*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***
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Jupiter. I'll be going out tonight to have a look. Won't be long left to see it for me as unfortunately the light from a block of flats near my house is a bit bright and they will soon be blocking the view as well.
As Jupiter leaves to the East, Saturn will rise form the West though
As Jupiter leaves to the East, Saturn will rise form the West though
Yup, probably Jupiter. Have you installed Stellarium yet? It's great for that sort of stuff 
Just got the update for Stellarium. Much improved i think. I need it on my laptop when outside.
I got mixed up of course and it's saturn that is leaving us and Jupiter rising
Slightly drunk, i should probably leave the telescope for tonight
I lost an eyepiece last time i went out drunk, i'd only just got it as well and couldn't find another. It was a slightly rare TMB planetary 6mm! cost me £60
I got mixed up of course and it's saturn that is leaving us and Jupiter rising
Slightly drunk, i should probably leave the telescope for tonightI lost an eyepiece last time i went out drunk, i'd only just got it as well and couldn't find another. It was a slightly rare TMB planetary 6mm! cost me £60
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Soldato
Anyone with an iphone, there's a fantastic FREE app called sky safari, it has augmented reality so you can literally point it at a star / planet / comet / galaxy or satellite and it will name it, it also gives details of size / magnitude etc, along with sometimes a quite indepth information about said planet / star if it's one of the major ones.
I'm looking to buy a telescope soon and i'm quite keen on the Celestron 130EQ (link). Can anyone tell me whether that's a decent beginners scope, and what i could expect to see from it? Or if there's anything better for the price (£130ish i can get it for). It does say that they would recommend a newtonian scope for nebulae and galaxies, which ideally i would like to see, but the 130EQ is good for seeing moons of jupiter and saturns' rings etc.
Just had a look at the Celestron powerseeker 127EQ (link), which is newtonian, and only a little more expensive, would this be any good?
Thx
I'm looking to buy a telescope soon and i'm quite keen on the Celestron 130EQ (link). Can anyone tell me whether that's a decent beginners scope, and what i could expect to see from it? Or if there's anything better for the price (£130ish i can get it for). It does say that they would recommend a newtonian scope for nebulae and galaxies, which ideally i would like to see, but the 130EQ is good for seeing moons of jupiter and saturns' rings etc.
Just had a look at the Celestron powerseeker 127EQ (link), which is newtonian, and only a little more expensive, would this be any good?
Thx
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Personally i would not recommend anything other than a Dobsonian for a beginner tbh.
I don't like the look of either of the mounts in the scopes you linked, you really need to make sure your mount is steady as otherwise you will barely see a thing. A dobsonian has a very sturdy mount and you get a much bigger apperture for your money as well. The only drawback is that you can not use goto technology (unless you get one with gogt but they are expensive).
The Sky-Watcher 130p/a50p are very good starters imo. Look earlier in the thread for some discussions about them
I don't like the look of either of the mounts in the scopes you linked, you really need to make sure your mount is steady as otherwise you will barely see a thing. A dobsonian has a very sturdy mount and you get a much bigger apperture for your money as well. The only drawback is that you can not use goto technology (unless you get one with gogt but they are expensive).
The Sky-Watcher 130p/a50p are very good starters imo. Look earlier in the thread for some discussions about them
Spent a lot of time faffing and being interrupted by a neighbour who left the security light on (even when he was sat next to me - he's a very odd chap).
Played with drift alignment which I'm starting to get the hang of however I only have about a 45deg window east-west so my west alignment is always really really bad but I was quite happy to get something! First time finding andromeda too - the result I'm quite pleased with considering this is the first time in at least a month!
Setup at 9 and finished at 2330. However 30x30secs without guiding gave me this:
Played with drift alignment which I'm starting to get the hang of however I only have about a 45deg window east-west so my west alignment is always really really bad but I was quite happy to get something! First time finding andromeda too - the result I'm quite pleased with considering this is the first time in at least a month!
Setup at 9 and finished at 2330. However 30x30secs without guiding gave me this:
Soldato
Yes, I was looking at the skywatcher 150p today, it's a big scope!. It was £219 in the shop but is about 200 online.
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.
Soldato
Nick, how do you get such beautiful space shots?
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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Two terms which people get confused about:
Tracking - the mount can move the telescope at the same rate as the earth rotates so the image stays in the centre of the field of view. This will require "polar alignment" to align the rotation to that of the planet.
Goto - the mount can find stars or objects it knows. Usually the goto is calibrated at the start of the session by finding known stars then one that is done it's as easy as saying "goto M57" and the mount moves ("slews") to the object.
Key thing for visual is to bring as much light into your eye as possible. A telescope isn't about magnification. So consider: aperture, focal length and quality of the optics.
For this reason newtonian scopes (including dobs) give the best bang for your money.
aperture the bigger the scope mirror/lens, the more light as possible into your eye. Bigger is better. With 105mm refractor, visually I can only see the core of andromeda (not like the image above). I've looked through a 16" dob and view at M51 and you could see it beautifully.
focal length this is how 'zoomed in' the picture you see will be. The longer the focal length the more zoomed in it will be but the dimmer the image will be for the aperture. A 1800mm scope may be zoomed in loads but the image will be black unless you point it at a very bright planet or the moon..
A good 150-200mm (8") newtonian (a dob is a newt too) will be large but will give better visual results than a 130mm.
I would recommend something like a skywatcher 150 or 200 dob or newt. Skywatcher are a solid starting point.
The following scope is very good, the mount is sufficient for visual use (although EQ2-3 doesn't provide motorised tracking):
http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150p-eq3-2.html
This 200mm on an EQ5 will give you tracking:
http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-200p-eq5.html
Watch out for low prices that state "OTA" which means you only get the tube and not the mount!
Lastly - eyepieces ('EP').
The bundled EPs will get you started but usually they are really bad. A good after-market EP will return a great deal more light and transform the view you see.
I have Baader Hyperion Eps which are mid market and result in a far brighter, sharper and clearer image. I would estimate at least 3-4 times more light than my bundled EPs.
If I had a budget of £200 then it would be a dob. I've had some beautiful views at a star party through a 16" dob that looked like my M51 picture!
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you have to remember the things you see through the telescope is not like the pictures. If you want that then its going to cost you a fortune. I started with a £100 scope and now i got myself about a £1000 worth of gear. Its a great hobby but expensive. My first scope was a 130p skywatcher that was very good. Personally i would get some 15x70 binos and learn some of the sky first and then if you like it, get yourself a goto scope.
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
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
Astrophotography is the complete inverse of visual astronomy.
In visual astronomy it's the aperture & focal length that is king which returns enough light to your eye so you can see things properly.
In astrophotography ('AP') it's the mount that is king. The mount tracking accuracy (assuming an ideal polar alignment) governs the maximum focal length and the maximum exposure time before star trails appear and ruing the image. Not only must the mount be super accurate but the mount must maintain that accuracy with the scope+cameras etc at a steady rate without wobbling. The accuracy required is far higher than is required for visual use.
For this reason it's worth going for an equatorial mount.
The 'speed' of the scope is important. Speed, or focal ratio, is given my focal length/aperture size. The higher the focal ratio, the dimmer the image is and therefore the longer the camera has to remain on target to take enough light in to make a photo. Having a f6 scope vs an f9 scope, for example, means a difference between minutes and hours to get the same image.
For AP aperture is less important than the mount.
You can image using a webcam and a dob with the moon, for planets use a webcam with a motorised mount but for deep space objects you need a proper mount and a fast scope.
My scope is a 105mm refractor that has a 675mm focal length (so that's f6.38) at on top of an equatorial mount (NEQ6 Pro).
The work flow:
1. align scope and allow it to acclimatise to the temperature.
2. find target
3. take multiple exposures of the target, called 'lights'. For example my andromeda has thirty 30 second exposures. Individually, they look noisy, dim and uninteresting.
4. take multiple exposures with the lens cap on (same length as the lights). This finds the noise from the camera. These are called 'darks'. I took ten 30 second exposures.
5. take multiple exposures with a uniform white light. This finds the aberrations in the image train (unfitness of the image field, dust motes etc). These are called 'flats'. I took twenty 2 second exposures.
Now you have your data, it's time to process it all. At this point I have 30+10+20 = 60 images.. all of 17MB each!
6. Make a master dark by stacking all the darks. This strengthens the signal, by removing random noise, of the constant camera noise so you have a picture of the noise you can subtract from any image.
7. Make a master flat by stacking all the flats. This strengthens the signal again for the constant aberrations caused by the lens, dust etc. This can be used to remove the effects of the aberrations from the any image.
8. Process each of the 30 lights using the master dark and master flat.
9. Stack the lights by aligning the stars so that resulting image signal is stronger than any remaining noise. Basically this makes the image brighter and brings out the faint details.
Luckily there are programs that help automate the batch processing.
Now you have your image.. well almost.
10. Use image processing to expand the range, adjust the histograms so that bright areas aren't burn out but faint areas are made visible. This is down to artistic taste. Personally I prefer an understated, natural look that doesn't use layering to process separate areas of the image differently. I also make a point of ensuring I'm not burning out the bright areas - if I have enough data (i.e. signal in the image) then there's no need to over process things.
Now you have your 'final' image.. well you can add more data as months/years go by to bring out further details.
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Dob + webcam + moon = great photos!
As the moon is so bright you can effectively take video of it using the webcam, say 4000 frames, then align the frames using registax or something like that.
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?"
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?"
I am looking in to maybe purchasing a motorized mount for my scope. I am going to do some research as to what exactly is possible, but atm i have the Skywatcher 250p dob but i am going to look at whether i would be able to either pick up a motorized dobsonian mount, which is what i would ideally like to do. If not, i might look around to see what i can pick up. If i could get a good quality eg for around £200 i would think about it. It would probably have to be second hand fro Startgazers.
Budget will be a restraint though.
Budget will be a restraint though.
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 
. 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
Indeed, i will have to look in to whether it will actually be worth doing tbh. I have been meaning to sort out a webcam for a while and a mate of mine has a good DSLR as well so i will see what we can come up with