Genesis 1:3

Sept. 24, 2011 - Fairmont, B.C.

Objectives:

Observe Jupiter through a telescope.

Photograph the stars as streaks of light due to the Earth’s rotation during a long exposure.

Notes:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.

Nearly 300 years after Alexander Pope wrote that epitaph, light seems to be a bit of a problem. How tragically brief was that period between Newton’s invention of the reflector telescope and Edison’s invention of the lightbulb. We fill our cities with the damned things as though we don’t already get enough God-ordered light pollution from the sun. Here, under the streetlamps, billboards, neon and noise, nature and nature’s laws lay hid as ever.

And since I’ve been back in Calgary (I’m actually writing this entry in October, about a week after my wild weekend of sex, drugs and astronomy in Fairmont), I’ve realized how pitiful the urban night sky really is. But until I can get out of the city again, I may as well do a bit of blogging to satiate my zeal for astronomy, which reached critical mass a few weeks ago when my girlfriend gave me a telescope that had been sitting in a friend’s basement untouched.

We took it out to Fairmont having almost no idea how to use it, save a few tidbits we picked up on the Internet. We found a clearing just off the highway near the airport, with a bit of light pollution coming from what I think was a hotel in the distance, but an excellent view of the night sky.

As the Moon was not visible, I decided Jupiter would be the best bet for a first attempt.

Using a 76mm scope with a 25mm eyepiece and (unbeknownst to me at the time) a 2.4x barlow lens, I aimed at the ancient father of all gods, who along with his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, wrestled the dominions of Heaven and Earth from the Titans and saw... blackness. Not even a particularly interesting shade of black either.

Try as I might, I failed to spot an object 300 times more massive than Earth. I soon realized I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all until I calibrated my small, spotter scope, which is mounted atop the big scope.

In desperation, I tried to get a look at the resort in the distance. Light poured into the eyepiece, and I twisted the focusing knob until I the strange blur finally began to take shape. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was. Yup, there it was, filling the circle: a lightbulb from somewhere on the outside of the resort. Edison smirked. Jupiter shrugged. My girlfriend opened a beer.

Still, having managed to focus on anything at all was encouraging, and I did manage to get a nice photo demonstrating Earth’s rotation, despite having left my cable release in Calgary (meaning I had to stand there holding the camera shutter button for two minutes, my beer woefully out of reach).

Fig. 1: Taurus

The stars appear as streaks of light, giving some idea of how much the Earth rotates in just over two minutes. Appearing as a big “greater than” sign, Taurus' horns are easy to spot as he charges to meet Orion, the hunter, who’s about to leap over the mountain. Just slightly to the right of the horns is the bright star, 35 Iam Tau. The light we're seeing left this star in 1641, one year before Sir Isaac Newton was born.

Pentax K10D, 28mm, 134 sec, f2.8, ISO 1600

I'm calling my first mission a partial success.

Tips:

Calibrate the spotter scope while there’s still daylight.

Cable release is a must.