Closer Encounters With Outer Space

Getting a glimpse of space is becoming easier for earthbound explorers, as new technologies revolutionize amateur stargazing in Ventura County.

From new ways to photograph distant galaxies to point-and-click star-search devices for portable telescopes, sophisticated gadgets are enabling amateur astronomers to see heavenly happenings once beyond their reach.

And many of the techniques were on display at the Astrocon 2000 conference Friday in Ventura, which attracted some of the nation’s foremost authorities. About 275 participants attended lectures, toured the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and then drove to the top of 8,831-foot Mt. Pinos, the best place in Ventura County to watch the night sky.

New equipment includes deep-vision telescopes--with powerful optics and falling price tags--which have popped up at high schools and colleges in recent years. For example, the 14-inch telescope at Moorpark College, where the Ventura County Astronomical Society holds its monthly meetings, is bigger than the one at Griffith Observatory.

“It’s completely different than lugging out that really heavy 8-inch Newtonian telescope we used as kids,” said Mike Chibnik, president of the society.

Far from academic, those advances are changing what people see and how they understand the universe. And it is putting into the hands of ordinary people powerful tools once only available to professionals and observatories. In fact, some amateurs do intergalactic sleuthing chores to help busy government and university researchers.

The new technologies also include “astrophotography,” pioneered by Oak View resident Tony Hallas, who has spent long, arduous nights atop frigid mountain peaks braving ice storms to get his trademark long-exposure shots. The technique uses multiple film exposures to create brilliantly clear images of planets, comets and nebulae.

A postage stamp-size computer chip, called a charged couple device or CCD, enables amateur astronomers to convert images from film and telescope view finders into digital information fed into a computer. Hallas and his wife, Daphne, use the technology to overlay multiple images of the same object to reduce blur and enhance colors and to achieve spectacular finished photos. Their pictures have appeared in Newsweek and other magazines.

Images can be made clearer still by chilling the computer chip, Chibnik said, which affects the way protons in light convert to electrons to make digital images. The technique enables a 6-inch telescope to produce images once available only through the world’s most powerful 200-inch telescopes. The pictures allow an amateur observer to study features and weather on a planet’s surface and to measure positions of comets and asteroids.

“An amateur with a CCD camera can go deeper and see more images than we could ever see before,” Chibnik said.

Some new telescopes come with a point-and-click tool that pinpoints heavenly bodies for the user. Using a device that looks like a TV remote control, the operator punches in coordinates, the time of year and the sorts of objects to watch and the computer offers a list of targets. With a few more clicks, the computer automatically positions the telescope and zeroes in on the object. The telescopes cost $350 to $3,000, said David Hobbs, a sales manager for Irvine-based Meade Instruments Corp.

The Ventura County Astronomical Society has a web site, www.vcas.org, with pictures of the Horse Head Nebula, Andromeda galaxy and assorted comets. It also has programs that can be downloaded to help telescopes track asteroids.

The astronomy conference concludes today at the Holiday Inn in Ventura with a talk by James Doohan, who played Scotty in the “Star Trek” television series. For more information, call 529-7813.