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Astronomy -
Who Woulda Thunk It ?
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Sometimes a guy just can't
win. I don't mean to join the long parade of whiners in the world. I'm
not sure anyone could feel really sorry for me in the least. I suspect
you might just hit your back button and say to yourself "what a waste of
bandwidth this page is." Nevertheless, I'm gonna get up on my soapbox and
blather on about a stroke of misfortune. At least that's what I'm calling
it, and I'm going to stick to my assessment until I find something else
to holler about.
I was out on my balcony enjoying a nice clear evening. The clouds had parted to reveal a beautiful view of the full moon alongside Jupiter and Saturn. I thought here might be a swell opportunity to take a peak through my big honkin' binoculars. And I was right. It was awe inspiring. The full moon was as high as it ever gets in the sky. It was the closest full moon to the winter solstice. The frigid temperatures made sure there wasn't too much water vapour in the atmosphere. For the downtown core of a city of 4 million people, It was as good as astronomy gets. (which by the way, isn't very good). Next I thought I'd try to take an afocal picture through one of the eyepieces of my binoculars. Here's where my story of woe begins. Sometimes you just set the bar a little too high and you whack your head trying to clear it. I put the lens of the digital camera up to one of the eyepieces of my 11 by 80 binoculars. I could clearly make out the bright light reflected back from Jupiter. "Not bad" I thought. I had confirmed a few seconds earlier that the four Galilean moons were easily spotted by the binoculars. I thought about how cool it would be to take a photograph of this. I tripped the shutter and the camera worked it's magic. It just wasn't magical enough. When all was said and done, all I got was a picture of a bright point of light in the center of a black background. Comparing the results with my expectations was humbling to say the least. "Why Me?" I asked. Here I am, living in the downtown core of Canada's largest city and I'm an amateur astronomer. I think my mum dropped me on my head when I was a child. It couldn't be that I'm overequipped with optics in the most light polluted location in the country, could it? I have a 90mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope, with an assortment of eyepieces that will allow magnification from 30 times to about 300 times magnification, and the aforementioned big honkin' binoculars. Why would I choose a hobby that demands a rural location if I live in the heart of a metropolitan area? Somebody should slap me.
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