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FOCAL POINT

®
A Once and Future Stargazer
T
HANKS TO THE SUN, I have as they arrive. I get a certain pleasure in
rediscovered the pleasures of watching the Sun’s mood swings.
looking at the stars every night. Unexpectedly, all this has reconnected
Let me explain. I am part of a team at me with my amateur “roots.” Astronomy
the Naval Research Laboratory involved for me began with a pair of binoculars
in building and operating one of the in- and a 2-inch refractor in the fourth
struments on the Japanese astronomy grade. Like many youngsters with a new
satellite called Yohkoh. Every weekday telescope, I looked at the Moon and a
morning I retrieve and display a few X- few planets, then stashed the scope in the
ray images of the Sun’s disk taken by closet. Astronomy came alive several
the satellite the previous day, to make summers later when, stimulated by the
sure all is going well. books I was reading, I purchased a few
In October 1991, when Yohkoh first AAVSO charts and tried to observe vari-
began routine operation, the Sun was able stars. I spent almost every clear night
near the maximum of its 11-year cycle that summer lying in a hammock with a
and a dynamic cauldron of ever-changing red-filtered flashlight, binoculars, and the
detail. Almost every image held some charts. Locating variable stars came slow-
new feature, especially ly for me — the entire
in the maze of looplike first evening landed
structures accompany- only T Cephei. I grad-
ing “active regions.” The Internet has ually learned to star-
Seen projected against spawned a different hop and in time could
space high above the variety of armchair locate 10 or 20 vari-
solar limb, these arch- ables in an evening.
astronomer. The
ing coronal loops re- The rest of my
veal the complex mag- armchair has been teenage years were
netic fields associated replaced by a spent with a succes-
with heightened solar computer desk, the sion of simple home-
activity. Elsewhere I made telescopes — a
frequently spotted daz- book by a modem. 4-inch, then a 6, and fi-
zling flares, intense nally an 8 — observ-
emissions from active ing variable stars, try-
regions whose consequences could often ing my hand at celestial photography, and
be seen over vast distances on the Sun. logging Messier objects and other sights.
Even coronal holes, regions with almost The pressures of college, graduate
no X-ray emission, showed variable school, and doing science ended it all.
bright points within their boundaries. Yet those evenings cemented my love of
Things were always happening, and I had astronomy and propelled me into it as a
a front-row seat. profession. They also taught me to ap-
As the solar cycle declined from its preciate the rhythm of the night sky and
peak, the Sun’s appearance in X-rays the flow of the seasons. I was eager to
began to simplify. But always there was see again old friends rising in the east.
something worth looking at and wonder- Sometimes I would get up just before
ing about. Even though we are still in the dawn to revisit objects from a different
depths of solar minimum, I can’t wait to season. It was fascinating looking at
On the Cover get to my computer each morning to see something that is always the same and
The eerie power of gravity to bend light has never what happened in the past hours. yet always different.
been more evident than in this Hubble Space Tele-
scope image of a distant galaxy cluster. The yellow
This ability to look at the Sun daily in That’s the feeling I’ve rekindled by
blobs are members of CL 0024+1654, which lies X-rays is only possible because comput- looking at the Sun every day. And now
some 5 billion light-years away in Pisces. At twice er networks now link the world’s conti- it has sent me back to my telescope at
its distance resides a ringlike galaxy whose image nents together. Retrieving and display- night to see old friends again.
has been misshapen and multiplied into lumpy blue
arcs by the intervening cluster’s gravity. Despite the ing the 262,144 bytes of data in a single But things are different now. Today
distortion, these funhouse-mirror mutations still re- image from Japan takes just a few sec- we are in the midst of a high-tech equip-
veal much about the distant galaxy, which probably onds. Weeks later all the images for a ment explosion. It seems as if everyone
would be too faint to be detected if it weren’t for
the cluster’s amplifying effect. Beginning on page 30,
particular day arrive on magnetic tape, has — or yearns for — a CCD camera,
Michael West (St. Mary’s University) finds other in- thus becoming available for reexamina- autoguider, and NGC-in-a-box software.
teresting uses for these galactic population centers. tion at any time. But somehow doing Page after page of Sky & Telescope is
Courtesy the Space Telescope Science Institute. that is not the same as looking at them filled with advertisements for every sort

6 Sky & Telescope January 1997 ©1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
PATRICK CORRIGAN
of technological wonder — all the elec- challenges the most egregious material.
tronic marvels of the Cold War in your But a lot of marginal stuff remains,
own backyard. In my view, you miss a lot making it difficult to glean the useful
when you hand over the control of your from the useless.
telescope to a computer. Don’t misunderstand me — there are
Sadly, many people have taken the already enough Luddites in the world.
next step, skipping the telescope alto- My well-equipped friends are fun to be
gether and communing with the com- with, and their automated telescopes can
puter instead of the night sky. The same be a pleasure to use. Many of them even
global computer network that delivers know quite a few constellations. And I
solar images from Japan also brings me admit to a certain fascination with how
endless messages from those who seem much a CCD can accumulate in a few
more addicted to exchanging vast quan- seconds.
tities of misinformation about astrono- Fortunately, though, we still have
my than actually looking through their Dobsonians, star-hopping, and the pleas-
telescopes. ures of teaching a few children from the
The Internet has spawned a different neighborhood some constellations on
variety of armchair astronomer. Instead the way to showing them M13 or the
of reading about the wonders of the uni- Orion Nebula. Sometimes I do lust for
verse, this one “surfs” the network for the high tech, and I do peek at the as-
pictures, predictions, and information of tronomy news groups on the Internet
dubious pedigree. The armchair has been occasionally. But my equipment, now 30
replaced by a computer desk, the book years old, harks back to a simpler time.
by a modem. Contact is with a keyboard It took a high-tech wake-up call — look-
instead of the night air. ing at X-ray pictures of the Sun — to
I find this group to be a little scary. make me realize that my heart is really
Armchair astronomers of the past could with the low-tech star-hoppers and the
turn to plenty of well-written books for simple pleasures of looking at the stars
solid information. But many contribu- every day.
tors to online astronomy groups don’t JOHN MARISKA
seem to want to take the time to look in Mariska is an astrophysicist at the E. O.
a book. Instead, they are all too willing Hulburt Center for Space Research at the
to post the first thought that comes to Naval Research Laboratory in Washington,
mind in response to a query. Misinfor- D.C., by day and — once again — an avid
mation abounds. Oh, someone usually amateur astronomer by night.

©1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. January 1997 Sky & Telescope 7

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