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

Ewaf said:
How much would a pair of beginners astronomy binos set you back, and do you need a tripod?
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Well i bought the Celestron Skymaster 20 X 80 Bins and they are very good.

the field of view on these is excellent, very easy to find objects this way, collimation on mine are just and very just out, nothing really, may need a slight tweak when get round to it.

Bins are good for globular clusters,comets,Moon,the Pleiades and the Hyades stand out really well, the orion nebula even at this Magnification still looks good, jupiter and a few of its moons easy to make out a ball shape with a very tiny bit of colour, your not going to see the belts or the red spot with these, still a joy though.

A tripod is a must with the larger bins, 10 seconds holding these and your arms will start to ache, shaking looking at the night sky is so off putting, so a decent one like the one i bought will do a good job.

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/tripods/horizon-8115-2-way-heavy-duty-tripod.html

I will be getting a decent telescope this coming autumn/winter and will still use my bins most definitely, i think they go well together.

so £200 will get you going with what i have in this review.

Really good bins these Celestron Skymasters, very sharp for what you pay, bang for buck as they say the Graphics Card section :)

Hope this helps my little review.

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Spook187 said:
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Really great info, thank you! Would love to get into this, just news to do some more reading up. Space and everything to do with it utterly amazes me.

My concern is I live in the middle of Reading so would have to drive 30mins to a more rural location.
 
Got out the other night for 20 mins just to have a look at the moon. Through the stock 25mm EP it was very clear and the whole moon easily fitted into the FOV; however the brightness was immense! I couldn't see out of my left eye after the session! :eek: Need a moon filter! The views through my 6mm SPL EP blew me away. The amount of detail you can see at 200x is amazing, and they were crystal clear views! :D :D

Very happy with the 20 mins, well worth it!
 
Binos are good - Sandrine bought me a pair of Pentax XCF 10x50. They're light and give a good field view with 5.6 degrees. :) You can pick these up for ~£70, or the better version which is the PCF WP II for ~£160.

Anything over 12x and a tripod is recommended. For 8x or 10x then they can be hand held if they're not massively heavy.

I'd recommend at least a 50mm diameter as you need as much light in as possible.

The perfect binos for me would be 8x80 or 10x80 as they'd turn night into daylight :D

For £4K you could get a serious pair of 18x120 APOs.. :eek:
 
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I think that 10x50s are the perfect size for handheld gazing, I think larger lenses would be too heavy for long periods and a higher mag would ne too shaky! 10x is difficult enough to keep still :p
 
Date for the diary - 28th April


Saturn reaches opposition on the 28th April, so this is the first of two good two months to observe it. It will then lie 1,340 million km from the Sun some nine times further away than the Earth and shine at magnitude +0.3. Its disk, 18 arc seconds across, is surrounded by its beautiful ring system that extends over 43 arc seconds.

To find it in the sky, follow the arc of the Plough's handle downwards to first find the orange star Arcturus and continue down to find the white, first magnitude star, Spica, in Virgo. Saturn, a little brighter than Spica, lies just to its left in the constellation Libra and will appear slighly yellow in colour.
Held steady, binoculars should enable you to see Saturn's brightest moon, Titan, at magnitude 8.2. A small telescope will show the rings with magnifications of x25 or more and one of 6-8 inches aperture with a magnification of ~x200 coupled with a night of good "seeing" (when the atmosphere is calm) will show Saturn and its beautiful ring system in its full glory.

As Saturn rotates quickly with a day of just 10 and a half hours, its equator bulges slightly and so it appears a little "squashed". Like Jupiter, it does show belts but their colours are muted in comparison.

The thing that makes Saturn stand out is, of course, its ring system. The two outermost rings, A and B, are separated by a gap called Cassini's Division which should be visible in a telescope of 4 or more inches aperture if seeing conditions are good. Lying within the B ring, but far less bright and difficult to spot is the C or Crepe Ring.

Due to the orientation of Saturn's rotation axis of 27 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system, the orientation of the rings as seen by us changes as it orbits the Sun and twice each orbit they lie edge on to us and so can hardly be seen. This last happened in 2009 and they are now opening out, currently at an angle of 18 degrees to the line of sight. The rings will continue to open out until May 2017 and then narrow until March 2025 when they will appear edge-on again.
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These are the three scopes i have in mind, all depending on my wallet size come aug/sept.


Celestron C8 SCT VX GOTO

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Celestron C8-SGT XLT GOTO

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Celestron C6-SGT XLT GOTO

C6SGTXLT.jpg
 
NeverWinter said:
Has anyone manage to see Saturn? Far too cloudy here last night.
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Saw it first time a few weeks back, but it was very low and wasn't the best image... Still looked stunning though! Went out on Saturday night and saw it again, much higher, and it really blew me away, even at 200x the image was superb!
 
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