Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog

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I have just finished reading the book Humanity: The Chimpanzees Who Would Be Ants by Russell M. Genet, Ph.D.

This fascinating book is the science-based story of how, in a remote corner of an ordinary galaxy 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang, the descendants of a third line of chimpanzees evolved into millions of humans who organized themselves into ant-like societies.

Originally rare hunters, we humans took up agricultural ways, aping the clever ants that became numerous by developing ingenious herding and gardening skills. Evolving our simple chimp tools into machines, we then tapped a bonanza of fossil fuel energy and blitzkrieged the planet.

Now facing planetary limits, what is our fate?

Reversing direction, will we return to a planetary Garden of Eden or, pedal to the metal, crash into oblivion? Will we transform the Earth into a sustainable global farm or, leaving our birth-planet behind, voyage to the stars with our machine partners to establish a galactic empire?

For me Part 1 of the book was probably the most revealing, and I learnt a great deal about the beginning phases of life. It was incredibly interesting, especially the process from quarks, to hydrogen and helium, then supernovae creating the heavier elements, then atoms to complex molecules, cells, bacteria and genetic DNA. I had hitherto not understood how the engine of gravity and stars built the first stepping stones to life. Absolutely fascinating.

Parts 2 and 3, confirmed my own thoughts and feelings about cultural evolution, governmental and religious control, and the stupendous speed at which we have evolved, whilst these sections of the book provided the necessary grounding on our chimpanzee descendants, our similarities to ants, how we changed from hunter-gatherers, to agricultural farmers, while reminding us about a number of cultures that quickly developed and just as rapidly became extinct, and how the machine age brought about our ruthless efficiency.

The stage is then set for the final section…… the analysis and expansion of the possible outcomes of our future into four scenarios:-

• Chimpanzee Paradise - the high tech Garden of Eden
• Boom and Bust - may the punishment fit the crime
• Planetary Superorganism - all together on the global farm
• Star Trek - our descendants inherit the galaxy

These again provided much food for thought, and more importantly led me to a more positive mindset and direction for the future of mankind.

Russell M Genet is a Research Scholar in Residence at California Polytechnic State University. He is an adjunct professor of astronomy at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo and as the Director of the Orion Observatory, observes eclipsing binary stars and studies cosmic evolution. Russ, who pioneered the world’s first fully robotic observatory (featured in the PBS special, The Perfect Stargazer), was the 51st President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He teaches Astronomy at Cuesta College on California’s central coast, where he lives with his wife and childhood sweetheart, Cheryl.

You can obtain this book from Collins Foundation Press using this link:-

Humanity: The Chimpanzees Who Would Be Ants by R.M.Genet

and you can read Russ’s Cosmic Perspective for further insight into his book.

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I like this post about 10 Things You Don’t Know About the Earth, very interesting……. Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer.

What if you dug a hole through the Earth and jump in? What would happen?

This and 9 other astounding facts are provided for your entertainment and enlightenment!

For instance, did you know the Earth has 5 Moons, sort of?

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I have added a new page to my site describing the modification to the Orion XT10 to replace the original Teflon bearings with a Lazy Susan turntable bearing.

This is one of the primary mods Dobsonian owners are interested to learn about, in their quest to achieve the smoothest possible Azimuth movement. The standard Teflon bearings suffer from a problem termed “stiction” that causes adjustment of the view in the eyepiece to become quite difficult when observing at high magnifications.

The mod involves the addition of a slimline Lazy Susan turntable with ball or cylinder bearings, but this results in a motion that is so smooth that even the wind can blow the telescope around! So a simple method of replacing some of that “stiction” becomes necessary.

In this section I discuss the main concerns, such as maintaining correct operation of the Intelliscope Computer Object Locator, with references to forum topics, other resources on the internet, including suppliers of suitable Lazy Susan bearings. The mod is done in a non-destructive way, so you can revert to the original Teflon bearings if required.

Mod 1: How to replace Teflon azimuth bearings with a Lazy Susan turntable on the Orion Skyquest XT10 Telescope

The page also features a short movie clip demonstrating the effect of the new bearing.

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I have recently added two new sections to the main www.Orion-XT10.com website.

• XT-Mods - this will provide information on any modifications and improvements specifically related to the Orion XT10i telescope
• Resources - is simply a proper place for my collection of Orion XT10 related web sites , other reviews, mods info, equipment and maintenance links. There are also more generally Astronomy related links.

Straight away I have added a fairly major topic of interest to the XT-Mods section, which covers the Addition of a Lazy Susan Turntable bearing to the Orion XT10 .

Go check ‘em out!

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What a bizarre combination of sightings this evening.

Early evening we had a fantastic thunderstorm. I love the power of a storm. The sky was incredibly dark, with fork lightning zipping across the clouds, and since the sun was setting from the opposite direction it was perfect for a strong bright rainbow to form, in a full arc over the fields behind our house. In fact there was even a second fainter rainbow arcing over the first.

Of course rainbows often occur with thunderstorms, and this was quite spectacular, with the bows and the lightning together.

Later in the evening the skies cleared and a miracle happened - yippee, the stars came out!!!

It seems absolutely ages since I’ve seen a nice clear starry night. There were still too many fleeting clouds to warrant getting my XT10 telescope out, plus the fear of more showers, so instead I took my 20×80 binoculars to the pagoda at the top of the garden and settled down for some enjoyment of the night views.

I took in Jupiter and its moons briefly before some cloud cover rolled in, and mistook Arcturus in Bootes for Saturn. Later I scouted around the regions of Ursa Major to see if I could make out any of the galaxies in this area, but I think the night air was too damp to allow me to see them with the binos, or I was just not concentrating on the right patch of sky (I had not taken any star atlas, nor the laptop outside because everything was too wet from the rain storm).

Next I viewed the beautiful star-studded jewels of Cassiopeia, and the wonderful clusters abiding within.

Usually during the course of an evenings viewing I will see several satellites individually crossing their own part of the sky, some blinking as they spin, others just moving steadily overhead. But tonight I saw something that made me do a double-take and confused me for a moment.

As I panned the binos on the tripod I suddenly wondered which direction I was actually moving them, because while some stars were moving, as expected, in the opposite direction to what I panned, 3 stars had suddenly appeared that were going roughly the same direction I was panning. “Eh? How can that be” I thought, until I followed them and got them centred in the view, and realised that they must be satellites, but ALL three were moving in the exact same direction, and in a triangular formation. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen this, as if they were flying together deliberately in a group.

So I tracked them as far as I could and very, very slowly the triangle formation changed shape, so they were in fact travelling at slightly different speeds after all. It was very strange to witness, because at first it looked as if they were intelligently flying as a group!

Finally I quite accidentally came across what at first I thought was Comet Holmes again. It looked the same indistinct fuzzy ball as I had seen a few months ago, when the comet exploded into life, but I thought that the comet was supposed to no longer be clearly visible. After consulting the excellent Stellarium astronomy software, I am certain that what I stumbled upon was the Great Cluster in Hercules. For a while I have been meaning to search this cluster out to see what it would look like in my new giant binos, so when I found it by chance this was quite a nice discovery. The last time I saw the Great Cluster was on my holiday in S.France, when I only had my 10×25 binos, and then the cluster looked very pale and small. In comparison the 20×80’s made the cluster very easy to spot, and to appear quite impressive.

So all in all quite a pleasant couple of hours observation, with quite a unique collection of visual spectacles during the course of the evening. The one thing I learnt was that with such long gaps between decent viewing nights (due to the crap weather), I have forgotten the locations of some of the constellations and stellar objects, and some revision is necessary, with star atlas on hand.

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Today I modified my Orion XT10i telescope by adding a second dovetail mount to accept a multi-reticule red-dot finder scope on the main telescope. I purchased the red-dot finder as a new accessory a few months ago now, but obviously could only use one finder at a time with the single dovetail mount installed on the XT10.

This modification means that I can now have both the standard 9×50 finder, and the red-dot finder permanently mounted without having to swap them over. This also has the advantage that both scopes will remain accurately aligned, because removing and remounting them previously caused them to go slightly out of alignment.

Each finder has its own advantages:

• The red-dot finder is very easy and intuitive to use, I think more so than the 9×50 which I often tend to get lost with when sighting stars.
• The 9×50 is quite a good finder, with a nice level of magnification to enjoy looking at the stars with in its own right, but it is made all the more useful by having the red-dot finder as a companion.

Adding the dovetail mount to the top of the XT10 was quite easy to do, although some careful consideration was given on the placement of the mount before actually drilling the OTA. I have taken some pictures and will in due course create a new page on my web site detailing the mod.

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The review of my Adler Optik Jupiter 20×80ZCF Giant Observation Binoculars which I have provided on my web site is now complete, and also includes an excerpt from Sky At Night magazine, September ‘08 issue, which did a group test on six pairs of binoculars, one of which was almost identical to my binos.

Overall I am very pleased with these binoculars.

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Well I had very little hope of actually seeing the Partial Lunar Eclipse which took place on 16th August, starting at 20:36 BST, and ending at 23:44, with maximum coverage at 22:10. This weekends weather had been forecast (once again) as rainy and cloudy. Dull, dull, dull!

So I had given up all hope of actually seeing anything, and so me and my good lady settled down to watch a couple of movies. Well halfway through the first film, we paused it to get a drinks top-up, and since I fancied a whisky-on-the-rocks, I had to go outside to the freezer in our garage, and glancing up at the sky was very surprised to see a gap in the clouds, only around the Moon, but large enough for me to go racing inside to fetch my new 20×80 binos and shouting for the wife to follow.

That’s the beauty of binoculars, and within about a minute the tripod and binos were setup and we were looking at the ghostly vision of the partially eclipsed Moon peering through a viel of clouds. It was quite a beautiful sight, and all the more special considering the clouds had opened up at exactly the right time for us to see the moon at almost maximum Earth shadow coverage. Very nice!

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At last after patiently waiting for the clouds to clear, I have enjoyed “first light” with my birthday present from my missus. A pair of Adler Optik Jupiter 20×80 Giant Observation Binoculars.

We bought them from Scopes-n-Skies (click the link for their writeup).

These binos are quite hefty, requiring tripod mount for stable viewing, and I also purchased the ScopeTeknix Zodiac ST90 counterbalance binocular mounting, which raises the binos right up to above eye level for comfortable viewing without having to strain your neck or bend down, and the counterbalance makes them easy to move around. Read the rest of this entry »

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