*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

wez130 said:
How important is go to technology? The celestron 130 in the shop had that, also tracked the object too. That was £189. I really feel like there are too many different types to choose from, reflector, refractor, newtonian and dobsonion, then there's different mounts etc. I know I want the biggest aperture I can afford, and the sky watcher has 6" I think. I just know that I don't want to buy twice. There's a celestron rep coming to the shop near me on Saturday, I will have a chat with him.
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As somebody on SGL recently said:

"The question you need to ask is are you a destination person or a journey person. If you are a journey person and finding the object for yourself is part of the fun, then it will remove that part of the fun from you. If you are a destination person whose interest is in viewing/imaging the object rather than finding it, then anything that gives you more viewing/imaging time is just a tool - rather like using a telescope to see fainter objects than you can with the naked eye."

Either way a goto would be equatorial, which aren't the easiest to use for a beginner, and for £200 it wouldn't be a great quality mount, to put it lightly. Probably enough for visual use, but the Dob would offer better views and be easier to use without aid. I'd go for the 150P, but it's up to you...

EDIT: Nick, that's without guiding? Amazing. How do you do it, i assume it's on an EQ...
 
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Bundled eyepieces from decent manufacturers are far from 'bad'. Skywatcher give you a couple of quite nice Plossls, and a really nice wide 2" Plossl on some of the higher DS models. Bad manufacturers will give you stuff labelled 'SR' or 'H' which you might as well just throw in the bin, but naturally you should steer clear of them anyway.

They will be easily good enough to start out with, but probably won't be matched to your scope. A set up of three or four would be ideal, from wide angle to high power and a bit in between, not counting any barlows. Read this if you're interested:

http://stargazerslounge.com/primers-tutorials/63184-primer-understanding-choosing-eyepieces.html
 
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/goodbye-tevatron/

:(

From SaveJWST:

"We live in a time when budgetary woes have taken precedence over our leadership in science. You will often hear politicians pay lip service to the importance of science and technology in a 21st century economy but when they allow world renowned particle physics facilities like the Tavatron and the Superconducting Supercollider, or phenomenally ambitious, next generation astrophysics projects like James Webb to fail, what does that say about the United States? What does that say about our collective conviction; about our ability to dream and do great things?"
 
A quick look on SGL turns up somebody (andyhicks) selling a Vixen GP motorized mount for £200, might be worth a look. But a 250P is a big tube. If you're imaging then you might be asking a bit much - that said i'm not an expert in that field :p
 
Well that Vixen seems to be around the same level as an EQ5, and while it's a great mount even that might struggle with the 250P. It's probably as good as you're going to get with £200 though, and should be fine with "short" exposures (there's a lot of debate on the value of lots of short exposures stacked compared to not as many long exposures stacked) - and if it doesn't work well enough then you could always sell it on for about the same price as you bought it for (maybe more if you're lucky). Depends if you're willing to experiment i guess...
 
bobbarley said:
I love Astronomy. I keep meaning to buy a telescope but I expect a good one will be very expensive? :(
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Define expensive :p

It will be linked to your expectations - if you spend £100 on it and expect to see everything like it is from Hubble then you'll be disappointed. But if you have an idea of what you're going to get then it will be amazing for you. People often say the 200P is a great beginner scope, and while they might be right i view it as a touch on the expensive side. The 150P is great too, and for roughly 2/3 of the price. If you're prepared to go used you can get some great deals for under £150 (lots of TAL scopes, built like tanks).

It also depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want to look, do you want to find or be pointed... do you expect to be able to image? :p

But yeah, if you set even a rough budget then you would find people will be able to put forward suggestions for almost any amount :)
 
Well the thing about stars is that no matter how good your telescope is they always just look like stars :p

The only star you'll be able to see detail on is Sol, and you'd need Baader film for that (DO NOT POINT A TELESCOPE AT THE SUN WITHOUT IT! ALSO DON'T TRUST THOSE TINY EYEPIECE 'SOLAR FILTERS', THEY'RE RUBBISH AND COULD EASILY KILL YOU, BLIND YOU IF YOU'RE LUCKY). But the good news is that stars aren't the only thing that's up there. Aside from the planets, there's nebulae, galaxies, clusters and a whole host of other objects. A new version of Turn Left at Orion (the Spiral Bound one) was recently released, and that should be required reading for anyone getting into astronomy.

Aside from the used TAL scopes i already mentioned, £150 would get you something like an Astromaster 130EQ, but since they're both equatorial you might find them a bit hard to use which could put you off. I've heard a lot of good things about the Skywatcher Heritage 130p Flextube, which you can get from First Light Optics and is a great beginner scope, and lots of people who got one to begin with still use is a a 'grab and go'. And whatever you get a moon filter and 2x barlow (or eyepieces tailored to your scope) would be worth considering, or at least putting on your to buy list.

Your other option would be binoculars (and a tripod... and maybe deck chair :p), which could be cheaper and are a great way to learn the sky - but obviously don't offer as much magnification/gather as much light. That does allow you to use them to view a whole different range of objects, and it's a good option for people who aren't sure if it's for them and maybe don't want to jump straight in by buying a telescope.

If you're interested then a good next step would be to get yourself on SGL, i haven't found a better all round (i would call Cloudy Nights more specialized ;))astronomy community yet:

http://stargazerslounge.com/
 
thedoc46 said:
When we see a shooting star, is that like an entire solar system that's having a real bad day. Which can't be very good for its orbiting planets. Especially if life exists on some. What causes a shooting star? Is it an actual star or is it something else like a meteor burning up in our own atmosphere?
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Got it in... two :p While there are a few fast moving stars, probably thrown out of 'place' by a sister star in their binary system going nova, what people call 'Shooting Stars' are the visible path of a meteoroid as it enters the atmosphere to become a meteor, and if it's large enough to land it becomes a meteorite :)

thedoc46 said:
Galaxies.... Can we see any with the naked eye? That us noobs might be mistaking for just another star? Or can we only see stars with our naked eyes?
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We can see a few with the naked eye, the main one being Andromeda, or M31. But like most things in the night sky it does just appear as another point of light. In fact, we can theoretically see anything with an apparent magnitude of six or below, but it really depends on conditions with regards to the atmosphere, light pollution, etc.

thedoc46 said:
They say it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light..
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Well, we'll see ;)

thedoc46 said:
So i guess leaving our own solar system is probably never going to happen is it. For for humanity at least. Unless they find ways to exploit wormholes or time travel.. Which once again, is unlikely. (according to the boffins) Do you think not being able to travel faster than the speed of light, was put in place for a reason? Perhaps to protect ourselves from each other (as in other solar systems / or even galaxies) Nature places natural defences in place, doesn't it. Such as camoflage etc.
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Not necessarily (or at all really) :D There are several proposed means of "practical" interstellar travel within a human lifetime, using current or viable technology. To undertake today they would require a massive, coordinated, unified effort on behalf of all humanity however which, while a nice ideal, isn't very practical. As technology progresses we will inevitably discover more efficient propulsion techniques and other advancements that will lead to it one day becoming a reality (if we don't all kill ourselves before then :rolleyes:)

Read:

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship/
http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

thedoc46 said:
Do any of you that are well astronomy, actually believe in god? I'll go on record as saying, I personally think god is unlikely.. At least our interpretation of what a god actually is. Perhaps we along with everything else in the Universe is part of some elaborate design of some kind. Maybe a bluprint left by a former very advanced civilisation of a previous universe, knowing, and placing the ingredients to create the big bang, along with the laws of physics, and were able to place the ingredient of life in the plan. However nothing has or ever will control our destiny.

What is your take on all of this.
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Astronomy and Philosophy do go hand in hand. You can't spend hours gazing into the stars without coming to a few realizations about yourself. I don't believe in a god, and i love the idea that we don't, nor can we ever, know even a tiny fraction of 'everything'. I believe that the future lies with us, in humanity. We have so much potential, and yet we are achieving so little. We are approaching a fork in the road, a choice between greed and suffering or compassion and beauty.


This won't make much sense without knowing about this :)


And if you want (more on their channel):

 
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thedoc46 said:
Noob question regarding the gas planets. So being gas, does that mean you could never land on a surface? Would it be just like flying through one big very dense cloud until you come out the other end?
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Well hopefully that's what Juno will tell us :)

It's possible that gas giants like Jupiter have a solid core, but until we get data back from Juno it's mostly just guesswork. Even if it is solid i doubt you could ever 'land' on it, the gravity would crush you before you got anywhere near, if the atmosphere didn't get you first.
 
Well maybe one day ;)

Would be interesting if it's an entirely liquid planet (well, on the surface). We need to learn how to talk to Dolphins damnit! :p

Although personally i find Gliese 581 and it's various exoplanets a more tantalizing prospect, as at just 20 light years it would be feasible with actual technology to reach it in within a human lifespan.
 
cHk4 said:
How much money are you looking at spending at getting a good scope? Wouldn't mind doing something like this.
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Depends what you want to do with it. Just observing? You can get some really great dobs for £200-300. There's some deals to be had for less than that too. Where it gets really expensive is when you start talking about astrophotography, which would be hard to do anyway until you've learned the sky.
 
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