Some 10 years ago I began to browse and surf for information on how to get my own telescope � well by 1999 I was lugging out my 10″ Meade LX200 to my backyard and happily looking at the clusters and nebulae in Sagittarius and Scorpio, the Orion Nebulae, and other sky treasures that, before getting a scope, I could only see at Joshua Tree National Park star parties.

Now I own a home on a 1 and 1/4 acre tract just 1 mile from the northern border of the Joshua Tree park and can look through that same LX200 (though now easily wheeled in an out of the garage on JMI Wheeley Bars� ) under some of the darkest skies anywhere. Just hunting for objects to look at using star charts and monthly astronomy magazines is satisfying enough. But I also want to image. For now I’m going to limit myself to webcams for the planets, piggy-backing my Canon 10D and, when I get the drift-align, polar alignment technique down, I’ll try some prime focus. But, I think I will wait to build my permanent observatory before trying anything more ambitious. Why? Because to do good astroimaging you need very precise polar alignment and having to polar align everytime I wheel out my scope is just too much of a hassle.

We’ll see. I’m a few years away from building the observatory.

In a few days I’ll upload a gallery of images I took the other night learning to use my SBIG STV�. I plan to use the STV primarily for autoguiding when I use my Canon 10D at prime focus. But it can also do some low resolution imaging of its own (black and white). Using it in “Track & Accumulate” mode Monday evening (’til 3 in the a.m.) I got some interesting images of M13, M8, M27, and M51. As soon as I process them in ImagesPlus and Photoshop, I’ll share the results.

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The October edition of Astronomy magazine reports that many cosmologists now think that the Big Bang, our Big Bang, is but one in a very long sequence of Bangs. If true, this renders our universe but one in a continuously lengthening series. The age of these universes in aggregrate then totals to trillions, not billions, of years.

First the earth was demoted from center of the universe to mere satellite by the force of Nicolas Copernicus’ mathematical proofs and arguments in his De revolutionibus which eventually led his successors to abandon Ptolemy’s geocentric model for a heliocentric vision. But this loss of status of place once enjoyed by our planet was minor in comparison to our recently coming to understand that the Milky Way galaxy is not the only galaxy, but, instead, but one galaxy among billions and billions of others swirling and racing in about and, sometimes, through one another. Edwin Hubble’s long hours of watching and measuring the redshifts of receding galaxies led to this incontrovertible conclusion.

And now, after just getting used to not being the center of space, we seem on the verge of realizing that the universe itself is not The Universe nor is it the sole source or measure of time’s beginning and subseqent flow.

The article concludes that it is coming more and more to look like time and space are infinite, without beginning or end.

Thoughts to fall asleep by?

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For the past 3 years I have been looking at different models and types of observatories suitable for backyard amateur astronomy. The dome with a revolving slit never made sense to me because of the effect on seeing of the escaping heat. So I finally decided on either a roll-off roof top shed, or clam shell. Sky Shed of Ontario, Canada has good pricing, and their selections of sizes and styles of wood-frame roll-offs are attractive and affordable - they even have do-it-yourself plans on CD. You can order them in various sizes, I”ll probably build one of the largest models — 10 x 12 or 10 x 14. Why not? Lots of room for visitors, desk, book shelves.

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