Friday 18 September 2015

Good Advice for for the (Starry) Night Life

Hello again. Welcome back to another instalment of the DAA blog!

I've been quite busy and quite active this summer when it comes to photography. I've been out shooting almost every weekend where the weather cooperates. Anyone who's been following me on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter will know I've published a lot of pics over the last few months. I'm even beginning to think that now I no longer can call myself a novice at astrophotography. I believe I've stepped into the the "intermediate" category. I'm still learning, but I'm at a stage now where I'm experienced enough to know what I need to do, what not to do, and understand how my different settings on my camera will affect my final product. 

That said, this blog entry is all about lessons learned. Recently I've written two separate "how-to" blog entries dealing with how to shoot the night sky and  improvised dew control methods. But this time, I'm dealing with just generic advice that can apply to anyone and is not directly related to the equipment you're using or the process of taking pics.

As anyone who knows me or follows this blog may already know, I'm a regular at the Lennox and Addington Dark Sky Viewing area and have been since spring 2014. In that time, it's become a quite popular dark sky site in Eastern Ontario and people travel from all over to come and see the darkest skies available in south eastern Ontario. This summer has seen a large increase in attendance at the site, and it's quite a mixed group of people. I've seen quite a few experienced observers and photographers that show up to practice their hobby. And nothing in this blog will be news to them. It's the "other" group of people that this is really geared at - novice and casual observers who make novice mistakes without even knowing it. 

These are the well-meaning, curious people that want to see the night sky. They're not regular public dark site attendees and don't necessarily know the etiquette for using a public dark site nor do they realize what to expect or how to prepare for it. Some people are driving from Toronto or farther just to come and spend a couple of hours under the stars.  They have no cameras, telescopes or binoculars. They just come to take in the sights. There has also been a much higher concentration of photographers wanting to try their hand at Milky Way and sky photography for the first time. And of course, there are novices showing up with their shiny new telescope they haven't a clue how to use. And I've noticed the common errors many of these people make

This blog entry is a set of guidelines when going to a public dark sky site - be it as a casual observer, photographer, or dragging your mini observatory out with you. Many of these may seem like common sense, but over the years, I've come to realize that common sense is nowhere near as common as the name implies. Therefore, these things must be said.
  1. Dress for the conditions: Sure, it may be a blistering 30+ºC when you leave home for the site. But come 2 AM, the temperature can dip down significantly to the mid teens, particularly in early and late summer. The high humidity that made it feel several degrees warmer than it actually was all day is now going to make it feel several degrees colder at night. That tank top those shorts and sandals aren't going to cut it. Also, make sure you wear comfortable footwear as you may be standing for a considerable amount of time. And ladies, a dark sky site is not a night club. No one cares what you look like. Leave the stiletto heels in the car and wear real shoes. I wish I was kidding on that last point, but I'm not. I've seen it a few times now.

  2. Bring insect repellent: When you go out to a remote site away from the city, you're going to encounter an increase in mosquitoes and other bugs looking to feed on you.  If you head out without any insect repellent, then you're offering yourself up as a meal to literally millions of hungry mosquitoes that WILL show up. Again, I wish I was kidding with that "millions" figure, but I may even be understating it. And of course, like the last point states, dress for the conditions. Wear long pants - preferably made of thicker material like denim so you can't be stung through your clothes. And wear either long sleeves, or bring a jacket. A hat is good too. And in case you didn't know, wearing cologne and perfumes actually attracts insects. If you insist on wearing it, then I encourage your to do so. But please don't stand near me. I want the bugs attracted to you, not me.

  3. Know your gear before bringing it out to a dark site: Nothing is more frustrating than fumbling around in the dark with equipment that you're unfamiliar with. Whether it's cameras, lenses, tripods, telescopes, etc, make sure you've gotten familiar with your equipment before taking it out. Granted, in some cases, you won't be able to use the gear unless you're out in the dark, but take time to play with it, read the manual and get familiar with it in day light before bringing it out to an observing or photo session. I can't begin to recount how many times I've spent a significant amount of time at the DSVA helping out some poor, lost noobie who just picked up a new piece of gear on his way to the site and has no clue how to use it. In some cases, I have no clue either, but just by my past experience, I'm usually able to figure it out. But even when I get something new, even though I know how it works, I try to experiment with it in day light at home first. I'm always happy to help out someone in need, but how much easier this would have been had the person examined their gear in daylight and read the manual before arriving.
  4. Practice light management: I get it. It's dark. You're at an unfamiliar location. You don't want to trip over stuff. So you bring a flashlight. Fair enough. But there's no need to carry an 80 000 lumen LED spotlight you could signal the Voyager probes with. Make sure that it's a DIM flashlight, or ideally a red one. Or use the screen of your smart phone vs the LED light. It takes an average of about 20 minutes for human eyes to adapt to a dark environment. In that 20 minutes, you really won't see much of anything. Once adapted, you'll see surprisingly well, even on a moonless night. But turning on a bright flashlight every few minutes just resets that counter.

  5. If you must use a white flashlight, cover the beam with a piece of clothing or something to dim it. And please, don't flash it in other peoples' faces. Bright light is painful to dark adapted eyes, and you'll end up angering people by ruining their night vision. And if you use your phone or a tablet to use a planetarium app to find your way around the sky, please dim the screen. And many planetarium apps will have a "night mode" that turns the screen red. Please use it.

  6. If you brought it to the site with you, take it with you when you leave: This goes for both personal belongings and waste. Make sure that you have all your belongings with you when you leave. Nothing sucks more than forgetting equipment or personal effects. And nothing sucks more for other people than showing up to a dark site and seeing a bunch of garbage lying around left there by people that were there the night before. Bring your waste with you when you leave.

  7. Give other people their space to work. Don't set your gear up inches away from someone else's. Leave some buffer. Realize that all it takes is a small accidental bump of someone else's tripod to completely ruin their imaging session. A little tap on someone's telescope tripod means they have to stop everything they're doing and go through an entire alignment routine again, get their target back in frame, reset their shooing plan. A slight moment of clumsiness means you've just destroyed the work someone has been doing for potentially a couple of hours. Also, the simple vibration of heavy walking can actually transfer vibration to someone's camera or scope which can shot up as jitters in their exposure. Be courteous and give people their space.

  8. Don't be an "askhole": An "askhole" is defined as a person who repeatedly seeks out the advice of others, monopolizes their time, but then disregard said advice or argues as to why their unsuccessful method is "better". If you seek out people around you who are being successful in their shots when you're not, you should probably heed their advice if you ask for it, particularly if you're struggling and your method isn't working out. That's why you asked in the first place. Most people will be more than happy to help you out. But keep in mind that our time under the stars is short and valuable. We don't mind helping beginners, but we don't like having our time wasted either.
So that's all I've got for the time being. Perhaps I'll revisit this blog in the future and add more to it. If I do, I'll likely reshare it via my Facebook page

So until next time, clear skies, and keep those eyes and lenses pointed up!







Sunday 6 September 2015

Dew Control, Ghetto Style: Keeping Your Optics Dew-Free On A Budget

The Dark Arts Mobile Field Observatory (DAMFO)
photo by Adam Correia
Dew. It's the enemy of anyone outside at night with optics. It will form on your lenses or mirrors and bring an end to your observing or photography session. Any night photography enthusiast who lives in a humid climate has likely encountered this hindrance, and has likely lost a couple of photo session due to it.

As astronomers and astrophotographers, we're all aware of dew control solutions. The cheapest solution for Cassegrain-style scopes and comes in the form of a dew shield. It extends past the corrector plate and helps mitigate dew formation. However, that doesn't help much when pointing straight up. And even when shooting lower to the horizon, a dew shield will at most buy you a bit of time.

The most reliable dew control is using dew heaters. But it's not cheap. Heating strips for most telescopes will set you back at least $100, and you still need to buy the controller, which can range anywhere form cheap 2-channel controllers for $100, to multi-channel for several hundred dollars. All serious astronomers will likely get a real dew control system at some point. But for someone just starting out and in need of a lot of gear, forking out $200 plus buying a heavy-duty battery that can handle the stress of dew heaters is not necessarily feasible. 

When it comes to my scopes, I have the heater setup, so its not an issue. I can last out the most humid of nights where everything else I have outside is soaked, but my optics are totally dry. Since I live in a particularly humid region in southeastern Ontario, it's a must. But when it comes to shooting with just my cameras, that's not really a viable option. But there is hope!

Then there's night photographers using just a camera and lens. Battery operated dew control solutions take time to set up, and not everyone wants to drag around a car or marine battery during a session. Most photographers like their mobility. So an electric dew control solution isn't really an option. 

In my last blog entry, How To Shoot The Milky Way and Night Sky With A DSLR Camera, I touched on dew control and how I go about it. With the use of chemical hand warmer packets, I can keep my lenses dew-free through the most humid of nights. My original setup was 2 hand warmers attached to my lens with a rubber band. This worked great and saved many of of my photo sessions. More recently, I upgraded to a LensMuff by Digital After Dark, a small nylon sleeve with velcro fastener that can hold some hand warmers and snugly attaches to my lens keeping it nice and warm. For more information, you can just click on the link provided to get the detail. And I can't recommend the LensMuff highly enough. It's a cheap, lightweight solution for any photographer that shoots at night. 

However, what I did want to share is how I applied that idea for a dew control solution for my friend Kevin. I've mentioned Kevin in a few of my blog entries, as he's been my "partner in crime" for astrophotography since I started. He was actually the one that got me taking pictures in the first place. My first astro photos were shot using his Nikon D60 attached to my telescope. 

Kevin's Celestron 8SE with my ghetto dew heater
Kevin doesn't have a set up anywhere near as elaborate as mine. He's been slowly piecing his equipment together since last summer. He uses a Celestron 8SE and Nikon D90 along with a bunch of other accessories. Overall, his set up works quite well and has gotten him some decent results. But his big nemesis is definitely dew. 

Last night, he was hesistant about dragging all his gear out due to the high humidity we were dealing with. And rightfully so, as many of his sessions have been ruined by dew. There's nothing more frustrating or disappointing in this hobby than dragging all your equipment out to a remote location to have your gear fog up within the first few minutes after removing your lens cap. But I had an idea to take my "ghetto" dew control to the next level.

Hand warmers attached to a strip of duct tape.
The solution was rather quite simple - 8 hand wamers (probably could have gotten away with using 6) attached to a strip of duct tape. Kevin was rather doubtful at first, but I think he's learned to trust my crazy ideas and was game to go for it. So a quick mental calculation (c=2πr - high school math ftw) gave me a length of roughly 25 inches to go around the circumference of an 8" mirror. Kevin took out his roll of duct tape (with a space pattern instead of the usual grey!), cut a 28" strip and laid it down, sticky side up. Hand warmer packets were opened, activated with a couple of minutes of energetic shaking, and lined up along the length of the tape. This was then attached to his optical tube as shown in the image below. 

At the end of the 6-hour session, Kevin's corrector plate
was still dew-free!
It was a very humid night. This was the dew collected on
my telescope carrying case.
It was ghetto as hell. It looked ridiculous. But in the end, how your equipment looks in the field really doesn't matter. Function always takes precedent. And if you find a reliable, home-grown solution to a problem, go for it! The picture on the right was taken as we started tearing down our gear at 3 AM. Despite a crazy amount of dew that had collected on everything else that was exposed to the night air, his optics were dry and clear. Note the quantity of dew on the finder scope lens. His corrector plate would be looking like this without my ghetto dew strip!

For an idea of just how much dew we were dealing with, take a look at the picture below. This was the lid of the Pelican Case that I carry my 8" Meade LX90 optical tube in. It was covered in dew, as was the rest of our equipment. The ghetto dew strip worked wonders. It was giving off  more heat than my premium electric dew strip does. Not bad at all!

Now, as ghetto and cheap as this is, over time, this could be costly. I get a large pack of  20 hand warmers (10 x 2-pack) for $13 + tax (about $15) at Canadian Tire. That adds up to about 75 cents per hand warmer. For a camera using 2, that's not too bad at $1.50 per camera. Using this solution for an 8" scope, this came out at a cost of $6. As a 1-time cost, it's not bad. But over time, that adds up pretty quickly. I wouldn't suggest anyone using this as a long-term solution unless you can get hand warmers in bulk at a cheaper price. But for an occasional dew-control solution, this one is a proven winner that was tested under pretty extreme conditions. We couldn't have asked for any better than this.

Of course, this technique can be used on various other scopes too. You can use this to keep finder scopes dew-free as well. You can easily do this to any refractor or Mak-Cass and use even fewer heaters. Want to keep eyepieces dew free? A hand warmer and a rubber band will take care of that too! Over the course of the winter, I may even try to make some kind of case to hold some hand warmers to the back of my scope's hand controller. I don't get out much in winter with my scope, because as soon as the temperature hits -5ºC, I can no longer read the display on my controller. I can potentially fix that issue and make my gear useable in winter!

So I hope this will help people who need a dew control solution but just haven't quite got the money to fork out for an expensive electric solution. If you have any comments, ideas, or suggestions to improve what I've done, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below or hop on over to my Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/darkartsastro and leave your comments there. 

So until next time, clear skies, and keep those eyes and lenses pointed up!