The Gimmick’s own Noel Telescope . . . and some Friends in High Places!
If you read my earlier articles, I’ve used a 70 mm Celestron refractor telescope for my first dedicated astronomy pursuit and wrote about recent viewing events such as viewing of the Jovian giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune last year (2019). With it, I’ve viewed all of our Solar System planets, the Moon, and some naked-eye stars (and will write more about the recent conjunctions of 5 of them soon).
Many famous telescopes bear names such as Cal-Tech’s Hale Telescope (Palomar, CA) and W.H. Keck Telescopes (Mauna Key, Hawaii), and even our 70 mm is now named too . . . the Noel Telescope . . . named for the Christmas Star of Bethlehem and the holiday I got it as a gift from Jessica (2018).
As notable as our Noel Telescope has been, by itself it can not get us into the realm of viewing deep-space objects and stars. That means . . . another scope that is larger and more capable of deep-space observation is needed.
To help, my wife Jessica and I decided to join a local astronomy group called the East Valley Astronomy Club in Mesa, AZ. To join some of their dedicated Club “star parties”, we decided to acquire a larger telescope.
Having recently read the afore-mentioned Issac Newton biography, it went into detail about Newton’s development of the reflecting-style telescope which primarily used two mirrors and a small lens eyepiece.
The Newtonian reflecting telescope is ingenious. To understand, the type of telescope that Galileo used to observe Jupiter and it’s largest moons is called a refracting telescope which consists of two lenses that work together to produce a focal length and magnification relative to the diameter of the lenses and the length of the telescope. In popular folklore, it is the “pirate-captain” telescope used to spot distant ships or islands while at sea.
Isaac Newton had many scientific and mathematical pursuits, one of which was optics. Around the time of the Black-Plague “country-side” quarantine in 1666, his optical experiments showed that light could be broken into component wavelengths of varying colors by the light passing through a prism.
It was partly through this that Newton saw one shortcoming that refracting telescopes of that era had, namely chromatic aberration. This is where the light coming from planets, distant stars or other deep-space objects had a noticeable “prism effect“, caused by the light breaking into components through the edges of the lenses (similar to his earlier experiments).
His solution for a telescope was to take two mirrors, one as a primary and a second smaller one and by positioning them at key distances from each other, he could produce a magnification effect between them.
The distance between the primary mirror and the secondary mirrors produce a magnified and inverted (with a reflecting-type scope) image of a times-power proportional to the length (in millimeters) of the scope and the width of the eyepiece. This is called focal-length and the amount of light gathered by the primary mirror is referred to as aperture. The magnification takes the length of the telescope’s body tube + length of the primary to secondary mirror + eyepiece to secondary and divides by the eyepiece width.
A wider aperture (the width of the primary mirror) gathers more light and the more light gathered, the larger and clearer the image can be depending on the eyepiece diameter/quality and the width of the primary mirror. The diagram above shows this in greater detail and the amount of night-sky detail you will see.
There are other telescope types that have been developed since that work to balance the positives of refracting and reflecting types. But for our use and for The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, Jessica and I settled on a reflecting telescope to accompany the 70 mm refracting Noel Telescope. After joining the East Valley Club, we asked for input from other club members on their choice of telescopes and why one reflecting type (for those with that preference) worked for them.
After some dedicated review of different brands, I leaned heavily toward a Meade LX-85 6-inch Newtonian reflector. A club member was looking to sell theirs and its mount/tripod and we quickly began to discuss this.
In Newton’s time, there was just the telescope with a basic mount that had to be manually moved to keep up with star locations in the sky. This suggests an altitude-azimuth style mount (similar to our 70mm Celestron). In today’s world, there are more tools available now that make time-based and deep space observing easier. The 6-inch Meade reflector we acquired had many of these extras gained through purchasing the telescope.
This is the Newtonian reflector we acquired. The labels shows key components of our telescope’s set up which are commonly used by astronomers. This shows the finder scope, counterweight, programmable Go-To equatorial mount, and tripod. One important note is that we selected a light-weight rechargeable (lithium-ion) DC and 120 VAC power supply that can handle a 6 hour or more power time for the telescope, go-to mount, lights, and even other equipment such as PCs and cameras. The latter two will be covered later.
The telescope is mounted on what you call an “equatorial mount“. The diagram above shows several types, and the equatorial type (used by our scope) is on the far right. That means the base location has the telescope’s central axis facing directly towards the north star Polaris.
The motorized rotation of the equatorial mount includes motors for directions called declination and right-ascension (a coordinate system used by astronomers to locate and track stars across the night sky depending on the calendar date and time of night which correspond to Earth’s rotation and location of its orbit around the sun).
The tripod chosen is especially important to give the telescope stability and weight-handling. The LX85’s mount/tripod can handle scopes up to 30 pounds or more depending on the telescope size. This would allow possible larger-scale telescopes to be used on the mount in the near future granted it can fit in the back of a standard car.
The focuser was the only major update that was required. The previous one did not handle camera weight well (if we were to use it for astrophotography) which led to some noticeable wobble. We purchased a newer GSO focuser from another club member and were able to utilize the previous focuser mount after some machine-screw hole placement permitting its installation.
Finally, we combined several Celestron and Meade eyepieces that both came with the Meade and used on the 70 mm Noel Telescope for viewing. As before, the smaller the eyepiece the greater the magnification (aka divide the focal length by the eyepiece diameter). It should be noted that greater magnification does not always produce a clearer image as the mirror size can limit the image quality.
This Newtonian telescope has been a good starting point for our astronomy hobby. Already (see above) it’s been used to observe a crescent Venus, double star Albireo, and supergiant Arcturus (I didn’t label the lower right image but I believe it is).
And like our Noel Telescope, we have dubbed our new Newtonian the “Lyra-Nightingale“ telescope in Jessica‘s honor. “Lyra“ is named after the meteor shower that I saw when I first held her hand and “Nightingale“ in honor of her recently-earned Nursing Masters-Degree. As for our small Noel Telescope, we still like the Noel because we can use it for faster setup/viewing and wide-sky survey.
Lyra-Nightingale will be used to see these familiar sights but with greater magnification. The future plan is (like any dedicated telescope) to also use it to view comets, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and other visible objects. To address limitations on viewing angles around our house and light pollution (interfering with seeing deep-Space) from nearby Phoenix, both Lyra-Nightingale and Noel are mobile enough to be taken to “dark sky“ locations exclusively accessible to our Club members or close to the Superstition Mountains. At such places, you have less light pollution, and it is much easier to see deep-sky items of interest. Lyra-Nightingale could be used for astrophotography with a (future) imaging camera mounted on the newly upgraded focuser.
Visiting Good, Age-Old Cosmic Friends!
One might ask why would you view deep space and photograph objects that have already been done before? The answer is that you do not get as much out of it unless you see and do it for yourself. We would like to think that deep-sky objects, stars, and planets are virtually good friends inviting us to visit them often and grow in our knowledge and fondness of their place in the Cosmos. It’s with that idea that we visually explore the Heavens and Space to see demonstrations of grandeur and handiwork in nature. Lyra-Nightingale and Noel are these windows into our spacefaring journey.
For The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski! 🙂
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DISCLAIMER: This is a review of a Meade telescope and mentions the East Valley Astronomy Club. All mention of these are positive and support them. This article was written voluntarily and royalty free. It is believed this constitutes fair use.