Tag Archives: science

Aurora Out My Window

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I see the aurora for the first time — well, sort of — right from the comfort of my own home.

If you pay attention at all to science-related news, you are probably aware that the sun is near the peak of its 11-year solar activity cycle, with lots of sunspots and coronal mass ejections. This has made aurora a lot more visible than usual, making it possibly for people to see it as far south as Arizona and Texas.

I don’t live that far south. I live in north central Washington state. Opportunities to view the aurora abound at my home — which has a perfectly unobstructed view to the north, right to the horizon — but I’ve spent much of the past two years away from home. Ironically, from June through August, I was traveling at latitudes farther north than where my home is, but I just didn’t see the aurora on any nights I might have. I could blame weather (clouds), ambient lighting (being near a city), or a lack of clear view to the north (from trees or mountains).

But when I got home, I became determined to see the aurora from my home.

The Science of the Aurora

I would be remiss if I did not mention the excellent Space Weather and Aurora Dashboard pages constantly updated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It provides a wealth of information about the aurora, from forecasts and current conditions to basic and detailed information about what causes the aurora.

For example, NOAA’s Aurora Tutorial page starts its explanation of the aurora like this:

The aurora is formed from interactions between the solar wind streaming out from the sun and Earth’s protective magnetic field, or magnetosphere. The aurora is one manifestation of geomagnetic activity or geomagnetic storms. As the solar wind increases in speed and the interplanetary magnetic field embedded in the solar wind turns southward, the geomagnetic activity will increase and the aurora will become brighter, more active, and move further from the poles. Even moderate solar wind creates aurora so there is usually a weak aurora somewhere even when there isn’t a big geomagnetic storm.

There are two types of solar events that create big geomagnetic storms that are associated with bright and active aurora. The first is a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, which can be described as a billion tons of plasma ejected from the sun, traveling at a million miles per hour. When a CME arrives at Earth, it can produce some of the biggest geomagnetic storms and thus, some of the brightest and most active auroras that extend furthest toward the equator. The second solar event that can create moderate sized geomagnetic storms is called a coronal hole. Coronal holes are the source of high speed solar wind streams. When these high speed streams arrive at Earth, they can produce active auroras. But the geomagnetic storms and aurora associated with coronal holes is less active than those from the biggest and fastest CME’s.

Later on that page, it explains what causes the individual colors you might see. This is a great place to start if you want to learn more about how the aurora forms and when viewing is best.

Forecasts < Actual Conditions

My quest to see the aurora started with the forecasts on the Aurora Dashboard page. Each day, NOAA provides a forecast for tonight and tomorrow night. You can see an example in the top two images in the screen capture below. Like any weather forecast, this is a prediction of what might happen based on data and models. In this particular example, the forecast looked good for two nights in a row.

Aurora Dashboard
In the early morning hours of October 10, the forecast for that night was a lot more optimistic than reality.

I’ve lost a lot of sleep trying to see the aurora. In this example, the forecast told me it should be visible where I live. But this page also provides a very short term forecast for the next 35 minutes. The image on the left is for the northern hemisphere and it painted a truer picture of the situation. The chances of seeing the aurora where I lived was slim. And, of course, I didn’t see it on the night of October 9-10.

Short Term Forecast
The short term forecast looked a lot better on the night of October 10-11.

But things were different on the night of October 10-11. I knew they were different when my social media feed on Mastodon began filling with aurora photos. I watched the Aurora Dashboard and was rewarded with a very promising short term forecast image. I set up a GoPro pointed mostly at the northern horizon and sky and turned on the night hyperlapse feature. Then I turned off all the lights in my home, including the solar string lights on my deck, and hung out on the deck to watch the sky.

Understand that my home might be 2 miles down a gravel road 10 miles from town, but it has a commanding view of the entire valley, including the brightly lighted cities of Wenatchee and East Wenatchee. This is not a good place for stargazing. No matter how much I tried to get my eyes adjusted to the dark, it simply wasn’t dark. But soon, after a while, I started seeing a reddish glow in the sky. I took a photo with my iPhone 13 Pro — yes, I know it’s time for an update; maybe after Christmas — and was shocked to see auroral streaks of pink lines in the photo.

First Aurora Shot
This was the first photo I took from my deck. It was 7:13 PM, less than an hour after sunset.

For the next few hours, I moved from inside my nice warm (but dark) house to outside on my cool deck. I tried hard to see beyond the faint streaks in the sky, but every time I took a photo, the photo revealed far more than I was seeing. It was out there but my eyes just couldn’t take in enough auroral light to see it very well.

Antoher Aurora Shot
I took this photo a little while later. The predominant colors were a pink and an almost lime green.

Another Aurora Shot
Here’s another shot from a while later.

It was rewarding but also frustrating. This was probably the first time in my life when I could photograph something better than I could see it. But I wanted to see it! With my eyes!

The sky started to cloud up a little and my frustration got the better of me. After a while, I gave up.

The Video

This was apparently a mistake. I should have tried again around midnight. How do I know this? Well, remember that GoPro I set up? Here’s what it captured before its battery died:

The Next Aurora Viewing

I’m watching the forecast pages closely. The next time we have a strong forecast, I’ll be ready with multiple cameras — including my Nikon, on a tripod — to capture it. But next time, I’ll set up a lounge chair on the deck, snuggle in a sleeping bag, and watch until I can see it better with my own eyes.

Never Stop Thinking

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I think of an experiment to test a theory.

As I age, I find that my mind often wanders into different directions, normally unbidden. I think it’s because I have very little in the way of distractions in my home: I live alone and I don’t have a TV going all the time. This gives me time to think — and sometimes I think about unusual things.

The Science of Hot Coffee

This morning, I thought about why it was so important for me to warm my coffee cup before brewing coffee into it and why it was equally important to get the metal teaspoon I use to add sugar and stir out of that cup as quickly as possible. It all has to do with temperature: keeping that coffee hot as long as possible so I could enjoy it at my own pace before it got cold.

The warmed coffee cup is pretty obvious — we’ve all had the experience of putting a salad on a dish still hot from the dishwasher. The salad touching the plate isn’t as cold as the salad that isn’t. This is why they chill salad plates (and forks) at good restaurants. It follows that putting something hot into a cold vessel will do the same. I guarantee you’ve experienced this yourself. I know only one other person who takes the time to warm his coffee cup before putting coffee in it.

(And yes, I know a lot of folks don’t give a damn about what they likely consider a minuscule temperature change. But I do.)

But the spoon? Why is it so important for me to remove the spoon quickly?

This morning I thought a little about that. I’d always assumed that the stainless steel teaspoon would act as a heat sink. One end is in the hot coffee and the other is in the relatively cool kitchen. The heat from the coffee would heat up the spoon, which was made of metal — an excellent conductor of heat — and that heat would travel up the spoon handle to its end. The handle, which was constantly being warmed by the coffee would be constantly cooled by room temperature. That heat energy that is lost would have to come from somewhere: the coffee.

This is something I’ve always assumed. It makes sense to me. But this morning, for some reason, I wondered if I was right. And then I came up with an experiment to test my theory.

The Scientific Method


Scientific Method diagram by Wikipedia user Efbrazil used via CC 4.0 license.

I was in fifth grade when I learned about the scientific method. That was a long time ago and, not being a scientist or in any way involved in lab work my entire life, you’d think I’d forget it. But some things just stick with me. I think the scientific method stuck with me because it made sense logically — and I’m definitely a logical thinker.

Don’t worry — I won’t go into the scientific method in detail here. I’ll just focus on this diagram, which shows all steps to the method. The important concept to take away from this is that it starts with a question you might want answered and then goes through the process of coming up with a possible answer (hypothesis) and testing that answer (experiment). If the results (analyzed data) support the hypothesis, you might be done; if they don’t, then you’re definitely not done. In either case, you’d likely explore other hypotheses, going through the process again (and again and again, if necessary) until you either couldn’t get an answer — i.e., the experiment results simply do not support any hypothesis — or you were confident that one of your hypotheses was correct.

When I thought up an experiment to test my theory about a stainless steel teaspoon as a heat sink, I realized I was using the scientific method. In real life — not in a lab, not as a scientist. It was a great example about how some of the stuff we learn in school that we don’t think we’ll ever use in life does become relevant every once in a while.

Want to see the process for my experiment? Here are the first four steps:

  1. Observation/Question – More of a question: does coffee get cold faster if you leave a teaspoon in it?
  2. Research Topic Area – Well, understanding what a heat sink is is probably important to forming a hypothesis.
  3. Hypothesis – Yes, coffee does get cold faster if I leave a stainless steel teaspoon in it than if I don’t. (This would not apply to a plastic teaspoon since plastic is a poorer conductor of heat than metal.)
  4. Experiment – Take two identical cups. Add an equal amount of boiling water to each cup. Put a room temperature teaspoon inside one cup. Take temperature readings every 5 to 10 minutes to see if the one with the teaspoon gets cold faster. (You could expand the experiment to include three cups and put a plastic teaspoon in the third to test the hypotheses that plastic teaspoons would not have an effect.)

That’s as far as I got. I thought up the experiment but I didn’t do it. It simply isn’t that important to me to know, one way or the other, if I’m right. But it might make a nice at-home experiment for home-schooled kids if you happen to know any. Science is important — and heat sinks are a part of our every day life — they’re inside every computer we own.

Why Blog about It?

Why am I blogging about this? Well, I think I surprised myself this morning by my train of thought and where it led me. I wanted to share that with other folks who might find themselves consumed with things that prevent them from thinking for themselves.

All for clicks and likes

Let me take a moment to mention how outside pressures, especially from social media, get people to do things just for clicks and likes. Just this morning, I read another gender reveal tragedy story — too many gender reveals exist solely to impress others with their outrageousness. People are dying because a blog post that went viral has convinced people to make their own viral moment centered around the gender of their unborn child. Are we really that dumb? That 15 minutes of fame can put lives at risk?

This is an extreme, of course, but think about the not-so-smart things you’ve done to impress your friends and others over the years. Those “watch this” moments. Ever think of why you were really doing them? Or what the consequences could have been if what you did backfired? Is it really that important to impress others?

How about impressing yourself instead?

Every day, we’re faced with a barrage of inputs from family, friends, strangers, advertisers, and the news media. Direct conversation, text, and email; social media posts by people with their own agenda; print, audio, and video advertisements on billboards, in magazines, and everywhere online and on television; network and cable news broadcasters. Too much of that input is trying to fill your head with someone else’s thoughts and ideas and manipulate your opinions. If you follow politics at all, you know exactly what I mean. It’s hard to have a moment to yourself, a time to just think based on verifiable facts and to form your own ideas and opinions.

I do this a lot. Yes, I spend a lot too much time on Twitter but that’s the only social media I allow access to my brain. (Seriously folks, #DeleteFacebook.) And even then, I’m careful about who I follow. I don’t want a diet of political nonsense from either side so I tend to avoid accounts that post just politics. Instead, I try to get tweets from fellow thinkers — or at least from folks who have a life that doesn’t revolve around cable news and the latest political/celebrity scandal. And when I’m not on Twitter — which really is most of the time — I keep active and work on ways to make my life fulfilling.

I think therefore I am. If you can’t think for yourself, do you really exist?

Anyway, does leaving a stainless steel teaspoon in your coffee make it cool faster? If you do the experiment, let me know.

Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories Can Kill

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Some reflections on the danger of COVID misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Do you want some reliable information about COVID-19? Visit the Center for Disease Control’s COVID page: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/. This page is especially useful if you’re wondering what to believe about vaccines: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html

The other day I saw a business owner I hadn’t seen since early in the days of the COVID pandemic. His name is Mike. His business is down in Yakima, WA and I’m pretty sure that the last time I saw him was when I was on my way back from my southern migration in mid March 2020.

The last time I saw Mike

Back then, the pandemic was still new. I’d done a bunch of art shows in Arizona and was scheduled to do one in Borrego Springs, CA on the second weekend in March 2020. I’d voiced some concern to my artist friend, Janet, who was also going to do the show, wondering whether it would be cancelled. She thought I was nuts — that’s how new COVID was. So we both drove all the way out to Borrego Springs, camped out in the desert, and were informed, the day before setup, that the show had been cancelled.

This told me what I’d already suspected: the pandemic was real and it was serious.

I headed home and stopped in Yakima along the way to pick something up at Mike’s shop. He was spewing conspiracy theories as usual — he’d always shared what he learned from far right wing radio talk shows with me and I always tuned them out — suggesting that COVID wasn’t real.

I got what I needed and hurried home.

I don’t like to disagree with folks who share what I think are crazy beliefs — it just isn’t worth it — but I don’t like to hang out with them, either. It’s almost as if I’m worried that some of that crap will take root in my brain and start rotting it.

Mike’s Bout with COVID

Want to read a real story from a COVID survivor? This Twitter thread has plenty of first-hand details.

Fast forward to Monday of this week. I needed another item from Mike’s shop and was already down in Pasco for an art show that weekend. Instead of going straight home, I headed over to Mike’s place in Yakima. I wore a mask when I went inside and, although none of the employees were wearing masks when I showed up, they all put them on right away. I admit that surprised me. Yakima is one of Washington’s COVID hot spots for a reason.

I talked to Mike. He wasn’t vaccinated, of course. He reported that he’d gotten COVID and told me all about the symptoms. How quickly it had come on, how he’d lost his sense of taste and smell, how he’d had a cough and some trouble breathing. He didn’t need hospitalization — or, if he did, he didn’t tell me about it. But since getting COVID, he was having issues with his arms. Pain, mostly, and lack of strength. It had been going on for months. His doctor had tried several pain medications and none helped — although ibuprofen, which I suggested, did. He claimed his doctor told him not to take it long term because it could “mess him up.” So he was living in constant pain after having COVID.

He was suffering from Long COVID.

He knew it. He admitted it. He said the good thing was that now he was immune to COVID so he wouldn’t be getting the vaccine. That was good because there was an Israeli study….

He went on a bit before I interrupted him and told him I had to go. (My fear of brain rot had kicked in.)

It Really Isn’t Worth It

Despite his crazy beliefs, I kind of like Mike. I don’t want him to be sick. I want him to get vaccinated. I want him to understand that what he’s reading isn’t true or is, at the least, misleading.

So when a FactCheck.org article related to misinformation about the Israeli vaccine study crossed my Twitter feed, I sent him a link in a text message.

You mentioned Israeli studies about vaccine efficacy. I hope you’re getting FACTS and not misleading information. Here’s an article from FactCheck.org about a misleading video about the Israeli studies. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/scicheck-video-questioning-vaccine-efficacy-pushes-falsehood-about-israel-data/

It got the response I should have expected. I can imagine him typing all this crap into his phone, feverishly trying to convince me that an organization I trust and respect is “bullshit.” I didn’t even read it all. In fact, I didn’t even know until just now, when I selected it to copy and paste, that he’d written so much; it didn’t show up in the text window. But here it is, in its entirety:

Did you know that fact-check.org is a bullshit site ? Deep into censoring, tainted by big Pharma money and tied to Facebook ?
No I’m not misinformed . I know too many Doctors, and RN’s who I talk to that agree with me . I don’t care if someone wants to get the Jab or not. I’ll take my chances with my natural antibodies, could I get sick again, yes, just like those who got the jab . I’m on the same page as Rand Paul. At least I won’t have to worry about all the side effects people have been experiencing.
I read all news left and right and it amazes how gullible and naive people are , for example just look at how many people fell for that phony Russian collision bullshit . You know, the ones that ONLY get their news from CNN or MSNBC, you know the type. The totally misinformed . Now that made up bullshit is coming to light . Durhams investigation has proven it to all be a total fabrication .
As far as studies go to the efficacy of natural antibodies there have been 96 studies so far .

Japan crushes Big Pharma with a small yet effective move


Japan is vaccinating and the Japanese government recently made Ivermectin available too . Since Ivermectin was made available New cases have plummeted from over 6000 per day to around 100 . If used in the early stages it is very effective . You can always tell who the misinformed are when you mention Ivermectin . If Horse Dewormer comes out of their mouth you can tell they are misinformed . Ivermectin was distributed to 300 million people in Africa by Merck for over 30 years, billions of doses taken safely . It is considered by the WHO as one of the ten most important drugs in existence . In 2015 the inventors won a Nobel prize for the good they did . River Blindness, elephantiasis and a host of other disease was eradicated by its use . There is also the Veterinarian Ivermectin medicine .
Believe what you want . I won’t believe anything coming from sources like factchecker.org and Wikipedia . Way too biased for me .

My response was short and simple:

Believe what you want. Sorry to bother you.

It’s kind of heartbreaking.

But there’s one thing I should have told him, one thing I realized after that final text to him.

He didn’t get vaccinated and he got COVID. I did get vaccinated and I mask up in public and I haven’t gotten COVID. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Another Neighbor Dies

Last week, another one of my neighbors died of COVID.

Understand that I live on a private road with only about 25 lots and maybe 20 homes. In total, fewer than 50 people live here. Yet we’ve lost two of them to COVID.

The first was an older guy who lived by himself and was not well-liked in the neighborhood. I don’t know for certain what his personal beliefs were, but I know he was friends with another anti-vax neighbor who he visited every morning for coffee. I’d see him drive by with his dog — the same one who killed my chickens twice — barking his brains out the pickup truck’s window.

The story that went through the neighborhood is that he got COVID and was hospitalized. He was in for quite a while. They were ready to release him when they discovered he had pneumonia. So they kept him longer. Then, before they could release him, he had a stroke — could it have been caused by a COVID-related blood clot? I don’t know. They sent him off to the Seattle side of the mountains for rehab and he died a while later.

Keep in mind that all this happened before there was a vaccine. Sure, he could have kept safe by wearing a mask, maintaining his distance from others, etc. But he apparently didn’t think that was necessary. Instead, he carried on his morning coffee routine with the other anti-vax neighbor, a man who goes off to work every day and is doubtlessly in contact with many people. And who knows what kind of other socializing he did?

The more recent death was infinitely sadder. The man who died was also unvaccinated, but he was a doctor so I honestly don’t understand why he didn’t get vaccinated. He was in his 50s and had recently built his home. He had a wife and grown kids and probably grandkids. He was in that time of life when the hard work is done and retirement is on the horizon. The time we supposedly work hard for our entire lives.

He and his wife both got COVID. They both wound up in the hospital. She recovered. He didn’t. He went into the ICU. I don’t know if he was intubated — I didn’t ask. But he didn’t come out.

I knew he was dead when I came home from shopping one day and saw the florist’s delivery van coming down the road from the direction of their home. Another neighbor confirmed it later. I was asked to help spread the news among our other neighbors, including the vaccinated couple across the street who had gotten relatively mild cases of COVID from co-workers and the pediatrician at the hospital who likely already knew about our neighbor’s death.

What I find so sad about his death is how preventable it was. A shot or two in the arm may have prevented his COVID infection and likely would have prevented death even if he did get infected. But somewhere, he’d read something that convinced him it was better to not get the vaccine. Did he regret that decision in the days and weeks leading up to his death? I don’t know. I hope his wife, family, and close friends learned something.

I hope my other neighbors learned something. But I know they didn’t. Apparently, these people can’t believe reality until it strikes them.

Hell, even Mike doesn’t believe — and he’s actually suffered through it.

The Pandemic Isn’t Over

This past weekend, I sold my jewelry at an art show in Pasco, WA. The venue was indoors and masks were required. I normally work at home and wear a mask only when indoors in public — for example, when shopping — so I wasn’t used to wearing one for 10 hours straight. I did not enjoy it.

I’m angry that I had to do it.

I’m not angry with the governor or the venue operator or the show promoter who required it. They are doing what they have to do to keep us safe. I appreciate that.

CDC COVID Cases
CDC COVID Deaths
As of today, the CDC reports more than 46 MILLION cases of COVID-19 in the US and 755,201 deaths in the US due to COVID-19.

Instead, I’m angry with the stupid, gullible, misinformed idiots who doubt COVID is real or serious when people are getting struck down with it every day. People who think the vaccine does more harm than good when all evidence proves otherwise. People who are keeping the virus alive and allowing it to mutate by giving it a place to thrive and grow — their own bodies — because they’re not taking logical, science-based precautions.

We are nearly two years into this pandemic and it is still affecting our lives. And it will continue to affect our lives until the misinformation and conspiracy theories about it stop.

Do you want this to be over? Get vaccinated. Wear a mask when among strangers or unvaccinated friends. Don’t let your guard down. Stop believing the bullshit. Let’s end this already.

A Message for Anti-Vaxxers

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It’s simple: vaccines save lives.

While I’ve been blogging about my summer cold, I’ve also been innundated by ads on YouTube, news stories on the web and radio, and Twitter posts practically begging people to get their COVID-19 vaccinations. The fact that people are not doing this blows my mind. Why wouldn’t you get a vaccine that could prevent you from getting a potentially fatal illness?

Apparently there are a lot of folks out there who believe conspiracy theories about the vaccine putting a chip in them, magnetizing their skin, or being “experimental” and, thus, dangerous. (I guess these are the same people dumb enough to believe the earth is flat, we never landed on the moon, and jet contrails are full of mind control chemicals. Does the stupid ever end?)

I’ve got one thing to say to these gullable morons: wake the fuck up.

Vaccines save lives. We no longer have to fear polio, smallpox, measles, and other serious, life-threatening illnesses because of vaccines. This has been proven again and again all over the world.

And to everyone out there who says they’re not getting vaccinated because “COVID is 99% survivable,” understand that there’s a huge difference between having an illness — whether it’s the common cold (which I appear to have), the flu, or COVID-19 — and dying from it.

Sure, there are folks who have gotten COVID and have survived. Lots of them. Maybe even 99% of them.

But are you considering the percentage who have been bedridden for weeks or months due to symptoms? The ones who have lost their jobs because they simply can’t do them anymore? The ones who have been hospitalized and separated from their friends and families? The ones with ventilator tubes painfully inserted into their airways, making it impossible to breathe on their own or even talk or eat? Do you think those folks are glad they weren’t vaccinated even though they survived (or have survived so far)?

Long COVID symptoms
Do you really want these symptoms for months or years? This scares me more than dying. At least when you’re dead you’re not suffering every damn day of your life.

And what about the ones who survived but are still dealing with post-COVID symptoms, including “long COVID” sufferers who still feel weak or achey, suffer from headaches, or can’t taste their food? And those with permanent brain or organ damage?

And what about the ones who survived but infected friends or family members who weren’t so lucky? The ones who have to carry the weight of someone else’s death on their shoulders because they so stupidly believed in conspiracy theories or disregarded science?

Don’t be a statistic like the folks in this Washington Post article:

A coronavirus outbreak at a Florida government building killed two people and hospitalized several others who were unvaccinated against the virus, a county official said.

The Manatee County Administration Building reopened Monday after the virus that causes covid-19 spread throughout the county’s IT department and forced the building to shut down on Friday. Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes, who is also an epidemiologist, said six unvaccinated employees, including five in the IT department, tested positive for the virus within a two-week period.

The two IT employees who died last week were identified in local media and obituaries as Mary Knight, 58, and Alphonso Cox, 53.

Hopes said that the one IT employee, 23, exposed to the virus who was vaccinated did not get infected.

Do you see a pattern here? I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more pieces like this one. Don’t let yourself or a loved one be featured as one of those killed or permanently disabled by their own stupidity — or yours.

Wake up and get vaccinated now.

My New Telescope

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I finally replace my old telescope.

Dobsonian
My old telescope looked a lot like this modern knockoff. Meade no longer makes them.

Years and years ago, not long after moving into my Arizona home with my future wasband, I bought an 8″ Dobsonian telescope. We’d seen Jupiter and Saturn through the big telescopes at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ and were hooked. The Dobsonian was an affordable, easy to use, and relatively powerful scope, although with hindsight I came to realize it was not the right choice. It had no tracking capabilities, making it a challenge to watch an object for more than a few seconds and making any attempt at photography an utter failure.

The Old Telescope in Washington

I moved the telescope to my new home in Washington when I left Arizona during my crazy divorce. I optimistically set it up in my living room near the door to my big open deck right after the house (and deck) were finished. I think I used it once up there. Too much light pollution from nearby Wenatchee.

Another time, at the request of a friend, I brought it down to the driveway so we could watch a conjunction of Jupiter (or Saturn?) with the moon. The two objects didn’t clear the cliffs behind my house before my friends lost patience and left. I sent the telescope with them so they could experiment with it on their own.

A year or two passed. I realized quite realistically that I’d likely never use the telescope because of the combined problem of local light pollution, difficulty in moving the telescope elsewhere, and the original problem of lack of tracking. So I sold it on Craig’s list. The guy who bought it knew a lot more about it than I did and realized he was getting a good deal. I was just glad to get it out of the corner of my living room.

The New Telescope

Time went by. Light pollution in the Wenatchee area only got worse. I’m still trying to figure out why so many people need floodlights in their yards that shine upwards. (WTF?) Although my street is wonderfully dark with few homes, most of which don’t have floodlights, the ambient light is so bright that the only time my home ever gets dark is when it’s foggy out at night.

Jan's Telescope
Here’s Jan’s new (to him) 16 inch telescope. He needed some modifications done to his little observatory to get it in there. He uses it for astrophotography and can operate it from a laptop inside his house. Check out his photos here.

But I travelled every winter and spent a lot of time in places with truly dark night skies. I started getting interested in astronomy again.

I also had a friend with an observatory in his backyard. He was extremely knowledgeable about telescopes and, after I accompanied him to look at a 16″ scope to replace his 12″ scope, I asked him to help me find a telescope I could travel with. The main qualification: it had to have computerized tracking.

Jan got right to work and found a nice scope for a good price in the Palm Springs area. Trouble is, I was home in Washington and not prepared to drive all the way down there to see and possibly fetch it. So he held off until I returned to Arizona this winter. I missed his first message with an option and it sold before I followed up. But I was on it for his second lead and wound up buying it.

It’s a 2003 Meade LX200 GPS in excellent condition, with tons of eyepieces and a set of filters. After checking it out with its owner, we packed it in its original box and foam, which makes it much safer to transport. It came with everything I needed to use it. And although I’ve since seen them listed for over $1,400 used, I only paid $700 for this one. A good deal.

Working Out the Bugs

Jan very graciously helped me set it back up the first time and showed me how to use it. We immediately ran into difficulties. For some reason, it wouldn’t align properly. I wouldn’t pick up GPS data from the GPS. It wouldn’t find stars and it wouldn’t track them.

I honestly didn’t think the seller had knowingly ripped me off. He had wanted me to come the night before so he could demonstrate it with something to see. I’m a decent judge of people and he did not act as if he was trying to pull a fast one. He even texted me after I left, thanking me and telling me that he hoped I enjoyed it.

New Telescope
Here’s my telescope set up in Jan’s backyard one morning. You can see his observatory beyond it.

We worked on the problems over several consecutive evenings. I was staying at Jan’s house so it was easy. At one point, Jan was convinced that I needed a new AutoStar controller — the device that connects to the telescope and tells it what to do. Replacing the batteries in it didn’t seem to help. Then I asked Jan to use his computer to update the firmware in the controller. He had a PC; I only have Macs. He did that on the third day and that evening we got everything working nearly perfectly. We suspected that the controller had gotten “confused” by sitting idle so long, possibly with bad batteries.

I packed up the telescope and stored it and its box of parts and tripod in Jan’s garage. I was going to Tucson for about a week and had no reason to take it with me since I wouldn’t have time to set it up and use it.

Going Solo

Jan kept telling me to read the manual and I kept trying. It was all a mystery to me so it became an excellent sleep aid while I was in Tucson.

But things changed when I returned from my trip. I fetched the telescope from Jan’s garage and stowed it in my utility trailer. I spent about a week in downtown Wickenburg, where I was showing and selling my jewelry at a big annual Art Show. Then I went off into the desert where I found an excellent campsite for the next 10 days.

One of the things I’d bought for the telescope (and had shipped to Jan’s house) was a lightweight telescope cover. The beauty of living in a desert environment is that there’s usually very little moisture in the air. That means little or no morning dew. And little rain. So I could set up the telescope near my camper, use it at night, cover it up, and not have to worry about it getting damaged during a typical 24-hour period. So I set it up, using the manual — which now had my attention — and got it all ready to use.

Telescope in the Desert
My telescope set up in the desert at my campsite southwest of Vulture Peak near Wickenburg, AZ.

I got it aligned by myself on the second try. The key, I realized, was to use the AutoAlign feature, which automatically figures out where it is, which way it’s pointed, and how it’s angled. All you do is fine-tune its view when it points to two different very bright stars. Once the alignment is done, you can use the AutoStar controller to point to any indexed object. I looked at Venus, the moon (which was a waning crescent at the time), Betelgeuse (which has been in the news a bit lately), the Pleiades, and the Great Nebula. In each instance, I had to adjust the view the controller suggested but, once that was done, the telescope tracked like a dream.

I also started experimenting with a WiFi device I’d bought for the telescope that let me control it with my iPhone using an app called Sky Safari. That made navigating a lot easier. It also gave me access to an “audio tour” of many night sky objects: a narrator’s voice tells you a little about the object you’re looking at enhancing the viewing experience.

I started playing with eyepieces that would change the magnification and field of view of the telescope. I had eight eyepieces, many of which looked as if they’d never been used. I discovered that stronger magnifications worked great on objects high in the sky but were too blurry for items near the horizon. Too much heat coming off the ground, making waves in the air.

I got to know a group of four people with a dog who hiked past my campsite every evening. One evening, they saw me messing with the telescope and I invited them to come back later to do some star gazing. They returned when it was fully dark and I showed them the same things I’d seen (except the moon, which was no longer in the night sky), along with some double stars and the Andromeda galaxy. This is something I never would have been able to do with the old Dobsonian because I’d have to keep re-finding the object every minute or so. They were suitably wowed.

Telescope at Dawn
Dawn was in the same direction as the glow from Phoenix, so I didn’t do much observing in that direction, but I did manage to catch sight of a waxing crescent moon, with Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all lined up in the morning sky.

I learned that the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were in the early morning sky, just above the horizon at sunrise. I woke on a morning with an absolutely clear view to the southeast and managed to align the telescope before it got too light to see anything. I saw four moons around Jupiter and Saturn with its rings. Mars was a reddish blur.

During this time, I watched the weather carefully. When rain appeared in the forecast, I disassembled the telescope and put it away for the rest of my stay at that site.

Beyond the Basics

Accessory Box
Here’s the nearly finished setup for my telescope accessories. After shooting this photo I found yet another eyepiece and added it with the others. There are two layers of foam; I have to lift the top layer to get to items beneath it.

Because I didn’t like the idea of having two separate boxes for carrying around the eyepieces and other accessories needed to run the telescope, I invested $50 at Harbor Freight on a waterproof case with foam insert. I spent about an hour laying out all the accessories and cutting the foam to fit it all in. This freed up the fancy padded Meade box that the eyepieces lived in and made a more secure storage area for the spotting scope and other more delicate items. Now I have just three things to tote around: the telescope in its original padded box, the tripod (which I may make a bag for), and this new box.

I’d like to get a similar case for the telescope itself. Jan has a canvas one that fits the foam for his similar 8″ telescope, but I prefer a hard case with wheels. Still, I’m not interested in spending $400+ to buy one and to have the added weight to tote around. We’ll see what I find without looking too hard.

I also bought an external battery at Harbor Freight. Designed to jump start a car, it also has 12 volt receptacles and USB ports. The telescope came with a DC power cable so it could be used without batteries; the previous owner said he used to plug it into his car when he was using it away from home. I bought a cable that converts that to something that could be plugged into a wall so I could use it with any common power source. Otherwise, it needs 8 C batteries, which I’d hate to burn through.

The Verdict

Although I wish the telescope was smaller and lighter — the tripod weighs about 30 pounds and the telescope weighs about 40 pounds — I can’t complain about the optics, operation, or view. It’s the telescope I wish I’d bought back in the late 1990s when I first moved to Arizona and got to enjoy dark skies. It fits fine in the back seat area of my truck or in my little cargo trailer. I can easily imagine taking it on camping trips or on nighttime outings with friends.

As my winter travels wind to an end, I expect to set it up in at least two more places: the desert at Borrego Springs, where I can share views with my good friend Janet before we part ways until next winter, and possibly Death Valley National Park, where I might detour just to check out the night skies. Next year, it’ll be part of my travel gear again.