Crumby's Telescope Tomfoolery Notes

Last night again was poor seeing due to high clouds in addtion to the usual constraints. Nevertheless, the round chested humans and dogs ventured forth anyway into the stygian darkness in search of gas giants, like Uranus. (I bet dogs are among the first to detect the arrival of a gas giant.) But Neptune erupts above the horizon first, so Neptune was the gas giant sought out, first. Once again, I'm having trouble ascertaining if the two I think are gas giants, are the actual gas giants. However, eventually I will know for sure, because they move around relative to their starry background.

One of the big jokes in the boys locker room of my youth went like this. A boy would be standing around nonchalantly in a group of conversant other boys. Then, of a sudden, he would sprint off some distance, and while in the process of sprinting off he would holler, "Jeez Louise, I had to outrun that fart."

You see, maybe, the boy passed gas and then ran away, leaving the other boys to endure his passed aroma. Maybe that's why those gas giant planets zip around so. They have a keen sense of humor. I wonder if Kepler thought of this, but just didn't include it in his musings on planetary motion. Course Kepler probably didn't know they were gas giants.

Ha! Yesterday, I espied an infomercial on the TV, one of those 30 second ones that gets shown a zillion times a day. The infomercial shows a picture of a dried up river bed with a simultaneous Texas dude voice informing that the Colorado River could dry up, so we all need to use 10% less water. The infomercial sponsor is the Lower Colorado River Authority. So, I reckon the Lower Colorado River Authority will follow its own recommendation and refuse to provide water and waste water services to 10% of the water hog developments in the basin. Or maybe the recommendation only applies to new water hog developments and only 90% of the new ones will get Colorado River water.

The telescope type known as a Newtonian reflector is very interesting. Since we have a 10" diameter one of these Newts at the CB, a red one, that I use quite a bit in my celestial body perusing, I also observe its Newtonian behavior. One of its behavioral characteristics is coma. That is, the stars it shows me at low powers are not concentric little dots, but little four way flares. In the middle of the field of view the flares are a more or less equal foursome flaring out each in a cardinal direction. But further away from the center, the flares flare more or less, each in its own cardinal direction and they are nowise the same flaring in distance for the starry perceived centroid. I am informed that these flares, also called diffraction spikes, are produced by the four vanes, colectively called a spider, that hold the secondary mirror in place. The secondary mirror catches the reflection from the primary mirror and reflects the primary's light to the eyepiece, but the vanes bust up the light path causing the diffraction spikes, maybe. However, if the red newt is properly collimated maybe, at very high powers, the diffraction spikes are not apparent around the stars. I am further informed that certain gizmos can reduce these diffraction spikes. These gizmos include very expensive coma correctors that may be inserted in the focuser before the eyepiece and three vane curved spiders. I have not yet discovered who vends these three vane curved spiders.

But why did I get off onto all that? Er. Oh yeah, high power. I have discovered that the Newt seems to allow for some serious high power magnification, way more than the 5.25 Roosian Mak. So now a lightly used 4mm UO ortho is on the way. It could arrive this very day or even tomorrow. When it does, I shall have handy the 4, 6, 7, 9, 12.5 and 25mm. That's almost all the set of UO orthos, minus only the 5mm and the 18mm. I don't want the 18, cause I already have a 16 UO Konig, but I need that 5mm, maybe.