I guess most people wouldn’t consider it a good thing to go to bed at 11 pm and wake up at 2 am in a totally dark house – the power out.
I did last night – well,this morning really. (OK – it was yesterday morning. Took me a while to finish editing this 
I couldn’t wait to see if the skies had cleared after several days of clouds and half-hearted rain. They had ! And no lights anywhere to interfere! So I rushed to get some clothes on and get out on the deck with the 10X30 IS Canon binoculars – my grab-and-go instrument of choice these nights.
Silent Night, Holy Night
And when I did two things hit me right away – first, the brightness of the stars with the Great Bear rising in the Northeast, his tail pointing to Arcturus which pointed to Spica which in turn was joined by Saturn. And second, the silence. Now this is weird because I can’t hear much anyways and I hadn’t been aware of the night being noisy. But standing on the deck a in this total darkness, the silence was almost Biblical and immediately, I thought if we had our wits about us we would declare two hours of total darkness straddling midnight on Christmas Eve. A sort of “the Day the Earth Stood Still” in miniature. Then maybe people would experience the universe as did the shepherds who “watched their flocks by night.” It is truly wonder full and awesome.
Well – those were first impressions. To the naked eye everything looked brighter, plain and simple, but the truth is there was still a lot of water vapor in the air and once my eyes had dark adapted I found I couldn’t get much below magnitude 5 which is where I get on any good night without a moon. But that was enough. And as a bonus it was an incredibly balmy 53 degrees! Quite a contrast from my last outing which was cut short because this old body just doesn’t handle 18-degree temperatures very well for very long.
At the moment I was operating on a photon deficit and needed to gulp down some of those ancient wanderers. But first I wanted to continue my tests of binoculars and this business of exit pupil and how it relates to astigmatism. So after checking Mizar to see if I could detect the double – I couldn’t – with the 10X30s I went in and got my observing chair and the 15X70s which I had stopped down to about 40mm to give them a smaller exit pupil. (The smaller the exit pupil, the less a problem astigmatism is. See this post for more info.)
Could I split Mizar with them? No. Not even with them on the parallelogram mount. Frustrating. I went in and got the 20X60s and tried Mizar again – maybe the seeing was really bad. Nope. I got a split. But here’s the thing. If I want a real nice split I have to back off as much as an inch away from the eyepieces and hold my head at a funny angle and all of a sudden stuff settles down and I can clearly see two stars where there was only a single, flaring, dancer before. Hmmmm… I got to try the 15X70s again. And I did. And the result was inconclusive. And then I removed the stops so they were truely 15X70s once more and darned - I was suddenly able to get the split I sought. Not quite as nice as in the 20X60s, but it was clearly there.
So on a whim I went over to Cor Caroli – the Heart of Charles. This is a favorite but I could not remember the PA, nor did I know how much separation there was. Was it possible to split it with binoculars? I did remember it to be a very easy double in a scope. Wow! There was this little violet dot, clearly separated by the 15X70s. I noted the PA as roughly southwest. Then I went in and quickly checked. Here are the facts from our Star Splitters blog:
Magnitudes: 2.9, 5.5 Separation: 19″ Poaition Angle: 229°
Now that’s what I would call a perfect binocular double! That 2.6 magnitudes difference in brightness makes it a bit challenging, but the separation of 19″ makes it easier than Mizar. The facts for Mizar are:
Magnitudes: 2.2 , 3.9 Separation: 14.3″ Position Angle: 153°
I think what makes Mizar a bit harder for me is not only the fact that the separation is less, but the brightness of the primary. At 2.2 it simply is more likely to dance for me, rather than settle down. In any event, I found Cor Caroli easier this morning.
The position of my head is different with the 15X70s than with the 20X60s. If they were both the same I would assume the problem is with my eyes, But with the 20X60s I seem to have to get above what I would consider the optical axis and with the 15X70s I’m closer to right on, or a little below. Go figure.
So what conclusion can I draw from all this? That there’s a knack to getting the most out of binoculars as double star instruments. You need patience and you have to keep trying. As time went on it all seemed to get easier for me and I don’t think it was because the seeing was improving – actually it was going down hill.
But long before it did, I did a quick galaxy survey, first with the 10X30s, then with the 15X70s. My first stop was M81/82. For years finding this pair has always been a headache for me – but with my new system of clearly identified guide posts I found them instantly – well, M81 instantly – it took a little while for the image to settle down and M82 pop into view. I had no trouble with my other two tests as well – M51, the Whirlpool, and M65/66 in the hook of the “J” in Leo.
I then retraced this ground with the 15X70 Celestrons and was reminded how this cheap – I got them for $45 used – pair of big binoculars can do a wonderful job on locating deep sky objects. With them there was no wiating for M82 to pop in view – both of these galaxies were instantly obvious – and so it was with M51 and 65/66.
Time to get a scope out on the deck and give the cheapy ($170) Orion binoviewers another work out. I choose the Televue 85 because it was already on the LXD55 mount and was closest to the door. But when I put the binoviewer in I couldn’t reach focus. Darn. Forgot that it will not focus in that scope with the 2-inch diagonal. It only reaches focus with a 1.25-inch diagonal. So back to the house – and into the light – to find a proper diagonal.
Once I had that in place I had no trouble with the binoviewers, but the battery on the red dot finder was dead. I wasn’t about to change it. I just did my best to point the scope at Algieba (Gamma Leonis) and see what this favorite double was doing tonight. Found it right away too! I was using 25mm Orion Sirius Plossls in the binoviewer – but these were acting like 12.5mm ones since the only way I could reach focus was with the “nosepiece” that comes with the binoviewer and doubles the power – in this case bringing it to 48X and thus about a one degree fov.
It wasn’t splitting at that point, so I switched to the pair of 13mm Plossls that had just winged their way here – par avion – from Canada. These were untested Televue eyepieces from the 1980s – Circle NJ. One had trouble being seated in the binoviewer, but I finally managed to press it into place – later I would have a heck of time getting it out. But right now the sight was simply beautiful. there was Algieba showing just a hint of tint – orange for the primary and greenish for the secondary. Love it!
And I hadn’t even turned on the drive. Oh there was some fooling around with interpupilary distance and some adjusting to get both eyepieces sharply focused. A bit of a bother, but worth it. Then I flipped the switch, skipped all that annoying stuff about date and time and went straight to “targets astronomical” – pressed “enter” and I was in business. the drive grabbed immediately. Of course I could have done a better job of aligning with the North Star, but I hadn’t so I needed to make an occasional adjustment in declination, but mostly this was time to be rapt in awe and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is really the most fun I’ve had observing in ages. This two-eye business takes some getting used to and a little more hassle, but it’s worth it.
I can’t explain it entirely, but it gives me a much more of a sense of being there than the ultra-expensive , ultra widefield “space walk” eyepices do. Maybe it’s simply that this is natural – blending two images is what our brains are used to doing.
In any event, I finally tore myself away from Algieba long enough to get a good look at M65/66 this way – this time using the 20mm Plossls. Once more a big wow! Once more, two eyes are better than one.
Yes, the binoviewer diminishes the light gathered by the scope, but not enough to matter to me.And here I had a galaxy for each eye and photons that had been travelling for 35 million years. This is what it’s all about. Can’t wait for the new, more sophisticated binoviewing equipment to arrive. Yeah – I’ve been on an Astromart tear lately selling all sorts of things so I could buy all sorts of new things. More on that in another post.
Oh – and the lights did come on. In fact, in a three hour observing session I only had about half an hour of total darkness. But hey – usually when we have a power outage we’re in the middle of a storm. This was a rare opportunity. Clear skies. warm air – and complete darkness. Delight full!
Delight full is a great way to describe that post! You had me hanging on the edge of the chair to see what was going to happen with Cor Caroli. Impressive! Now I’ll see if I can do it with either the 10×30′s or the 15×70′s.
As I was reading the beginning of your post, Greg, it reminded me there’s something about a still night that affects other senses, not just hearing. It’s a physical sensation.
I live in a small town of about 500 people, and when the vacationing hordes haven’t invaded during the summer, it’s normally very quiet around here. The only constant when it comes to sound is the rise and fall of the ocean’s surf as its pitch rises and falls with the moons grasping and letting go.
But about midnight, it quiets down tremendously around here — except for those periodic surges of oceanic noise, which can get downright loud at times — a constant pounding and thrashing that you can feel.
When the ocean is in its quiet phase, though, and the silence is pure, you can actually feel it. I’ve always maintained that even for those who can’t hear at all, or hear well, it would be very noticeable, which I think is what Greg experienced at the beginning of the post when the power was out.
I think of it as the physical absence of sound waves impacting on our skin, or our head, or on our body in general. You wouldn’t think that could be experienced sensually, but I really think it is.
Think of it this way: when there’s a lot of sound — meaning NOISE in general — there’s a lot of physical energy in the air, which is caused by the movement of all those sound waves. When it’s totally calm and quiet, the air is literally still. Your body isn’t bombarded with a myriad of energetic sound waves — and as weak as all that energy is when compared to the other physical forces we experience, the collective absence of it is right at the threshold of our detectability.
Whether that explanation is right or wrong, I feel its absence on every calm, quite night.