A new house, a new observing site.

 On October 25th, my family moved out of our old house and into a new one not too far away. The old one was falling apart due to age, and being a two-level house, my aging parents were having trouble getting around. The new one is smaller but I'm really liking it--especially because I can observe much more easily.

My old house also had no observing locations in its very large yard. There was just too much trees, and the only wide open space, which was still blocked in the low south where Jupiter & Saturn & the summer full Moon hung out, was on a steep slope. When I first started observing in 2016, I observed from the back deck, which cut off half the sky. Since then, trees and bushes had grown up and covered even more of the sky. But this was mostly fine, because from 2017 onwards I was volunteering at the Cline Observatory every clear friday night.

When we were driving home in a van from the Stellar Society 2017 Solar Eclipse Expedition, I asked the driver to drop me off at home, which was on the way back to school. The astronomer professors remarked on how dreary that jungle of a neighborhood was for astronomy.

One winter night, when the power all across my town went out, I drove out to a nearby field to take advantage of the black. I brought no telescope (well, I might have had my monocular, I'm not sure), I simply watched the night sky for a few hours with my unaided eye.

When the Cline Observatory closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic, I realized that for the sake of my own sanity, I would have to continue my observing on my own. I had my AstroMaster 114EQ and my Bushnell Voyager, and a Bortle 5 or 6 suburban sky to use them with. But the trees around my house prevented this. So I went back to that field I'd found.

 In April, I received my Apertura DT6 Dobsonian, which is when the observing really took out, when I started my log, etc. All of that would be done mostly at that field, with only occasional peeks being done at home. Since I had to drive to the field to do any serious astronomy, all my equipment stayed in the SUV. To my fellow astronomers: if you can get away with this, I highly recommend it. This halves the cooldown time and is very practical. Just make sure things don't get too hot in the summer.

The observing field, which I nicknamed the "star field," was owned by some random landowner who I eventually contacted and got actual permission for. The trees to the west were a little too high, and they prevented me from seeing the evening apparition of NEOWISE, but otherwise the trees remained fairly low and unobstructive. The skies were plenty dark, the only lights coming from a farm house down the road and the annoying occasional lights of cars, which I learned to shield away. I never really gave that site a proper goodbye. I think the last time I used it before the move was to test Mr. Meade (the toy Meade refractor I got) vs the Galileoscope.

My New Home

My new observing site, the back yard and driveway at my new house, has some advantages and disadvantages. The chief advantage over my previous home is that most of the sky is visible from some point in the yard, a yard which is flat and fenced off. The sky is not quite as dark as it is from the star field, but it's close.

Tall trees block off the equatorial eastern sky for about 30-45 degrees altitude. Pleiades doesn't come out of the trees until it's at forty degrees. The Moon wastes away in the trees for hours before it gets high enough to see. A tree to the south, which is currently branches only, blocks the southern sky for about 30 degrees altitude, but I can usually work around it. Mars also hangs above the neighbor's house, stranded in poor seeing, until fairly late.

The biggest disadvantage is that there is just absolutely no northern sky. I can see Cassiopeia fine, but the north star is completely covered from every angle, as is a huge amount of the northern sky and in many places much of the zenith.

The houses are closer packed, and that means if someone keeps their light on, I'll see it. Something I might get some day is some kind of tarp or tent that will block streetlights. And one neighbor has a bright blue-led shed light. I don't know why and maybe I'll ask them to turn it off or replace it, because it makes most of my back lawn unusable for deep sky observing, which is unfortunate because that's the space with the best overhead clearance.

So far I've observed on almost every clear night, which is much more than I can say of my previous setup.

I also keep my scopes inside now. And there's no stairs or slopes to navigate when moving my scopes around. Getting scopes inside and out regularly was not a real option at my old house, but now it's easy to take things in and out. And I don't have to drive out to do astronomy.

The sky also means that casual accidental astronomy can be done. One morning this week, mom woke me up early because she went outside and saw that Orion was very beautiful. I dragged myself and my dob out of bed and we went out and observed the Great Nebula and Venus early in the morning, which is an excellent way to start the day.

I haven't been doing a very good job keeping up with my blog entries. Some time I need to talk about what I did to the Bushnell Voyager, and my new experiments in solar projection observing (also made possible by my new observing location!)