Science

From engineer and SF fan
to astronomy.

Anyone can do astronomy for real,
as Mark Paice reveals from his back garden.
His retirement showed that it is never too late to start.

Being a STEM graduate and enjoying science fiction, having interests such as astronomy, seems only natural.

So, whilst auditing the pubs of St. Albans with a bunch of Old Age PSIFAns.  Among much else across a warm summer's day, we discussed my rediscovery of astronomy, and with infectious enthusiasm Jonathan suggested that I write this short piece.  “Channel Patrick Moore,” he said. I was up for it, so sporting eBay purchased monocle here goes.

I’m a child of the 60’s, brought up on Sputnik, Apollo, The Sky at Night and Fireball XL5 (opening credits here) so inevitably “space” holds a powerful attraction. Earth is amazing and the life on it is incredible but if you really want to blow your mind you only have to look up. (As I rule never listen to anyone who says “Don’t Look Up” [c.f. the film of that name – trailer here]).

Unfortunately, the demands of career, marriage, kids etc. had pushed my passion for astronomy into the background.  But that period of my life has not been a completely dry period. I was lucky enough to be sent to Ethiopia for work. In the Ethiopian highlands near Debre Birhan the Sun sets like a shutter being pulled down and then, with a big chunk of the Earth’s atmosphere below, you are dazzled by the splendour of the heavens, the stars, the planets, nebulae and the Milky Way looking like an unfortunate accident in the dairy. Since my visit, there is a new observatory nearby: the Entoto Observatory Space Science Research Centre.  But I don't think that there is a causal relationship between my earlier visit and subsequent creation of this observatory, but you never know.

Other experiences: Lunar eclipses in Sicily, Stefánik Observatory in Prague, Comet Hale–Bopp glimpsed through telephone wires, Perseid meteor shower viewed from a car park. It was enough to keep me wanting to be more than a space dilettante.

Now I’m ramping down work, kids have finally moved out and my long-suffering wife is keen to get me out of the house occasionally.  I’ve decided to take astronomy a tad more seriously.  It is not just the amazing things you can see; I want to salve the inevitable frustration of science.

Science tells us that we should be sceptical of second-hand information and trust only what we actually observe. Galileo Galilei got into deep shit when what he saw disagreed with the what the Catholic Church told him he should be seeing.  Unfortunately its impossible to empirically check more than a tiny fraction of what we accept as “scientific fact” . As an engineer I’ve designed things that only work because they obey laws that scientists have discovered so that’s satisfying but I’d like to check some other things, just to give me some peace of mind.

You do not need any equipment to “do” Astronomy, just eyes will do. However, people have always put huge effort into making things to aid their observations. From Stonehenge, and the Pyramids to Jodrell Bank (built the year I was born) and the James Webb Space Telescope.  Such effort should not be underestimated: Herschel even used horse manure to cast the mirrors of his great telescope (maybe that’s where we get the phrase ‘stinking to high heaven’)?

Anyway, my eyesight’s not what it was so I decided I needed a telescope to get to grips with my re-found hobby.   First decision should I choose a refractor (lens focussed) or reflector (mirror focussed). I wanted to look at planets but also fainter “deep sky objects” for which you need to capture a lot of light. Reflectors are best for this (the larger ones are rudely called “light buckets”). I chose a 200mm (mirror diameter) Newtonian invented by guess who?

Its principle is quite simple: light comes in and is focussed by a curved mirror at the back, reflects back up and is directed into the eyepiece via a secondary mirror set at 45 degrees.  You get different magnifications depending on the eyepiece you plug in and optionally something called a Barlow lens. For instance, with a 10mm eyepiece and a 1,000mm focal length mirror I get a magnification of 100x. If I add in the 2x Barlow lens I can get 200x. The latter is most useful though for astro-photography looking at planets.

I purchased the equipment from Rother Valley Optics. They are still providing the mount, optics and eye pieces (including Barlow lens) as a bundle for £649.00. I later added the Motor Drive for another £149.00 and the Astronomical Camera for £192.00 which allowed me to do some astrophotography.  So the whole lot for under £1,000 (US$1,270).

There’s a problem. When you start looking at something with high magnification you need to keep the instrument very steady.  Looking at Jupiter even with binoculars is like trying to focus on a horny firefly (they’re all horny, that’s why they light up)!  You need a “mount” for the telescope. Amateurs have two main options: Dobsonian or Equatorial.  Both types let you point the telescope in any direction (remember polar coordinates)?   The axes of the Dobsonian are set horizontally and vertically and the simple construction makes the mount cheap and lightweight, ideal for light bucket reflectors and deep sky objects that are faint but big, so they need only low magnification.

But I wanted something general purpose that would let me look at planets, at high magnification as well, so I chose an equatorial mount. One axis of this is pointed directly at the celestial north pole.  The advantage of this is that you only need to rotate the telescope in this one axis to keep it pointing at the object of interest as the Earth rotates.  I added a motor that controls the rotation, and the object stays fixed in the same position, which is great for long exposure astro-photography.

So, there it is, if you have a few quid to spare you too can have a setup like this. You can see the Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter whilst the planet itself rotates and the billowing of Orion’s Nebula (although maybe not attack ships on fire off his shoulder). If you do not want to spend much it’s still amazing what you can see with a good pair of binoculars.

There’s an old poem:

                              “A man that looks on glass,
                              On it may stay his eye,
                              Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
                              And then the heaven espy.”

Aurora Borealis, near Bedford

I was observing the star T Corona Borealis which is expected to go Nova any day now. I thought a cloud had come over but when I looked away from the eyepiece the whole sky was ablaze with the Aurora Borealis.

The moral of this story is that you don’t need flash equipment to “do” astronomy.  Do look up!  And keep watching the skies…

Mark Paice

Mark Paice is an engineer and was originally a member of Hatfield PSIFA SF. Following graduation, he has had a career as a researcher in agricultural engineering investigating precision farming and spatial weed population dynamics.  He went on to work in industry developing control software and systems for agricultural tractors and then for on-road vehicles; applications firmly adjacent to robotics.  He has a few refereed papers and patents to his name but he was particularly chuffed by the SFnal titles given by editors to a couple of popular science articles that spun out of his press releases relating to his work. One was titled “Weed Killers from Outer Space” in the Independent newspaper and another titled “I Robot” in Farmers Weekly magazine.

Left: Mark channelling Patrick Moore.