Stars and Wildlife at Pedernales Falls

I went to Pedernales Falls State Park last weekend with my dad. Since we had to get their before the park office closed to get a permit for the star gazing area, we were there five hours before it was completely dark. We spent the time hiking to the falls and back along the equestrian trails. It was a bit of a no-frills trek, because it was hot and we definitely weren't in our peak hiking condition that we once were. The last hours of daylight we spent in the shade near the car. It was actually fairly pleasant outside, if a bit warm.

The star gazing area is "unfinished". I use scare quotes because honestly I don't see a reason to build anything more than was already out there--at least for our purposes. It was a big field that gave us visibility of the sky almost all the way down to the horizon. Here's the Google satellite images of the field we were in:

The circle in the middle is a kind of henge they've built and intend to use as an amphitheater. I didn't get a good look at it, but it appears to be modeled after a big sun dial or maybe even a solar calendar similar to Stonehenge. It's unfinished, but from what I gathered from the various park personnel it will end up housing a larger telescope owned by the park for visitors to control via electronics.

The structure directly east of the amphitheater appeared to be a barn of some kind, potentially used in conjunction with the equestrian trails which entered in the northeast and southeast corners of the right paddock. It was in disrepair, though; a broken window or two and I recall the barn doors didn't seem well mounted, as if opening them might break them.

It's worth noting that this area of the park requires a permit, albeit a cheap one. For my dad and I, we paid a total of $14, which included the park entrance fees. The left paddock with the amphitheater was actually locked. The front office had to send a ranger down to unlock it for us.

Once we were in and set up, it wasn't until 9:30pm before anything was very visible. Saturn was the first look we had, which looked pretty similar to my first serious viewing. Very bright and very clear. However, I've been using my 10mm eyepiece with the 2x Barlow lens and I've been noticing some smudging and smearing of the image. I'm almost convinced it's a low quality Barlow, but I could be mistaken. I might look into buying a new one at some point. Well, actually, I might just buy a nice 5mm lens and be done with it.

The ranger drove up probably around 10:30 or 11pm. I suspect his official business was making sure we weren't up to no good, but his real purpose is because he's a closet astronomer. He had some knowledge of constellations and such, which he was happy to show us.

The ranger pointed out a star he thought was interesting. I don't recall the star name, but it was a bright one and even by the naked eye it changed colors randomly. It would be blue at one moment and then it was phase red. He said he saw it in a higher power scope one time and it looked like a kaleidoscope.

I'm fairly certain that what he was showing us was the atmospheric disturbances of the starlight. The star was definitely lower than 30 degrees from the horizon, which meant we were seeing it through lots of atmosphere. I confirmed my theory later than night when we found another star behaving the same way. What is odd is that this behavior isn't apparent in all stars near the horizon. I suspect it's either the natural color of the stars or the fact that they're particularly bright (or both) that causes the affect.

We also saw the Andromeda Galaxy. This is roughly what it looked like through my scope:

Actually, my scope showed a flatter blur; the central orb of the galaxy didn't really resolve. It was also fairly dim, even through my 25mm eyepiece. I didn't bother trying to look at it through higher magnifications. I could say it was disappointing to see it as a smudge, but honestly it made me eager to get better at astronomy so I can justify better equipment.

It is a little frustrating that I bought the telescope to see planets and all of them except Saturn are below the horizon for at least a few more months. Hopefully this winter won't be so miserable at night to prevent some stargazing when they're around (and some winter constellations and objects are out and about).

The waning quarter moon was absent from the sky all night. When we left at 12:45pm, it wasn't even glowing on the horizon.

As a side note to all this, we saw more wildlife than I think I've ever seen camping. Ever. First, while we were hiking around, we saw at least three deer. Then while sitting next to the car waiting for the sun to go down, we saw a lone javelina. I was a little surprised to see how small he was. At the end of the night, we pointed our big flashlights around the field we were and we saw glowing eyeballs all over. With out binoculars, we saw at least three deer bedded down on the edge of the field. Finally, driving out we probably saw 10 deer and another 3 or 4 javelina.

Also, the falls also had a good number of large fish in the small intermediate pools. We even saw some people fishing the ponds (though I don't know how legal that is).

We made it back home a few hours later and passed out almost immediately. It was a long day and night.

The Opposite of Cynicism is Engineering

When I find myself losing faith in humanity, I look to its scientists and engineers.

For instance, under a kilometer of water, we can dig many many more kilometers below the sea floor to extract huge amounts of oil. That oil is shipped around the world in a vast interconnected trade network of ships, trains, pipelines, and freight trucks. The world produces over 90 million barrels a day of this stuff, and we chew it up almost as fast. But on the whole it isn't wasted. The oil is brought to refineries where it is cooked, cracked, processed, and decanted into products and by products that make up plastics, rubber, asphalt, car lubricant, medicines, gasoline, jet fuel, and electricity.

Now, we can have endless meaningful debates on the consequences of this industrial activity, and how it balances against alternative energy sources or its environmental impact. However, that doesn't diminish the awe inducing accomplishment that such an effort not only exists, but is so well built and tuned that we often take it for granted.

Another example is our accomplishments in space. It's no small feat to put something in orbit, let alone send people to the moon or probes to the outer limits of our solar system--and that's just the beginning of what we've done. Hundreds of satellites litter Earth's orbit, taking weather measurements, watching for nuclear launches, providing telecommunications for people in remote terrain, and locating people's position with a precision which is jaw dropping.

Let's think about Global Positioning System satellites for a moment. These metal boxes are 20,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface. You can fit one and a half Earths between us and these satellites, and they are moving around us at 3.8 kilometers every second. If we were driving down a highway that fast, it would take us just three hours to drive around the whole planet. And despite how far they are and how fast they're moving, they can identify where we are up to 3.5 meters. That's like throwing a dart from Honolulu and hitting as dartboard bulls-eye on Maui--while moving at Mach 10.

Finally, if the accomplishment isn't enough, just remember that all this knowledge and skill is learned. We pass the vast expertise from generation to generation; genetically and biologically, we're no different from our homo sapiens ancestors from a million year ago. The only thing that separates us from them is education. If one day everyone died except a baby boy and girl, overnight our species would become just as ignorant of the wonders of the universe as we were when we lived in caves.

I wrote all this because I watched the Space Oddity music video, which embodies the dreams and fascination of space that kids had who grew up in the space age. Then I watched it come true, reviving my hope in humanity for another day:



It's 9:15pm and the stars are out. If you need me, I'll be in space.

First Light: Celestron Omni XLT 120

I bought a telescope.

I just got it in the mail last Thursday. It comes with a decent 25mm eyepiece. I bought an extra higher-powered 10mm eyepiece and something called a Barlow lens which doubles the magnification of any eyepiece (at the expense of halving the field of view). From these three things, I now have effectively 25mm, 12.5mm, 10mm, and 5mm focal length eyepieces. The magnification of each of these are 8 40x, 80x, 100x, and 200x, respectively.

Along with these, I bought a moon filter. When you look at the moon through the scope, it can be exceedingly bright. The moon filter reduces that brightness. It's actually two polarized lenses that, when you change their orientation relative to one another, it changes the strength of the filter. This isn't necessary, but it's useful for dealing with different moon phases. They are not solar filters though!

This is a refractor telescope, so it has lenses and no mirrors. It's aperture (diameter of the front lens) is 120mm (4 inches) which is a decent size to see the moon, planets, and the brightest deep sky objects. It's mounted on a Celestron EQ4 equatorial mount, which--once aligned properly with the spin of the Earth--allows you to track stars, planets, and the moon very easily as the Earth rotates under them. It's all very stable, partly because the mount is quite heavy.

Last night, I went out to the parking lot of a local high school. I looked at the moon, Saturn, Vega, and the Ring Nebula. I tried finding the Whirlpool Galaxy, but due to the severe light pollution from the city nearby, my scope couldn't find it. I'm fairly confident I'd be able to see it if I had darker skies somewhere else.

Here's a few pictures I found on the Internet that I think is very representative of what I was able to see through my scope. First, I looked at the moon:

Seeing the moon was extremely easy, and since we had a half moon, the terminator between the light and dark sides created a very similar contrast on the craters as seen in the photo. Very awesome. I could look at it for hours by itself.

Next was Saturn. This is pretty much identical to what I could see in my scope:

The rings were perfectly visible, though in this photograph, you can see what appear to be Saturn's moons. I saw something last night, but I'm not certain it was a moon or not. One thing that my telescope did see that's not as visible in this picture were the Cassini division in the rings, where the rings are thinner in some spots (actually due to the gravitational pull of Saturn's moons, like giant tidal waves rippling through the rings). They were a bit more discernible in my scope last night.

I looked for the Whirlpool galaxy, but I couldn't find it. I suspect it would have looked something like this, if the skies were darker:

After failing to find that, I started looking for the Ring Nebula. After quite a bit of searching, I saw the faintest image of it in my scope. It was so faint, I almost thought it was a reflection of my iris in the eyepiece lens. Here's a picture of almost what it looked like:

After that, I had been out in the parking lot for over two hours, so I packed it in at around 11pm.