So the Mini Tower is not capable of serious scientific work? I DON’T THINK SO!!!
Yesterday, 27-August-2009, another occultation of Antares by the Moon occurred at 2101 UT. Unfortunately, our club announcement was not posted until around the middle of the day and I had no idea about the event until the first news note popped up in the email. YIKES! Time to get moving!
I plotted the event and found a clear site right on the center line that was only about 15 miles from my house. Unfortunately, it was right along side of a major highway! Uh-oh! Also, our only working Astro-camera, a modified web cam, was on loan to a friend who lives about 40 miles away! Houston! We have a problem! A brain storm hit almost instantly! I’d better get moving before I set off the smoke alarms!!
I called my friend David Gilmore (a.k.a. Rags) and asked if he had a camera that I could use for this event. I was originally thinking of his video camera, but, he told me there was no way to couple it to a telescope. However, he did tell me that he had an adapter that would allow his Nikon DSLR to be mounted to his C8. GREAT! I have my own C8 so I could have one imaging and the other as a visual guide scope. They would be a matched set so I would be seeing exactly what the camera would be seeing. EXCELLENT!
First, I would like to make note that I have never in my life used a DSLR! I grew up with manual film cameras. I do have nice little Pentax pocket camera that has served me well since I bought it. It has been to Iraq twice and even though it looks as if it has been in a war zone it is still working perfectly. I just could not use it with my telescopes because there is no way to hook it up.
I drove over to Rags’ place and he gave me the fastest lesson in using this type of camera in history. OK. I think I got it. So, I packed his gear into the truck with my gear, which was still there from last night and headed to the site.
Upon my arrival, I found that the satellite images from Maps.Yahoo.com were severely outdated!! The area that I had selected was now overgrown! ARRRRRRRRRGH!! OK. I looked at the images and map and started driving around. I still had some time so all was not lost, yet. There was the State Highway Garage, but, the gates were locked and I couldn’t find anyone around. I finally found a perfect site that was about 1 mile west of where I wanted to be located. In fact, it was the ONLY place that was open and accessible. Everything else was either tree covered or oriented so that the Moon was not visible.
The spot that I finally found was located right off of State Route 9. It was the exit ramp to Granite Lake Road in the town of town of Munsonville, NH. I drove through Munsonville looking for a place closer to the center line. I would have missed the town if I had blinked. I like towns like that! Anyway, I parked my truck along side of the exit ramp and began setting up. I had hoped to get to Latitude N43.013029, Longitude -72.14166, which is 0.05 Km from path center. Instead, according to the map, the location I used is at Latitude N43.006035, Longitude -72.15800, which is 1.394 Km from path center. The GPS in the Mini Tower showed the same coordinates. Even though I had to climb a short slope to get to level ground, it was perfect! I had little choice anyway since there were no immediate options.
The location
I lugged the gear up the slope and got the Mini Tower set up and leveled. I ran AC power from the truck to the site and then started mounting the OTAs. Using the secondary Vixen style saddle plate that is standard with all Mini Towers I mounted Rags’ C8. His C8 has an ADM Accessories Vixen dovetail. Mine was on the main Losmandy style saddle plate since my C8 has an ADM Accessories Losmandy style dovetail. The Mini Tower secondary saddle plates do not come with the Allen leveling screws installed. We install them on every Mini Tower that comes to us. To our knowledge, we are the ONLY ones who do this. If we had not done so I could never have aligned the two OTAs. By using these screws and rotating the saddle plate around the CW axle I was able to perfectly align both C8 optical paths in only about one minute. The GPS had locked on and I had synchronized to the Moon. I was ready!
The set up
I mounted the DSLR to the back of Rags’ C8 and had no idea how to focus it! I could see nothing on the view screen on the back. I had completely forgotten that this camera was a through the lens camera and in a mild panic called Rags on the cell phone. Yeah! For ONCE I actually had a signal on that horrible thing! Verizon has the absolute worst coverage in NH, bar none! That’s another story for another time. Rag’s reminded me that it was just like the SLRs of old and once I looked through the view finder I was back in action. Even so, focusing these things is not easy when looking at something such as the Moon, through a C8, in daylight, while wearing eye glasses! I managed to get a few test images that looked promising and settled down to wait for the event.
The time is near!
A local police officer that was off duty happened to notice me and all of my gear up on the bank along side of the exit ramp. He stopped over to see what was up. I introduced myself, handed him one of my business cards and told him what was going on. He was intrigued. I had him look through My C8 which was set for visual use and after some effort he was able to see Antares which by now was not too far from the Moon. At this time, the ONLY cloud in the sky just happened to move right in front of the Moon! This same thing happened to us on the last occultation! I was not thrilled to say the least. Officer Pope of the Antrim, NH Police Department was smiling as I shook my fist at the obnoxious cloud. He had seen enough, the Moon was behind the cloud and he decided to politely excuse himself and go about his business. Shortly after he left, the clouds started to move away. They weren’t completely gone, but, it was enough that I had some hope of seeing the event as well as getting some images of it.
Antares was now quite close. The event was near. I took a few pictures and when I tried to change the shutter speed the camera wouldn’t respond! OH NO! NOT NOW! I called Rags, again and told him what was happening. He tried to help me go through the commands as best he could. He had only used the camera a few times and was trying very hard to remember how things worked on it. We finally got it working, again. So, I was able to get back to the task at hand.
At 1701 hours local time, just as the graze began, my friend Paul Cezanne called on the cell phone. He was down on Cape Cod and was trying to see the event with some of his club members. I was looking through the EP and started yelling at him, “There it goes! It’s back! It’s behind another mountain! It’s back again! I’m trying to take images! I’ll call you later!” then hung up! Actually, I think we were both kind of yelling at each other about seeing it or not seeing it, but, everything went so fast that I don’t clearly remember. I threw the phone to the ground and started taking more pictures.
It was now 1718 hours local time and the event was over almost as soon as it began, or, so it seemed. It certainly felt as if it had taken longer, but, the clock doesn’t lie. Throughout the event I was able to watch as Antares disappeared and reappeared and still was able to take some pictures. I could only hope that at least one would come out. Since I had no idea how to call up the images and review them on the LCD screen I just kept snapping away until about 1720 hours. At this point I decided it was time to break things down and head for Rags’ place to see what results, if any, I had achieved.
I got to his place about an hour later and we went down to his computer to unload the images. Once we had them on the computer we started to look and found that I had actually managed to get some images. Not only did I get them, some of them were pretty good. Some even showed Antares just as it was passing behind a mountain! YIPEE! Here are some of the results. Apparently, there were still some wispy clouds around. I just didn’t notice them until after we downloaded the images.
Getting close!
Antares is just slipping behind a mountain.
Antares reappears
Antares touches another mountain.
Antares is back again.
Antares almost disappears.
Antares is back and bright.
Going behind another mountain.
Back once more.
Once more Antares dims behind a mountain.
Antares shines very brightly again.
The above images are the better of the lot. I have a number of them. They show pretty much the same thing. At one point I messed up the focus on the C8 and a few of the images are just too embarrassing to show. However, this game of hide and seek went on for several minutes. However, as with all things, it came to an end too soon. I watched Antares drift further and further from the Moon. I finally decided that it was time to pack it in and go see what I had managed to capture.
After Rags had moved the images to the thumb drive on my key chain I headed for home feeling very tired, but, very satisfied. I, the Village Idiot, had actually managed to get some good images with a camera that I had no clue how to run using a set up that many have said would not work for such an event. I believe that this proves the extreme portability and capabilities of the Mini Tower. I was able to jump up, run to a site, set up in virtually no time with some heavy equipment and get the results for which I could only hope. That is exactly one of the things for which the Mini Tower was designed. So, yes, the Mini Tower has once again proven that it is probably the best and most capable of the Grab-N-Go mounts on the market, bar none!
CS
Steve