Exploring the deep sky with video
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, I was bored with amateur astronomy. I was tired of seeing deep sky objects — galaxies, nebulae and star clusters — as nothing more than faint blobs from my backyard. I wanted to go deeper into the night sky, too, to see more of everything, whether from home or from dark sites. A telescope larger than my 20-cm would have helped, but I didn’t want to haul around a monster-sized Dobsonian reflector, much less pay for one.
Not long after my observing sailed into the doldrums, I found myself at an amateur astronomy conference. The sky was more orange than black from thousands of streetlights surrounding our hotel. Yet, one brave enthusiast set up his telescope anyway to take us on a video tour of the sky.
The idea seemed laughable given the viewing conditions in the hotel car park; as if the light pollution wasn’t bad enough, a full Moon was also lighting the sky. However, with the aid of a sensitive video camera, his 25-cm telescope revealed the globular star clusters M13, M5 and M22, plus many more, it easily resolved them. Faint nebulae appeared on the display monitor too. You didn’t have to squint through an eyepiece or use averted vision
