After enough years of outdoor UV exposure, temperature fluctuations, and who knows what all else, most plastics start to break down. The thin support ring – looks like polyethylene of some sort – has started to crumble, and the radio telescope’s nose cone is hanging loosely.
Still working!
Inside, the receiver and amplifier appear to be in good enough shape. Note that many birds and many bugs have made a real mess of things.
Not suitable for single-stream recycling.
And they’ve built an astounding nest inside. Dried grass, last year’s hydrangea blooms, torn bits of plastic bags, some shredded paper, a few ripped-up bits of surgical masks. Removing all of this did not endear us to the starlings.
Measure twice, mill once.
The plastic solution worked for a while, but it’s time to up our game. Aluminum brackets, precisely machined out of solid blocks, drilled and tapped for stainless steel hardware. Bright and shiny and destined to be hidden away from view.
Duct tape buys time.
And then, with summery Pennsylvania weather on the horizon (read: thunderstorms), we seal the whole mess up with duct tape. Maybe it’ll deter the birds until we can deal with the rest of it some fall.
The most amazing part is that we didn’t end up using hot glue.
Six decades ago, there wasn’t much on the south end of campus, making it an ideal place for the new Observatory. Relatively calm, not much to block the view, and few sources of nearby light pollution. A lot can change in that time.
Today’s maples and oaks – not pictured, because they were maybe saplings? – are now large enough that they block some low areas of observation and are losing limbs due to disease and age. The stadium has been wreathed by parking lots and festooned with high-intensity lights. Campus buildings have crept southward, surrounding the site. Lewisburg and its surroundings have developed, installed more nighttime lighting, and the sky has grown brighter, obscuring more of the night sky.
Clouds, however: they’re here as much as they ever were. Oh, central Pennsylvania.
This particular wind speed indicator hasn’t been functional in ages, but at some point it was probably useful in determining whether or not to go outside for telescope observations. Wind is of concern in astronomy, as it can produce poor seeing and – when really strong – cause telescopes to shake. But wind chill is the more immediate concern. Cold nights can be good for observing, with clear skies and good seeing, but rough on fingers and toes.
All of that standing still, lack of warming sunshine, etc. doesn’t do a lot to counter a cold night. Maybe think ahead and bring along a hot beverage?
An awful lot of that chart is devoted to conditions when no one should be outside at all. One line of thought considers that a chart with all of your category indicators bunched up on the left isn’t the ideal for communicating information visually. Another notes that an endless tundra of negative numbers tells you enough without needing the particulars.
The Observatory’s windows have but a single sheet of glass, which leads to some impressive wintry displays when the temperature differential is just right.
The rest were on white paper. Why yellow for Ranger 4?
We have several boxes of NASA press releases from the height of the space age, for the simple reason that it’s easier to pack things away than to sort and dispose of junk. None of them are worth much, really, but they can be entertaining. Take this, for example, a summary of the Ranger 4 launch. Not mentioned here, but interesting: Ranger 4 was the first US spacecraft to reach another solar system body.
By crashing into the Moon, as intended. You can read more in a brief summary by Leonard David, or by skimming Wikipedia.
Entertaining bits gleaned from the Space Activities Summary:
“Major Objectives Impact Moon”
“Major Results Impacted Moon”
Velocity is listed as “At lunar impact, 5,963 mph,” but can safely be assumed to be zero very shortly thereafter.
The “rough-land survivable seismometer” likely didn’t, although the fact that it crashed on the far side means we’ll never know.
There may have been “[n]o scientific data obtained,” but they did slam a space probe into the Moon, and before anyone else.
A surprise discovery on a hallway bulletin board at the Observatory: a push pin Big Dipper!
It’s good and charming and subtle, and we can forgive that this version has eight stars instead of the night sky’s seven. (Not counting the visual double of Mizar and Alcor where the handle kinks.) Someone did this on a whim, and now it’s hard to resist the idea of putting up others all over campus to see who notices.
Making an ‘X’ across your telescope’s eyepiece is a handy thing, letting you mark the center instead of eyeballing it. There are all sorts of reasons you might appreciate that little bit of assistance, provided it doesn’t actively interfere with seeing things. So you use as fine a wire as you can. Which is going to break, of course, so keep some spares in the desk drawer.
How thin? This is AWG 53, all of 0.0007 inches thick (0.0178 mm). Enough to make even the finest human hair seem chunky in comparison.
Our Observatory is the second on campus, a replacement for the 1887 original. That one was constructed to house our antique Clark refractor telescope, an early gift from William Bucknell, because it’s really not the sort of instrument you set up on the front lawn when the skies are looking decent.
Here we see the building’s layout as of June, 1959, presumably as discussions were underway regarding the renovations that would begin in 1962. During which one of these walls would collapse, necessitating a relatively hasty pivot to create the current Observatory to maintain the astronomy program. (We’re very grateful for that, sixty years later.)
Should we expect restrooms in an 1889 structure? Which way is north? Did the individual drafting up these plans just not like drawing doors? What’s that unlabeled space “south” of the office? When transitioning a class from the classroom to the observation dome upstairs, do you lead the students through your office or make them go outside? So many questions.
Our wonderful Clark refracting telescope support column, in all its masonry glory. Structurally isolated from the rest of the building so that footsteps don’t cause wobbles in the telescope’s field of view.
For the most part, the light accumulation of dust, pollen, and other stuff on the objective lens of your telescope is a thing you live with and ignore. The damage you can do to the lens and its optical coatings is far more severe than the minor loss of image quality from tiny flecks. Known and accepted trade-off.
Here, however, we have a classic TeleVue Renaissance that’s still in good shape. Aside from the dust and dead spiders, anyway. Exact age is unclear, but we can roughly place it between TeleVue’s founding in 1977 and the construction of the “Halley’s Comet” models in 1985. Serial number 1100, for anyone keeping track at home. Even dust-covered, the optics appear good at a quick glance, and they have a reputation for remaining in good shape for a long time.
There’s a bit of chromatic aberration when you look closely, an issue which has been resolved in their current models. (Optics = hard.) The design type is called a Nagler-Petzval, which uses a pair of lens doublets to correct numerous distortions caused by refraction. Every design has its pros and cons; this one’s quite nice. Our version has – we think – an air-spaced doublet (two lenses utilizing different curvatures) as the objective, and a cemented doublet in the rear.
At least, that how the Halley’s Comet edition was made. The current optics update utilizes two air-spaced doublets – see the diagram for the NP101is – so it’s reassuring to see that the improvements are incremental. Good sign for the one we have.
Okay, the brass could’ve aged better, but it’s got character!
Needs polish.
Black on brass looks good.
Nice touch.
Even the knurled knobs on the focuser are brass. We don’t want to leave this for display, however. We want to see the stars!
Eesh.
That dust, though.
Speckly.
Yeah, definitely a problem. A cleaning is in order.
Can’t make it worse, right?
Not pictured: the dead spiders removed with air from a bulb blower. Dead spiders do not improve optical quality.
Red goo.
Here, we’re applying a coat of First Contact polymer cleaner, an expensive but effective treatment for safely removing gunk from precision optics. Comes in a wee bottle like it’s nail polish and smell like nail polish remover. Because it’s got acetone and other solvents in it.
Drying before removal.
Once it dries, that little tab lets us pull away the pink film with all of the dust and debris stuck in it. A good time to wander away from the stink of volatile solvents and get a cup of coffee.
Much improved.
And, well, that’s a substantial improvement.
Water spots. No dust.
It’s not perfect. The polymer is very good at removing particulates, but less so at water-soluble stuff. Once we evaluate this with a camera setup, we can see if a follow-up cleaning with deionized water is necessary.
Big improvement.
Problem there, of course, is that we run the risk of introducing tiny scratches in the process. Could be worthwhile if the effects are still visible, but we’re still erring on the “do a minimum of harm” side of things.
Despeckled.
Will it live up to its potential as an imaging ‘scope? Maybe. There’s a fair chance. If not, we’ll keep it around as a stylish yet usable throwback for visual observation. The best telescope, as they say, is the one you use.
