A year of pandemic astronomy

Something has gone horribly wrong. But we all know that.

A couple weeks ago we had a set of virtual TriStar lectures, an attempt to run the TriStar amateur astronomy conference online. It worked great, though it rather lacked the social aspect found in real-life TriStars at GTCC.

One year prior to TriStar 2021, we had TriStar 2020. By then we were already beginning to see how the coronavirus disease was changing our lives. We were encouraged not to shake hands and to take extra care if we were ill, but we still had the meeting, and we still had the special Saturday observing session at the Cline Observatory. I hosted in the dome that night. Next Friday was cloudy, and by the Friday after that the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic. There hasn't been a Cline Observatory viewing session since TriStar 2020 and as of yet none are scheduled.

Prior to this, I had been volunteering at the Cline Observatory since April 7th 2017. It was nearly my 3rd anniversary of getting into serious amateur astronomy. Every single clear Friday evening (aside from two days when I had gone on vacation and one where I was going through a health crisis--yeah, I can count the exceptions) I would go to the Observatory and do public outreach. I mostly hung around outside with the 8" Dobsonians and 8" SCT, chatting with friends and regular volunteers, and showing stuff to the general public. In 2017 (and again for fun in 2018) I took the Observational Astronomy course at my college, which I like to call a "formal education in amateur astronomy." It taught me how to set up observing plans, navigate the night sky, and use all sorts of telescopes. It's also the official volunteer qualification program.

Occasionally I would assist (and by 2019, run sessions as host) in the dome (sometimes I would have to do so to fill in for someone else, most of the time I would be scheduled), controlling or commanding the 24" CDK and talking about space. Though I greatly enjoyed hosting, I loved spending time out on the pad with the 8 inchers and my friends and mentors. For a large chunk of that time it was my only in-person social interaction every week.

My involvement in the Cline Observatory was almost vitally important to me. Just as the pandemic loomed ahead, I had grand plans of getting into sidewalk astronomy and expanding my outreach. I had run one "sidewalk" observing session at the convenience store near GTCC with my "bong scope," showing off the Moon to strangers, and had a blast. I had big plans to continue. I'm sure many of us had big plans before March 2020.

On that first Friday after the pandemic began, I realized I had to find other ways to continue my interest in astronomy. At that time I had just the Bong Scope and an AstroMaster 114EQ. I took both of them (along with my mother) to an empty field near my house. I don't remember the specifics--I know we looked at the Orion Nebula, the Moon, and Venus. Thinking back, I feel that I can almost remember the smell and the temperature. It was cool but not uncomfortably so. I polar-aligned the 114EQ, maybe for the first time--the Observatory's 8" Dobsonians replaced the 114EQ at home, so it had been a while since I'd used it, and I had since learned how to do polar alignment. The AstroMaster is quite frustrating to use due to its extremely finicky undersized EQ-1 mount. But at least on that night, I suppose it didn't phase me too much.

I tried to do astrophotography with the cursed thing--some christmases ago I'd gotten a NexImage 5 planetary imager but had no laptop to use it with until that year. I tried imaging the Moon, but found it was too zoomed in to get a good stackable image with. So I bought a motor drive. It didn't end up working--after years of misuse with an oversized telescope tube I suppose its mechanism just wasn't working anymore.

In early April, Mom found an open box sale at High Point Scientific, and there were two telescopes in the price range of perhaps something I could get as my big birthday present. I could choose between two options in the $200-300 realm: A $300 Meade ETX70 (which was a small refractor on a Go-To mount--I thought the GoTo would be useful for astrophotography) or a $230 Apertura DT6. Thank god I went with the DT6, a proper 6" Dobsonian.

Looking back at the logs it looks like the thing arrived just in time for my 3rd anniversary of joining the Cline Observatory on April 7th. On April 10th, bringing it out to the observing site for the first time, I was astonished by views of Messier 42 and the Sombrero Galaxy (And Cor Caroli too).

I would continue to go out to the observing field, often several times a week, with my 6" Dobsonian and my other smaller instruments. I would sometimes have family or occasionally a masked up friend with me, but most of this time was spent alone. It was a very different experience.

I feel like what I've been doing for the past year is very different to what I was doing before. I got much more involved in visual observing, eventually finding objects which should have been obvious before, as well as eventually going for objects off the beaten path.

In October I moved house to a place with more skies visible and less trees, compared to my previous house. However, the skies are now brighter and there's still more trees and stray lights than there ever were at the observing field. Even as I have more equipment than I did last year, I feel limited--boxed into a much smaller part of the sky, only occasionally able to escape to a darker, wider sky more than 30 minutes away. In part because of this I find I've been keeping up with my log a fair bit less than I had before, unfortunately.

I know more about telescopes and observing than I think I did at the observatory. And while the observing class to lay the groundwork for this was absolutely crucial--I don't think I could have done this on my own--I feel now that I have taken astronomy into my own hands and have begun exploring it on my own.

Yet still, I can't wait for the opportunity to share it with everyone else again.