A Grand Design

“Tickets, please. Tickets? Tickets, please!”

“Umm, I have it right here ... just a minute … Umm … Ah! Here you go.”

“Oh! Bode’s Galaxy! Lovely this time of year. Sit back. Relax. We should be there before you know it.”

“Thanks, I sure could use some rest”

“Psst. No offense, but if you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve got some pretty weird dudes, hopping bare-bellied around on a stage, on this wet little planet.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Welp! We’re on time (for a change!) so it won’t be more than about 12 million light years now.”

“11.8. Thanks, Chewy”

“11.8 +/- 1.1”

Everything seemed so backwards. Backwards and upside down. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. The triumph of the anti-hero was only supposed to live in some musty old noir detective novels. Real ones, with covers, bent page corners, and a faint wisp of age. But no! This was real life. Maybe. We were to be ruled by chaos, impermanence, and alternative facts. The anti-hero was King, immune from everything but Covid, H1N5, and brain worms. It stung. The worry and despair were exhausting. Don’t! That’s what they want, we were told. Easy for you to say. So I called an Uber and Chewy and I headed out for Bode’s Galaxy.

Bode’s Galaxy was discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode, on New Year’s Eve, in 1774, 250 years before the American beginning of the end. Or end of the beginning. Something like that.

Bode should have been at a party toasting the New Year with a glass of “sket”, bubbly Riesling, but he couldn’t because sket wouldn’t appear in the world for another 25 years or more. So instead, he was writing up his notes on a new galaxy he discovered. His galaxy! Bode’s Galaxy. Bode wasn’t looking for comets. He was looking for cool astronomical things in the cosmos, like the planet Uranus. Bode’s Galaxy is a “grand design” spiral galaxy, meaning that it has well-defined spiral arms that wrap around its core for many radians. That’s pretty special; even today, only about 10% of all the known galaxies are grand design galaxies. But back then comets were all the rage. Consequently, not too many sket drinkers knew about Bode’s Galaxy.

Charles Messier was looking for comets. You remember him. One night he, and fellow comet geek Pierre Méchain, happened to bump into Bode’s Galaxy, not knowing it belonged to Bode. He was German, after all, and they were French. They preferred champagne. Once Messier and Méchain realized that Bode’s Galaxy was not a comet, they gave it the number 81 and entered its curriculum vitae into Messier’s Do-Not-Call list, to warn other comet geeks not to waste time on it. Nowadays, professional astronomers, like all professionals, being wont to make things as complicated and opaque as possible, refer to Bode’s Galaxy both as Bode’s Galaxy and M81. Also “NGC 3031”, but that’s another story.

Chewy and I prefer plain old Bode’s Galaxy. And sparkling hard cider, being ourselves somewhat weird American dudes.

I set up the telescope in the early evening, to ensure the tripod was level and all the cables and paraphernalia were assembled and ready. It was unseasonably warm, with a soft but distinct wind shuffling oak leaves about. Clear skies. The quarter moon cast a magic spell on the woods and meadow. A couple of deer were miffed about the intrusion and snorted their displeasure. Tough, you wood rats. At that point Bode’s Galaxy was still hiding in the wings, well below the tree line, grabbing a final glass of sket, before it would race up into the heavens with the Big Dipper. I’m not sure what caused the spat, but just as Bode’s Galaxy would make its entrance, the Moon would excuse itself and disappear below the horizon. Which was good for those of us trying to get to Bode’s Galaxy, actually. But don’t tell the pollsters I said so.

Chewy and I waited.

We returned to the telescope in the dark, about 1:30 AM the following morning, and fired up the mount, software, and camera to get ready for the trip. Now, we don’t have the snazziest of modern telescopes and we stumbled around for about 40 minutes trying to get it aligned and calibrated.

“Go to Betelgeuse”

The mount started to grind its gears and the telescope slowly wheeled around, pointed up in the air, and then came to a confident halt.

“Shit! You don’t have a single star in that whole field of view. Now what am I supposed to do? Get with the program!”

Instantly I felt bad and regretted my rebuke. That was the anti-hero trauma talking.

“It’s OK. It’s OK. We’ll get you going. Don’t worry.”

Like cranking up an old tractor by hand to get the engine to turn over, we jiggled with ascension and declination, back and forth, until something we hoped was Betelgeuse was centered in the image. This whole process was then duplicated with several other stars. And each time our starship became a little more accurate.

OK, the moment of truth.

“What do you think, Chewy?”

“Go to Bode’s Galaxy!”

The mount perked up and seemed to purr now, the telescope whirled in the direction of the Big Dipper, and over the loudspeaker came:

“Next stop, Bode’s Galaxy!”

Once it gains some confidence, our starship can be pretty cool and sophisticated.

“Zero her in, Chewy!”

Chewy snapped an image of the sky where the mount had settled. In a split second, the software calculated the positions of all the stars in the image, compared those positions to a catalog of star coordinates, and solved for the true pointing location of the telescope. Just a little bit off.

“My fault, Chewy. I probably didn’t get the calibration quite right.”

Not to worry. The mount slewed itself a little bit this way, took an image, solved again, slewed a little bit that way, and so on. In short order it was centered directly on Bode’s Galaxy.

“Fasten your seat belts. We’re cleared for takeoff.”

I went back out to the site as the sun came up. Just a tripod, some polished glass in a metal tube, and a bunch of wires dangling about. The birds were out claiming they knew all along that the sun would return. Chewy was gone.

I tore down the setup, stuck the camera, tripod, and telescope in their duffle bags and headed back to the kitchen. Fixed a cup of coffee, and resisted the old urge to scan the morning headlines. I’m too depressed to argue. Instead, I went upstairs to pour over the images. There were 100 worthwhile 2 min exposures. To my surprise, 99 of them could be registered by their star locations and stacked, each summed on top of the last. When the stacking finished, the software loaded the final mix.

And there it was! Bode’s Galaxy!

“Pics or it didn’t happen!”

Well? It did happen. We traveled eleven point eight, plus or minus one point one, million light years in three hours and twenty minutes!

“You mean, you collected 3 hours and 20 min worth of photons that left Bode’s Galaxy 11.8 million years ago.”

“Shut up, Chewy! I know that. Go get the ship ready for another trip.”

Relax. We should be there before you know it. A Grand Design.

If you look closely enough at the image, you can feel the spritz of sket bubbles on your forehead.