Video Astronomy

Up front, let me say that I hate fussing with equipment.

Not due to impatience, just that I am in the encyclopaedia under the topic "KLUTZ". Give me two pieces of hardware, and one will end up backwards, missing a component, or lost somewhere until I clean the garage. My wife and my observing buddy both laughed for months when I talked about getting a truss dob, imagining the nightly assembly comedy. And I have never had any desire toward imaging. Not to say I don't absolutely admire the work of practitioners of astroimaging. Their art is breathtaking.  But I know I was not born with the genes nor blessed with the time that allows others the vision and ability to apply technology to extract the beauty from the gray blurs we see.  Plus, on the personal side, if I can't see it in an eyepiece, it's not real, just a refinement of Forrest Gump. I am purely an eyeball at the eyepiece kind of person, becoming one with the view.

I started in astronomy about 20 years ago at the urging of my best friend and wife, after we'd been married for 25 years.  She told me she was running out of ideas for holiday gifts, and unless I got a hobby, it was socks and underwear for the rest of my life.  Fine, says I, socks and underwear are always welcome.  Wrong answer.  Shoemaker-Levy 9 was just making news as about to hit Jupiter, and all my life I was interested in astronomy so I went out and got my first scope, a 6" f/5 Newtonian-GEM, two years later a 10" SCT, ending up with a 14" tube dob. But after about six or seven years, I was growing bored. Faint fuzzies were losing their draw. Then I got asked to help with some public outreach at schools in Tucson, Arizona.  I was a bit dubious; what could we show under city lights.  But it turned out easily accomplished, and astronomy was reborn for me.  I was now seeing old targets through new eyes. 
 

I went from being a solitary, somewhat jaded observer to loving public outreach four to ten times a month with either my 10" SCT or 18" truss dob.  Eventually, several years ago I took over the Grand Canyon Star Party when Dean Ketelsen, who started it, retired after 18 years. 
 

Over the years, my wife had become an award winning high school science teacher, certified in five states in physics, chemistry, math, geology, meteorology, oceanography, and astronomy.  But we found early on that she could not see objects in an eyepiece.  She had a cornea defect in both eyes.  She could teach astronomy, but could never see what she taught.  Then, four years ago the defect got so bad it was uncorrectable in each eye so she ended up with corneal transplants and artificial lens implants.  Then the bad news.  Still no vision capability in an eyepiece.  When she first discovered that her retinas have a defect previously undetected, a folded membrane over her rod cells that make each eye see multiple images in an eyepiece that become a blur, she cried about it for a long time.  For years she had operated one of my scopes at GCSP; if I put it on a planet or double star, she could see enough to keep the blur centered.  But DSOs are an impossibility.
 

Then, last Autumn and again last February, during our regular outreaches in a county park, I had the same visitor come up to my 18" truss dob.  She is bright, enthusiastic about astronomy, blessed with a vision of DSOs yet a reality of their relationship with the rest of the universe.  And she is wheelchair bound.  Such a delightful person to speak with.  So, to see planetary nebula one night, and M104 at high power on another night, two companions lifted her up to my eyepiece, propped against my ladder.  And there she was thanking ME for sharing the view.
 

And recently, I learned that children don't develop the ability to process solitary images in an eyepiece without external context of view until at least age five, sometimes as late as age seven, and yet we have them at our telescopes with their parents pressuring them to see something that they have no ability to process yet.
 

After the February incident, although a confirmed, virtually militant eyeball at the eyepiece as true observing, I started checking out live imaging.  And my National Park Service counterpart immediately got excited and wanted to start publicizing that GCSP would now support handicapped access.  Oh oh, better get moving.  So I ordered a Video Astronomy camera.  First light was on M13, the great Hercules cluster.  I called my wife out to the back yard to see the 13" monitor view of the screen full of diamonds.  She came out and stared at the screen, and said "So THAT'S what people are talking about!"
 

So we set up our video corner at the entrance to our setup area at GCSP, monitors facing to not interfere with the other 50 to 70 scopes.  Bill McDonald who does weekly shows at Lowell Observatory did one night with a Video camera and 24" monitor (the original person seven years ago who began trying to get me into video in an era of ToUCam, CRTs, and AC power only - OK Bill, I caved in), Wayne Thomas did seven nights bringing two great cameras and an old security camera, forgot the interface to the scope for the good cameras so we duck taped an old .965 to 1.25" adapter to the old security camera and he used that on Saturn all week, and John Suscavage did four nights with another camera.  And the response was frankly awesome.  Mostly from normally gifted people who thought what we were giving to those who had no way to access the night sky was a special gift. 
 

Each night my granddaughter ran my video on the 10" while I was indoors setting up the talks or out doing constellation tours.  The final night she didn't feel well so my wife reclaimed her old job and did the Moon and Saturn.  And had over 400 visitors in two hours.  Each night we had an average of four wheelchair bound visitors, many mobility challenged and unable to climb the slight rise to the rest of the fifty or more scopes, many who, it turned out, have similar night vision processing problems as my wife, and uncountable children who could only see Saturn in the monitor. 
 

While I still prefer the views in the eyepiece personally, to not provide a live video image as an alternative is to deny access to the wonders of the night sky to the physically challenged, optically challenged, and/or those who are just to young to process the image in an eyepiece.  Access that we normally gifted people too often take for granted.  When visitors leave my display with a hug, and at times in tears, or a child jumps up and down and says "Mommy I can SEE it!" after no luck at other scopes, that to me is priceless.
 

The other night I finally got time to branch out into exploring DSOs with a new camera. I stuck it on The Ring for seven seconds and called my wife out to see her second DSO.  She stared for about fifteen seconds at the gorgeous red and green, and yellow overlapping layers, and said "Where has this been all my life?" and I think I saw a tear or two.  Now that's also priceless.

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Jim O'Connor

Vice President - Tuscon Amateur Astronomy Association

South Rim Coordinator, Grand Canyon Star Party

(Printed with Permission)