Miraval

I was contacted by Shawn Steuer, the owner and director of a company called Portable Planetarium, asking if I would be interested in helping him with an extended event at the Miraval Resort north of Tucson. Shawn had an arrangement where he would put on a multimedia presentation and then have a viewing session afterwards during three evenings. Shawn asked if I would be willing to supply a telescope or two for the event and I agreed. I borrowed a friend's Celestar 8" so that everyone who attended could look through a telescope. I opted not to take the Obsession because of the short viewing time (30 - 60 minutes each evening). Taking that large of a telescope is just not worth anything less than at least a couple of hours' worth of viewing time, because of the set-up/thermal equilibration/tear-down times. Plus, I did not know what to expect from the type of people that would be attending. The last thing I wanted to do was bring an 8 foot ladder and have people who could not climb the thing to look through the eyepiece.

Another factor was the moon. Ranging from 75% (June 9) to 92% (June 11) illumination, the moon was going to make viewing a challenge. Shawn had his presentation themed so he covered galaxies the first night, nebulae the second night, and star clusters the third night.

June 9: The viewing started around 10 PM local time and I had the Celestar 8 on the Moon and the Ultima on Jupiter as it was low on the western horizon. The view of the Moon was great because I used a couple of polarizing filters to cut down the brightness. A very pleasing view. The view was accordingly mushy, but the two main equatorial belts were visible, as were all four satellites. Once everyone got a chance to see Jupiter, I moved the scope over to M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. I could barely make out some spiral structure on the larger galaxy (NGC 5194) but only with averted vision. I'm not convinced anyone else saw any structure. Everyone was able to make out both galaxies (NGC 5194 & NGC 5195). The next objects we turned to were M81 & M82. M82 actually showed quite a bit of structure and was probably the crowd pleaser for the evening. There were only about a half dozen people who showed up and most left by 10:30. I moved the Ultima over to Albireo to give those who remained a look at a very nice colored binary system.

June 10: The evening started out great with Shawn and I watching as the International Space Station tracked overhead. Too bad this occurred before his presentation started because I'm sure the guests would have loved to see this. The viewing started around 9:50 PM, but our viewing location was moved to behind the auditorium where Shawn was giving his presentation. The location was such that viewing Jupiter was not possible with the telescopes, but I did bring along the Canon 10x30 binoculars which worked fine on Jupiter and its satellites. Shawn had gone over nebulae in his presentation so I had the Ultima on M57, The Ring Nebula. The Celestar 8 was again positioned on the Moon and was really an outstanding view. We also looked at M17, The Swan Nebula, using the Ultima, a 22mm Panoptic, and OIII filter. The OIII really saved the day on this one --- the Moon was too bright to allow the 8" to really capture any detail unfiltered. The last object Shawn wanted to look at was the minor planet 4 Vesta. I had forgotten to download the latest orbital elements for the Ultima and had to locate this using a chart I printed out. This was pretty difficult given the position of the Moon at only 31 degrees away. It took me about 15 minutes to find Vesta, and hopefully I'll have learned a lesson in downloading the orbital elements before I try that again with the Moon out. We again looked at Albireo for those who stayed late.

June 11: I had suggested to Shawn that I bring my CCD camera set-up for the Ultima to help visualize the objects. The Moon was becoming so dominating that I thought a real time CCD image would be great for the guests to see. Shawn had an LCD projector that we used to project the laptop CCD image onto the outside wall of the auditorium. Again, the Celestar 8 was positioned on the Moon using the polarizing filters. The theme for this evening's viewing was star clusters and I started out with M13, The Hercules Cluster. I used the Celestar 8 to also look at M13 to give everyone an idea of how the image on the CCD compared to the image in the telescope. We then moved the Ultima over to the globular cluster M5, which I think is just as impressive as M13. M80 and M4, both globulars in Scorpius, were also easy to capture on the CCD. Having the CCD set-up was great because we went back to see M57, M51 and M82 as bonus objects for those who stayed late. We again looked at Albireo with the Celestar 8.

Shawn snapped an image of the Moon with a Sony Cybershot DSC-P5 looking through the eyepiece (Celestron 26mm) on the Celestar 8" and it turned out very well, especially considering that this was a one shot deal with no fiddling of exposure settings or "mulligans". I flipped the image left to right so that it appears as it would in the sky. Click on the image at right for a larger version.

It would have been nice to have more guests attend each evening, but many of the activities at the resort start early during this time of the year because of the heat. It's usually pushing 90° F by 10 am. Hopefully, Shawn will be able to do this again and will have more input on the scheduling so that this could be done around a new moon. Still, I was impressed with Shawn's presentation. He has some very interesting animations for basic cosmological principles which really were a great primer for viewing through the telescope. It would be great to have his presentation during school star parties.