(Originally posted on Mar 17, 2007 16:13)
And talking about comets, March 15th also marked the anniversary of my encounter with yet another comet 21 years ago. The Halley.
Since I was about 9 years old I was fascinated by astronomy and since I was in high school I was an amateur astronomer.
Being an amateur astronomer in Brazil in the 80s was a very frustrating activity. In that period the Brazilian government was trying to kickstart the domestic industry by forbidding imports. So if you were a musician, for example, you couldn't get your hands on high quality imported musical instruments, you had to content yourself with the low grade Brazilian made copies. And in the case of amateur astronomers it was even worse. There wasn't any Brazilian made telescopes at all, not even low grade ones. So, if you wanted to be an amateur astronomer in Brazil in that period you also had to be an amateur telescope maker. So when I was in high school me and another astronomy buff friend of mine started making our own equipment and research. It was fun and it consumed half of my free time (the other half being consumed by my other hobby: playing guitar and singing in a garage rock band. With a low-grade Brazilian made electric guitar, of course) to the horror of my mother who used to give me a hard time for fumbling with non-profitable, time-wasting activities instead of studying. She used to yell at me that I would never make any money with this astronomy nonsense. Ha! She couldn't be more wrong. Well, actually yes, she was even wronger when she forbid me to take paint and design classes because I would never make money with it... But I digress.
So astronomy and telescope making were very time consuming. Can you imagine how long does it take to grind and polish a block of glass by hand until you have a perfect parabolic surface? But it was fun. I loved it. We used to skip geography and history classes to get together with the physics teacher and discuss astronomy and astrophysics.
And then by the end of 1985 we started preparing for Halley. All our equipment were specially made to photograph deep space objects. For the comet we needed a wide angle, high luminosity astrocamera. We were already developing a big telescope. We already had the mirror, a 30Cm monster that took hundreds of man-hours of painstaking polishing. But in no way this equipment was going to be ready for Halley. By chance we stumbled upon a derelict copy machine and after some major surgery we extracted from it's interior the lenses that would be our new astrocamera. And from some scrap metal and an old washing machine timer we made a motorized equatorial mount and on March, 15th, 1986 we became the first amateurs to photograph the Halley comet in Brazil.
Here's a transcript from the article in the photo, condensed and without the unnecessary tabloid bla-bla for your convenience:
Since I was about 9 years old I was fascinated by astronomy and since I was in high school I was an amateur astronomer.
Being an amateur astronomer in Brazil in the 80s was a very frustrating activity. In that period the Brazilian government was trying to kickstart the domestic industry by forbidding imports. So if you were a musician, for example, you couldn't get your hands on high quality imported musical instruments, you had to content yourself with the low grade Brazilian made copies. And in the case of amateur astronomers it was even worse. There wasn't any Brazilian made telescopes at all, not even low grade ones. So, if you wanted to be an amateur astronomer in Brazil in that period you also had to be an amateur telescope maker. So when I was in high school me and another astronomy buff friend of mine started making our own equipment and research. It was fun and it consumed half of my free time (the other half being consumed by my other hobby: playing guitar and singing in a garage rock band. With a low-grade Brazilian made electric guitar, of course) to the horror of my mother who used to give me a hard time for fumbling with non-profitable, time-wasting activities instead of studying. She used to yell at me that I would never make any money with this astronomy nonsense. Ha! She couldn't be more wrong. Well, actually yes, she was even wronger when she forbid me to take paint and design classes because I would never make money with it... But I digress.
So astronomy and telescope making were very time consuming. Can you imagine how long does it take to grind and polish a block of glass by hand until you have a perfect parabolic surface? But it was fun. I loved it. We used to skip geography and history classes to get together with the physics teacher and discuss astronomy and astrophysics.
And then by the end of 1985 we started preparing for Halley. All our equipment were specially made to photograph deep space objects. For the comet we needed a wide angle, high luminosity astrocamera. We were already developing a big telescope. We already had the mirror, a 30Cm monster that took hundreds of man-hours of painstaking polishing. But in no way this equipment was going to be ready for Halley. By chance we stumbled upon a derelict copy machine and after some major surgery we extracted from it's interior the lenses that would be our new astrocamera. And from some scrap metal and an old washing machine timer we made a motorized equatorial mount and on March, 15th, 1986 we became the first amateurs to photograph the Halley comet in Brazil.
Here's a transcript from the article in the photo, condensed and without the unnecessary tabloid bla-bla for your convenience:
Halley - Amateurs make equipment to take photos
Equipped with a newtonian reflector telescope of 120mm diameter and 870mm focal distance, a telephoto lens of 180mm and a 400mm astrocamera, the students Marcos Sakaguti and Anacleto Domingos Espinosa, residents of the city of Piedade, located and photographed the Comet Halley last Saturday night in a place 3 Km from the city. All the equipment were handmade by the students.
Sakaguti declares that all he knows about Astronomy he learned from books and doesn't intend to follow Astronomy as a career. He intends to computer sciences and have astronomy as just a hobby. Even so, both Sakaguti and Anacleto are members of the Union of Amateur Astronomers, based in São Paulo and they maintain contact with the physics professors of Sorocaba Faculty of Technology.
Sakaguti tells us that when he photographed the comet last Saturday the sky wasn't in good conditions for this kind of astrophotography but even so the comet could be seen through their equipment. The observer explains that Halley was located South-East at an altitude of 25 to 30 degrees.
He was the first amateur in the country to locate and photograph the comet.
As the best views of the comet are reserved for the next few weeks, both students intend to obtain more detailed photos.
Before the event of the "Halley fever" both amateurs were already busy with astronomy and astrophotography. And when they are not in the field using their equipment, Sakaguti and Anacleto are busy with another activity: the fabrication of their equipment. With lenses, mirrors and tubes in a modest workshop they produce equipments that can't be found even in the specialized market.
About their handmade equipment, Sakaguti explains that the newtonian reflector telescope, contrary to what people believe, works not with lenses, but with parabolic mirrors.
Intending to get better astrophotographs, both amateurs are developing a much bigger telescope with a main mirror of 300mm of diameter and a focal distance of 1680mm, which will be the biggest amateur telescope in the country. "With this equipment we will be able to observe and photograph the most faint galaxies and nebulae", explain the student.
The photos and observation date of Halley obtained by Anacleto and Sakaguti are being forwarded to the National Institute of Space Research in São Jose dos Campos and to the International Halley Watch in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as data obtained in the Southern hemisphere are scarce and highly needed.
About the spectacle that the Halley will give to the brazilians, Sakaguti warns that too much expectancy may end in frustration: "The spectacle will be fascinating, I have no doubts, but the communication media and the commerce are making too big a deal about it and this may frustrate a lot of people". He reminds us that in 1910 in it's last apparition, the comet was 8 million Km from Earth. "This time it's closest approach will be no less than 63 million Km. And that's a very considerable difference" warns Sakaguti.
It's so frustrating how journalists have the ability to mess scientific information (er... Monica, if you're reading this, read it "most of the journalists"). They not only messed a lot of the information that I gave but they published the wrong photo! In the same negative I had several shots that I made while testing the equipment and then some really good shots of the Halley. And of course they had to publish the worst of the test shots. Aaaaargh!
Even so, this article helped me get one of the best jobs I've ever had. When I was in Japan and still working in a factory I made some friends in the amateur astronomy community in Nagoya. When I showed them the astrophotographs that I'd made in Brazil with my crude hand made equipment I got the respect of those who were using state-of-the-art equipment. After some time one of them, who was a manager of a big telescope maker company (actually one of the greatest telescope company in the world) offered me a job in the company.
As I am an amateur I have no curriculum in the astronomical field. But I had my photos and this newspaper add and they were enough to convince the directors of the company to hire me.
That was such a great job that I never thought I would have the slightest right to dream that one day I would get.
And it was offered to me because when I was a kid I used to waste my time "fumbling with non-profitable, time-wasting activities instead of studying."
Mooom! Pay-back time!!
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