Astronomy - 06.2019

12 ASTRONOMY • JUNE 2019

W

ith sky observ-

ing, as in most

things, success

is more satisfy-

ing than fail-

ure. If you want to show people

Saturn’s rings, there is no

upside to turbulent air blurring

those rings into an incoherent

mess. So why attempt an obser-

vation whose chance of success

is negligible?

Yet I know I’m not alone in

finding futility appealing.

I saw this last November

when I invited a couple of peo-

ple to join me in the meadow

behind my home for some

naked-eye exploring. I had two

targets in mind: the planet

Uranus and the Triangulum

Galaxy (M33). I expected the

first quest to be successful,

but not the second.

Sure enough, after they’d

followed my green laser to east-

ern Pisces and viewed Uranus

through image-stabilized bin-

oculars, we tried for a naked-

eye glimpse of the planet. And

we all saw it. There is a strange,

wonderful satisfaction to this

that cannot be shared with

most of our friends. Only

another astronomer can under-

stand the allure of seeing the

seventh planet with no optical

assistance. If there’s even a

word for this singular pleasure,

I don’t know what it is.

That autumn night was dry,

clear, and moonless, with the

nearest population center of

25,000 some 20 miles (30 kilo-

meters) away, so seeing M

was a possibility. But from my

backyard meadow, I’ve seen it

only once all these years. The

STRANGEUNIVERSE

BY BOB BERMAN

Flirting with

futility

chance of success was minus-

cule. And so it happened; M

wasn’t there. The point, how-

ever, is that it was fun to try.

Then I noticed a star where

there normally is only a blank

piece of celestial real estate.

“There’s Mira!” I practically

shouted. For decades I’ve delib-

erately avoided reading when

Mira (Omicron [ο] Ceti) would

reach naked-eye visibility.

There’s no trace of it nearly the

entire year. And then, for about

a month, an obvious star sud-

denly shines to the right of

Cetus’ tail. The thrill is seeing

that blank bit of sky undergo

that metamorphosis. The under-

lying science of a pulsating giant

star in its final death gasps

before becoming a planetary

nebula is pretty riveting, too.

Comet hunters routinely do

the near-futility thing. They

search the sky hour after hour,

year after year, and typically

see nothing. And then in one

glorious pre-dawn moment,

they may become the first per-

son to witness the approach of

a new celestial object.

Something even more aston-

ishing happened to Oscar

Duhalde in 1987. He runs the

equipment at Las Campanas

Observatory in Chile, where the

great 6.5-meter Magellan tele-

scopes are perched. On

February 24, 1987, while per-

forming his technical and

instrument tasks, he stepped

out to walk to another observa-

tory building. Glancing casually

into the clear Chilean skies at

the Large Magellanic Cloud, as

he had done a thousand times

before, he now saw a star in it.

Oscar, one of the nicest guys in

the world, knows the sky far

more intimately than most pro-

fessional astronomers, and he

knew then and there that he’d

discovered the first naked-eye

supernova in four centuries.

Actually, Oscar’s story

doesn’t count — futility-wise

— because he wasn’t trying to

find a supernova. His tale is

more similar to that of the two

amateur observers (I knew one

of them) who observed the

spokes on Saturn’s rings

through their backyard tele-

scopes years before the Voyager

spacecraft first showed that

“impossible” feature to be real.

A more relevant quest involving

the sixth planet might be you or

me trying to see Saturn’s Great

White Spot. The storm typically

appears once every 29 years.

Normally there’s no trace of it.

Another impossible observa-

tion? What about the Sun’s bril-

liant red chromosphere? This is

something you should not look

for if you value your eyesight.

For a few seconds just as a total

eclipse is ending, immediately

before the literally blinding

photosphere starts to appear,

the awesome chromosphere is

brief ly exposed. Using binocu-

lars longer than she should

have, near the end of the 2017

totality, my wife suddenly

shouted, “Oh my God, what is

that?” Despite being a veteran

of five totalities, she had never

even heard of the chromo-

sphere, but excitedly told us

how the Sun’s western edge had

just turned a vivid purple-red.

Far safer is the circum-

zenithal arc (CZA), which I

used to consider a near-futile

quest. I look for the CZA

almost every day, whenever the

Sun is lowish and a thin cirrus

layer is overhead. This upside-

down rainbow, whose vivid

color is unsurpassed by any

other phenomenon, can hover

directly overhead — but

nowhere else. Does successfully

seeing something only once out

of every 50 attempts qualify as

a nearly futile project?

What does? Please send your

favorite near-futile targets.

Some phenomena can be

challenging to find, but

well worth the effort.

BROWSE THE “STRANGE UNIVERSE” ARCHIVE AT http://www.Astronomy.com/Berman.

The Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is a difficult target for the naked eye, requiring utterly

perfect conditions. Even though it is rarely visible, many observers find the challenge to

spot it exciting. STEPHEN RAHN/FLICKR

I know I’m not alone in finding

futility appealing.

Join me and Pulse of the Planet’s

Jim Metzner in my new podcast,

Astounding Universe, at

http://astoundinguniverse.com.