Page 64 - Astronomy - October 2017 USA

and an excited participant on a television panel of experts talk-
ing about Voyager 2’s recent close encounter with Neptune. On
August 24, Voyager made its closest approach to this distant,
shimmering, blue ice giant.
Sitting next to me was Carolyn Porco, a key member of
Voyager’s imaging team. I felt out of place among the professional
astronomers from the university and their years of experience and
knowledge they represented. I was, however, the only one at this
KUAT public television event who observed the sky with small
telescopes and regularly brought these exciting events to the pub-
Neptune’s dynamic weather
was a surprise for Voyager lic through planetarium shows.
scientists. In backyard One of the most exciting discoveries discussed was the existence
Uranus is easy to see as a scopes, it appears as a small of massive storms in the upper atmosphere of Neptune. Since the
bluish-green disk, but it is but bright bluish disk, here
essentially featureless in visible with its brightest planet is nearly 3 billion miles from the Sun, it was assumed that
it’d be far too cold to have any kind of weather. Passing just 3,000
backyard scopes. DAMIAN PEACH moon, Triton. DAMIAN PEACH
miles (4,800 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops, Voyager 2
discovered what was dubbed the Great Dark Spot. Voyager also
planets using backyard scopes and cameras. added six new moons, recorded the fastest winds on any planet in
For many years, my go-to book on astrophotography was Outer the solar system, and uncovered a set of planetary rings.
Space Photography for the Amateur by Henry E. Paul, published in When the moderator, John McClury, turned to me and asked,
1960. The book still provides a gold mine of information, covering “Can the average amateur astronomer expect to see any of these
everything from lenses and telescopes to home observatories and new discoveries in their telescopes?” I had to answer, “None of it.”
sky conditions. Paul recommends using a standard 6-inch f/8 These discoveries are truly beyond not only any amateur equip-
reflector or a 3-inch f/15 refractor, with a preference for the reflec- ment, but also the greatest telescopes on Earth. “You may not be
tor. Obviously, a telescope needs a motor drive to compensate for able to see these discoveries for yourself, but knowing about them
Earth’s rotation. But the revolution in CCD imaging and the use of makes your own observations so much more interesting,” I said.
digital cameras has made the techniques described in this book Thinking about what the Voyager mission meant to astronomy
obsolete. Even films recommended by Paul, such as Kodak’s High enthusiasts, I found another old notebook entry. This one was
Contrast Copy Film and Plus-X, have long become extinct. from August 19, 1976. I was observing with the 24-inch Ritchey-
In the section on planetary photography, Paul says, “The plan- Chrétien telescope at Michigan State University with Dave
ets are difficult subjects for the amateur Duzinski, a fellow grad student. We had
photographer because of their small angu- “This is the time when been taking photographs of Jupiter. After
lar size.” A number of illustrations in this we were done and Dave had gone into the
book show Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and humans have begun darkroom, I had the scope to myself and
Neptune. Paul provides a group of draw- began observing the planet visually.
ings of Saturn next to a few photographs. to sail the sea of space,” It was about 3:30 a.m., and the sky was
Every one of the drawings is better and wrote Carl Sagan. steady and clear. The view of Jupiter was
shows more detail than the photos. There one of the best views of the planet I had
is a universal graininess to the photos that ever seen. My drawing shows five distinct
was impossible to avoid for ground-based imagers. The Voyager 2 bands with a few bulges and delicate features. Io’s shadow was
images were astounding compared with any images we could cap- slowly progressing across the giant’s face, and the star field in
ture from telescopes on Earth. which it was embedded was beautiful. It turned out that all the
In the 1980s, Voyager 2 undertook flybys of Uranus and photographs Dave and I took were overexposed, and my drawings
Neptune, the ice giant planets. My ever-present notebook has an became the only record of that night.
entry for June 9, 1981, featuring an evening search for Uranus. I
was using a 4¼-inch rich field telescope, a sheet from Atlas of the A unique and epic voyage
Heavens, and a finder chart from the Abrams Planetarium Sky All these memories and musings have brought me back to Carl
Calendar. It was easy to spot Uranus’ blue-green disk among a Sagan’s book Cosmos, published in 1980. The chapter “Travelers’
number of stars that formed a loose triangle with 41 and Kappa Tales” compares the adventures of the newly launched Voyagers to
Librae. Needless to say, Uranus appeared as only another bright the early discoveries of the 18th century.
“star” among this fairly bright group. Even with my 3-inch “This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of
Unitron and Celestron 8, I could never see any details on this space,” Sagan writes. “The modern ships that ply the Keplerian
planet. Both Paul’s book and the Jupiter book by Asimov have trajectories to the planets are unmanned. They are beautifully
photographs of Uranus and Neptune made with large ground- constructed semi-intelligent robots exploring unknown worlds.
based telescopes. Because of atmospheric turbulence, no details . . . We have embarked on epic voyages.”
can be seen in these photos — just a bright, blurry disk with a few Not only was our understanding of these outer worlds about to
of its moons present. change forever, but so was the view in our modest telescopes.
Sharing the excitement of Voyager
By the end of Voyager’s Grand Tour, in August 1989, I was direc- Raymond Shubinski is a contributing editor of Astronomy who has
tor of the Flandrau Planetarium at the University of Arizona, been observing the sky for many decades.

64 ASTRONOMY • OCTOBER 2017