From time to time I will also cover equipment discussions like the latest and greatest camera tech, mounts and scopes from the perspective of EAO and provide my review and thoughts.
Some background.
I have been involved with this hobby for over 25 years (since I was in my early teens). I started out with visual observing and then gravitated towards long exposure imaging/astrophotography as the light pollution made visual impossible. But over time as I got deeper into imaging and processing I felt I was losing touch with why I got into this hobby in the first place... which was exploring the universe from my backyard. Also work and family commitments made it challenging to find time for imaging. EAO allowed be to get back to observing and opened up the universe in a way visual observing never could. It has rekindled the excitement I felt when I first started out and has been a truly enjoyable experience.
A note on Electronically Assisted Observing from heavily light polluted Suburbs
Like many others who pursue this fascinating hobby I live in a heavily light polluted location. On most nights I cannot see stars fainter than magnitude 3.5 from my backyard (7 or 8 on the Bortle scale also referred to as a red/white zone on light pollution maps, white being the worst e.g. Manhattan ). And while I do make the occasional trip out to a dark sky site, more than 99% of my observing is from my backyard due to the sheer convenience.
Under these conditions visual observing is next to impossible. Visually, I am barely able to make out even M13 Hercules Globular Cluster, one of the brightest deep sky objects, through my 8" SCT.
Hence like many others I turned to EAO using CCD based imaging and video cameras to do near real time observing/imaging.
In my view EAO brings multiple benefits:
- The obvious one is that I can pretty much observe any object from my backyard without going to a dark sky site
- Ability to see color. Video cameras and CCDs help compensate for the shortcomings of our eyes which are a product of evolution. Rods which dominate cones (both are types of detectors) in our eyes are responsible for vision in low light conditions (scotopic vision). But Rods cannot decipher color and have low spatial acuity (also means visually they can see less detail).
- CCDs can also significantly exceed how deep you can go vs. visually with the same aperture scope due to their ability to collect light over time. With my 8" scope and a very sensitive CCD I have detected magnitude 22 quasars at the edge of the observable universe using very short exposures. To visually observe the same object I would need a 200" scope at a perfectly dark site!
And although there is no substitute for dark skies even when using a CCD based camera I have found that any object I can observe electronically from a dark sky site I can also observe from my heavily light polluted backyard (albeit with slightly reduced quality) which levels the playing field to an extent.
At the end of the day I hope this blog shows you that serious deep sky observing is very much possible even from very heavily light polluted locations using very modest size telescopes provided you have the right equipment. I hope it also (in my small way) encourages you to take up this fascinating and intellectually challenging hobby and learn more about our universe and our place in it.
Clear skies...
