astronomy buffs
 

These are some of the most awesome photos I have ever seen.
All taken from his backyard.
Gallery

Yeah, some really nice shots in there.

love it.

amazing what you can see on a star filled night, even with a pair of 10x binoculars. look at the third star down Orion's sword. you can see swirling masses.

Wow, really nice. I see stuff like that done with obtainable equipment and it makes me want to jump back into observing. I used a lame Meade ETX for a few years & had some fun with it, but it was really limiting. Now, the equipment is so much nicer and much cheaper. I'll probably go with a Meade 8" like this: Meade LS Series Telescopes

My dream is to build an observatory at my place in Montana and stuff it with some very nice astrophotography equipment. I feel like I could definitely spend my last days gazing at the heavens and be completely satisfied with everything :)

Amazing photos. In a lot of them the universe looks like it's almost a living organism.

This is an actual photo that someone took. I think it's about 8 hours of exposure time all together. Many of the cool Astrophotography photos on the net these days are a combination of a bunch of images. You take 10 shots at 30 seconds a pop, then use an application to line them up with each other and stack the layers on top of each other. This was made the same way over the course of a year or several months.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1264101309.jpg

That's all of Orion's sword and the star at one end of his belt.

Left to right, that's the flame nebula, the horsehead nebula, the running man nebula and the Orion Nebula

I love stuff like this. I cannot believe that in all of those galaxies, around zillions of solar systems there is not more life. We would have to be delusional/ narcissistic to think that.

Yep. Not to worry... in a hundred years, people will look back and be amused at 2010 thinking.

steve! that is awesome! i tried to peek at the system with a spotting scope..but it was difficult.

i wish i knew more...we also looked at some stars..to the naked eye, 4 stars formed a "Y". with the binos, you see all the stars inbetween! an "expert" said those individual stars were solar systems...i was blown away.

motion, the night sky in montana must be amazing. i am going next year..after elk. i wanna check it out.

I have the 8" Meade. You will love it. Powered DEC and RA are a MUST if you are going to take pictures. CCD cameras have come down a lot so that even makes it easier.

My first scope was essentially a 102mm spotting scope. you could see a lot of stuff with it.

My latest scope is much more.

I'd love to head to Montana or AZ to check out the skies from there. The skies away from big city light pollution are so clear and bright that it's hard to pick out some constellations. From my mother's house using 10x50 binoculars, I was able to peak at several galaxies that I can hardly see from my house, and her place is still relatively light polluted.

National light pollution map.
http://www.lightpollution.it/worldatlas/images/fig2.jpg
The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness

I live in a cesspool of light polution. :(

We went camping years ago in Big Bend National Park, TX - in the middle of nowhere.

I was astounded at how many stars were in the sky! I've never seen anything like it before or since.

That's really cool! I'm an amateur for sure... After constant asking from my son we bought him a inexpensive telescope.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1264131781.jpg

We've spent a TON of time looking through it so I thought we'd upgrade. Not that it's the best but it's quite better then the cheap one. I got the moon filter and the digital camera adapter so we can take pics too. Haven't done that yet as it's so new to us.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1264131853.jpg

So it's been even better! It's just I really don't know what the hell I'm doing with this stuff so I don't know if it's even set up right. I think I actually need to read the directions... :rolleyes:

He's my little science guy (6yo)! The school sent home a list of books and some misc items and he picked out a 3D human body kit! LOL! I'll get it for him, why not...

Not to derail your thread but if anyone has any tips for us that would helpful I'd appreciate it! Feel free to PM me or Email me too.

Mike B/Pazazu is the resident telescope expert, so he'll probably chime in at some point.

It looks like you've got a 6" Newtonian telescope on an Equatorial mount (the most complicated). I'm not sure if you've got the mount setup right or not because I've got a similar telescope (Newtonian), but it's on a Dobsonian mount (the least complicated).
http://www.cloudynights.com/classifi...nian-large.jpg

I do think that it's unusual for the focus knobs to be above the focus tube, but I think it's just how you have the mount rotated. If that picture was taken from a bit more to the left, so you were looking down the business end of the scope, you've got the counterweight on the right and the scope on the left, you'd want to rotate the scope about 180° clockwise. Then the focus knobs would be below the focus tube and the finder would be above that. That's a more normal orientation.

more like this.
http://img.alibaba.com/photo/1106462...ock_Driver.jpg

Yes, the dial extends past the focus tube. I just changed it around after your post. I probably had it wrong but it looks more right now.

C and that's another problem I have. It's just me and I know I'm weird but it is what it is. I'm right handed but I do many (WAY TOO MANY) things left handed. So this might be set up for a left hander? If it is it's just purely by my preference.

I had a long post all typed out and lost it, damn.

Tonight I was out just at sundown checking out Jupiter and 4 of it's moons and the Earth's moon.

Probably the three biggest stunners in a scope are in order Saturn (everyone loves this one), the moon, Jupiter. It's cool to see a planet and it's moons, and there's so much to see on the moon, especially now when it's only a quarter moon. Full moons are actually the most boring in a telescope. When you've only got part of the moon lit, the part closest to where the light and shadow meet is neat because of the contrast between light and shadow. I think Saturn is coming up really late at night these days, but in a couple of months, it should be up early enough for the kiddo to see.

Other than that stuff, the next two coolest things are probably Orion's nebula and Pleiades's.

After that, the easiest to find items are the Messier objects, Messier Maps
They aren't all easy to see, some are pretty hard if you are anywhere near a city, but they are probably 110 of the easiest items to find besides the planets and the moon.

If you don't already have an Astronomy program, get Stellarium (It's Free). It's really cool. You enter your location (or even remotely close is good enough) and it will show you what's in the sky above you right now (or whenever you want, you can scan through time forwards and backwards). The planet's and their moons have the correct motion (if you see 4 moons of Jupiter, you can figure out which 4 you saw). You can zoom in and out and for some items, see photos. It's very cool.

If you have any questions, post them. Besides me and Mike B/Pazazu, there are a few more folks that peruse the skies on the board.

Some of the biggest light polluters out there are prisons. Think about it. In the middle of nowhere (usually) with tons and tons of artificial lighting for security. It's a real problem when you start designing them - especially in the context of current day "green building" trends.

Cities are getting better (but have a long way to go). Lots of rural communities are implementing night sky ordinances which prohibit artificial lights which allow light leakage above the horizon plane. So things will progressively get better for amateur astronomy over time.

I'm not sure if you understood what I was talking about, so here.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1264138702.jpg

Usually the focus knobs are below the focus tube, and usually the finder scope is above the focus tube.

I routinely cruise the Nasa Hubble pics...this is one of their latest from Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF)
The two bright spots are 10 billion light years from Earth, this is a patch of night sky that is absolutely blank when viewing from Earth.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1264139206.jpg