iPhone Astrophotography: ‘magnifi’ iPhone case.

This is a guest post by Andy Hewitt @andyuk71

I received a 6” reflecting telescope for Christmas – a Jessops’ TA900-114EQ. Blessed with clear skies and a glorious full moon, I focused the 20mm eyepiece and brought the moon in to sharp relief. Memories from my childhood came flooding back of a Prinz Astral ‘scope my father had bought my brothers and I, many Christmases ago, and I was thrilled to feel the same excitement I had had as a child. Naturally in today’s digital age, I wondered if it was possible to capture these wonderful pictures on my iPhone. I soon discovered that the iPhone is not naturally disposed to taking these kind of images, but a quick search on the net revealed that there’s quite a number of amateur astronomers out there obtaining passable results with them. The light-metering of the phone means that unless the phone is clamped in some way to the lens, unwanted light will leak in and decent results will be hard to get. Some kind of clamp arrangement would also possibly guarantee correct alignment between the phone’s lens and the eyepiece’s aperture. The image below was obtained by holding my phone to the telescope’s eyepiece.

HR12.5mm lens.

A reasonable result after cropping and some tweaks in iPhoto, but the difficulty of aligning the lens with the eyepiece, coupled with the promise of even better results made my mind up to research if there was a better solution out there.

Searching online, I found a couple of different options available in the form of cases, and decided to plump for the ‘magnifi’ (seen above), a Kickstarter project from the States that received enough backing to launch it into production. Not currently available direct from the UK, purchasing is easy enough via PayPal, though the mooted Custom’s charge was a suck it and see event… The device isn’t exactly cheap at £61.53, though I was prepared to take a risk, hoping the results would justify the expense. With international postage charges of £9.83, and an £8 Royal Mail handling charge, the grand total came to £79.36. It arrived in just under two weeks, as promised, and on opening, included everything listed on the website. The package comes with 4 rubber ring adapters to attach to your lenses to ensure a snug fit – in practice, this works without a hitch – and they fit very tightly to the lenses themselves; some people may find them a bit fiddly to put on, but no more than that. The case and lens attachment aren’t fitted together in transit, but again, this is really simple to do.

I took the first opportunity that came along to use the magnifi case, with the moon as my target object. It was at this point that certain realities became apparent. Firstly that the lenses supplied with my Jessops 6” reflector, are probably, erm, not the best thing about the telescope.

As you can see in the picture, the barrels are short and the higher-powered the lens is, the less black plastic there is to clamp the magnifi to. Fortunately, the HR20mm is sufficient in this area and a good lens to view the moon with. The old moon in the new moon’s arms promised a lot with a terminator giving good contrast and cutting down the glare, but ultimately results were disappointing, and for a number of reasons.

With the phone slotted into the magnifi case and the case clamped to the lens, a relatively large mass is added to your scope – at this point you get the measure of your mount. With the phone turned on to the camera app, it’s possible to view the moon via the phone’s screen and even bring in into focus. However, the fun starts when, after carefully aligning and framing your (moving) object, you press the button to take the picture and hey presto, you’ve introduced camera-shake. I tried numerous different strategies to overcome this issue with varying degrees of success. Undaunted, I moved my sights onto Jupiter and was rewarded through my telescope’s lens, by seeing the familiar bands of Jupiter with my own eyes – my first time – and rather unbelievably, the four visible-from-Earth moons (I think). I badly wanted to capture these images digitally, and did, but there was too big a gap in quality between what I was viewing through the eyepiece and what was being displayed on my phone, and ultimately being recorded.

A frustrating interval of several cloudy night skies ensued then, but I was far more successful at my next attempt. Steve had pointed me in the direction of an iPhone app called SlowShutter and this proved to be a revelation. With a full moon to aim at on this occasion, I was determined to justify the expense I’d laid out. SlowShutter enables you to set the exposure time and also factor in a delay for shutter release. I set a 0.5 second exposure and a 5 second delay. After a bit of trial and error, dividends were soon in abundance and the gap between the eyepiece and iPhone was metaphorically narrowed.

Full moon, HR20mm lens, some tweaks in iPhoto.

Some pros and cons. SlowShutter is a great app but, unlike the iPhone’s camera app, it doesn’t permit a digital zoom of the image in view – sometimes this is necessary to overcome the black circle effect that occurs with some lenses when using magnifi, dependent on their viewing aperture diameter. Depending on lens aperture size, the black circle can manifest in two ways, one you can zoom-in past, or one you can’t. I need to test this further though with some different/better eyepieces. Frustratingly, the barrels on my lenses are just physically too short to clamp magnifi to satisfactorily. I’m still very new to astronomy and astrophotography. I know barrels can be replaced or extended but I’m not entirely certain on how this affects the focal length of the lens.

Unless you have a rock-solid mount, pressing the button to take the picture will inevitably introduce blur to your image, which of course is the last thing you want, even the smallest movement is of course, magnified greatly: shutter delay overcomes this. Another problem is exposure. Images like the moon are very bright and play havoc with the light meter of the iPhone’s camera. However, I experimented with tapping on the screen in the light and dark areas, allowing the phone to re-meter and give a better exposure – SlowShutter has this facility too and even has an exposure lock feature, which aids between shots as normally the app would re-expose for the next shot.

Magnifi does allow you to take pretty decent images of what you’re seeing through your telescope, and as far as iPhone astrophotography contraptions go, it certainly offers a professional looking and well-made, thought-out practical option. It’s still early days for me and my use of magnifi. I live in a busy city with depressingly high levels of light pollution, so I’m limited to possible objects to capture. However, I envisage that with more experience, better lenses and of course, dark skies, the magnifi will prove to be an invaluable piece of equipment for me and other amateur astrophotgraphers.

Image below captured with HR12.5mm lens.

Leap Seconds

Today the International Telecommunications Union are voting on whether to abolish the leap second. This miniscule measure of time is added in to our time-keeping systems every so often to make sure they align more accurately with the time as measured by the spin of the Earth.

The original definition of the second was 1/86400 of a mean solar day which is related to the speed of the Earth’s spin about its axis. We might call this the “Earth second”. However the Earth’s spin in not regular. To begin with the Earth is slowing down by a couple of milliseconds per century due to tidal breaking. This breaking action is as a result of the drag of the Earth spinning beneath the tides created by the Moon. In effect the Moon is “stealing” energy from the Earth, increasing in its orbit about us while our spin slows.

In addition to this discrepancy the Earth is occasionally wobbled off course by major geological events, such as earthquakes. The 2004 Pacific earthquake which resulted in the Boxing Day Tsunami actually caused the Earth to speed up by over 2 milliseconds.

To avoid the problem of an irregular length of day – and therefore an irregular length of second – scientists adopted the much more regular SI second, which is the length of time it takes for 9,192,631,770 cycles of vibration of atomic caesium. This “atomic clock second” is accurate to one part in ten billion, and since 1972 this has been the international standard in timekeeping.

But time kept using the the SI second doesn’t match exactly with time kept based on the spin of the Earth, which after all is the time we experience every day. In order to make these two time signals match leap seconds are added every so often. Since 1972 25 leap seconds have been added. The last leap second was added at 23:59:59 on 31 December 2008, and the next one is due to be added at 23:59:59 on 30 June 2012. But leap seconds themselves are irregular, and are decided on by the ITU whenever the two time signals drift by more than 0.9 seconds.

The argument for abolishing these additional leap seconds is that it creates problems for modern computing and navigation systems that use the atomic clock second. Every time one of these irregular leap seconds is added the world’s hi-tech time keeping devices need to check and adjust by one second. It would be far simpler for us to use only “atomic clock seconds”.

However if we were to ditch the leap second then our civil time keeping would begin to drift with respect to “real” Earth time, so that in thousands of years time our clocks might read 8am just as the Sun is setting. This might seem like a minor concern right now – after all a millennium is a long time – but it’s something that astronomers and scientists do need to consider to avoid future problems. One alternative would be to introduce a “leap hour” to be introduced every few hundred years to keep the clock aligned with the real world.

London Borough Of Ealing Declared International Dark-Sky Reserve: Spoof

Hilariously, I have been “quoted” in a fictitious article on the website The Spoof. This article boasts the headline: “London Borough Of Ealing Declared International Dark-Sky Reserve”!

The police have been inundated by calls from anxious Ealing residents, worried about strange white dots in the night sky

The piece continues:

‘London is an international centre of excellence for numerous endeavours,’ explained Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. ‘It was total madness that Londoners had to travel to the mountains of Chile or to Exmoor, wherever they are, to get a decent view of the night sky.’

So the author(s) of the piece know their stuff: the Atacama Desert in Chile is widely recognised as one of the very best places for stargazing on the planet, while Exmoor became an International Dark Sky Reserve in November 2011, following on from Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park in 2009, and Sark Dark Sky Island in 2010.

The article introduces me as:

UK astronomer Steve Owens, chair of the IDA‘s Dark Sky Places Development Committee

again true, but not nearly so widely known. They must really have done their homework on this story. They then put words in my mouth that are entirely reasonable:

‘To be declared an International Dark-Sky Reserve,’ he explained, ‘an area must possess an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights. Light pollution from conurbations is the most significant barrier to this aspiration, and areas in London possess quite exceptional challenges in that respect.’

Ha! Very true. Then the article continues:

As part of the bid for Reserve status for Ealing, street lights were disabled within a ten mile radius… In addition, local byelaws were passed to enforce the use of blackout curtains after dark within the Reserve area. Car headlights and other sources of light, necessary to facilitate travel, were required to be red in order to not affect night vision.

From now on my analysis of this article might read as somewhat po-faced, as I point out their errors, but it does at least allow me to talk a little bit about what it means to be a Dark Sky Place.

The IDA doesn’t require the extinguishing of all street lights, nor black out curtains, nor red car headlights. All nice ideas though, from an astronomical point of view. Just not very practical.

The article then quotes several fictitious Londoners:

‘Since the changes, I have been almost constantly working outside at night,’ said emergency paramedic and ambulance crewperson, Ursula Major. ‘I often point out the constellations to distract RTA and other casualties from their injuries.’ [actually, studies have shown no connection between reduced light at night and RTAs.]

‘Sometimes,’ admitted Leo Regulus, an unemployed young person from Boston Manor, ‘I stop when lootin’ from Ealin’ Broadway ta wunda at the splenda of the Miwkey Way. Last week,’ he continued, ‘I even went back ta Argos ta nick a Newtonian reflecta telescope, init.’ [similarly, there is no good evidence that reduced light at night increases crime.]

Astronomers from across the UK have visited Ealing to avail themselves of its crystal clear view of the heavens. ‘Many initially complained about mugging and the loss of equipment,’ admitted sergeant Izar Bootes from the Metropolitan Police, ‘but the ability to repurchase their kit, or better gear, at Leeland Road market on Saturday mornings has more than compensated for such inconveniences.’ [see above]

Even everyone’s favourite astronomer Prof Brian Cox gets a mention:

The quality of the sky over Ealing means that key astronomical features are clearly visible for the first time in over two centuries. The police have been inundated by calls from anxious residents, worried about the appearance of strange white dots in the night sky.

‘It looks like that Brian Cox bloke was telling the truth, after all,’ said one amazed Northfields resident.

Make sure you read the whole article, but remember: the London borough of Ealing isn’t really an International Dark-Sky Reserve!

 

Dark Skies Orkney – A Midwinter Astronomy Festival

I’m heading up to Orkney for two weeks to run a midwinter astronomy festival. I love Orkney, and the chance to visit there in the darkest of the year is a real treat. For astronomers the long winter nights in Orkney have a lot to offer. It’s not just the relative absence of light pollution above Orkney, but also the fact that in the weeks around midwinter there are over twelve hours of pitch blackness between astronomical twilights.

Aurora over the stones of Stenness

The full programme of events is here, and I hope to blog about a few of my activities too.

The programme is funded by an STFC Science in Society Grant

Orionids Meteor Shower 2011

Some time in the small hours of Friday or Saturday morning (21-22 October 2011) the Orionids meteor shower will reach its peak activity rate.  The peak occurs some time around 21 October each year, but this year it’s uncertain which day it will fall on.

The Orionid's parent Comet P/Halley as taken March 8, 1986 by W. Liller, Easter Island, part of the International Halley Watch (IHW) Large Scale Phenomena Network.

Meteor showers result from the Earth passing through the trail of dust and debris left behind by a comet. In the case of the Orionids the parent object is the most famous of all the comets – Halley’s Comet.

The peak meteor rate for the Orionids is lower than some of the more spectacular showers (the Perseids in August, the Geminids in December, and the Quadrantids in January all regularly outperform the Orionids) but it is still worth looking out for.

The meteors will appear to radiate from the constellation of Orion (hence the name) but they will streak across the sky in all directions, and so you shouldn’t confine yourself to only looking towards this one constellation.

On Thursday and Friday evenings the radiant rises in the east around 2200 BST (2100 UT)  and continues to rise to its highest in the south just before the sky starts to brighten at 0600 BST (0500 UT). The higher the radiant above the horizon the more meteors you will see. However a crescent Moon will rises in the east on both mornings, the light from which will drown out some of the fainter meteors.

This shouldn’t matter much to you if you’re observing from an urban or suburban area, as the man-made light pollution in the sky will do a far better job of obscuring the meteor shower than the Moon will, but for lucky observers in dark sites (and I’ll be one of them, as I’m spending the weekend on Sark, the world’s first Dark Sky Island) the Moon may interfere.

Here’s a table with estimated hourly rates based on dark skies / suburban / urban areas, at hourly intervals throughout the night, assuming a ZHR =40 throughout this period (It may be that the peak will fall outwith this period, e.g. in daylight hours, so these are best-case-scenario numbers).

Time (BST)	Radiant Altitude	Radiant Direction		Hourly Rate Urban Site	Hourly Rate Suburban Site	Hourly Rate Dark Sky Site (if Moon not present)
2200	rises	ENE		<1	<1	<1
2300	8°	ENE		1	2	4
0000	16°	E		1	4	8
0100	24°	ESE		2	6	16
0200	33°	ESE		2	8	22
0300	40°	SE		2	9	26*
0400	46°	SSE		3	10	29*
0500	50°	S		3	11	31*
0600	50°	S		3	11	31*

* the true rates, given that the Moon is causing natural light pollution, are probably half these values.

All of these timings and altitudes are based on an observer in central Scotland. For other UK observers the values in columns 2-4 may be slightly off, but not noticeably so.

Observing Advice: wrap up warm, head out before midnight, sit youself in a reclining lawn chair, and enjoy the spectacle. The rates may pick up around 0200 BST on Thursday or Friday and may stay high until dawn.

Borrego Springs Dark Sky Community

Dark Sky Places Traveling Fellowship Part 7

Thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, I have received a traveling fellowship to visit all of the International Dark Sky Places in North America between 22 August and 03 October 2011. This series of blog posts will detail my visit to each of these very dark places.

Borrego Springs, Dark Sky Community

The final stop on my dark sky places odyssey was the desert community of Borrego Springs in southern California, smack bang in the centre of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest state park in the “lower 48″ states.

In 2008 the IDA designated Borrego Springs as an International Dark Sky Community, the second in the world after Flagstaff, and the first in California. This designation recognises the fact that the night sky above Borrego is very dark indeed (considering that they are less than 100 miles from the suburbs of Los Angeles) as well as the community-led efforts to minimise the effects of light pollution.

Aurora above Borrego Springs, by Dennis Mammana

The town was settled in the 1930s, and there is a small community there still (pop 2500 ish) that live in Borrego Springs year-round. However the soaring summer temperatures (May – Sep the average high temp is above 38°C, and can reach as high as 49°C in mid summer) mean that many residents only winter there from Oct till Apr.

The town’s main economy is tourism, with four golf courses, an annual wildflowers display, and winter migrating birds all attracting tourists to the pleasant 20°C average mid winter temperatures. Dark skies tourism is starting to flourish in the town, with the Nightfall festival in its 18th year, and many other tourism businesses are starting to take note of the potential to expand their winter season.

The IDA even have a credit card featuring an image of Borrego Springs

During my visit to Borrego Springs the dark skies coalition, chaired by Betsy Knaak of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association, asked me to host a workshop for local tourism businesses, as well as a public evening talk (both were sold out), and a school talk to over 120 primary school kids. The interest in dark skies from across the community it staggering.

Indeed of all the places I have visited on this traveling fellowship, Borrego Springs reminds me most of the model for dark skies tourism that works so well back home in the UK’s dark sky places, such as Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park, and Sark Dark Sky Island. That is: the designation is achieved by a local group of activists; the local tourism businesses then use the dark skies to attract visitors in the “off-season”; and the astronomy activities are run by a small group of local astronomers. In the case of Borrego Springs their go-to guy for dark sky tourism events is the astronomer, writer and photographer Dennis Mammana.

I was lucky enough to go stargazing with Dennis and take some photos of the night sky. The evening when we were out was far from ideal: often a marine layer sits over San Diego and blocks out much of its light but on this evening the light domes of this city, and others, were evident.

Dennis was almost apologetic, comparing their skies unfavourably with some of the other incredibly dark places I had visited on my trip, but the comparison is unfair. Borrego Springs is not in the middle of nowhere; it’s a mere two hours drive away from Los Angeles, southern California, and north-west Mexico, with tens of millions of people within easy reach of a stunning night sky.

I obtained an SQM reading of 20.25, admittedly not as dark as the other places I had monitored on my trip, but still very dark, and the IDA recognises that a Dark Sky Place needs an exceptional night sky relative to the population that it serves, which in the case of southern California is a huge population.

The opportunities for Borrego Springs are huge, and I hope that what they are doing will feed back to what we’re trying to achieve in the UK, and vice versa, as a perfect model for dark sky tourism.

All-sky image above Borrego Springs

In the image above, the light dome in the top of the image (SE) is from the large city of Mexicali. The light dome in the lower right of the image (N) is from Palm Springs, the light in the lower part of the image (NW) is from Los Angeles, and the light in the left hand side of the image (SW) is from San Diego.

Draconids Meteor Shower 2011

On Saturday 8 October 2011 a rare event may occur – a meteor storm! The usually sedate Draconids meteor shower only produces a few shooting stars per hour in most years, but in some years we have a meteor storm, and that’s just what’s predicted for this year.

It won't look like this

During a meteor storm the Earth passes through a particularly dense clump of comet dust, meaning that rates of shooting stars temporarily spike, and estimates this time suggest the possibility of up to 10 shooting stars per minute during the peak of the storm. However a nearly full Moon will spoil the view, drowning out all but the brightest 10% of meteors, reducing the actual observed rate of perhaps 1 per minute – still well worth looking out for.

The peak is set to occur at 2000UT (2100 BST), and is ideally placed for observers in the UK. Activity is expected to increase from 1600UT (1700 BST) but at that stage the sky will still be bright in the UK.

If you’re keen to witness this (possibly) amazing event here are some top tips:

1. Head out early. Start your meteorwatch once the sky gets dark enough. For most people in the UK this will be from 1900 – 1930 BST (anyone living in the north of Scotland will have to wait a bit longer). Although the peak of the storm is estimated to occur around 2100 BST there will be plenty to see in the hours leading up to the peak.
2. Know where to look. The Draconids all appear to originate from the constellation Draco, which will be high in the NW sky, just above and to the left of the north star, Polaris. However the meteors will streak across the entire sky so don’t just look NW.
3. Know what to look for. Meteors appear as bright streaks of light moving rapidly across the sky. They last for a fraction of a second, but the Draconids are unusually slow meteors. Still, blink and you might miss one.
4. Keep the Moon to your back. The full Moon will drown out the light from all but the brightest Draconids, and if you look at the Moon it will spoil your night vision, so keep it behind you, ideally blocked out by a building or tree.
5. You just need your eyes. Binoculars and telescopes, while ideal for observing faint nebulae and planets, are no good for meteorwatching. You want to take in as much of the sky as you can, and have as wide a field of view as possible, so just use your eyes.
6. Get comfortable. The best bit of meteorwatching kit is a reclining lawn chair. Point it towards the NW, lie back, look up and enjoy the show.
7. Keep warm. It will be very cold outside if it is clear, so wrap up warm. If you’re lying back on a reclining chair, wrap yourself in a blanket or sleeping bag form maximum warmth.
8. Get away from city lights. This isn’t as important for this shower, as the Moon is flooding the sky with natural light anyway, but in general the fewer lights you have around you the better.
9. Get away from clouds. This hopefully goes without saying, but if your sky is cloudy you won’t see much. The UK Met Office website can tell you if there is a clear sky anywhere near you, and you should consider traveling to get clear skies.
10. Record your observations. If you want to take part in a meteorwatch and submit your observations there a several ways you can do that. One fun and accessible approach is to tweet your observations with the #meteorwatch hashtag. If you want to take more detailed rigourous data you can submit an observing form to the International Meteor Organisation, the British Astronomical Association or the Society for Popular Astronomy

Make sure you tell your friends! This a great opportunity to see a rare meteor storm, so get as many people as possible outside and looking up.

CAVEAT: This is only a predicted meteor storm; it may not occur and if it does not then meteor levels will be very low.

Flagstaff: The World’s First Dark Sky City

Dark Sky Places Traveling Fellowship Part 6

Thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, I have received a traveling fellowship to visit all of the International Dark Sky Places in North America between 22 August and 03 October 2011. This series of blog posts will detail my visit to each of these very dark places.

Flagstaff, International Dark Sky City

Flagstaff is a city with a long connection to astronomy. It was dubbed “the Skylight City” in the 1890s, and the Lowell Observatory, cited on Mars Hill just west of the town, was established in 1894. Six decades later the United States Naval Observatory was set up five miles outside the town. As a result, light pollution has long been a concern in Flagstaff.

Flagstaff: the World's First International Dark Sky City

In fact, in 1958 Flagstaff adopted the first lighting ordinances to prevent the rapid deterioration of the night sky for astronomical research. This ordinance is worth printing in full:

ORDINANCE NO. 440
AN ORDINANCE DEFINING SEARCH LIGHTS IN THE CITY OF FLAGSTAFF, PROHIBITING THE USE OF CERTAIN COMMERCIAL SEARCH LIGHTS IN THE CITY LIMITS OF FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA AND PRESCRIBING A PENALTY THEREFOR AND DEC THEREFOR AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY

BE IT ORDAINED by the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Flagstaff as follows, to-wit:

1. It is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person or persons to operate within the City Limits of the City of Flagstaff any incandescent or arc-type search light, beacon light or similar lighting device designed to and capable or projecting a beam of light into the sky for a distance of an excess of one half (1/2) mile.
2. The provisions of this Ordinance shall not apply to emergency search lights or beacons or search lights or beacons pursuant to public authority.
3. The provisions of this Ordinance shall not be construed to prohibit the use of short-range open type, wide angle stationary floodlights not capable of projecting a beam of light in excess of one half (1/2) mile.
4. Any person violating any provisions of this Ordinance shall be guilty of’ a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of’ not to exceed $300.00 or imprisonment in the City Jail not to exceed (90) days, or both such fine and punishment.
5. In order to protect and preserve the public health, safety, and welfare, it is necessary that this Ordinance become immediately effective and it is hereby declared to be an emergency measure to become effective upon posting and publishing according to law.
PASSED AND ADOPTED by the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Flagstaff’, this 15th, day of April, 1958.

Thirty years later astronomer Chris Luginbuhl led new, comprehensive city- and county-wide ordinances. Ever since then a dedicated and enthusiastic team of community activists have been combating the increasing problem of light pollution that comes with an expanding city.

Today’s dark sky defenders are the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition (founded in 1999), many of whom I met on my two visits to the city, including two leading lights in the fight for dark skies, Dark Skies Coalition founders astronomer Chris Luginbuhl and community organiser Lance Diskan.

Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition spread the word

Indeed Lance moved to Flagstaff so that his children – born in Los Angeles – could see the stars: “One of the things we required when we had children was that they be able to see the stars,” he says. “We wanted them to have the unlimited imaginative potential that comes from looking at the stars. Part of being human is looking up at the stars and being awestruck.” Lance has completed a masters thesis entitled: “The Night Sky in Human Culture”.

Flagstaff was awarded International Dark Sky Community (IDSC) status by the IDA in October 2001, and indeed it was Flagstaff’s unique history of lighting controls that inspired the IDA to form this designation in the first place. It wasn’t for another five years that the IDSParks programme expanded the family of dark sky places into larger parks.

During my two visits to Flagstaff in my traveling fellowship (on 8-10 Sep and again on 23-24 Sep) I met with members of the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition, learned of the community activism, was given a night-time tour of the good (and the still-present bad) lighting, visited Lowell Observatory, went stargazing and saw the Milky Way in a city centre (!), took a day-trip to the nearby Meteor Crater, and attended the opening night of the 2011 Celebration of the Night.

Meteor Crater through a fisheye lens

The latter is the fourth such event, which seeks to promote dark skies across a wide range of events and programmes, The opening event I attended was the public unveiling of the excellent Nightscapes IV exhibition of artworks inspired by the night, and by dark skies.

Throughout my visits I got a real sense that Flagstaff is leading the world, not just in lighting controls, but in engaging the local communities in the city to make them feel ownership of the wonderful resource they have overhead every clear night.

The fact that I could see the Milky Way from a small park in the middle of a city of 66,000 attests to the success of their mission, but it is an ongoing battle. Even in this enlightened (pardon the pun) city, there are poor lights that cause glare, trespass and skyglow, and which have to be constantly monitored and reported. And the resources of the volunteers in the Dark Skies Coalition are stretched very thin dealing with this problem.

Astronomer Chris Luginbuhl put it very well in conversation with me. “I get caught up in lighting controls, and drafting lighting ordinances, but I’m not interested in lighting; I’m interested in nighting”.

Measuring sky brightness with an SQM-L from Buffalo Park in Flagstaff resulted in readings of 20.5, excellent for a city, and corresponding to a Bortle Class of 4, which normally you would only get at the rural / suburban transition. Just a few miles east of the city in the KOA campground the sky was even darker, reading 21.4.

Natural Bridges Dark Sky Park

Dark Sky Places Traveling Fellowship Part 5

Thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, I have received a traveling fellowship to visit all of the International Dark Sky Places in North America between 22 August and 03 October 2011. This series of blog posts will detail my visit to each of these very dark places.

Natural Bridges National Monument, International Dark Sky Park

In 2006 the International Dark-skies Association designated this small park in Utah as the world’s first International Dark-sky Park, thereby setting the bar incredibly high for those parks that wanted to follow suit.

The skies above Natural Bridges are amongst the darkest in the USA, and the only skies that have been rated as Bortle Class 2.

Natural Bridges National Monument, International Dark Sky Park

And the park has been taking advantage of this unique status ever since. Astronomy forms a major focus of what the park now does, with a twice-weekly stargazing programme utilising an 11″ Schmidt-Cassegrain and a 24″ Dobsonian telescope, allowing visitors to gaze far into the depths of space.

The custom-built Dobsonian telescope

The astronomy programme is run my ranger Gordon Gower, a retired English and history teacher with a burning 50-year passion for astronomy. Graham described the programme to me; the laser tour of the constellations, the telescope viewing, the light pollution demos. These are all offered to the guests staying in the campground, and according to Gordon every Wednesday and Thursday night when the programme runs, the campground empties. “Many of the people that come to Natural Bridges National Monument don’t know about our dark sky status,” says Gordon, “but they are amazed at how clear and bright the Milky Way appears from here.”

The small visitors centre is decked with astronomy posters and books, and both of the park’s telescopes are on prominent display. There are even plans to build a small roll-off roof observatory on the site.

Naturally, the lights in the park are all exemplary, downlighting and adding no unwanted pollution to the park’s skies. For the past five years Natural Bridges has inspired parks around the world – including Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park in Scotland, which I helped set up in 2009 – and now there are eight such parks, and the number is growing every year.

Thanks to the National Park Service and Natural Bridges National Monument, areas of our planet are being protected against light pollution, and truly dark skies are being preserved for all to enjoy.

All-sky image of Natural Bridges National Monument

The image above was taken before the end of astronomical twilight, and so a small amount of sunlight is still present in the sky in the east (top left of the image), but it’s worth showing for the meteor that I managed to capture, which is on the right hand side of the image, crossing the longer aeroplane trail.

Using the Sky Quality Meter I was able to measure a sky brightness (after astronomical twilight) of 21.6. This is very dark indeed (need it be said?), but still higher than it should be, due to the Milky Way which was directly overhead when I took the reading, and adds its own light pollution!

Clayton Lake Dark Sky Park

Dark Sky Places Traveling Fellowship Part 4

Thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, I have received a traveling fellowship to visit all of the International Dark Sky Places in North America between 22 August and 03 October 2011. This series of blog posts will detail my visit to each of these  very dark places.

Clayton Lake Dark Sky Park

Clayton Lake Dark Sky Park is the fourth International Dark Sky Place on my tour, and so far the most remote. Nestled in NE New Mexico, about 15 miles from the town of Clayton, this small park has long attracted astronomers to its dark skies.

Clayton Lake

Local high school principal Terrell Jones told me: “I’ve been bringing school kids out here for over twenty years to see the dark skies; it was a way of getting more kids interested in taking science, and of keeping the physics class running. We asked their parents to come with them, and lots of the parents – most of them ranchers who you’d have thought wouldn’t have been interested – started to want to know more.”

One such parent was Art Grine, Clayton’s barber. So taken was he with the wonders of the cosmos that he and his wife enrolled in Terrell Jones’ astronomy night class course, and he’s now president of the newly-formed Clayton Astronomy Club, which looks after the small observatory at Star Point,within the dark sky park. Art’s passions for astronomy – although he’s only been doing it for a few years – is evident, and his infectious enthusiasm is one of the main driving forces behind the success of the dark sky park.

Tourism seems to be a big part of the reasoning behind the dark sky park; much like Mont Megantic Dark Sky Reserve the streets of Clayton are festooned with flags promoting astronomy, the local “what’s on” guide features dark skies prominently, and the local hotels actively promote it. After the observatory was installed and the astronomy club set up, they ran monthly astronomy star parties at the site, and applied for and were awarded Dark Sky Park status (Gold Tier) in 2010.

Clayton, New Mexico

Since then they’ve continued to thrive on the dark sky status. Visitors to the park get sent to Art the Astrobarber who unfailingly arranges a time for them to see through the telescope, of which he is rightly proud.

Star Point Observatory, Clayton Lake

And the skies here are really dark, some of the darkest I’ve seen, with SQM readings of 21.6, and very little sky glow evident in the all sky images I took.

One satisfying story of light pollution mitigation comes from the local prison, the North East New Mexico Detention Facility, which opened in 2008, after the Clayton Lake observatory was built. The lights of the new prison were too bright and badly installed, and a new light dome appeared on the horizon of Clayton Lake. Terrel Jones and Art Grine visited the prison governor to ask whether he might instal shields on the lights, and brought with them an example shielding fixture. So persuasive were they that the governor had the inmates manufacture shields for all the offending lights, and so the light-dome was removed.