ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED; M87 JET: NASA / ESA / THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI / AURA)ELECTRONIC OBSERVING by Rod Mollise
66 JUNE 2020 • SKY & TELESCOPE
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ifteen 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 8-inch
would have helped, but I didn’t want to haul around a
monster-sized Dobsonian refl ector, much less pay for one.
Not long after my observing sailed into the doldrums, I
found myself at an amateur astronomy conference in Nash-
ville, Tennessee. 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 summer sky.
The idea seemed laughable given the viewing conditions
in the hotel parking lot; as if the light pollution wasn’t bad
enough, a full Moon was also lighting the sky. However,With a little tech, you can see
farther and share the view.ppSTRANGE NEW WORLDS One of the great joys of video observ-
ing is being able to glimpse exotic objects in modest telescopes. One
example is the relativistic jet in galaxy M87, the bright wisp near the
galaxy’s core, as shown in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The
author’s 8-inch scope “easily reveals” the feature with his video setup.pGEARING UP The author prepares for a night of video astronomy with
his 8-inch SCT. Although the extra equipment adds complexity to his
setup, he fi nds the rewards more than worthwhile.with the aid of a sensitive video camera, his 10-inch tele-
scope revealed the globular star clusters M13, M5, and M22,
plus many more, and 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 — there the([SORULQJ
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