Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal

Light in a bucket

By James Knudsen

And the traveler in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark.
He could not see where to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.

If you follow the sports pages you know that I recently had a birthday, well, it was last month. Rather significant in that I turned 49 or, as Dad likes to say, “You're entering your fiftieth year.” I'll have to try that at a party sometime:
    “How old are you?”
    “I've entered my fiftieth year.”
    For the most part I think I'm coping with the passing of time fairly well. Yes, I should have adopted a face-moisturizing regimen sooner, but overall things are holding up fine. And, as I like to say, “The view gets better.” The view of the universe I mean. The view in the mirror, the full-length one...well, the less said the better.
    If there's one thing that can weigh on the middle-age psyche it's that sense of being jaded. Living in Los Angeles and in Hollywood in particular for a number of years, it took something really special to get one's attention. One day my head was turned by the sight of a Maasai tribesman walking down Santa Monica Boulevard, red-ochre cloak draped about his shoulders and seven-foot walking stick in hand. Now, that was different. But the usual Hollywood oddities that make Mid-Westerners eyes go w-i-d-e...yawn. So, when something does get the senses focused it must be rather special.

Recently I was compelled to purchase an inexpensive telescope. And then I purchased another. I often look skyward to see if there's anything I can name. My knowledge of astronomy is limited to a semester course in junior college and the things a fellow Marine named Troy was able to point out while we stationed in some dark corner of the globe. From him I learned how to find Scorpio and Leo, and I can still find Scorpio. Thus armed, I have begun looking through my new light bucket.
    Now a few words about telescopes and making them work. First, size matters. It's all about light, gathering as much of it as possible from the particular light you're trying to look at. You're not trying to look at the sodium-vapor light on the corner, so if that is bleeding into your retina – well, that's too much of the wrong light.
    The light you're trying to look at in more detail is millions of miles away. And while it may be reflecting billions of candle powers worth of light, by the time it works its way across the universe or galaxy or even an inconsequential solar system – by the time it's done all that, it's just a dot, a little point, a tiny spark of light measuring a few lumens to the naked eye. So you need a big bucket. But even with a big scope, the amount of sky you're looking at, the field of view (fov) is very small. And as you increase magnification, the field of view gets even smaller. Some things are getting bigger. The point of light you're focusing on is getting marginally bigger and the effect of movement on the telescope, movement caused by slight adjustments to the focuser or the tripod, all those movements are being magnified, enormously.
    Also, the eyepiece is never at a convenient height or angle, the night air temperature is never what you dressed for, and even a little town like Tulare, California hurls enough light pollution into the sky to obliterate all but the brightest of the celestial objects. It was into this mess of optical problems and solutions that I set out to see what I could see.

First up was Mars. The god of war entered opposition on April 6 and is currently very close to Earth. Skilled astronomers have been posting pictures of the images they've been able to capture on the internet. I am not a skilled astronomer. As struggled to get the red planet in focus I learned that in addition to all the difficulties mentioned above, everything's moving. Mars is moving, Earth is moving, the scope's moving on its rickety tripod. But, seeing Mars moving across my eyepiece was something of a revelation in itself. Most everyone knows that the solar system is a collection of rocks whizzing around the Sun. But it's quite another thing to observe movement. Although, I'm told that what I observed is mostly the Earth's rotation and not Mars' orbit, still it got my attention.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

    Thus emboldened I turned the telescope westward to catch Jupiter before it dropped below the peak of the house's roof. Jupiter is still a brighter light despite being 726 million kilometers further away. In years past I'd been able to observe its Galilean moons with binoculars. I knew I'd be able to do that, but I wasn't sure what else I might be able to reel in. So, I began the task of finding it in the “finderscope,” easily the worst piece of equipment I own. This thing would be at home in a Cracker Jack box. I console myself with the knowledge that Galileo brought down an entire worldview with optics that were of lesser quality than the 5x24 joke that sits atop my reflector telescope.
    Once I had the big light lined up, I began moving in closer. First the 32mm eyepiece, then putting that atop a two-power barlow, then the 12.5mm eyepiece, and so on. Gradually, Jupiter started to get bigger in the eyepiece. Its movement across my field of view sped up as well. And then at some point – I don't keep notes because I'm not a skilled or even good astronomer so, I don't know what power I had reached – Jupiter stopped being a flat disc of light. And then there it was, Jupiter and its four moons moving across the night sky.
    And there was a sound, not from Jupiter – he's the strong, silent type – a sound from me. The sort of sound I imagine little Cindy Lou Who must have made when she first saw the Grinch. You see, there in my eyepiece, visible to my jaded eye for the first time, were the streaks of the jovian giant's atmosphere. The streaks we all know from our grade-school science book.
    I gasped.
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Copyright © 2014 by James Knudsen

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