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Well, the EQ6 may be a work horse but that didn't stop my freinds from immolating itself the other night, smoke coming out of the casing and a very well fried PCB. The joys of things made in China, one day we'll all have Astro-Physics mounts or Paramounts and be happy! NGC2403 again, same data as below but reprocessed with much improved colour correction. You never quite finish learning Pix.  The Monkey Head nebula in Orion, a last gasp effort before Galaxy season fully sets in.  One more as I've just finished re-processing it to get the colour right. Or at least better. NGC4244, the silver needle galaxy. 
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Mar 21, 2011 23:43
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Nice freaking job on caldwell 7 man, I am able to pick out SN2004dj! What were you using to image that?
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Mar 22, 2011 16:44
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I wondered if I would pick that up when I was looking into imaging it, pretty cool that it is still so bright. The image was taken with my 250mm F4.8 reflector, it's mostly put together from Orion Optics UK parts, with a nice crayford focuser and fully flocked with Protostar light trap material. The next upgrade is to replace the spider with a protostar one, the OO spider is really nasty to be honest, very flimsy. You guys are so lucky in the US to have such a large market for self built telescopes and custom parts, finding such items in Europe can be a real pain, not least because you have to go hunting in a dozen different languages!
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Mar 23, 2011 10:24
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Hey astronomy goons, I was looking into buying a telescope after reading some Carl Sagan and watching The Cosmos. Some guy on Craigslist is selling a Vintage Jason model 313 refractor telescope 60mm . for 30 dollars. Is that worth it will I be able to see cool stuff like the guy has a couple posts above me?
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Apr 7, 2011 14:24
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It would be hard to go wrong for $30, but a 60mm scope is really going to be limited to the Moon, planets, and only the brightest deep-space objects, like star clusters. You could probably see several of the brightest nebulae from a reasonable dark area. Galaxies would be barely detectable. But as a cheap way to get started, go for it. If it's complete and in good shape, you can always pass it on for what you paid for it.
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Apr 7, 2011 15:59
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lemonslol posted:Hey astronomy goons, I was looking into buying a telescope after reading some Carl Sagan and watching The Cosmos. Some guy on Craigslist is selling a Vintage Jason model 313 refractor telescope 60mm . for 30 dollars. Is that worth it will I be able to see cool stuff like the guy has a couple posts above me? 30 bucks is a cheap way to start out, but keep in mind that no matter what scope you get, galaxies and nebula will look nothing like what you see in pictures. Most of the time they look like smudges. Like Bolkovr said, it will be best to view the moon and planets with that scope. A lot of my friends come over expecting my 8" SCT to let them fly through galaxies and wormholes apparently, because every time I show them something, the say, "Is that it?". To which I reply, "What do you mean is that it!?" 
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Apr 7, 2011 17:20
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Yeah you really can't go wrong if it's just $30. However, I would make sure that everything works, focuser travel and rotations on the mount should be smooth but not floppy. Make sure the whole setup doesn't vibrate strongly when you tap it.
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Apr 7, 2011 17:23
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It's been a good week for astronomy and astrophotography here in the UK, lovely sunny days and clear night. I managed 8 hours strait last night, suffering for it a bit this morning though. With wife and kids out of the way I've managed to get my processing sorted in record time. NGC2903 Barred Spiral Galaxy in Leo  NGC2903 Barred Spiral Galaxy by tmarkuk, on Flickr NGC4565 Edge-on Spiral Galaxy in Coma Berenices  NGC4565 The Needle Galaxy by tmarkuk, on Flickr Pretty happy with both of those.
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Apr 9, 2011 18:03
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Well, it was a clear enough night, which gave me ideas. Nikon D700 (unmodded), GSO RC 6" on NEQ6, 6400 ISO 10x3m lights, 10x3m darks, 16 bias, no flats (DynamicBackgroundExtraction), a complete newbie at everything at the wheel. I didn't polar align properly, certainly didn't drift align, didn't autoguide though I have the means, didn't focus properly and just plain hadn't planned on imaging at all. M27 just happened to be there and thus "what the hell" popped into my mind. I also haven't used PixInsight before. It could be worse.
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Apr 10, 2011 23:38
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Arrrrg! You guys are killing me. Celestron has had my mount since the 28th of March. I emailed them 2 days ago to see how it's going and their response was, "We have received your mount".... Sigh....
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Apr 11, 2011 00:42
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So I'll be travelling around the interior of BC this long weekend and I figured I'd stop by the Loon Lake Observing Site. A friend has been kind enough offer to lend me her older Sony DSC-R1 and a tripod. As someone who has never done this before, am I on the right track? I know my exposure time is going to be pretty limited without a proper tracking motor but I've always wanted to give this a shot.
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Apr 19, 2011 18:04
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Jekub posted:Pictures Man I would love to see some pictures of the setup you have to take these pics. I think I remember somewhere in this thread where you described your setup, but I'd love to see what it looks like.
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Apr 19, 2011 23:25
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How effective are the "light pollution" filters for deep-sky observing in a city? Is it just a waste of money or do they actually work? I would love to own a telescope but live inside a city and don't own a car - so getting away from the light pollution will be very difficult. Edit: Also, someone has a Meade ETX90EC on craigslist for $50. The 90mm aperture is pretty much only good for moon and planets, right? polyfractal fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Apr 22, 2011 |
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Apr 22, 2011 00:11
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polyfractal posted:How effective are the "light pollution" filters for deep-sky observing in a city? Is it just a waste of money or do they actually work? I would love to own a telescope but live inside a city and don't own a car - so getting away from the light pollution will be very difficult. I haven't used one in an area with high light pollution personally, but I've heard people that I observe with singing the praises of narrowband light pollution filters (specifically the Orion Ultrablock) for city observing. They're really only useful for observing nebulae, but if that's something you want to enhance you might want to look into them. As for the ETX90, your primary viewing targets would be within our solar system, but if you do happen to get it out in a dark area it's definitely capable of observing some deep sky objects. Depending on how the light pollution is where you live, some of the brighter deep sky objects could be within your reach from the city as well.
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Apr 22, 2011 19:06
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Loztblaz posted:I haven't used one in an area with high light pollution personally, but I've heard people that I observe with singing the praises of narrowband light pollution filters (specifically the Orion Ultrablock) for city observing. They're really only useful for observing nebulae, but if that's something you want to enhance you might want to look into them. I had an ETX90PE for awhile as a step up from my 20x80's. It was a great scope for viewing the planets. Orion nebula, Andromeda Galaxy and a few globs made it into view a couple times with pretty good visuals. On a side note, after a little over a month of waiting, my CGEM finally made it back from warranty repair today. Invoice says they replaced the main board and hand controller. Now if I can just get some clear freaking skies!
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May 3, 2011 00:51
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fuzzi posted:Man I would love to see some pictures of the setup you have to take these pics. I think I remember somewhere in this thread where you described your setup, but I'd love to see what it looks like. Sorry, it's taken ages to get back to you this. The current setup looks like this :  It's really hard to take pictures in the shed, I should set it up on the tripod somewhere to take some nice shots. Anyway, the setup currently is :
No new images from me this month, we had some really good nights here over the two long weekends we had but I ended up with family and freinds for those days.
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May 8, 2011 19:43
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I rented a 50-500 Sigma lens for the Shuttle launch, which got scrubbed. Instead: Not the best photo ever, but the best I've taken of the moon so far!
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May 9, 2011 03:03
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Wow, talk about dedication. http://skysurvey.org/
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May 12, 2011 22:18
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Oh hello astronomy thread! Haven't posted in a long time. The weather in Boston has been the worst. It's been so very grey here. I've only been out a handful of times in the last month. Luckily it was clear for a while the other night, and I managed to get some decent shots of the Moon, and Saturn before the clouds rolled in once again... 
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May 16, 2011 21:04
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So it turns out the Sony DSC-R1 isn't the best camera for long exposure shots. Under manual mode it has a few limitations that I'm guessing might be due to the internal memory limits. The longest exposures it can do is 30 seconds at ISO800 and 180 seconds at ISO160. I did the best I could but the shots themselves seem to be pretty noisy and my level balancing in Photoshop is weak. Oddly enough, my favorite shot of the trip wasn't actually at the drat Dark Sky site but when I pulled over on the return home to get some shots of the city and just happened to do a long exposure of the hillside: Then at the dark site itself:   The drift and the quality of the sensor really start to get noticeable on these exposures so I'm hoping I can start looking for something better. Is there a decent site for finding equipment in Canada?
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May 20, 2011 18:04
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Single frames off my D700 (at ISO 6400 admittedly, so it sort of ruins the argument) are noisy too, you need a tracking mount and a stacking application. The astrotrac or an EQ3 or something would do the job.
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May 20, 2011 22:57
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Yeah stacking is the way to go. A good stacking program can make decent pictures from even mid-range non-SLA compact cameras (preferably ones which can be made to shoot in Raw mode - JPEG compression is not a good idea).
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May 26, 2011 11:20
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New member here. Buddy gave me a Celestron C90 1000mm/f11 with three eye pieces!!!!!! Fly me to the Moon......
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Jun 1, 2011 23:40
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Just got back in from seeing Saturn. Yeeessss.
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Jun 3, 2011 09:22
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Thanks for the advice on stacking and a mount. I'm going to be attempting a barn door mount soon but we've been having just an abysmal summer here in Vancouver. I put together a nice roadtrip for the fiance to go through Portland/San Fran/etc. and she shut it down. Why? Because she wants to see the Northern Lights instead. I love this girl. Any tips on shooting for the aurora? I was considering a trip northward to Inuvik but it looks like that's a bit above the auroral oval. The auroral activity itself also peaks around March/October so a summer visit isn't going to be the best results as well. Are longer exposures really needed, or will any particular filters help?
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Jun 3, 2011 17:01
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I've been wanting to get a telescope for awhile now, done quite a bit of research into what I should be looking for and all. I've looked around on Craiglist a bit and there's a few nice telescopes at good prices in my local area (like a 10in Orion reflector asking $250), but I'm wondering, what should I look at when checking out a used scope to make sure it's in good condition?
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Jun 7, 2011 18:37
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AceSnyp3r posted:I've been wanting to get a telescope for awhile now, done quite a bit of research into what I should be looking for and all. I've looked around on Craiglist a bit and there's a few nice telescopes at good prices in my local area (like a 10in Orion reflector asking $250), but I'm wondering, what should I look at when checking out a used scope to make sure it's in good condition? Ask: "When was the last time you cleaned the mirror?" if the answer is ANYTHING but "Never.", walk away right then and there.
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Jun 7, 2011 18:47
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My primary and secondary get cleaned about once a year, it's neither difficult or damaging provided you understand what you are doing and take care whilst doing it. Mirrors collect dust and grime which over time will degrade your seeing, especially if like my telescope it lives outside. Modern mirror coatings are mostly aluminium with a quartz overcoat which is pretty difficult to scratch provided you use the right methods. But yeah, when buying a second hand scope, look up the specification and check for discussions regarding it first on the various astronomy forums. Restrict your purchasing to manufacturers of known quality and avoid the horrors of instruments of the type sold by shops which don't specialise in telescopes. Some of my cygnus nebula images form last year have been picked up for this months episode of the BBC's (very) long running Sky at Night show, it's pretty cool to have something I have done on TV.
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Jun 7, 2011 21:44
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Jekub posted:My primary and secondary get cleaned about once a year, it's neither difficult or damaging provided you understand what you are doing and take care whilst doing it. Sure, expect most people (non-astronomer's) idea of cleaning out the mirror involves a paper towel and some Windex.
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Jun 8, 2011 04:26
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Well the guy already sold the 10" scope I mentioned, so now I'm shopping around some more for a decent scope within my sad little ~$300 budget. I've been using a decent set of 60mm binoculars I was recommended in the astrophotography thread last year, and now (of course) I want more. I've read a number of reviews and have it narrowed down to a few choices that all sound reasonably good: Celestron AstroMaster 130 EQ - $180 Big upside to this is low price (if Telescopes.com is reliable, anyone used them before?), but eyepieces don't sound to be of terribly good quality. Orion SpaceProbe 130 EQ - $250 Longer focal length, decent quality eyepieces, and still far enough under my budget I could toss in a 2x barlow. Kind of leaning towards this one right now. Orion StarBlast 4.5 EQ - $220 Smaller aperture, and short focal length (superior for non-planetary viewing?), decent eyepieces, and still fairly cheap. Orion SkyQuest XT4.5 - $240 + $30 S&H 114mm for the more than the price of 130mm (and leaves me little room for buying another eyepiece/barlow), and on a really awkward mount for a scope of its size. Sounds like it has great build quality though, and good eyepieces. Keep dreaming - $0 Hold on to my money and maybe next year I can afford a 8" or 10" reflector, or maybe I can snag a deal on Craiglist/Astromart, who knows. Any input on my options here (or any good ones I've overlooked) would be much appreciated! Like I said, I'm leaning towards the SpaceProbe 130 EQ right now, since it sounds like the most versatile of the bunch for the price. I'd kind of like to try to get back into astronomy before I go back to school next year, but those 10" dobsonian reflectors sound so supremely badass I don't know if I should just wait. 
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Jun 9, 2011 06:48
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5 inches of aperture is the least I would ever want to use, and then preferably in a Cassegrain configuration for portability; the whole point of Newtonians is big mirrors for cheap. Try looking for the Synta-made Dobsonians, Sky-watcher and Orion (USA) should have them, with or without goto. Also consider that short wide Newtonians (low f-ratio, say below 8, I'm not a Newton expert) are asking for a coma corrector pretty badly. $250 is a pittance for a nice telescope, unfortunately, keep looking at the classifieds. Better a nice big scope that is rewarding to look through that will make you happier in the long run, than instant gratification, in my opinion. (Remember that light-gathering increases by the square of the aperture.) Wolf on Air fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jun 9, 2011 |
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Jun 9, 2011 10:19
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AceSnyp3r posted:Any input on my options here (or any good ones I've overlooked) would be much appreciated! Like I said, I'm leaning towards the SpaceProbe 130 EQ right now, since it sounds like the most versatile of the bunch for the price. I'd kind of like to try to get back into astronomy before I go back to school next year, but those 10" dobsonian reflectors sound so supremely badass I don't know if I should just wait. One thing to consider is your location. If you live in an area with a lot of light pollution, you're better off getting a more portable scope than some big dobsonian monstrosity, if you intend to travel for better skies. I made this mistake originally, and am much happier with my Nexstar 8i. As for your budget, you're really scraping the bottom of the acceptable telescope range. If you had double the budget, you could start looking into used SCTs with tracking and GoTo mounts, which do a lot to get me out observing more. I'd delay the purchase if it meant upgrading to a 5-6" Nexstar SE or similar scope, but it's never fun to wait. If you do decide to wait, try going to some star parties to see what it's like to observe through various telescopes.
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Jun 9, 2011 22:19
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Yeah I've been to some star parties both locally and that my school hosted, in the darker sites I was pretty impressed with the views a guy was getting with his little 6" go-to cassegrain (a Meade model of some sort). I live very near Denver, so the light pollution is terrible. Not only that, but I live in an apartment and would have to carry the scope down 3 flights of stairs, so I don't want anything so big that I can't shove it in my car and take it out to a park or something at least. Sounds like I'm better off just biding my time for now though, thanks for the advice guys. My future budget depends largely on what kind of job I find, so maybe I can get a 8" scope of some sort within another year or so. Edit: On an entirely unrelated note, a few times while I've been looking at stuff with my binoculars, I've spotted some moving objects of some sort. All the ones I saw moved reasonably fast, as fast or a bit faster than the ISS, and seem to be brightest near the zenith and getting dimmer and too dim for me to see by the time they're within 10 degrees or so of the horizon. If I had to guess, I'd say the apparent magnitude was somewhere around 3.5-4, and usually steady brightness, no blinking lights or anything readily visible. I've checked NASA's Skywatch the last couple times, but none of the satellites there ever matched, so I'm not sure what it is I'm seeing. Just really high flying aircraft? I've seen them going W to E, S to N, and N to S. Sikreci fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jun 12, 2011 |
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Jun 10, 2011 01:27
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Hey everyone! I've passed over this thread so many times but I'm not certain why. I've been an amateur astronomer essentially my entire life, and at one point I had decided to make a career of it. When I was attending university I majored in astrophysics. My favorite observing would be of double stars. They're so gorgeous, especially when their colors contrast. They always resolve well and satisfy in a smaller scope. I just got back inside from a bit of viewing. I used my 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain scope, on an EQ mount, to take a quick peak at some really interesting stuff; Saturn, Albireo, Cor Caroli, 24 Coma Berenices, and M3. I highly recommend you check those objects out when you're observing near Saturn. I stumbled upon a great list of double stars at http://www.saguaroastro.org/content/BEST-MULTIPLE-STARS.htm
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Jun 15, 2011 06:40
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Hey, I'd like to get into this hobby and have around 2000 Euro to spend on a decent telescope. I've already got binoculars but I'm still quite a novice. I would like a solid telescope that I won't outgrow anytime soon. My googling has led me to the Celestron Nexstar 8SE which seems to get solid reviews all around. What do you guys think?
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Jun 15, 2011 23:43
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Celestron NexStar is certainly a good place to start, though they are pretty heavy for moving about the place, not a problem if you are observing from home or don't mind heavy lifting. 2000 Euro is a solid budget to get something well worth having, have you had a chance to look through any scopes yet to get a feel for what you can see? Are you intending to stick to visual or hoping to dabble in imaging in the future? The mount type used for the 8SE would be restrictive for anything other than lunar or planetary photography.
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Jun 16, 2011 13:38
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I'm working on a planetarium program but I've run into a bit of a problem. I can't for the life of me find consistent astronomical data on the web. I need raw data for stars and other objects. I need right-ascension and declination data to be given in h:m:s.s and deg:arcm:arcs.arcs I also need this data to be unformatted and from a credible source. Trying to source this information online is so difficult. Every idiot posts an HTML table of objects on their web page but the data is never formatted properly. It's pretty frustrating...
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Jun 16, 2011 23:00
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Woodsy Owl posted:I'm working on a planetarium program but I've run into a bit of a problem. I can't for the life of me find consistent astronomical data on the web. If the data is accurate it can be mined from HTML pretty easily. Post the data up.
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Jun 17, 2011 23:13
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What you are asking for is called ephemerides for solar system objects, singular ephemeris, and there's plenty of sources. The primary scientific-accuracy source would be NASA/JPL HORIZONS, which has a neat telnet interface. What you then want to do is to simulate the orbital elements given in the ephemerides. Stars and DSOs are much less complicated, and there are standardized catalogues from various astrometric missions, depending on how deep in magnitude you want to go. A good start would be looking at what Cartes du Ciel uses and where it sources it from (it uses a whole set of different databases), it's open-source, so getting the file formats should be a nonissue. Wolf on Air fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jun 19, 2011 |
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Jun 19, 2011 03:24
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For the longest time, I've been set on getting an Atlas over the CGEM. Then I looked around Celestron's website today and saw they have a "new" mount, the CGEM DX. It's a CGEM head (with different motors/controllers?) on a CGE Pro tripod, upping the carrying capacity by 10lbs to 50lbs. Has anyone had any experience with the DX yet? It's $500 more than the CGEM, which seems kind of ridiculous when I could probably get a CGE for the same money if I'm patient (which I'm not).
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Jun 22, 2011 00:42
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