stargazing

[WILLIAMS5232]

does anyone dabble in astronomy?

i'm usually in Houston where you can see 10 stars on a clear night, but tonight i am in Mississippi where you can see thousands. tonight is very clear so i dusted off my ole telescope and brought it outside. i love looking at just random areas of sky where you can see little bitty faint stars. also, i can just put in a wide field lens and stare at a star cluster for several minutes.

i have a 10" dobsonian telescope, but i have a feeling i will own a 16" in a year or two. i just hope the upgrade is worth it.

[notyou2]

stahrgazer

[2dimes]

Good timing. Just a couple weeks ago I found this http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/as ... -telescope and brought it home. It's been cold cloudy and we're in the city so it has not helped us see anything off the planet yet.

[WILLIAMS5232]

Good timing. Just a couple weeks ago I found this http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/as ... -telescope and brought it home. It's been cold cloudy and we're in the city so it has not helped us see anything off the planet yet.

nice. i suggest going to amazon and purchasing this; night sky
that's if you are really interested in it.

after about 4 books, this was the most helpful. once you learn how to use it, it has a wealth of imformation.

your telescope is small. don't be disappointed when you don't see things the way you may expect to. but there is still plenty to see with that. you should be able to see the rings of saturn, and make out some of the color bands of jupiter. for certain you will see the moons of jupiter. after that and looking at the moon of course you will be bored. so you have to go to the deep sky objects.

these will be not very interesting in such a small telescope, but there are a few things that will be worth your time to locate. which for me is the best part of the whole deal. i like being able to recognize constellations and knowing where to look for galaxies and star clusters and things. but that's just me.

the Pleiades (spelling?) is badass to look at. it's that thing that looks like a fuzzy little dipper. some call it the seven sisters. living in the city, that would be probably the best object to observe. to the naked eye it looks like about 6-7 stars. but through a scope you see upwards of a hundred stars or so. you can also make out the andromeda galaxy too. kind of hard to find until you get an idea of what too look for. it just looks like a fuzzy cloud with a bright dot in the middle.

anyway. hope you find it interesting. i sure do.good luck.

[2dimes]

My brother is a pretty avid amateur astronomer with several mid range telescopes.

The main reasons I grabbed this one is the low cost and portable size. If my area thaws out it will be going camping with us and I am prepared to replace it if the dog or either of my children become the instrument of it's demise.

I don't think I will become an astronomer but I definitely want to expose my spawn to it in case they end up interested.

We have been to an event at the airport in Cutbank Montana a few times called Montana Fun Weekend. It is a small enough town far enough from any large cities that one year I was standing outside and looking at the Milky Way with my naked eye.

My Father in-law gave us a spotting scope and I had hoped it would be good, but even on the tripod it's pretty tough to focus on terrestrial targets. It was sort of ok for the moon but not really.

What filters do you have? I'd like a lunar filter and possibly a couple of others. A solar filter seems pretty cool but they are a bit above my current budget.

[bdb]

Very cool topic!

I have a 6" Newtonian on a rock steady polaris mount and I really like looking at deep sky objects. I am blessed with a fairly dark sky in my small town in NW Colorado, and am but minutes away from very dark skies.

A few things worth seeking out (IMO) are the whirlpool galaxy, Andromeda, and M13 in Hercules. But by far my favorite area is in Orion. The Trapezium can be breathtaking on cold clear nights. Just don't breath on the eyepiece or you are done for the night.

For quick access when I don't have a lot of time to prepare I like http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html. The maps are easy to use and they have a sprinkle of things to look for listed. Good with a Dob I expect. I like to plan an evening hunting faint objects using actual coordinates and my mount''s setting circles.

I have used a friends 16" Dob. It was a great light bucket.

[tzor]

does anyone dabble in astronomy?

I wish I had the time.
I wish I didn't have so many trees around my house.
I had an astrophysics minor. I was taught by a number of radio astronomer professors.

Radio astronomy, it is argued, is far better than optical astronomy.
The later is done at night
In high altitude places
Where it is exceptionally cold
And where you can't use heat because it will spoil the optics

The former, because of the nature of the sun and radio waves, can be done in the day
In nice places (like Arecibo) where the weather is warm
And since the control room is separate from the telescope, in air conditioned comfort

My project for my minor was analyzing infrared maps of the Orion Nebula.
Little preborn baby stars ... they look so cute when they are young.