Pa Wilds

I took a short two day trip the pa wilds. Drove all back roads. Penn dot has been busy surfacing many back roads. I targeted cheery springs state park whichever is known as the darkest spot in pa. And possibly ny too. Many ameratuer astromers come here and this past weekend was a group gathering. These guys are high tech. Cameras and laptops connected to very high end telescopes. These guys are taking images of distant galaxies. Truely amazing.
The stars were crystal clear. You could see the band through the sky, the milky way.
The ride was really cool too. But a little chilly sleeping in the tent on mon night.

That last pic is one giant telescope! I always wanted a high end one. When all the lights are off in my neighborhood - like right now since we have no power - you can see the whitish streak of the milky way clear as day up there. Was checking that out over the past couple days. Where I grew up in the shadow of Worcester, there was so much light pollution that I had never known you could see the milky way with the naked eye.

Over the years I've meet some very interesting amateur astronomers. I was taking a machine shop course in local Vo Tech school and most of the class were employees of the local Black and Decker plant. This was back in the day when their tools were still made in the US. The guys were building a telescope, not any telescope but a giant one. They had after hours access to all the B&D shop tools but needed a large lathe. Just so happens the school had a Navy surplus huge lathe, ways 10-12 feet long. They machined the structure for the telescope on it. Lost track of the guys long ago and I'm sure they are now in heaven since they were much older than I.

Another physicist I worked with ground his own lens for his home made telescope! Talk about patience. Chuck up some glass in a lathe, grind away and then polish, polish and more polish. It's like shaping a lens using Boni Ami. He had a light tracing ray measuring instrument built in so he could track his progress. His name was George Bush, no not the one you are thinking of, this one was smart.

Oh my God, you're a physicist?? Damn that explains a lot. I'm sorry, couldn't help myself

I'm heading to Cherry Springs tomorrow ( Thursday ) on the motor scooter.
I'll camp Thursday and Friday nights then head home Saturday. I planned
to go last weekend for the Black Forest Star Party, but Irene changed my plans.

If you ever get a chance to visit Cherry Springs, by all means do it. They have nice
bathroom facilities, but no food or showers. The dark sky is just beautiful.
The daytime motorcycle riding is best part of the trip.

Cap, that's awesome! I've noticed more stars at night with many homes blacked out here. I have an old Tasco 4" tucked away someplace. My brother is a good amateur astronomer; me, i can identify maybe two or three constellations. Astronomy is amazing, I like to watch some of the astronomy shows. I know there are many things the human mind cannot understand, but it's in our nature to try and understand everything. I find it hard to comprehend that virtually everything in the universe was the size of a pinhead 18 billion years ago. But I do kind of comprehend that when the M31 Galaxy in Andromeda eventually collides with the Milky Way Galaxy, there will be virtually no physical collisions! Just gravity interacting with mass.
Also heard that phycisists call the most up to date theories "the current mythology", because our understanding of the universe limited at best. and then you get into the heavy quantum stuff, like a particle can exist in two places at the same time in different parts of the universe. Also heard a theory that the big bang could have been where two universes shaped like sheets happened to touch....

Speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. Light would go around the equator more than 7 times in a second. Light travels 11.7 inches in a nano second. And I think 1/100th the width of a human hair in a pico second.
When you look at the sun, you see light that is nine minutes old. And when you look at distant stars, you could be looking at light that left the star billions of years ago.

I don't know if this is true, but I heard the energy from all the radio waves that ever hit the Earth from outer space ,is less than the energy of a snowflake hitting the ground.

tsb wrote:I'm heading to Cherry Springs tomorrow ( Thursday ) on the motor scooter.
I'll camp Thursday and Friday nights then head home Saturday. I planned
to go last weekend for the Black Forest Star Party, but Irene changed my plans.

If you ever get a chance to visit Cherry Springs, by all means do it. They have nice
bathroom facilities, but no food or showers. The dark sky is just beautiful.
The daytime motorcycle riding is best part of the trip.

Wow, I missed you by a few days. ( I missed spelled Cherry in my original post. Was using my fancy new phone!)
I was told the main field was packed with astronomers. 75% left by Sun morning due to the rain. The holdovers had great skies Sun night through Tues. The guy sitting in the chair with white shorts in my last post is a well none regional astronomer & photographer/writer. Or so I was told. They all take pictures and analyze the images on laptops. Not like when we were kids.

And I agree, the roads were tons of fun. I road right through Higens on Rt 125 for quite a while. It was smooth enough for a skate board. Most of the roads like new in Central PA, at least the secondary roads.

Here's a picture of a home made Newtonian (Dobsonian) telescope that was made by a good friend of mine. It has a 16" primary mirror that is also home made. I also have a 13" scope that I made completely by myself that looks quite similar overall to the 16", though admittedly not quite as 'outwardly' nice (my woodworking skills are not complete, but I grind, polish, and figure my mirrors better, so the 13" is better than the 16" where it counts). The 16" shown here is now mine also. When my friend decided to sell it I just had to jump in and buy it.

I've been grinding and polishing on a 30" mirror for a few years now. Perhaps some day I'll finish that one.

With the load I take, I look like homeless scooter trash.

The ride on 44 from Allenwood to Cherry Springs is the best.
It's now open again above Waterville. Good stop in Waterville
for gas and eats.

Don't be knockin homeless scooter trash tsb

Hey Freetown, don't the ponies get jealous when they see you riding that old thing?

Naaa, they think she's a distant cousin. If you were to get hold of one of the original Easy Rider mags--before the yuppies got hold of it--there is a front cover picture by David Mann that covers this particular inter-twining of Horse & Harley

Well, the trip to Cherry Springs was kind of a bust. Got in
about five hundred mils of riding, but the storms Thursday night
were soaking and the fog Friday morning was thick and lasting.
Saw about 10 minutes of stars at 2:00 AM Friday.
The ride home was foggy and chilly. No sun till south of route 78.
Even a bad ride is still good.