display I did
not do very much direct observing through the Q's 8mm Brandon. My quick
impression was that the view was pretty much on a par with the view
through the A-P refractors, with one exception -- toward the end of the
evening, with Mars very high, Martin put a Denkmeier Binoviewer on the
206mm A-P. The view was as stunning as one might expect. (I didn't
learn what eyepieces were mounted, as I didn't want to hold up the line
with technical questions that would be of no interest to the public.)

Another crowd pleaser: my new 60GB iPod Video. I was able to show
people processed images of Mars that I had made during the past week,
as well as the movies from which the images were derived. I also had on
the iPod slide shows of both Solar System images with my Q and some of
the deep-sky images that I have made with my TeleVue 76 and Canon 20D.
Those who have seen my web site know that I'm far from being in the top
class of astrophotographers; nonetheless, the images that I showed
seemed to be crowd pleasers.

Other notes: - The Celestron and Meade SCT's I looked through all
presented excellent views, as expected (I have an 8" Meade in my little
observatory http://www.davidillig.com/observatory14.shtml.) A good
friend of mine would have brought his 16" Meade, but he is recovering
from surgery to his right hand, and can't handle the transportation of
that monster at this time.

- Most of the Dobs I looked through had pretty good images. Images were
sometimes ever-so-slightly fuzzy, lacking in contrast (compared to the
Q and the A-P's), and displaying some color fringing (collimation?). I
did not have the opportunity to look through the 20" Dob, but it is
said to be very good.

- Many members of the public seemed to have done their homework, and
they asked cogent, informed questions. Whether I knew all the answers
is another matter. Even the 'tweens and teens were not particularly
obnoxious.

- With so many people coming around I had no time to do any imaging.
This is unfortunate, as atmospheric turbulence was considerably less
than I have experienced from my home over the past week or so. I made
several short QuickTime movies to demonstrate to the public and to
interested amateurs how webcam images are captured, aligned, and
stacked to produce still images. This process quite amazed the public
as well as quite a few amateurs who had heard of the process but who
had not tried it or even seen it done.

I ended my evening by thanking Martin Cohen for going to all the
trouble of bringing that magnificent 206mm refractor, and by expressing
my hope that Martin's business will improve to the point where he can
afford a Questar!

Mars Skywatch 2005 was probably the most successful public outreach
program that I have attended, and I seriously doubt if any individual,
lay person or amateur astronomer, was left disappointed.

Davoud
www.davidillig.com

* For those who haven't had the pleasure of visiting the Company 7
showroom in Laurel, Maryland, it is as much a museum as it is a store.
There are many optical instruments, both historical and modern, on
display that are not for sale. And Martin /does/ have a number of
Questars in the museum collection.

** Stay tuned on the Questar mount. I've recently purchased a Losmandy
G-11 from Company 7, and, weather permitting, I'll install it in my
observatory as soon as I receive my 18VDC power supply and the mounting
plate for my Astro Pier from LeSueur. I'm going to put the 8" Meade OTA
and the TeleVue 76 and sometimes, perhaps, the Questar, on the
Losmandy. Then I'm going to try to put the Questar on the Meade fork
mount using a cradle that I recently purchased at Astromart. Having the
Q on a goto mount will be a great timesaver at public outreach events,
where people don't want to stand around and wait while I look up RA and
DEC and fiddle with manual setting circles.

*** I explained to the public that, while the Questar is superb for
Solar System observing and imaging, the Q and I would quietly slip out
the back way if the Astro-Physics refractors turned to deep-sky
observing.

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com