Posts Made By: Fred Lusk

Dave…

I did that on a friend's scope at our last star party. One more reason I prefer the Rigel QuikFinder.

Fred

Rich…

Try a standard moon filter. Mars is so bright that I have trouble looking at it for any length of time, and I'm only using a C5. The moon filter dims Mars just enough, and I think it enhances contract a bit too. I have a set of color filters and they do a good job, but I like the moon filter the best.

John…

I did a word search on "Orion" and found Job 9:9, Job 38:31, and Amos 5:8. The first and third verses also mention the Pleiades.

Lots of verses mention "stars" but generally in a non-specific way.

Isaiah 13:10 mentions "constellations" as do a couple of other verses.

The Sun and Moon are mentioned many places.

Happy Hunting,
Fred

Andrew…

I don't know about the Orion (never seen one up close), but I do have a C5 and it does seem to cool down pretty quickly. It's hard for me to quantify because I don't need to pay much attention to it. At a typical star party, by the time I get set up, get my snacks out, etc., the scope is pretty much ready to go.

Probably the most extreme cooling required is when I observe in my backyard in winter. Then the scope goes from a 68°F house to perhaps a 45°F outside (I rarely observe when it's colder than that). Images are reasonably sharp almost right away, though I'm sure it hasn't reached anything like thermal equilibrium yet.

One thing in favor of the C5 is the lack of mirror shift during focusing.

Fred

Jake…

You've found our favorite place. Not only is Glacier Point a great dark sky site, the surroundings are without peer.

Our club (Central Valley Astronomers, Fresno) participates in public star parties there every year. See the September issue of Astronomy Magazine, p. 96-99, for more info. The photos are from 2002, most if not all from the weekend we were there. I'm the guy in the red sweatshirt in the photo titled "Even before nightfall…"

Fred

Floyd…and everyone else…

Last year (November ???), the Astronomical Society of Nevada, Las Vegas (I think) held a star party at the Mesquite Springs Campground. I found the info during some semi-random internet browsing. I wanted to go, but it's a long haul from Fresno for just two days and I couldn't free up more time. If I remember correclty, they were trying to make this an annual event, so you may want to research it.

Mesquite Springs is located near the north end of the valley (SW of Scotty's Castle a few miles) at an elevation of about 1800 feet. It's probably an excellent site. Dante's View might be good too, but it's a pretty exposed ridgeline and can be windy.

Observing at low elevations in Death Valley is likely not to be as much of a problem as it is elsewhere. The air is extremely dry, etc. I took my family a couple of years ago to do some back-roading over Easter Week. Because of the full moon and our focus on rough roads, I did not bring my scope but I did bring a pair of 10x50s. From the parking lot at the Stovepipe Wells Lodge (exactly at sea level), even with all the little yellow lights on the buildings and in the parking lot, I could see mag 6 or better naked eye before the moon came up and I don't have good eyes. With binos, it was extraordinary. Even the one day when it was windy, once it calmed down around sunset, the dust settled out pretty well.

My vedict--this should be a primo spot for fall/winter/spring observing. I still want to go.

Fred

Darien…

I like to joke that all my educated relatives left Louisiana a long time ago :-)

Actually, my father's side of the family has been in LA for >150 years. I have/had relatives in Epps, Monroe, Ruston, Haughton, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Belle Chasse, etc. These include—active or retired—a pharmacist, a pastor, a college professor/dean, a petroleum engineer, a major league pitcher/pitching coach (Billy Muffett…a relative by marriage), a roughneck, several soy bean farmers (one fought in the Battle of the Bulge), and a bunch I can’t remember.

I have been to LA twice: 1973 for a family reunion (we took Amtrak from CA) and 1980 for my grandfather’s funeral. I have little desire to go back. My impressions: LA is a beautiful state…from the inside of an air conditioned car. The 114°F and 15% relative humidity we sometimes get here in Fresno pales in comparison to the 102°F and 98% relative humidity we found in Monroe when we landed in 1980…then we got 3” of rain. Most distrssing to me, though, was the blatant prejudice and even outright racism, including in my extended family. That and the abject poverty I saw along the train trestle in the swamps near Houma (e.g. shacks the size of a walk-in closet housing a family of four…and every family was black).

My dad was born in Shreveport in ought-33, but my grandfather moved the family out to Long Beach, CA, a few weeks later. Even though my grandparents lived in Southern CA for 40 years, they never abandoned their prejudice (fairly strong, but not the worst). My father, however, rejected prejudice (the horror!), but his sister embraced a mild version. My parents believed, and I was raised to believe, that race was a distinction not worth making. I found my grandparent’s attitude somewhere between pathetic and humerous and told them so. Among the relatives I met on my two trips, the only ones I can say who were definitely not prejudiced were the pastor and his family (in fact, one his boys was suspended from school in about 3rd grade for sharing his lunch with a black friend…suspended until the pastor raised holy hell) and a second cousin who is a born-again Christian…and half Italian, as if that matters.

…to be continued…

Fred

Darien…

Now for a couple of stories…
(1) When my grandfather retired from Dow Chemical—he managed an iodine extraction plant in Seal Beach, CA—he and my grandmother moved back to Monroe. All my grandfather wanted to do was fish and sit by the bayou. My grandmother hated it and moved back to CA after he passed away. On my first trip, my grandmother introduced me to one of her friends, a black woman about 15 yrs younger who lived next door. My grandmother having a black person in her house and actually calling her a friend was quite a shock…but apparently they really were friends. IIRC, this woman was a college prof and her husband was an MBA with his own business, or the other way around. Anyway, this woman was several rungs above my grandmother on both the social and educational ladders (after high school, my grandmother had one semester of business school in 1930). BUT, my grandmother called her friend “girl” and she addressed my grandmother as “ma’am”. Old habits die hard, I guess. I was disgusted and told them both.

…to be continued…

Fred

Darien…

Last story…
(2) One of my best friends in high school was a black girl named Gloria. Gloria was smart, a good athelete (she ran an 11.0s 100-yd…I did not), and her dad was a doctor…and she claimed to have the best tan in school. Our junior year both of us took chemistry from my father. When my grandmother heard about Gloria, she assumed she was my girlfriend and teased me about it. No amount of denial on my part was going to sway a southern woman from her incorrect assumption. Anyway, my grandparents were coming to visit for a week and my grandmother just had to meet Gloria. So, Gloria and I set up an ambush. It turned out that Gloria had been sick for a couple of days and needed some homework assignments. She could have asked my dad for them on her first day back in school, but we decided to have her come by the house to pick them up…and meet my grandmother. Gloria called during dinner and I told her to come on by. Hearing that the call was from Gloria, my grandmother started up with the teasing. A few minutes later Gloria showed up with Kim, a Puerto Rican girl from our school —I mention this because it’s another nail in the coffin. (Gloria later fixed me up with Kim, but I don’t hold that against her.) I let them in the front door (no servant’s entrance for these two) and Gloria came up to my dad and gave him a big hug (faux pas). When I introduced everyone you should have seen the look on my grandmother’s face. Priceless!!! Then I told Gloria that the homework assignment was on my desk and she could just go into my room to get it (another faux pas). When she and Kim were back there, I yelled “I didn’t make my bed this morning, would you two make it for me?” By now I had broken as many social rules as I could think of. The best part about it was that my usually non-stop-talking grandmother said hardly a word to anyone for the next three days, and none to me. As they were leaving, I told her she shouldn’t make assumptions and she shouldn’t have been upset if Gloria actually had been my girlfriend. My grandmother half-way apologized. My grandfather thought the whole episode was amusing, partly (I think) because my grandmother got her comeupance for once.

If you have made it all the way to the end of this epic, you have won a prize: you have my permission to buy the biggest, best, most expensive telescope your heart desires. Just don’t send me the bill.

Fred

Here's a photo of Sentinal Rock, which is on the south wall of Yosemite Valley across from Yosemite Falls.

Fred