2004.12.10
My hometown astronomy club, the Pajarito Astronomers, doesn't have star parties in the winter so Bob and I decided to check out the next-closest alternative, the El Valle Astronomers. They have star parties year-round in two locations, El Rito and Taos. Today's was in El Rito and it's just over an hour by car, so we packed up Bob's scope and my photo gear and headed out there, arrived just as it was getting dark.
Their observing site is on the campus of Northern New Mexico Community College, El Rito Campus. The site is a field just south of the campus and there is basically nothing on the other three sides. The campus and town of El Rito make very little light so the location is extremely dark.
They have a recently-constructed three meter dome and a 16" Meade SCT inside. Apparently the telescope had been in for service until this star party, so everyone was there to mess with it and get it set up in the dome. We were the only people who brought their own telescopes.
Apparently, the club has an NSF grant to build an academic-grade observing facility; the dome and 16" scope are just the beginning. They showed us a engineering drawing of the final plan, which showed a covered walkway from the dome to a control building that included a classroom, bathroom, kitchen, bunks, equipment storage, etc. Also, there would be two rows of leveled concrete pads with built-in piers and parking spaces for each. Finally, there would be earthen berms built to totally block the light from El Rito, the campus, and approaching cars (the general audience parking lot is behind berms).
The plans look amazing, and the construction is already beginning! They had the field graded for the foundation of the pier rows and the building. They say that construction of the building itself should begin this summer. The best part is that they encourage their members to come down and use the observing facilities even when there isn't a star party going on. This means that, once they get everything set up, I could conceivably go down there and hook my camera up to the 16" scope and do some serious photography, and I would only have to carry my camera gear and a few adapters - not lug around the giant telescope. This is well worth the 1.25 hour drive time.
The folks in the El Valle club were very excited to see Bob and I as new members and made comments about "fresh blood" in the club. Both Bob and I were excited about contributing to the new facility in a variety of nerdy ways (automating the dome movement, networking the building, etc). It did strike me as odd that there are only a handful of people in the club and yet they will have this fantastic facility soon. One thing that I found disconcerting was that no one there seemed to understand drift alignment. Apparently their pier was not well aligned and they didn't seem to know how to go about fixing it. It has serious declination drift right now and it will definitely require an azimuth fix. Apparently their pier was built with the correct elevation bend for their location. I hope so, otherwise they will have to deal with shimming and all manner of unspeakable acts.
Anyway, the El Valle guys spent their time setting up the 16" while Bob and I got his scope going and polar aligned it. By the time we finished that, the sky was totally dark and Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) had risen to the point of being visible with the naked eye. We took a couple of prime focus pictures with it including this 15 minute exposure:
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Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) exposed for 15 minutes at ISO 100, f/10, EFL ~3550.
Guided on a background star with an SBIG STV.
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We couldn't get the STV to guide on the comet itself because it was too dim and diffuse. Perhaps next month when the comet is higher and brighter we will be able to guide on it and get a stable shot. Until then, this shot gives a good idea of the proper motion of the comet.
Once again, I could not get the STI Stiletto focuser to give useful results. I'm going to send it back tomorrow and hopefully Richard will tell me that it was a defective unit, because I don't have any idea what I could be doing wrong.
Being frustrated with the focus situation, we decided to go to piggyback photography and hope that my autofocus would work on the distant lights of campus. The autofocus indicated that it had worked and the image looked good in the camera viewfinder, but a subsequent wide-field shot of M31 had very fuzzy stars.
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The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) taken with a 50mm f/1.4 lens (EFL 80mm) set to f/2.8
for 10 minutes at ISO 400. The camera was piggybacked on Bob's 14" SCT and guided
through the scope with the SBIG STV.
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I'm getting very frustrated about the focus situation. Hopefully the Stiletto will get replaced with a working unit and that will be all better. However, I'm not sure how to handle accurate focus with the piggyback shots. Some experimentation will be required.
Despite it being the clearest night that the El Valle group has had for a star party in the last six months, they all left by 10:30. They were very kind and left us the lock to the gate, and said we could stay as long as we wanted. We stayed until about 11:30 when Bob started to get really cold. More hot tea for you, Bob! :)