He's a legend, no doubt about it. I could trace much of my own interest back to him too.
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Originally posted by Dogg Thang View PostHe's a legend, no doubt about it. I could trace much of my own interest back to him too.
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Well ive been into astronomy since is was in my teens, hence my 360 ID - Theskywatcher, i have 4 telescopes and 2 pair of binoculars, Rossco the first advice is usually to buy inexpensive binos to see if you enjoy the hobby, or find a few friends that have equipment and again see if you enjoy it. What do you want to observe, or photograph, or you might even like Solar observations ( though solar scopes are a fortune ). I myself are a totally visual observer , which i do pencil drawings of open clusters and NGC objects and galaxies. What is your lower and maximum budget?? Do you drive ? or will you need to carry this scope your going to buy, portability and ease of use are also factors as is great optics.
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Basically 3 types of telescopes you should consider.
Reflectors - good sturdy mounts, difficult to move about because of weight, great for lunar, photography and stars.
Refractors - amazing optics , usually light weight and portable , great for deep sky observing , ie clusters , galaxies and stars.
Schmidt-Cassegrain design- again great optics , less portable than Refractor but more portable than Reflector - amazing for all astronomy , photography , webcam photography.Last edited by MisterBubbles; 10-11-2011, 22:32.
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Anyone seen Venus hanging in the south-west sky an hour or so after sunset recently? It's simply stunning and brilliant in more ways than mere magnitude. Even with the naked eye it's quite special to see right now, especially in the cold, crisp and therefore more stable air.
Oh and Stargazing Live, a three part show with Brian Cox starts on BBC2 tonight at 20:30. Last year's shows were pretty good so it should be worth watching for anyone with an interest in the heavens.
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Venus has been looking top notch. I thought Jupiter was bright but Venus, wow!
I managed to take an "it's not that good but by it's the best one I've managed to take!" photo of the Orion Nebula just now, so I thought I'd post it on here.
Should be 700 pixels wide, but, er, it isn't! Right click / view image for a very slightly larger viewLast edited by EJG1980; 21-01-2012, 23:59.
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Thank you, kind sirs
I'm in the suburbs on the outskirts of London so the light pollution could be worse, but it's still fairly annoying. It's not too bad when you take a shot of something high up in the sky with a shortish exposure time.
I took the photo with a Sony A55 SLR connected directly to a Celestron 127mm/5 inch Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope. Unfortunately the mount of said telescope is very dodgy, I think the motors are going and I'm getting a lot of errors on the handset, so it tracks very poorly at the moment which makes using it to take photos very hit and miss.
The above pic was an 8 second exposure at ISO 12800. I was very lucky to get that as I had 2 second exposures that were no good because the mount didn't track properly and the stars were blurred all over the place. Fiddled with the levels and contrast in Photoshop, tried to get rid of as much of the noise as possible without losing any detail. Reducing the size really helped make it look better too.
I'm very close to convincing myself to part with the money for a Celestron CG5 mount, seeing as my current one is on its last legs. It's a much higher quality and heavier duty mount, and it's equatorial too, far better for tracking objects, so I should be able to get much longer exposures at much lower ISOs using that.
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Great time for planetary observations right now. Venus is still shining down on us, still looking brilliant for an hour or so after dusk, Jupiter hangs overhead for most of the night, Mars and Saturn pop over the southern horizon in the early hours of the morning, and if you're lucky can just see Mercury as teh sky brightens before sunrise.
It's been too cold for me to sit out with my telescope, but I went for a 4am stroll in the hills last night and Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and the crescent Moon were all on show. It was magical.
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