STARLOG

A PIRATE'S TALE

AUGUST 2, 2016

Tonight was mostly clear and hot. Sunset found me at Lowe's with the wife, getting some gear to dig a hole in my yard to plant a tree. When it's dry, our soil is a very hard clay that feels like you're trying to dig through concrete. Wetting it doesn't really help because the water doesn't easily seep down to the lower layers, so you end up with a muddy layer on top of concrete, which makes things even worse.

Yesterday, we began digging the hole for the tree. We waited until evening for two reasons: first, it has been HOT lately, and it doesn't even begin to cool off until after the sun sets; and second, we have a strict HOA, and with this tree being planted in the front yard, I didn't want to give them an excuse to write us up for having an untidy yard.

I carefully excavated the sod (to use it somewhere else) and ended up with a large dirt circle in our front lawn. If the HOA sees it, we'll blame it on an alien crop circle, I thought. Then we began digging a hole into the dirt to plant our tree. The first few inches went pretty smoothly until we hit the hard clay. We tried spades, pitchforks, hoes, and even a Garden Weasel. In two hours time, and after a broken pitchfork, we succeeded in digging the hole another 6 inches deep.

Dang, it's getting late and we still need to dig another 6 inches or so. My wife asks me what the HOA would say if they saw this big hole in our lawn. "We'll just tell them we're pirates and we're looking for buried treasure," I quipped. But instead, we put the tree (still in its pot) in the middle of the hole, threw the loose dirt back in the hole around it to hold it in place (and to clean up the front lawn a bit), carted the sod to the back yard, and decided to go to Lowe's the next day to find something to cut through the clay.

Fast forward back to tonight. We wandered around Lowe's for awhile and, not finding anything better, settled on buying a pickaxe. If this doesn't scream "Pirates!" to our neighbors, nothing will. I began humming "Whistle While You Work" softly to myself as we made our way to the checkout line. Walmart was next door to Lowe's (who thought of THAT?!?) so we spent a bit of time in there as well.

The Sun had set by this time, and in the parking lot, I caught sight of Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. I tried for Mercury, but I couldn't make it out with my naked eye.

Getting home, we decided it was too dark to start work on the hole again, so I ended up with a free, clear evening. These short summer nights mean that I only have 60-90 minutes of observing time on weeknights, so I quickly set up the telescope and gear in the driveway: folding table, eyepiece case, observing chair, star charts... it looked like a star party where I was the only one who showed up.

Jupiter had already disappeared behind some houses, so I pointed at Mars first. It was low in the sky and swimming in the atmosphere, but in moments of good seeing, I could make out Hellas, Syrtis Major, Iapygia, and Utopia Planitia (home of a Federation shipyard in Star Trek), along with a polar cap.

I then turned to Saturn. It also was swimming in turbulence, but once in a while, it would snap into perfect focus and my 12" scope really strutted her stuff. The rings were gorgeous and detailed, and crepe ring was obvious. I wasn't able to make out the Encke Gap, but that may have been due to the turbulence.

Time to try for something a bit harder. I pointed at M4, and was pleasantly surprised to see it there, plain as day, even though Scorpius was diving right into some lights from a baseball diamond about a half mile away. There are times when M4 isn't strong enough to poke through the muck that is my urban sky. Using my barlowed 18mm eyepiece (211x), the cluster appeared large and somewhat oval with dozens of stars visible. Looking more like an open cluster than a globular, most of the brightest stars were along a straight line bisecting the cluster.

At this point, a neighbor turned on his porch light for a few minutes and it reminded me that I had recently built a light shield out of black posterboard. I went inside and got it and slipped it over the end of the telescope, and then took aim at M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. The ducks were flying frantically back and forth from one edge of the eyepiece to the other. The breeze had picked up a bit and the light shield was acting as a sail. "Avast! Batten down the hatches, Matey!"

I tightened down the azimuth bearing and that helped a bit, but the breeze was too much. When it would sit still, M11 was gorgeous, with one bright yellow star surrounded by a dense flock of fainter siblings. Like a gold nugget amongst a pile of silver coins.

This was not good. I turned the telescope in another direction. High in the sky was M57, the Ring Nebula, so I took aim with my star cannon. The nebula was large and bright, and I was able to easily make out the nearby magnitude 13 star with averted vision (it blinked in and out with direct vision), but I could not make out the central star. The ring was not quite circular, and it appeared on the verge of showing me a bit of color at the edges, but the scope was still shaking a bit too much for me to get a clear view.

Getting a bit discouraged with the wind on an otherwise gorgeous night, I tried one last time. I swung the scope to nearby M13, the Great Hercules Cluster. It was a beautiful rosette of stars, with some brighter ones sprinkled in the foreground. But the telescope was still shaking in the breeze enough to make viewing difficult. A pity.

I knew I'd have difficulty tracking down anything new. There were times when I actually had to hang on to the tube of the telescope to keep the object from zipping out of the field of view. I put away my gear, disappointed by the wind, but grateful to at least be out enjoying the stars again.