Articles By Bruce Scodova

Back in June of 1980, I purchased a Meade 12.5" f/6 Research Series Telescope. This telescope has been the workhorse of the majority of my observations having been traveled around North Central and Central Ohio. In all, it is most at home here at the Warren Rupp Observatory. Here is the 12.5" telescope and some of the many places it has called home.

The Meade telescope at home in the 31" Dome – 2003

First visit to RAS in the winter of 1981

In the mid 80’s at this roll off observatory on Garver Road

Getting an education in OSU’s planetarium in 1980

Resting with friends inside the RAS clubhouse ready to observe – 1980’s

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A Circumpolar Observing Project

Inspired by Mike Allen’s ‘Within 10 degrees from the pole’ I began an observing program to observe all the circumpolar NGC and IC objects. That is basically 40 degrees in declination from the North celestial pole for those of us in Ohio. Circumpolar objects are those objects that will never set from our northern latitude. As Mike points out in his article, equatorial mounts naturally have a tough time observing around the pole, which is why dobsonians are much easier to use than equatorials when observing objects at high declinations. However, I have found that observing close to the pole with an equatorial mounted telescope is very easy to do as long as you observe objects when they are close to the meridian. The meridian is a line running through the north pole, through the zenith and southward through the south pole. At the RA hour of the meridian (local sidereal time or ST), the Right Ascension (RA) axis is almost horizontal to the ground and the Declination (DEC) axis is parallel to the meridian. In this position, making small telescope movement in RA (east and west) along with telescope movement in DEC (north and south) is easy to accomplish even when doing so on top a ladder at the eyepiece. Even at extremely high declinations, equatorials are easily moved in RA by lifting or pushing at the tubes center of balance. Having RA and DEC motors with slewing capabilities would make this task even easier. Another essential requirement for all this to work very well is accurate polar alignment.

To generate the list of NGC and IC galaxies within 40 degrees of the pole (listed in order by RA) is a very simple thing to do when using the DSO Utility in Megastar5. Within minutes, I generated 24 observation lists of galaxies by RA, one for each RA hour with declinations of 50 degrees and higher. Within each list, the galaxies are order by increasing RA further aiding in the search sequence by always working west to east. This is kind of like paddling a canoe up stream, you will observe the objects while they approach (or reach) the meridian hour (ST). The meridian is also the point at which the object will be the highest in the sky giving the best views possible. Eventually time will win out and you will have to jump ahead several hours to the east to catch the next list as it approaches the meridian. Using optical encoders connected to Megastar5 will aid in the location and identification of deep sky objects around and close to the targeted galaxy. With observing list in hand, displaying the actual FOV and RA/DEC offset of the next galaxy in Megastar5 made moving the telescope and finding the objects a breeze. After all, the telescope movement was basically entirely in DEC, with only a slight adjustment in RA.

On January 30^th, 2003 I started my list of northern circumpolar NGC and IC galaxies. With the help of Megastar5 other non NGC/IC cataloged galaxies (UGC, CGCG, PGC, MAC, etc.) were observed within one or two field of views (FOV) of the primary object. On the evening of March 26th, 2006 I completed the circumpolar list (801 NGC/IC objects). To see the circumpolar list and/or the observations of these objects, see the links on the ‘Member Observations’ page on this web site or go here: Circumpolar Objects and Circumpolar Observations

Clear Skies.

Bruce

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Reading Observational Shorthand

For those who have ventured into my Astronomical Observations will soon notice that all my visual observations are in some kind of a shorthand notation. This article will help explain where this notation derived from and how to read it. Maybe you too will develop some sort of variant of this code for your observations.

Back in the early 1980’s when I was getting started in recording astronomical observations; I sampled other amateur astronomers observing logs. While each individual has specific needs and requirements, I wanted something descriptive that could be applied to a variety of objects yet short in length. Also, I wanted to use something that could be recorded, stored and retrieved at a future date. Since my study and interests at the time involved computers, what would be better than using a computer to store observation logs! My first attempt was to put each object’s visual description on computer punch cards. However, that had limits. Only 80 characters could be used and there was so much information to recorded; date, sky conditions, moon, telescope, eyepiece, location, object name/number, and finally the visual description. Others were using pencil and notebook writing wonderful descriptions of objects but I knew this method would not last over time and besides, it could not answer the following questions:

· How many objects have I observed?

· How many objects have I observed in Pegasus?

· What objects did I observe on a given date? What telescope was I using?

· Have I observed this object before? If so, what telescope, what eyepiece, what were the sky conditions, who was with me?

· Which observations have companions or interacting members?

· What objects have I observed with the WRO 31” telescope?

· How many NGC’s are in Aries and how many of them did I observe? Which ones have I not observed?

As you can see, these questions can go on and on. No one at the time had an observing log system that could answer these questions. It would be years and would take advances in database software packages before this could be possible.

Long before Megastar and TheSky, there was The Revised New General Catalog of Astronomical Objects (RNGC). It listed all the NGC’s in order by RA. In addition, it gave the object’s RA, DEC, type, size, magnitude and Dreyer’s visual description. I soon had every page copied, constellations identified for each object and each page placed in plastic covering. With 6” engraved setting circles on my new Meade 12.5”, I now had a powerful observing aid to take with me observing. I soon learned Dreyer’s description codes while hunting down NGC’s using the RNGC. Soon after, I found myself writing down descriptions of objects using my personal variations of his codes. One thing leads to another and soon I had observing sheets preprinted with fill-in-the-blanks Dreyer codes. The following web site will give you a full description of the Dreyer NGC codes http://www.dvaa.org/Dreyer.html. Now, I finally had a way to accurately describe visual observations in a consistent manner in about 20 characters or less. I could now use IBM punch cards and record most the relevant information for each object observed. The FORTRAN program soon was migrated to Basic and my observations were electronically printed by NGC order on a regular basis. These ‘flat files’ were kept on floppy disks and I continued to use the Basic program to keep recording observations. This method would answer some, but not all of the questions mention above. Not until the invention of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) many years later was this observing program once again upgraded to the version it is today. The observations made over twenty years ago were preserved and easily loaded into the new database architecture.

The success of preserving historical observations is greatly attributed to the following observational shorthand. This method is in use today and has undergone minor changes since it’s inception over 20 years ago. You will find this codes all throughout my observation logs. Each observation is described in a consistent manner. First the objects appearance as seen in the eyepiece (diffuseness, brightness and size) is recorded. A comma separates each attribute.

For example:

VDIF,VF,MS very diffuse, very faint, moderately small

DIF,EB,PL diffuse, extremely bright, pretty large

PF,VS pretty faint, very small

Basically, the following d