Astronomy

[EJG1980]

I know, I know, I'm a filthy planet philanderer

['Press Start']

I just took the blue bin out and on my way back I looked up and stood still for about 10 minutes. I have never seen so many stars so clearly. We have a clear sky here tonight and it looks like a sea of stars blanketing the sky. Sizes, colours, brightness, everything was visible.

I didn't care if I looked weird just standing there in my PJ bottoms and hoody top. I smiled, remembered how little I was in the grand scheme and felt a longing to stay out in the beauty of the night.

->Open Spoiler<-

but the wind got through my PJs so I went back indoors.

[EJG1980]

We had clear skies here too last night (after nothing but cloud for the entire Easter weekend, bloody typical!) so I had to take advantage. This isn't a very good shot, really just a test to see if it would come out at all. Hopefully I'll be able to improve on it the same way I did with the Orion Nebula! It's Messier 3, a globular cluster made up of around 500,000 stars:

[Charlie]

I just took the blue bin out and on my way back I looked up and stood still for about 10 minutes. I have never seen so many stars so clearly. We have a clear sky here tonight and it looks like a sea of stars blanketing the sky. Sizes, colours, brightness, everything was visible.

I didn't care if I looked weird just standing there in my PJ bottoms and hoody top. I smiled, remembered how little I was in the grand scheme and felt a longing to stay out in the beauty of the night.

->Open Spoiler<-

but the wind got through my PJs so I went back indoors.

I love moments like that when the beauty and majesty of nature reaches down and touches us. It's profound and ineffable, better than sex, better than being intoxicated on alcohol or drugs, better than the aquisition of money or material goods or knowledge. It's humbling.

[EJG1980]

Another dodgy globular cluster pic, a different one this time, Messier 13 (The great cluster in Hercules). Better than the previous effort but still a long way to go. The constant rain isn't helping though!

[MisterBubbles]

Really nice HE, really a fav of mine, but hope this aint cheeky want to try taking a shot of any of the clusters ie the messier ones in Auriga?

[MisterBubbles]

Oh and how jealous i am of even having clear skies, what with work and other commitments and glasgow being light polluted, then i don't drive or i'd go to darker skies, my hobby is kinda dying, as you see my XBOX id is how much i loved the hobby, but im just more a casual observer and thats pretty sad. Hopefully one day circumstances change and i can get back to my visual and drawing deep sky objects.

[EJG1980]

Cheers, and thanks for the suggestion, always looking for new objects to (attempt!) to photograph. Although usually when I think of something to look at / get a suggestion it turns out to be something that's blocked for half the night by our house, or the block of flats next door, or the big tree at the end of the garden

The light pollution here isn't good, but at least it isn't the worst, at least I'm only on the edge of London rather than right in the middle. We have three of those nasty orange street lights annoyingly positioned so they can be seen from our garden though. And, of course, the rain and clouds spoil a lot of nights. Had about two or three clear nights in the past two weeks.

We're going on holiday to Wales at the end of May to a cottage that's in the middle of Snowdonia National Park, a few miles from the nearest town, so I'll be taking a telescope. If we can avoid cloud and rain the skies should be awesome compared to what I'm used to!

[Super Grover]

SkySafari 3 (ios) is available for free at present.

SkySafari 3 Pro and SkySafari Plus have also been reduced in price.

[Rossco]

Some great shots the last few pages guys!

What scopes you all using? I still haven't bought mine yet due to other hobbies taking precedent but possibly in the next month so I'll be eyeing up all the different models soon and deffo looking for one with auto tracking so I can take photos with my DSLR.

Still working away alot in Norway and the stars one night in particular last week were just unbelievable. Never seen a sky so clear since we are literally in the middle of nowhere near the coast with zero light pollution. Saturn was so bright you could see it's reflection on the sea like you would normally expect to see of the moon. And the aurora borealis was out pretty strong too. I got in from work about 1am and just stood for about half an hour looking up. Utterly mesmerising.

[EJG1980]

My current stuff:

Celestron CG-5 equatorial mount
Celestron 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope
Skywatcher Startravel 102mm Refractor telescope
Some Celestron binoculars that I can't remember the name of!

I often look up and think "Imagine what it'd look like if I could cut the electricity to the whole town!" Only three weeks until we're going on holiday to the middle of Snowdonia national park for a week though, where hopefully we'll have some very clear skies free of light pollution. Fingers crossed we avoid the clouds!!!

[Rossco]

Cheers HE. I'm really struggling to decide what to get. I want a good quality scope but I need one with equatorial tracking for photography and it just shoots the price up.

Thr Skywatcher Explorer 150P with Goto mount is ?600. 6" mirror on it. Can't decide on whether to go for that or what setup you have with the CG-5 and your Celestron scope. It's such a minefield!

The type of things you're looking at and photographing is what I wanna be doing I know that much at least.

[EJG1980]

Well definitely don't do what I did and buy an alt-azimuth mount first, THEN decide you want to get into the photography side and have to spend more on a new equatorial mount! That's what comes from getting too excited and not properly researching what you're buying in the first place

I'm slightly winging it and picking up knowledge as I go along, so I don't feel confident recommending stuff as I'm always asking others on astronomy forums and astronomy shops for advice myself. Definitely have a long discussion with someone at an astronomy shop, I find First Light Optics and Harrison Telescopes very helpful, they'll definitely help point you in the right direction.

I would recommend the CG-5 mount though, it's bloody heavy and sturdy and has some software routines built in to help with polar alignment, which I don't think the Skywatcher mounts have. Expensive but you get what you pay for.

Also a shorter focal length faster aperture telescope is probably a good idea. My Celestron Mak has a 1500mm focal length and the aperture is a pretty slow F/12, which makes photography with it more of a challenge. That's why I bought the Startravel 102 as well, as it's only 500mm and F/5 so you can grab more light with shorter exposures and the bigger field of view makes any movement less apparent. Haven't had a chance to use it properly yet though, effing weather!

Edit: speaking of shorter focal lengths, another thing you can do is buy a dovetail bar to attach your dslr directly to the mount instead of the telescope and use a normal camera lens. Use the telescope purely for visual observing and take all your photos with regular lenses. I've been inspired to give this a go myself after seeing this photo just now, which was taken using a DSLR and 200mm lens.

Inspiring shot, and makes me realise I've got a loooooong way to go to get something that good

[Super Grover]

A picture of 'hot dust' near Orion's belt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17909397

[Adrock]

I'm not into this myself, but for anyone who is interested in Astronomy and lives in or around London you may want to check out the Mill Hill Observatory. Worked there in the past and they offer public viewings as far as I know. They have quite a few telescopes. But big ones with big domes that open above them and stuff.