The draw of stargazing is hard to describe. Sometimes you don’t even know you want to stargaze and then you step outside and there they are — gorgeous stars twinkling away in the darkness. This is particularly true on cold winter nights in the Northern Hemisphere when the last thing you’re interested in is freezing your buns off in the snow while trying to spot some deep-sky object through a rapidly cooling telescope. (For viewers in the Southern Hemisphere, it may not be so cold unless you live at altitude.) But one glimpse of Orion through the kitchen window is enough to send me out there — at least for a little while.
Summertime is different. Theoretically you’re supposed to be able to go out there, lie on the grass with pair of binoculars and take in the sights. Well… maybe. It can be a challenge, especially if you share your stargazing site with a couple of million insects.
Where I live it’s not the cold weather that keeps me indoors on clear summer nights. It’s the mosquito population. We have a burgeoning supply of these bloodsuckers, and it’s tough sometimes to fight them off. A couple of summers ago we went down to Florida with some other skywatchers to observe Mars from lower latitudes and see if we could spot a phenomenon called the “Mars flash.” This occurs when the Sun, Mars and Earth are roughly aligned (like during opposition) and you can (theoretically) see sunlight glinting off ice particles on Mars’s surface. We did manage to catch a glimpse of the flash, but we also came home with patches of skin ridden with bites from mosquitoes and tiny bugs called “no see ums.” No amount of DEET-laden stuff could ward them all off. Once we got home I set up my telescope in the backyard so I could continue watching Mars. But, mindful of the bugs, I sprayed myself diligently and resorted to burning these repellent-enhanced spirals called “mosquito coils.”
There I was, aiming my telescope at a tiny red dot in the sky, smelling of DEET, and surrounded by multiple coils smoking away around me, theoretically keeping the industrial-strength mosquitoes away from me. I often wonder what our new neighbors would have thought about if they’d seen me out there, surrounded by burnt offerings like some goddess in an ancient temple. Then I got to thinking — maybe that’s what all the incense was about in those temples — it wasn’t just for the nice smell — maybe those folks had mosquitos too!
While DEET is a great way to keep most mosquitos away, some folks don’t want to wake up with that DEET hangover. Others don’t like the smell or the idea of chemicals settling onto their skin. There are a great many other remedies out there — clothes called Skeeter Beeters, herbal concoctions that supposedly fend off the biters and chewers, and the rich smell of citronella is supposed to keep ’em at bay, too. A few folks I know even swear by an Avon lotion called Skin So Soft. So, I called my sister (who knows someone who knows somebody who sells Avon) and she’s going to get me a tub or a bottle of this stuff and I’ll test it out here in the wilds where I do my stargazing. And, just to be safe, I’ll find a few of those mosquito coils as a backup. I rather like the idea of being the star goddess — as long as the smoke doesn’t get in the telescope tube!
Yearly Archives: 2003
Done, for Now!
This past month I’ve been doing markups on the layouts for Visions of the Cosmos — the book that Jack Brandt and I have written together, due out this fall from Cambridge University Press. It has been a time-consuming process — crosschecking each page with the manuscript and images we sent to the press last spring. I call it the “fine-tooth comb” process and now that it’s done, I’m glad it’s over. But, while I’m doing it, it seems to last an eternity.
Now that it’s done, I can turn my attention back to the sky. Most avid amateurs out there are checking out the planet Mars when they get a chance. For those of you who have been under a rock or eating your way across the south of France or living under cloudy skies, here’s the scoop on the Red Planet’s doings.
First of all, Mars is about as close in its orbit as it ever gets to Earth. On August 27, 2003 it will be about 35 million miles (that’s about 56 million kilometers) away. So, that means if you’re checking it out through a telescope, it will appear about as big in the eyepiece as it ever gets. Still, it won’t be THAT big — but depending on the size of your scope (say a 6-inch or larger), you should be able to make out the polar cap and maybe some dark markings. That is, of course, if the view isn’t obscured by a dust storm at Mars or a cloud bottom here on Earth. Right now (the end of July, northern hemisphere) you can go out about midnight and look for the Red Planet low in the southeast in the constellation Aquarius.
What if you were on Mars, looking back at Earth? Well, right at opposition the view wouldn’t be too good — Earth would be pretty close to the Sun as seen from Mars. But, at other times of the year, if you were a Martian stargazer with a good backyard-type telescope, you’d see a bluish-white world with a good-sized moon in orbit around it.
This image was taken on May 8, 2003 by the Mars Global Surveyor that’s orbiting Mars and mapping its surface. Kinda gives us a whole new way of looking at our home planet — from the viewpoint of a Martian!