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Highlands Today

Celestial Celebrations

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Cliff Perkall built his first telescope in 1971 and has been a amateur astronomer and telescope builder ever since. Perkall hosts star parties at South Florida Community College throughout the year.

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: October 27, 2008

For their first Christmas together in 1968, his wife, Marleen, asked Cliff Perkall what she should give him.

"I said, a telescope or a model train. If she had given me a model train, I probably would have become an amateur railroader."

But she chose the telescope, and that energized his lifelong hobby in astronomy. Three years later, he learned how to grind the mirrors and glass to make his own, far more powerful, 8-inch wide scope, for looking deep into space.

Today, the Tampa native is retired, and lives in Sun 'N Lake of Sebring. He's seen planets, even galaxies which were born long ago and far, far away. He works with physics teacher Erik Christensen to throw star parties for South Florida Community College science students.

The two telescopes he's made are like camera lenses. The longer one - the first one he constructed - is similar to a telephoto lens. It magnifies specific objects so they appear much larger. The second scope is like a wide-angle lens. It's for studying deep sky fields tens of thousands of light years from Earth, like galaxies and nebula - an interstellar cloud of dust, gas and plasma.

Perkall is mechanically minded. He made a career of fixing copiers, at first for Lanier, then for a St. Petersburg firm called Danka.

To make the telescopes, Perkall had the tubes constructed for him, then spent 60 hours grinding the glass and mirrors until they became concave, and aligned them inside the telescope tube. An eyepiece lets him view what the telescope reflects.

Both telescopes are Newtonian, named for British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who invented the first reflecting telescope in the late 1600s.

At the star parties, students see the local planets - Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

"You can see those with a good pair of binoculars," said Perkall. That's a 7x35, or a 7x50, which has a wider set of lenses. Both sell for as little as $28.

Neptune is difficult to see. It's the seventh planet, its surface isn't well lit by the sun, and it's powdery blue, Perkall said, so it's difficult to spot even with a telescope.

Even the Andromeda galaxy can be seen with the naked eye, said Perkall. A mere 2.5 light years away, it's the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way, and appears as a smudge of light in the sky. Through a telescope, it appears as a spiral fan, about seven times larger than Earth's moon.

The pole star, Polaris, is about 27 degrees off the horizon. How to find that? Ninety degrees is directly overhead. Perkall holds up his hand, extends his arm, and puts his pinky on the horizon. The pole star is at his index finger.

"All the other stars rotate around it," Perkall said. But, since the starship Earth is traveling through space along with the stars around us, Polaris is shifting away.

"In the future, thousands of years from now, there will be another pole star, and Polaris will be over there," Perkall said.

Tonight, assuming there are no clouds, Jupiter can be seen bright in the south-southwestern sky about 8 p.m., about 30 degrees off the horizon. Because it's the biggest planet in our solar system, it appears as the biggest object in the sky. With binoculars or a small telescope, an amateur astronomer can even see the largest of Jupiter's 63 moons.

Perkall is one of three members in a budding local amateur astronomy club, which meets occasionally at the Arc facility east of SFCC.

Perkall did just fine for himself as a copy machine repairman. He and Marleen have a prosperous retirement, and they own a beautiful new home in a gated addition in the western reaches of Sun 'N Lake. But, he said, if he'd gotten that telescope as a child, instead of as a gift from his wife, he'd have been a professional astronomer instead of an amateur.

The next star party is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30. Anyone may attend. More info: Cliff Perkall, 382-3861.

Gary Pinnell can be reached at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com or 863 386-5828

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