Any Amateur Astronomers Out There?

by cofty 39 Replies latest social entertainment

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  cofty

  I have recently revived my interest in the night sky.

  There are a lot of great sights you can identify with just a pair of binoculars. I am currently relearning how to navigate my way round all the constellations and find some of the best objects.

  I live out in the country so we get almost total darkness right outside my front door.

  I have downloaded the Microsoft Worldwide Telescope which a brilliant bit of freeware for navigating the night sky.

  Here's hoping for some clear skys at the end of the month when the moon will be dark again.

  What is your favourite object in the night sky?
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  Viviane

  I am. I have a Celestron Astromaster 114. I use Stellarium as my software. I love the moon, Mars and Jupiter. I am hoping to get a solar filter soon so I can observe the Sun. If you have an Android phone, there is an app called Night Sky Tools that is really nice to have, it has a night mode that puts everything in red to preserve your night vision.
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  cofty

  Great tips thank you.

  I might get back to you for advice on telescopes in the future.
• 

  JeffT

  I had a four inch reflector as a kid, alas the mirror pitted over the years making it unusable. We're thinking of buying another telescope of some sort. I noticed last night that the moon will pass very close to Jupiter tonight, they'll be right overhead approaching midnight.

  I hear you about about relearning to navigate the night sky. I've forgotten almost everything I used to know. Being a city dweller doesn't help, when I was young we lived out in the country.
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  Oubliette

  I've always been a fan of the night sky, particularly the winter night sky. My interest in astronomy started when I was a teen. Orion's Belt and the Pleiades are stlll like old friends to me when ever I see them.

  One of my favorite night time events is to sit outside during the Perseid's shower and drink scotch. It's good to do with someone you care about, get a little drunk and contemplate life, the universe, whatever.

  I used to have a pretty good telescope. One of my nicest experiences was one night when I found the Beehive star cluster. It was pretty fucking amazing! Yes it was.
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  snare&racket

  Ahh cofty, I can't wait to finish this academic mountain and enjoy life again.... Top of my list is buying a telescope and learning more about astronomy. I watched all the stargazing live series and always have been a fan of the late Mr Moore and the sky at night.

  I believe the aurora borealis is going to be visible in the uk soon and for the less amateur telescopes and gear, any moment now a black hole will consume a gas cloud which may provide new and interesting light displays (recently in news), which will teach us much,

  for me the exciting stuff is things like the mars rover and the panaramic view photos it has taken, I get a real kick out of that kind of human interaction with such distant objects. I was born in 1980 and we had no rovers, no good photography of outer space or planets really.

  My favourite pastime with a telescope is staring endlesly at the moons surface, but it has been a while now. My favourite picture is 'pale blue dot' via the Voyager explorer.

  Give me a good 12 months and I will be bugging you for advice on finding interesting stuff. I am keen to catch the ISS if possible and after seeing the milky way in Australia I would love to see it again.....btw how come I didnt know we could see it from earth, its awesome!

  I wouldn't mind doing some amateur photogrophy of it all too, so again expect me to bug you :P x

  snare
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  Hortensia

  I like watching the Milky Way. We can drive up to about 9,000 feet on Mt. Shasta, way above any lights, put out our camp chairs, wrap up and watch the milky way for as long as we want. I never saw the MW until I moved to the desert, where at the time the night sky was still dark enough for star-watching. There's something awesome about watching the sky.
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  konceptual99

  I dabble in some astrophotography. I have wanted a scope for years but never got around to getting one. I find great satisfaction however just from looking at what I can with the naked eye and bins. The moon through bins is fantastic.
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  Twitch

  I've always been fascinated with astronomy but have never owned a telescope. When I was a kid, I sometimes bought Astronomy magazine, studied star charts, the constellations and dreamed about owning a Schmidt Cassegrain type on a T style equatorial mount with a clock drive. Money from my paper route went to video games instead. Ahh foolish youth.

  The motion of everything fascinates me. From the mere cycle of the seasons and the ecliptic, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, Newton's universal law of gravitation and classical mechanics, a finely tuned balance of matter in motion plays out in a precise and predictable fashion. And though seemingly static, everything is ever so slowly shifting. Amidst this clockwork is chaos, the integral part of any system where an ever so slight randomness mixes it up a little bit from time to time. Anywho, I seem to be waxing on...

  My favorite night sky objects would be M31 the Adromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula and the Pleides cluster.
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  Xanthippe

  Orion the giant in the sky. Also been enjoying Venus at sunset, absolutely brilliant, now it's going into its morning phase to be seen just before sunrise from January 15, today!

  http://www.space.com/24238-see-venus-morning-sky-observing-guide.html