Space watchers?

[dragongrower]

Anyone looking into space?

I'm planning on buying a telescope, so wanted to hear what people out there has to say about it..

Lets talk!

 

[ShantiSadhu]

Anyone looking into space?

Inner and Outer Space are Exactly the Same.

OR

As Above, So Below.

Good Luck & Have Fun with your Telescope! ​

 

[ParadigmShift]

Been wanting to buy one also in the 8-10" range. My local observatory has a nice Celestron 14 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope mounted on a Paramount ME mount from Software Bisque.
Let us know what one you decide on getting.
God Speed

 

[dragongrower]

Cool, thanks for the replys... thought there were more space watchers on here.. Will tell you later what I find out..

 

[Some1here]

I bought a 8 inch Dob last summer and used it 3 times! The summer sucked real bad. Cloudy nights and rain. Hope I can use it this summer. To cold right now for me to be outside looking at the sky

 

[medi-useA]

I love watching the space station pass overhead...and I don't have a telescope!...in the evening I like to try to spot satellites as the sun reflects off them. this is, just about after sunset...suns gone...but enough light to reflect off the sats..


muA

 

[1G12]

About 10 years ago I bought a Mead 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. I then signed up for an astronomy class at the local JC. I wanted to know what I was looking at and its significance. Best thing I ever did as I learned a whole bunch of stuff. Another thing you can do is join a local astronomy club. These people are always very helpful about what equipment to add to your set-up and how to best utilize it.
Schmidt-Cassegrains are a good choice as you can get the most light gathering ability in the smallest package. A 10 inch reflector & its tube would be too large for me to haul around. However, I've taken my S-C up into the mountains a few times on camping trips in the back of a truck & it's quite manageable.
The only drawback to S-C & reflector scopes is the central obstruction (for the secondary mirror) which can affect the image, particularly if you are trying to look at planets under high magnification. The best scopes for planets are refractors but they are also very very expensive and not so great for observing nebula or galaxies or other dim/diffuse objects due to their tendancy to be of a smaller aperture due to cost constraints (a 10 inch refactor would cost you enough money to retire on).
So, it's kind of a trade off...what kind of scope you get depends on what sort of stuff you plan on observing.
The cheapest scopes are the reflectors (we call them light buckets). You can get quite a large one for a reasonable price and be able to see lots of stuff but you'll need the space for it.
There are some however, that you can disassemble for transport. Instead of having a tube, they have struts that you cover with some kind of material when you set-up to keep out stray light.
And lastly.........this time of year.........check out the Orion Nebula with its hot young stars & gas & dust in Orion's sword.....a very cool thing to look at.

 

[desant]

Used to watch sapce and moon when i was a kid and living in the country

I UK... i am planning to buy a nice telescope when i save some ££££

But here skies are cloudy 95% of time :S

Otherwise connecting with the stars is bad ass.............

 

[facelift]

Check out the MEADE site for returns. You can get one with a computer and data base for cheap. It's useless here in the city, but it travels well.

You might for this neato. Near Earth Objects with diagrams.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

 

[ToughGirl]

I think it's a great hobby, and I spend many nights in the summer looking through my telescope. If you buy a decent one you will see the craters and mountain ranges on the moon (clearly), the rings of Saturn and some of her moons, the great red eye of Jupiter and her moons, pulsars, a few nebula, constellations, satellites, the ISS, and Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Try to get one with a motor that tracks the sky, it makes life a lot easier.
Eventually you'll become familiar with your sky and you'll know where things are. We just went on vacation recently and I finally saw the southern cross It's weird but when I was there the night sky felt very foreign to me, although when I mentioned it nobody else knew what I was talking about!

 

[Sam the Caveman]

I've got an 8" Zhumell reflector telescope. It's huge.

There is too much light pollution at my house and I have no way of securely moving it right now. There is a local astronomy night meeting at the library in a month. I was so happy to hear of it, I might be able to actually know what I'm doing with this thing.

 

[facelift]

Here's a good one.

It's an Apollo object that is one of the few that is greater than ZERO on the torino scale. While it's only a 1, it one of the few I've seen recently.

(2005 YU55) 2010-Apr-19 0.0152 5.9 110 m - 240 m 21.9 13.12

Here's the link to the orbit diagram.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2005 YU55;orb=1

If you center on the object and zoom in, you'll see that;

1. On April 19th and 20th 2010 it passes behind Earth chasing it for a few hours and;
2. It come by again on November 6th 2011 this time passing in front.


What I have observed in the past. The ones that pass in front of Earth leave a dust trail which the Earth passes through with in a day or two depending on the distance. It could take hours to research the ones I've seen that came real close and within a few days a fireball shows up on the news.

There was one over Pa., the 1st one I saw that may have been a match, and there was another more recent fireball. The main problem is the list gets updated and as time goes by, the objects become hard to find. I know I was keeping notes, but with so many crashed computers, those notes are long gone.

I know what I saw, I have no idea why NASA doesn't make these connections public. It would be some kind of advancement. Bigger than the alleged Moon landing, walk, drive, orbit.

Keep your eyes open and post if you find a fireball in the news.

Here's another link to the ones which are said to pose a risk of impact.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

 

[Dr.Dank]

I look up every now and then enjoy the galaxies and everything this world has to offer
ufo 2

 

[46and2]

Dont have a telescope but grew up in the country where on cloudless nights i would smoke a joint and look at them and just chill out. Usually made me feel insignificant after a bit, but in a good way...really puts things into perspective. Anyways if you have an android phone theres a neat-o app made by google called sky map...uses gps and the gyros on the phone to determine which portion of the sky you have your phone pointed at and will show you a map of what stars are located there.. def would be cool with a telescope in hand...