Mabuhay!
I had been preparing for a Christmas trip to the Philippines for well over
six months. I was determined to take advantage of the Southern skies
observing opportunities while there, so the most work preparing came in
building a six-inch Dobsonian reflector that I could carry on the airplane
flight with me. The scope was finished in
November, and with high hopes I
took off on Sunday December 12th for a long trip.
The trip started off well on two counts -- first, my home-built
"Travelscope" sailed through security checks, size checks, and weighings
with no problems at all! Second, during the 16-hour flight from San
Francisco to Manila, I spent hours at the airplane's window watching the
Southern Cross rise above the horizon while Geminids whizzed by brightly and
frequently. I had a good feeling about this trip...
Our final destination was Tagum, a city of about 100,000 people some 60
kilometers outside the large city of Davao on the south coast of the island
of Mindanao -- one of the southernmost islands of the Philippines, at about
5 degrees North latitude.
Twenty-two hours of plane flights and layovers after leaving San Francisco,
we arrived in Davao and made the drive to Tagum, where my wife's parents
live. I had been to the Philippines eight times before, but never before
with a telescope of any kind, and not since becoming astronomically-aware.
Arriving in Tagum, I set up and assembled the Travelscope, collimated
it, and checked it out...it survived the trip with nary a scratch and was
ready to go!
When darkness fell, I could hardly wait to get outside. Setting up the
scope in the backyard, I watched as the sky faded and stars and planets
began to appear. Jupiter was the first thing visible -- but not at the
southerly spot I was used to! It was directly overhead, crossing nearly
right at the zenith. Orion began to rise in the east, and it too was at the
mid-point north to south, and looked upside down! This was going to take
some getting used to...
Another thing that took getting used to was the weather outside. I'm
used to bundling up with many layers of clothing at the higher-elevation
locations in Northern California where I normally observe, and still being
cold. In
Tagum, I was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and was sweating like crazy
in the 80-degree heat and 90% plus humidity. As it darkened, though, I
could see it was going to be worth it. The most obvious visual difference
was in the steadiness of the skies. There was virtually no twinkling on any
of the stars I could see, and the air hung still above me with no hint of a
breeze. There was also no light pollution that I could detect at all, and
as the sky darkened it turned an inky black that I had never seen before.
The combination of dark sky and stillness gave an eerie three-dimensional
impression of vast depth to the sky.
With the air so still, I started off looking at Jupiter and Saturn. I have
never before had such fine views of these gaseous wonders! I was able to
easily work between 200X and 300X, and saw cloud details on Jupiter and ring
patterns on Saturn that were only hinted at before. I could swear I saw
color and hints of surface detail on Io and Europa as well at 400X. Water
vapor in
the air lowered the transparency just a bit, but I would still rate it 8 out
of 10, and seeing as at least 9 out of 10.
I started going after deep-sky targets at M42 in Orion, intending to work my
way south from there. I wound up staying at M42 much longer than I planned,
however, as the detail visible in the great nebula was outstanding due to
the sky conditions! My wife, who has seen M42 from San Francisco and
environs many times in my scope, came out and took a look...her comment was,
"It looks like the pictures of it do now!" My feelings exactly.
Over the course of the next three weeks, when weather and the moon allowed,
I worked the constellations south from Orion down through Sirius and Puppis,
then into uncharted (for me!) territory in Carina, Volans, Dorado, Vela,
Centaurus, Crux, and Musca. Since I had never even seen most of these
constellations before, let alone tried to find deep-sky targets in them, I
worked rather slowly and methodically, savoring every discovery and spending
lots of time at each object I found to burn them into my memory.
Omega Centauri is an awesome sight whenever you can see it -- high in the
sky from a wonderful dark site with great seeing, it is absolutely
incredible! Straggling stars filled nearly the entire field on my 32mm
eyepiece, and with higher powers the number of resolved stars increased and
flooded the view. Even naked-eye I could see that it was not a star, but a
fuzzy ball. Having it high above horizon haze gave a wonderful clear view.
I could spend months studying the area around Crux -- the Southern Cross.
This bright little constellation nestled inside Centaurus is a wonder of
clusters, nebulae, and multiple stars, all sparkling with color. It has
always represented exotic, tropical skies in my mind, and it didn't
disappoint.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are visible as fuzzy patches to the
naked eye, and contain some nice telescopic objects as well. My favorite,
in the LMC, was the Tarantula Nebula -- it puts M42 to shame, and has
wonderful sweeping dark lanes that swirl through it, and clusters of young
blue stars that burst from the center. The SMC is equally appealing, and
just below it the huge cluster NGC 104 (47 Tucanae), while not quite as
impressive as Omega Centauri, still puts on a show that even M13 can't
match.
Where I spent most of my time, however, was in Carina. Sweeping this large
constellation with binoculars shows the large Eta Carina nebula clearly, and
many other fields of nebulosity and star clusters worth exploring.
The richest experience I had on my trip, however, was not sweeping Carina or
discovering the Magellanic clouds...near the full moon of December 22nd, we
went to a beach resort near the end of Davao Gulf where it opens out onto
the Celebes Sea. Our first night there, with the moon up and nearly full, I
brought out the Travelscope to spend some time with Jupiter and Saturn on
the beach. Because of the upcoming holiday, the resort was nearly full, and
the beach pretty packed even at night. My odd assemblage of wood and
aluminum on the beach soon drew a few people over to see what was going on,
so I obligingly started showing Saturn, Jupiter, and the moon to the curious
onlookers. Now, this is something I've done dozens of times at Fremont Peak
in Northern California and other places, but the reaction at a remote beach
in the Philippines was
amazing...the usual disbelief, then oohs and ahhs, were followed by people
running down the beach to gather friends and bring them over, and before
long I literally had a crowd of over 100 people gathered around waiting
patiently to get their turn at the eyepiece, and peppering me with questions
while they were waiting! My Visayan (the local dialect of Tagalog spoken on
Mindanao) is not all that hot when it comes to scientific or astronomical
terms, but between my poor Visayan and my visitors' poor English, we somehow
were able to understand each other. I answered questions about distances to
the planets, why Saturn has rings, are those really moons around Jupiter,
why are there so many craters on the moon, how do you build a telescope, how
much does one cost, where are the rest of the planets...on and on. My new
friends brought over beer, rice, fish, mangos, and other delights, and
wouldn't let me pay for any of them. When clouds finally brought the
observing to a halt at about 3:00 AM, we all sat around and talked until
sunrise about the age of the universe, the vast distances in the cosmos, and
the meaning of life. It was a magical night that I will never forget.
Just after noon the next day, a man approached me in the resort lobby with
two young children in tow. He asked if I would be showing the planets again
that night -- he worked the night shift at the resort, and instead of
sleeping had walked home (over an hour each way) to bring his two children
back with him so they could see the wonderful things he had seen the night
before. It was an honor to put his two kids first in line so they could get
what will probably be the only chance in their lives to see Saturn's rings
for themselves that night -- a night which went much like the first.
My three weeks in the Philippines passed all too quickly, and soon it was
time to return home. I had planned for this trip and built a special
telescope for purely selfish reasons -- to see southern sky wonders for
myself. I achieved most of my personal objectives, but I also learned an
important lesson...the most gratifying part of my trip was not what I could
see, but came from what I could show to others.
The Travelscope was a huge success. It fit perfectly into the overhead bins
on all of the planes I took, it was light enough to be easily hand-carried
with the attached shoulder strap, and it handled all of the abuse and knocks
with aplomb. Most of the time it went through airport X-Ray machines
without any questions, with one exception: on my return home, a gentelman
at the security checkpoint in Manila asked me to open the box so he could
inspect it. When I did, and explained it was a telescope, a smile crossed
his face and he asked, "How big is the mirror?" Astronomers pop up in the
most unusual places...
One precaution I took was to toss a couple of photographs of the telescope
fully assembled and being used inside the telescope box itself. Whenever
anyone asked what this thing was, I'd pull out the pictures and show them.
The design allowed enough room inside the rocker box/case that I was able to
fit all of my eyepieces (in a padded box), and a pair of binoculars (8x32)
along with the Travelscope parts -- a self-contained observatory!
Thanks to all on the ATM list who offered suggestions and gave encouragement
while I was putting this unique project together. It gave me some wonderful
experiences, and was well worth the effort to build it. Now, when can I
schedule a vacation in Australia...? :)
Paul LeFevre
Questions? Comments? E-mail me! lefevre@midway.com
(all pages copyright 1999,2000 Paul LeFevre. No text or images from this site may be used without permission.)