Notes from the Debris

Sept. 25, 2011 - Fairmont, B.C.

Objectives:

Successfully align my spotting scope.
Observe Jupiter.
Observe anything other than a light bulb.
Photograph stars swirling 'round Polaris.

Notes:

The Solar System consists of the Sun, Jupiter and debris.

I’m paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke, who was misquoting Isaac Asimov, but I think it gets the point across. As if it’s not humbling enough to be members of an insignificant species of ape who only began looking toward the heavens just a moment ago in geological terms, a closer look at the sky reveals the slime from whence we came was stuck to a bit of space dust leftover from the formation of Titans.

But the hairless apes did look up, and even those primitive astronomers correctly put Jupiter foremost among the gods. After the Sun, the Moon and Venus, it’s the brightest object in the sky, and by far the largest of the planets. Even in over-lit Calgary, its brightness is almost impossible not to notice, even with the unaided eye. The sky needn’t always be clear; sometimes it even penetrates cloud cover, casting an eerie glow.

Imagine its influence on a bronze-age culture, for whom astrology was an essential part of military strategy.

I wonder if it was visible the night of a great storm over an ancient, Mycenaean fishing village. Maybe the poets of antiquity had eyewitness reports of the celestial body, which the Greeks called “Zeus,” hurling thunderbolts from the heavens.

Maybe I'm fantasizing a bit; Greek mythology does, however, have a story in which Zeus traps the monster, Typhon, under Mount Edna in Sicily. Maybe the ancients were telling us, in their own way, of a terrifying eruption, dutifully noting the objects in the sky so future astrologers could interpret such warnings.

But if Mount Edna’s wrath represents Hell on this apparently-very-active piece of debris, the geological hotspot to which I’ve come must be Heaven.

Fig. 2: Fairmont Hot Springs

A hairless ape tests Galileo’s theory of falling bodies.

Pentax K10D, 28mm, 1/125 sec, f4, ISO 100

Here, at Fairmont’s hot springs, hairless apes baptize themselves in geoheated waters and worship the Sun. But I was determined, on my last night in paradise, to get a view of Jupiter through my telescope.
We found time in the middle of the day to make sure the telescope worked, and managed to get some nice, sharp views of the more distinctive mountain peaks, using at 67.2X, 134.4X and 420X magnifications respectively. I even managed to line up the crosshair of the spotting scope, although not quite accurately enough for it to be as useful as advertised.

Hours later we were in a clearing, our confidence unshaken by the previous night’s failure, with a celebratory bottle of Zenato Cresasso at the ready.

Once again, Jupiter, forming an upside-down triangle with Aries’ horns, outshone everything else in the sky.

I’d seen him through a telescope once before. It must have been winter of ’98 when I was taking intro astronomy (as far as I ever got, I’m sad to report). I was thrilled to see not only the disc of Jupiter with its horizontal bands of colour, but its four brightest moons: Callisto, Io, Ganymede and Europa, which appeared as bright points of light, two far out on either side, one a bit closer on the left, and another just to the right, looking as though it were just growing out of the planet itself.

So when at last light began to fill my eyepiece with weird, elusive shapes, I knew when I managed to focus on a small-but-bright point of light, that I was off target. I don't know which star I spotted, but I was encouraged nonetheless. The spotting scope helped a bit, and I made another attempt. As I wiggled the scope to and fro on its rickety tripod, the eyepiece suddenly exploded with light. A bit more adjusting, wiggling and focusing and suddenly there it was.

I let out a howl. Not only did the mammoth planet jump out at me, its moons were even more brilliant than I remember: Callisto stretched way out to the left, Io a bit closer, Europa just to Jupiter’s right and Ganymede further out still. It was by following the orbits of these four, celestial beauties that Galileo concluded Earth was not, as Aristotle had decreed, the centre of all motion in the Universe. But we were still only just learning our real place in the Universe.

But never mind the 401 years of history since Galileo first observed these heavenly bodies; just think of everything that’s happened on Earth since I last saw them. Geocentric-minded apes were in a panic about the possible end of the world with the turn of the millennium (as if our arbitrarily numerical measure could have any effect on the cosmos). The numbers “9” and “11” were still of no consequence to anyone.

And to think all that time Jupiter has been presiding over the skies with little concern for the affairs of the apes occupying a dim, far away point of light among the debris left over from the formation of the Solar System.

And yet - and yet - try getting a bottle of Zenato wine anywhere in the cosmos besides Earth. My girlfriend and I got properly drunk, glimpsed the Pleiades, did a bit of stellar photography and celebrated life on the planet of apes and grapes.

 Fig. 3: Draco, Ursa Minor and Ursa Major

As I packed up the scope, my lovely apprentice photographer heroically held the shutter open over four minutes and captured this beautiful shot of Ursa Minor ("smaller bear") hanging by his tale above a passing cloud.

Pentax K10D, 28mm, 244 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

 Tips:

A red flashlight would be nice.
Make sure to photograph any celestial body about which I’m likely to wax poetic on my blog a week and a half later.