Back from Mt. Wilson. Got to view Saturn and Jupiter through the 100” telescope, couple of nebulae and globular clusters through the 60”
That was quite special
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In related news, haven’t been up this late in years
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The docents at last night’s Mt. Wilson observing session said they’d take and share Jupiter and Saturn pictures from last night, which I’ll share on this thread, but some general observations on big telescopes.
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The largest scope I’d looked through before was probably either 12” or 14.” And the largest I’ve personally handled in a 4.5”
A 60” is 25x more powerful than a 12” and a 100” is nearly 3x as powerful as a 60” (and 75x a 12”). A 100” is about 500x more powerful than my 4.5.”
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(Since light-gathering power scales as the square).
Plus… dark mountain vs sea-level urban which is my usual conditions.
My best conditions were probably the 14” on a tour to Mauna Loa observatories. Mt. Wilson is too close to LA to be as good but last night was pretty good.
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But what difference does 500x power in good conditions make? One test is maximum useful magnification. With my 4.5” on balcony with LA skyline in bg… maybe 100x is sharp on a good night. I can go as high as 300x with a 3x Barlow but it’s basically useless on even the best night.
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Last night? Saturn at 700x and Jupiter at 500x (they old have gone bigger) were sharper than my scope at 40x on the best night. It was genuinely spectacular. I didn’t expect the live view to be as good as photos made from longer exposures and image stacking.
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Another test is color. The more light gathering power, the more you are using cones (high light color) rather than rods (low light monochrome) to see. This means you barely see any color in a small scope. With my eyesight, I get red Mars faint orange for Jupiter. All else is B&W
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Last night? Clear orange+yellow for Jupiter, yellow for Saturn, intense blues for a few nebulae. Didn’t see any strongly separated hue mixes like blue+purple+green etc that you can see in long exposures. They said women can usually see richer colors.
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What special about live is that you truly feel you’re seeing the thing as “true” as humanly possible short of actually going there. All astrophotography you see, even in visible spectrum, is so processed, and so convolved with instrument characteristics, it’s kinda a fiction.
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All in all, a 500x difference from my more routine experiences is the difference between riding a bicycle and flying in an airplane.
I’m really glad I did this while my eyesight is still decent. Mt.Wilson 100” btw is the largest telescope in the world amateurs have access to.
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And for those who don’t know their astronomy history, these 2 telescopes are responsible for probably the biggest discoveries of the last centuries… the Hubble red shift (expanding universe) the structure of the Milky Way.
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Direct observation was already obsolete in 1908-20 when these 2 telescopes were built. It’s a romantic affectation. Both were really built as cameras. Humans were meant to only look through them to set up the photography not to do observations directly.
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More modern scopes, including the 6-mirror interferometer at Mt. Wilson (an active research instrument unlike these 2 historic ones which are no longer used), can’t actually be used for “naked eye” observing at all.
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You can rent both scopes for group events.
100”: $2700 per half night and $5000 per full night for a group of up to 20 people.
60”: $1,050 per half night and $1,700 per full night for a group of up to 25 people.
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They do occasional individually ticketed nights. 100” is $225, 60” is $95. We got in on a rare 2-for-1 night for $195 each.
Highly recommend any of these. Guaranteed to blow your previous telescope experiences out of the water. Size matters.
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Most astronomy events you can go to use smaller historic scopes in much worse places, or modern amateur-grade instruments (usually Celestrons ~12-18”). But these 100+ year old scopes are vastly superior. Modern tech/software can do a lot, but not make an 18” mirror beat a 100” 😆
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The 2 historic observatories are completely funded by these events and donations and staffed and operated by volunteers. So if you want to keep these going, support them.
mtwilson.edu
(The active research instruments have grants and things)
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Also, Mt. Wilson is now annually threatened by wildfires. There’s a huge tank of firefighting water. It’s basically Russian roulette up there every year, and it’s unfortunately possible it could get destroyed in an unlucky year… so if interested, visit sooner rather than later.
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iPhone photos taken by the docents through the 100” scope. Real thing was significantly superior.
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