Science Monuments

Lifetime Experiences

Browsing through an old photo album recently triggered a desire to review a lifetime of science experiences. I certainly haven't "seen everything", but I've witnessed a satisfying number of interesting things. Here are some things I've done and seen.

Observatory Visits

First, places with no pictures.

Sometime near 1980 I took a group of students to visit the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. We viewed Saturn through the 12-inch Clark refractor there. Unfortunately, pictures are irretrievably stuck behind plastic in an old photo album.

It's a pity I also have no pictures from a 1985 visit to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The beautiful wood construction inside the dome housing the 24-inch Clark refractor was a wonderful sight. 

Yet again, I have no pictures from my brief time in 1993 within Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts where I saw a 10-inch refractor.

During a 2001 visit to Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin I stood under a massive dome next to the giant 40-inch refractor. The Yerkes telescope is the largest refractor ever made! It was an amazing experience to ride the movable observatory floor and see this beastly telescope move. I searched for pictures I might have taken but found none.

In 2006 I took some students to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, WV where we saw the huge 100-meter radio telescope. Students even climbed part way up into the structure. Why can't I find any pictures?

Finally, Some Pictures!

A long switchback 1998 bus ride up Mount Evans in Colorado delivered me to the University of Denver's Meyer-Womble Observatory at an altitude of 14,148 feet. The building was closed, so I couldn't view the binocular telescope then housed within. I recall experiencing no adverse effects from the high altitude. Apparently, the dome seen here was lost in a windstorm in 2012, and the observatory was decommissioned in 2018.

It was quite an adventure getting to the top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea in 2002. This extinct volcano is a world class observing site home to a number of premier large telescopes. In the next picture C and I stand before (from left to right) the 3.58-meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the 8.1-meter Gemini North Telescope, the University of Hawaii 2.2-Meter Telescope, and the 3.8-meter United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.

Our group was allowed inside the huge Gemini North dome and into the control room. The telescope was too big to capture in a single photo. The best I could do without a wide-angle lens was an image of the upper structure seen below.

Upon exiting the Gemini dome I felt a bit lightheaded from the 13,800-foot altitude. In contrast, only four years before in 1998 I felt no altitude effect on Mount Evans in Colorado at 14,148 feet. I was determined not to be sent back down the mountain, so I concentrated on slowing down and breathing deeply. The dizziness passed. 

It was a thrill to see the twin 10-meter Keck Telescopes, the largest in the world at the time.

Twin Keck Domes.

Our group was allowed inside one Keck dome to view the rear of one of the 10-meter segmented mirrors.

Next is a more distant view of Keck Domes along with Japan's 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope on the left.

Standing before Japan's Subaru Telescope.

One year later in 2003 I attended a meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Participants were able to visit Kitt Peak Observatories and I gladly went along. Different telescopes are spread across the mountaintop at an altitude of roughly 7,000 feet as you can see in the next picture.

Here I'm standing before the 4-meter Mayall Telescope's dome. This telescope is the largest on Kitt Peak.

Standing before the concrete 4-meter Mayall mirror blank. These mirrors are huge! This is only half the size of 8-meter mirrors on Mauna Kea!

The next two pictures show Kitt Peak's McMath Solar Telescope.

The odd shape and telescope operation are shown in the next schematic.

The 1.6-meter mirror ultimately projects sunlight into a control room. On the day we visited our group was viewing a large solar image projected onto a white table.

A highlight of our time on Kitt Peak was an evening visit to a 20-inch telescope set up for public viewing. There I had the best eyepiece view of Jupiter I've ever seen. Although Jupiter's disc was large at 500X, what struck me most was the color! In all previous Jupiter viewings with modest telescopes at sea level I had only seen shades of gray. With this telescope on Kitt Peak Jupiter's cloud bands showed detailed colored swirls! A colleague of mine told me that once I had visually observed at a dark mountaintop site I would be forever spoiled for suburban sea level viewing. How right he was!

While in Tucson we visited the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab located under the University of Arizona's football stadium stands. Famous mirror maker Roger Angel directed the innovative construction of large 8-meter class mirrors here. We saw separate chunks of glass sitting in a relatively shallow 8-meter diameter bowl. This contraption would eventually be inserted into a rotating oven in which the glass would melt and form the desired concave mirror shape caused by rotation. In the next picture our group is looking at one of the nearly finished mirrors.

While in Italy in 2004 to observe the transit of Venus our group visited the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo shown in the next picture.

A modest observatory is located on the roof of the building above. We were taken inside the dome and saw the telescopes seen in the next image. The main telescope is a 15-inch Zeiss refractor with smaller telescopes mounted alongside. Notice the brass-colored 90mm Coronado solar telescope near the top.

During our trip to England in 2006 I was thrilled to visit historic Greenwich Observatory seen from a distance below.

A 24-hour clock and "public standards of length" were part of the attractions.

Looking out over the Greenwich Observatory roof.

You can't go to Greenwich without standing on the Prime Meridian and pointing to the north celestial pole!

One stop during our 2019 Australia tour was at Sydney Observatory.

I was unimpressed with the blurry image produced by the antique 1874 11-inch refractor inside.

Most impressive in Australia was Siding Spring Observatory. The main 4-meter telescope and dome along with a visiting kangaroo are shown in the next three pictures.

The historic Australian Parks Radio Telescope is still in operation. We went inside the base building.

We also saw multiple radio telescopes of the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex which tracks and communicates with spacecraft including the very distant Voyager probes. 

Our last Australian observatory visit was at bleak and rainswept Mount Stromlo near Canberra. A wildfire in 2003 destroyed five telescopes here.

I regret not seeing famous California Observatories like Mount Palomar and Lick Observatory. Sadly, I never got to view the southern night sky and observatories in the Atacama Desert in Chile. I'll never get to these places now.

Physics Monuments

In Ithaca, New York I toured the Cornell Synchrotron in 1988 but have no pictures.

Closer to home in Newport News, Virginia I attended two open houses at the Jefferson Lab. Seeing complex mind-blowing equipment there was quite an experience. Here are two pictures looking along the electron accelerator beam line in 2014.

Next are two more Jefferson Lab pictures from 2016.

Human Monuments

Here are some monuments of a different kind.

I stood before Marie Curie's family home in Warsaw, Poland in 2001.

I also shivered in 2001 before the Copernicus statue in Warsaw.

The Santa Croce Church in Florence, Italy contains tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, and the composer Rossini among others. I stood before Galileo's tomb in 2004.

I've been fortunate to see some monumental human scientists in person during my life.

As a graduate student I attended a lecture by Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg at Princeton!

I humbly sat at a seminar table with John Wheeler also at Princeton. Wheeler worked with Niels Bohr, was Richard Feinman's thesis advisor, and could be considered the founder of modern general relativity research into black holes.

I stood next to Edward Teller, Oppenheimer nemesis and "father of the hydrogen bomb", while he talked with students at Randolph Macon Woman's College after he gave a lecture in support of Reagan's proposed "Star Wars" missile defense system.

I accompanied Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman during his visit to Randolph Macon Woman's College. Lederman was responsible for several fundamental discoveries in particle physics and was the director of Fermilab.

I attended the 1978 Jansky Lecture at the University of Virginia given by Nobel Prize winner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekar creator of the Chandrasekar limit for the mass of a white dwarf star.

Also, at the Jansky Lectures in 1983 and 1984 I saw Nobel Prize winners Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias who discovered the Cosmic Background Radiation left over from the Big Bang.

I heard Jocelyn Bell who discovered the first radio pulsar give a wonderful description of rotating neutron stars in the 1995 Jansky Lecture.

Finally, I briefly shook hands with groundbreaking evolutionary biologist and public intellectual Richard Dawkins before his smashing, show stopping lecture on his book, The God Delusion, at Randolph Macon Woman's College.

I've seen some things!  

 

Objects Revisited

 Long Exposures

I've been revisiting previously imaged objects. Now I'm devoting an entire night to just one object using longer exposures and Seestar's AI Denoise feature. On December 16th I used mosaic mode and light pollution filter to capture the entire Rosette Nebula in the constellation Monoceros. The following image is a 150-minute (2.5-hour) exposure, the longest exposure I've ever done with Seestar up to this point.

The dark central cavity contains open star cluster 2244 whose energetic stars clear the cavity and cause surrounding gases to glow. Strings of dark obscuring dust are nicely silhouetted along the upper cavity edge. I probably went overboard using AI Denoise to darken the background. Too many faint details may have been lost. (Click to enlarge all images.)

A few days later on December 21-22 I attempted another filtered mosaic mode capture of NGC2264, (the Cone Nebula, and Christmas Tree Cluster), also in Monoceros. The next image is only a 100-minute exposure, but it turned out much better than a previous attempt made last year.

The Cone Nebula is in the upper right. This dark column of gas and dust is outlined by excited gases. The Christmas Tree star cluster is horizontal in the image above. The triangular shape is more apparent in the next rotated image.

The upper tip of the Christmas Tree is a bright star just below the Cone Nebula. The triangular Tree's base is just above the brightest star near image center. I allowed more red nebular background to remain in the final image this time.

Nearly a month of cloudy sky and bright moonlight passed until January 11th when I captured a 112-minute exposure of NGC2359, Thor's Helmet, in Canis Major. Enlarge the next image to full size for the best view. Notice the dense distribution of background Milky Way stars, including some colorful ones! The "wings" of Thor's Helmet show up reasonably well. The central spherical bubble of glowing gas is created by strong stellar winds emitted by the hot, energetic central Wolf-Rayet star.

Clear sky continued on January 12th. Galaxies M81 and M82 are a popular astrophotography target in Ursa Major. The next image is a 143-minute exposure of this pair using mosaic mode. M81 is on the right, M82 on the left. Unfortunately, the pair is slightly off center. After a few minutes of an initial well centered exposure I noticed an airplane's bright lights had streaked directly over M82. I terminated this first exposure and immediately started a new exposure. In the brief interval between exposures Seestar's slight movement had shifted the image slightly off center.

A few nights later on January 15th conditions were good again. Moonlight was absent, and all my neighbors' lights were miraculously off. I used mosaic mode and the light pollution filter to capture a 155-minute exposure of IC2177, the Sea Gull Nebula. This expanse of glowing gas spreads across the boundary of constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. It seems that the bright, roughly circular patch of nebulosity with intruding dark lane located in top center is called IC2177. This is the Sea Gull's "head". The "wings" are spread out horizontally across the image. A rich distribution of Milky Way stars, including some obvious clusters, add to the scene.

I'm pretty happy with the previous image! The two-hour 35-minute exposure is now the longest I've ever done with Seestar. Actual telescope time is usually about twice the exposure time because Seestar continuously rejects sub exposures with tracking errors. I might be able to get a 3-hour exposure at some point, but this will challenge my ability to stay awake for hours after midnight.

The Christmas House

 Neighborhood Attraction

One family in my neighborhood puts a great effort into Christmas decoration. Their house draws many spectators not only from neighborhood residents but also from many others who cruise around to see Christmas lights. The front lawn is densely packed with displays. The next picture captures most of them but doesn't include others beyond the driveway on the right.

The open garage on the right is the highpoint of the show. As seen below, it is transformed into a Christmas wonderland that rivals any department store or mall display.

An animatronic reindeer and Santa greet those who enter. Kids and families can sit for pictures on Santa's chair while Santa moves and recites Santa talk. All this is quite popular with visitors. I was particularly impressed by the miniature villages on the left.

This is truly a magical creation! Below are three closer views. As always, click on images to enlarge for the best view.

Someone spends a lot of time to carefully arrange all this detail. We are all grateful!

Odds and Ends

 Enduring Clouds

Skies have been very cloudy this November and December. Rare periods of clear sky last only a few hours before clouds return. Over the past months I've had only three opportunities for astrophotography.

On November 17th I took advantage of one clear stretch to attempt a long mosaic exposure of the Orion Nebula, M42. The next image is a 37-minute exposure with light pollution filter engaged. I wanted the exposure to last 60 minutes or more, but I couldn't stay awake long enough after midnight to accomplish this. 

Located above the brighter M42 Orion Nebula is a group of white reflection nebulae. NGC1977 is the lower one with a dark bulge invading from below. NGC1975 is a bright patch above NGC1977 with two stars in its midst. NGC1973 is nebulosity to the left of NGC1975. Dark lanes running through this nebulous group form the Running Man Nebula. (Enlarge the image above by clicking on it to see full detail.)

Daytime sky was temporarily clear on December 3rd when an unusually huge sunspot group was present on the Sun. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to set up my solar telescope, so I used Seestar to produce the following image. The sunspot group's length was about 28 percent of the solar diameter on this day!

Clear transparent sky didn't last into the evening of December 3rd. Hazy thin clouds made night imaging impossible. While emptying trash I looked almost straight up at the nearly full Moon and saw the following moon halo. The picture below is a quick shot with my handheld phone. Nearby Pleiades stars are not visible, although one bright spot on the Moon's lower left might possibly belong to the Pleiades.

Eleven nights later on December 14th conditions were finally absolutely clear. Unfortunately, it was a frigid 18 degrees (minus 8 degrees C), and howling wind was gusting at 15 to 20 mph. Wind was shaking and rattling my house, so Seestar would certainly suffer the same effects. With luck the next two months will offer better opportunities for celestial imaging. 

 

Avoiding Lights

 Colorful November Sky Pictures

Clear sky on November 12th presented a good opportunity to create a Seestar portrait of the Perseus double cluster. Unfortunately, two neighbors had turned on multiple bright lights which glared directly into Seestar's lens when pointed north toward Perseus. Imaging the double cluster was initially impossible.

I hoped these lights would eventually turn off. While waiting I pointed Seestar directly south away from the lights toward the constellation Aquarius where I made an attempt to capture the colorful Helix Nebula (NGC7293). The following 60-minute exposure is an improvement over a previous attempt last year. (Click on all images below to see the best detail.) The Helix Nebula is the closest planetary nebula to Earth. Gases previously emitted by the central white dwarf star are excited by that star's ultraviolet radiation and glow with characteristic colors.

Troublesome neighbor lights were finally extinguished! This allowed me to move to the original target in Perseus - the double cluster (NGC869,884). In the following 31-minute exposure NGC 869 is the upper cluster, and NGC884 is the lower one. I particularly like the colorful orange stars sprinkled about. This image looks great when enlarged to full size!

Dark moonless sky continued, so I next pointed to Cygnus to capture the eastern segment of the Veil Nebula. The entire Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant too large to fit in one Seestar field of view. NGC6992 is one segment of this nebula called the Eastern Veil Nebula. I used the light pollution filter and mosaic mode for the following 23-minute exposure. A longer exposure would have been better, but, unfortunately, the exposure ended too soon when the Veil Nebula began setting behind the roof of my house.

The constellation Auriga had risen in good position, so I next targeted the Flaming Star Nebula (IC405). I used the light pollution filter and mosaic mode for the following 90-minute exposure. The nebula is excited by bright star AE Aurigae, the brightest star right of center.

Well after midnight I could no longer keep my eyes open. It was time to quit.

October Clear Spell

Long Exposures

October usually brings periods of clear sky. This year the clear spell happened near new Moon, so bright moonlight did not interfere with attempts to try long exposures of nebulae with Seestar. On October 15th, using mosaic mode and light pollution filter, I made a 111-minute exposure of IC1848 - the Soul Nebula in Cassiopeia. The next image shows the result. The nebula's brighter parts are visible, but, compared with online photos made with better equipment, much of the dimmer portions are missing. (Enlarge the image by clicking on it to get the best view.) 

A few days later on October 20th I made a 110-minute unfiltered mosaic exposure of the Pleiades. Fine detail in the wispy blue reflection nebulae can be seen in the next picture. This year's Pleiades image is much better than last year's result made without mosaic mode and without Seestar's AI Denoise feature.

Two nights later on October 22nd clear moonless sky presented another imaging opportunity. This night I began with a 130-minute filtered exposure of the California Nebula (NGC1499) in Perseus. This is the longest Seestar exposure I've ever made. Mosaic mode was necessary to capture the nearly two-degree length of this nebula. The next image shows the bright outline of "California", but the dimmer central part of the nebula is missing.

I think dim nebulae portions don't show up in these long mosaic exposures for two reasons. First, each constituent part of the final mosaic is not exposed for the full time as Seestar moves from one position to another to cover the entire area. Second, my relatively bright light polluted sky makes it difficult for dim features to rise above background glow. 

Past midnight on October 22nd I saw Orion rising above trees. Troublesome neighbor lights were all turned off at this time, and dark conditions were too good to pass up. So, I set Seestar to make a filtered mosaic image of the Horse Head Nebula (IC434), the Flame Nebula (NGC2024), and the bright star Alnitak in Orion's belt. The next 71-minute exposure shows more detail than my previous attempt last year. It would have been nice to expose for more than 71 minutes, but at 3am my sleep deprived brain shut down, and I went to bed.

After gaining experience using long exposure mosaic mode, I've discovered that subsequent processing with AI Denoise seems to eliminate artifacts caused by field rotation. As usual, Seestar's reported exposure time is much less than the actual exposure time because so many frames are dropped due to tracking errors. This means I need to plug Seestar into external power to prevent the battery from running out while it runs nearly all evening to make one image.