Astronomy anyone

soulchill

soulchill

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Anyone into astronomy? I'm just getting back into it after my daughter said they're studying the solar system. Pulled my old telescope out of storage only to find that my nice tripod is missing, so got a cheap one for now. Still need to find a couple of lenses and my filters. I also found a DOS emulator that runs on OS X and it runs my old Dance of the Planets program!

Seems like a dull month for things to look at. Great view of Jupiter and of course the moon is fun for the kids. I think there's a meteor shower near peak, but still a slow one and my neighbors trees interfere with my northern view.
 
sure, yes i'm into astronomy. astrology too.
whats the specs of your equipment?
 
It's an old Celestron Comet Catcher. Think its 500mm focal length with a 5.5in mirror. I have a 7mm (I think, just gotta find it) and 18mm lenses and the 2x barlow. The tripod's too cheap, so if I had the 7mm, it'd be really difficult to aim correctly and focus with such a small field of view.

I got it as a gift when Halley's comet came around. It was fun tracking it before it was visible to the eye, and even then to see the tail. When I had the nice, equatorial mount, you could see the disk around Saturn if you were really patient with the focus. It could use a little less sensitive worm gear on that.

Somewhere I've got some color and polarizing filters, too. Unless the kids found them first!
 
I am! I have a fantastic app on my phone too which simulates what you're looking at.... "Star walk"

I took astronomy in undergrad to satisfy my upper level natural science requirement. My teacher named a dark star after Jerry Garcia :) I still keep all my notes and textbooks downstairs. It's fascinating!

http://www.gdtstoo.com/deadfile/astgarcia.html
 
That's a cool article. I took one, also. I think my prof had some bad experiences because he'd bring up stories about TA's finding things and their professors getting the credit! I kept all my stuff from college. I also took astrophysics. I don't remember much of it, though. Mostly using Kepler's laws to calculate planetary and satellite orbits. We did low energy orbits as well as delta v to do slingshots or get captured into orbit around a different planet. it always amazes me how old so many of these discoveries are.
 
Anything to deal with outer-space excites me! I love it all! To think how tiny we are among all these other giant rogue planets, stars, planets in general, solar systems and everything else! Gives me chills honestly. :D Saturn was always my favorite planet. So many cool little facts about it. :)
 
The Voyager missions were a big deal to me. Hard to believe they're still going and sending info back. You think anyone will ever see those golden records again? Or did they even make it on board.
 
Voyager has inspire me that it keep amazing from 1970s tech that can go that far than anyone would imagine!
 
Good site. Thank you. It is interesting how they know the speed of the solar winds and their existence.
 
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