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Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

INTJ Mastermind posted:

Might be a stupid question, but if I balance an EQ mount, do I need to rebalance it when I change the orientation?

Once you have it balanced, you won't need to rebalance it until you add/remove weight. Changing between light and heavy eyepieces is generally not enough to need additional counterweight unless you're already straining it with other things.

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DorianGravy
Sep 12, 2007

How do you all feel about computerized starfinders on telescopes? I initially wasn't considering one, because it seems like it would take away from a bit of the mystery and "exploration" of star-gazing. I was told by a friend of mine, however, that I'll definitely want one. Before she had said this, I was considering something like the aforementioned Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...&pf_rd_i=507846

I suppose a computerized equivalent of that telescope would be something like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-NexStar-130-Computerized-Telescope/dp/B0007UQNNQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1264145901&sr=1-4

Anyone have an opinion about this computerized vs. non-computerized, one way or the other?

As a second question, is this a good collection of lenses? I'll just be stargazing casually, and am essentially a beginner:

http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-94303-Accessory-Kit/dp/B00006RH5I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1264146451&sr=1-1

Spoot
Feb 7, 2007
I ordered the Celestron AstroMaster 114 EQ Reflector Telescope with drive motor the other day. I am anxiously waiting for the first clear night to use it.

grendelspov
Jun 12, 2008

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can you see nebulae and galaxies directly though the eyepiece? Any color, or do they just look like a smudge or a blotch?

I've had a Meade ETX 60 AT for years and I just bought T and T-mount adapters for my Canon EOS. Should I just point it at Orion, open up the shutter and hope for the best? I guess I'll have to use the motor for slewing the scope for any exposures longer than a few seconds?

On another note, have any of you had any luck with using bright starts to let your scope self-calibrate? Or do you calibrate based on objects you just know?

octane2
Jun 4, 2007
Interstellar Overdrive
INTJ Mastermind,

Not a stupid question at all. Are you imaging? If so, I personally do re-balance if I'm moving from one side of the meridian to the other. Even the smallest things, such as cables dangling in the breeze, can make a huge difference.

So, process for me is to move to area of the sky I wish to image in, re-balance, find a bright star, synchronize the Gemini to it, slew to object and start imaging.

INTJ Mastermind posted:

Might be a stupid question, but if I balance an EQ mount, do I need to rebalance it when I change the orientation?

octane2
Jun 4, 2007
Interstellar Overdrive
Jekub,

I have not had an issue to date with finding a guidestar in the field of view of the ZenithStar FD80 coupled with the Meade DSI. Even in the sparsest field, such as around NGC 253, I was able to find a good guide star. If I do have issues, I have the normal William Optics guide rings that I can easily pop on in place of the rigid system.

Cheers.

Jekub posted:

Octane2 how do you get on with having your guidescope mounted in rigid rings rather than adjustable? Do you ever have issues locating a guide star with that configuration? I tested a similar setup for mine over the weekend but had great difficulty locating a suitable guide star (imaging Leo triplet) whilst keeping the object in frame. I imagine having a better guide camera than a modified webcam would help with this.

grendelspov
Jun 12, 2008

grover posted:

My area (Hampton Roads, VA) is light polluted all to hell, which hurts.

What's up Hampton Roads buddy! :hfive:

I just got the T-adapter for my 'scope via UPS today. It's supposed to snow here, so it will probably be a few days before I get to try it out.

The other night I tried putting my Canon Rebel DSLR on a tripod and doing some long exposure shots with a wide angle lens. I have to admit, even though I could barely see anything more than the basic outline of Orion, the photos showed some really nice star fields. Nothing to get too excited about, and I was amazed at how much blurring I saw just from leaving the shutter open for a minute.

Can't wait to play around with some moon and planet shots. I'm not ready to take on any shots that require accurate tracking yet.

Ziir
Nov 20, 2004

by Ozmaugh
I've been itching to attempt some amateur astrophotography ever since I got my tripod but it's been raining intermittently for the past two weeks. Well, I finally had my chance tonight. I realized I probably picked a bad night to go out because it was a full moon but I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and photograph both the moon and the stars but now I know better.

Anyway, here is my first attempt:



This was taken with 50mm lens at f/1.8, ISO 100 and 15s exposure time. I found that anything longer than 15s resulted in something extremely washed out due to the moon's brightness. I read that you can stack up multiple pictures to make it look better so I took ~13 of these pictures before a cop found me and told me I was trespassing... Anyway, how do I do that? I can open them up in Photoshop as layers but then what? I'm looking for a tutorial for dummies as I just found out what a mask was the other week.

Is there anything I can do aside from buying a bigger lens or a telescope that would let me take pictures of galaxies and other cool things? I can't afford a lens or telescope with now, so the 50mm f/1.8 and kit lens are all I have.

Edit: How come I can't take pictures of the moon? I don't get it. The 50mm lens has a longer/bigger/farther (whichever terminology is correct) focal length than the human eye, so in essence everything seen through my camera should be zoomed. The moon was pretty big tonight through my eyes and I could see details on the moon, but when I tried to photograph it, nothing came out. Long(er) exposures resulted in a huge glowing orb, and shorter exposures resulted in a moon the size of a dime, even though the moon as seen with my eyes was huge (aka the lens "zoomed out?").

PlasticSun posted:



I want to take pictures like this. Someone teach me :saddowns:.

Ziir fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Jan 30, 2010

HOLYFLAMINGCRAP
Jan 29, 2004
Moves like a Movie Star
I recently read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and have become space obsessed and have been thinking about getting a telescope. The problem is I live in NYC where light pollution is insane and I was wondering if anyone on here lives in NYC and whats your experience with telescopes here. Is it pointless, or can you see alright in the middle of central park maybe?

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

HOLYFLAMINGCRAP posted:

I recently read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and have become space obsessed and have been thinking about getting a telescope. The problem is I live in NYC where light pollution is insane and I was wondering if anyone on here lives in NYC and whats your experience with telescopes here. Is it pointless, or can you see alright in the middle of central park maybe?

Unfortunately you'll be limited to planets and the moon with light pollution like that. The brightest deep sky objects will be a stretch.

Wanderer89
Oct 12, 2009

HOLYFLAMINGCRAP posted:

I recently read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and have become space obsessed and have been thinking about getting a telescope. The problem is I live in NYC where light pollution is insane and I was wondering if anyone on here lives in NYC and whats your experience with telescopes here. Is it pointless, or can you see alright in the middle of central park maybe?

From living in Tokyo for a year, I'm afraid the poster above is correct.... On another note Cosmos (the series) is on Hulu, with limited commercials, :v:

celestial teapot
Sep 9, 2003

He asked my religion and I replied "agnostic." He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: "Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God."

HOLYFLAMINGCRAP posted:

I recently read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and have become space obsessed and have been thinking about getting a telescope. The problem is I live in NYC where light pollution is insane and I was wondering if anyone on here lives in NYC and whats your experience with telescopes here. Is it pointless, or can you see alright in the middle of central park maybe?
Unless you can get away from the city, forget about deep sky viewing. You need a big aperture telescope for that kind of stuff, and if you get a big dobsonian all you'll be doing is picking up more sky glow.

DorianGravy
Sep 12, 2007

On a related note, what's the best resource to use to find a good location for stargazing? I'm in a pretty bright city myself, and have been looking at places to drive to. I've taken a look at http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ and http://cleardarksky.com/, and while I can easily tell what places have good seeing, I can't tell which places are actually conducive to setting up a telescope for a couple hours. Are parks generally the best places? Some of them say things like "closes at dark," which is a little inconvenient. Any tips?

(To be more specific, does anyone know of any good spots within an hour's drive of New Brunswick, NJ?)

DorianGravy fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Feb 4, 2010

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

DorianGravy posted:

On a related note, what's the best resource to use to find a good location for stargazing? I'm in a pretty bright city myself, and have been looking at places to drive to. I've taken a look at http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ and http://cleardarksky.com/, and while I can easily tell what places have good seeing, I can't tell which places are actually conducive to setting up a telescope for a couple hours. Are parks generally the best places? Some of them say things like "closes at dark," which is a little inconvenient. Any tips?

(To be more specific, does anyone know of any good spots within an hour's drive of New Brunswick, NJ?)

If you're not in a club, your best bet will be state parks. A lot of them close their gates at dark and expect people to stay the night, and charge a fee that assumes a overnight stay. I don't know any specific places, but the state parks in the orange area of the jshine.net map to the west of New Brunswick would be a good place to start looking.

A bortle scale orange sky isn't great, but you'll instantly notice the difference coming from a white zone. Deep sky viewing is easily possible in this quality of sky, as long as you stick to objects that aren't too dim (I don't know what your equipment is, but magnitude 7 or 8 would probably be your limit, assuming great seeing).

PlasticSun
Feb 12, 2002

Unnaturally Good

Ziir posted:

I want to take pictures like this. Someone teach me :saddowns:.

The most important part is to find an area with dark skies. The links above are good resources but the important thing is just to get the hell away from people.

If you want to have any of the foreground lit you'll need some kind of light source, lanterns work well and the old propane style have good control over how much light they put out. Campfires are also good provide you've got a good supply of kindling. Both will give out a very warm light, if you want to pair the blue starlight with a cool light you can use flashes with reflectors.

The shot you mentioned was a really simple shot, I put a handful of kindling on the fire to amp it up a bit and had the camera on a short tripod. Lens was an 11-16 2.8 @ 2.8 and the exposure was 30 seconds at ISO 1600. Next to no post was done aside from adding a bit of brightness to the blue channel.

With your 50 this is what I would do:

1) find a dark sky spot.
2) find some sort of rise/hill/etc where the dark sky spot is.
3) setup a camera at the base of the hill with the 500 looking upwards, you should just have the top of the hill in the bottom of the frame.
4) put something cool up on top of the hill, maybe it's you maybe it's a tent whatever.
5) add some sort of light to the hill, if it's a campfire it should be off camera to the right or left if it's a tent just fire a strobe inside the tent or use a headlight in the tent.
6) Expose for 15 secs at @1.8 with ISO 1600.

You won't have the big wide field of view but you will have a subject other than the stars and with that exposure you should have more stars and part of the milky way exposed.

PlasticSun fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Feb 8, 2010

PlasticSun
Feb 12, 2002

Unnaturally Good

Ziir posted:

This was taken with 50mm lens at f/1.8, ISO 100 and 15s exposure time. I found that anything longer than 15s resulted in something extremely washed out due to the moon's brightness. I read that you can stack up multiple pictures to make it look better so I took ~13 of these pictures before a cop found me and told me I was trespassing... Anyway, how do I do that? I can open them up in Photoshop as layers but then what? I'm looking for a tutorial for dummies as I just found out what a mask was the other week.

Is there anything I can do aside from buying a bigger lens or a telescope that would let me take pictures of galaxies and other cool things? I can't afford a lens or telescope with now, so the 50mm f/1.8 and kit lens are all I have.

Edit: How come I can't take pictures of the moon? I don't get it. The 50mm lens has a longer/bigger/farther (whichever terminology is correct) focal length than the human eye, so in essence everything seen through my camera should be zoomed. The moon was pretty big tonight through my eyes and I could see details on the moon, but when I tried to photograph it, nothing came out. Long(er) exposures resulted in a huge glowing orb, and shorter exposures resulted in a moon the size of a dime, even though the moon as seen with my eyes was huge (aka the lens "zoomed out?").

Shooting while the moon is out results in most of the stars getting washed out. The moon is crazy bright, also your 50mm lens has a natural field of view of 47 degrees. The moon is 29.3 arcminutes which is about .50 degrees. So it's going to be pretty small when you want to take a picture of it. By comparison telescopes that get good images of the moon range in focal length from 800-1200mm.

To get a good shot of the moon you'll need both a longer lens (even a 200mm would help a bit) and you'll want to stop down and use a slower shutter speed, like 1/4 sec at F8.

INTJ Mastermind
Dec 30, 2004

It's a radial!
So I bought a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ, and so far it's pretty awesome. Yay first telescope! I also got a Telrad and a 3x Barlow.

I found a place about 30 minutes away from my apartment that's pretty good. It's red-level skies, but coming from Los Angeles, it's a lot better than what I'm used to. Also it's at the end of a country road, so there's no lights around.

Found so far: M42, M31, Sigma Orionis, That double-star in Andromeda I forgot the name of...

One problem I'm having is going from binoculars to my scope. I'm using Turn Left at Orion, and I'm able to find objects pretty easily through my 7x50 binoculars that I can't with my new telescope (Sigma Orionis and M31 Andromeda) to be specific.

I feel this is because the binoculars have enough field of view to allow me to easily star hop, I can more easily feel my orientation when holding a pair of binoculars in my hands, and the aperture is large enough to pick up guide stars that aren't visible to the naked eye, yet not too great that I'm overwhelmed by too many small stars.

With the telescope, I'm having a lot of trouble star hopping. I have a Telrad finder, but that can only point me at the brightest stars in the constellation, can't see many of the dimmer ones because of light pollution. The lowest-power eye-piece I have is a 20mm (650mm focal length on the scope). That gives me about 32x power. So I'm seeing around 1.2 degrees FOV through the eye-piece. Also, the telescope picks up a ton of stars, so I'm not sure which guide stars I'm looking for. Plus when staring 90 degrees offset into the eye piece on the EQ mount, it's hard to figure out where you're pointed sometimes. Thankfully, the 20mm eye-piece has an erecting diagonal built-in.

The telescope is awesome once I find things, but it takes me a while to do that. I can see something perfectly clearly in my binoculars, and I can't get my scope to point at it. Why can't you find it?! It's right THERE!

So this leaves me with 4 options. In order of most expensive to least-expensive

1) Buy a finder scope.

2) Buy a 40mm eye-piece for increased FOV.

3) Buy a tripod adaptor for my binoculars and use them as a finder-scope. The mount my 130EQ comes with has a camera tripod screw on the top, I can fit binoculars to that and use it as a "finder".

4) Practice more, suck less.

Also, when using the 3x Barlow on the 10mm eyepiece (200x power), it seems I can't get anything in focus. It bounces between being just slightly out of focus both ways. When I knock it down to 100x power with the 20mm it's a lot better. How can I tell if it's a problem with the Barlow? Atmosphere? Collimation? Am I pushing the telescope too much? 200x power on a 5" scope should be ok?

INTJ Mastermind fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Feb 10, 2010

Jekub
Jul 21, 2006

April, May, June, July and August fool

INTJ Mastermind posted:

I have a Telrad finder


The Telrad is cleverer than you give it credit for, each of the rings accurately projects 4 degress, 2 degrees and half degree on the night sky which can be used to assist star hopping. Or, even better, take a telrad chart with you. A telrad chart is a chart with the telrad circles printed on it showing you where to place the finder. You can buy books of these for the various deep space catalogs, or you can find plenty of them online to print out. These will make your life much easier.

Also yes, get a nice big FOV eyepiece, life is much improved when your trying to find things.

I picked up a new Celestron CGEM mount on the weekend to replace my badly overloaded Sphinx, I mounted it in the shed on the weekend and hopefully tonight will be my first night using it. I choose it over the EQ6 for it's better software, improved bearings and motors and the fact that it comes with a losmandy style mounting. But I would probably have been happy with either.

Jekub fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 10, 2010

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

INTJ Mastermind posted:

Also, when using the 3x Barlow on the 10mm eyepiece (200x power), it seems I can't get anything in focus. It bounces between being just slightly out of focus both ways. When I knock it down to 100x power with the 20mm it's a lot better. How can I tell if it's a problem with the Barlow? Atmosphere? Collimation? Am I pushing the telescope too much? 200x power on a 5" scope should be ok?

Probably the atmosphere. My "maximum" magnification on my 8" is 350-400x, but i've only been able to hit 350x once and have it be in focus. It's a combination of atmospheric turbulence and temperature changes that makes up what we call seeing. Find your observing area on cleardarksky.com to get a decent prediction of what the sky quality will be like.

I'll second Jekub's recommendation for telrad charts and using the rings. It took me a couple nights to get comfortable with mine, but I wouldn't replace it with anything short of a Televue NP101 with a 31mm Nagler which would overload my mount and send me to the poor house.

Crusty_mabiba
Mar 25, 2001

cool as lava.
Hey. Whats up astro people! I never knew this thread existed.
Just bought a new scope a month or so ago. Celestron XLT-127. 127mm / 5" aperture. CG-4 eq mount /w motor. I love it so far. Just got camera attachments, and I'm excited to start taking pictures. Anyway, heres a picture of the new rig.



Hopefully I'll have some more pictures to post soon!

INTJ Mastermind
Dec 30, 2004

It's a radial!
The plastic window on the Telrad doesn't have any coatings on it right? It'll be fine to clean with a wet tissue?

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

INTJ Mastermind posted:

The plastic window on the Telrad doesn't have any coatings on it right? It'll be fine to clean with a wet tissue?

Yeah, just clean it like any piece of glass.

Ringo R
Dec 25, 2005

ช่วยแม่เฮ็ดนาแหน่เดัอ

Ziir posted:

I read that you can stack up multiple pictures to make it look better so I took ~13 of these pictures before a cop found me and told me I was trespassing... Anyway, how do I do that? I can open them up in Photoshop as layers but then what? I'm looking for a tutorial for dummies as I just found out what a mask was the other week.

When you have them all on separate layers, set all except the bottom layer to lighten. Head over to the Dorkroom for more photography questions: http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=247



I took this with no regard to constellations because I don't know any. Then a friendly couple explained to me all the stuff I missed out :( Also, PlasticSun, 'sup 11-16 f/2.8 buddy? :hfive:

AstroZamboni
Mar 8, 2007

Smoothing the Ice on Europa since 1997!
Orion just announced a cool new scope on their facebook page, although they haven't put it on their website yet: SkyQuest XTG fully GoTo/Tracking motorized/computerized dobsonians in 8 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch versions.

Apparently they use the same "SynScan" controllers on their larger computerized mounts and on SkyWatcher's computerized telescopes. They might make good star party scopes.

TomR
Apr 1, 2003
I both own and operate a pirate ship.
Hello Astronomy Thread.

I did a test of my wide angle lens on the sky last night.


Click to see millions of stars. The edges have a lot of chromatic aberrations.

Funkysauce
Sep 18, 2005
...and what about the kick in the groin?

HOLYFLAMINGCRAP posted:

I recently read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and have become space obsessed and have been thinking about getting a telescope. The problem is I live in NYC where light pollution is insane and I was wondering if anyone on here lives in NYC and whats your experience with telescopes here. Is it pointless, or can you see alright in the middle of central park maybe?

I'm up in the Bronx and on the clearest nights I only get stuff up to 4.50 Magnitude, I can see a little of Orion's Nebula, the planets, moon, some times clusters, like Pleiades but no real cool looking deep sky stuff. I was thinking about taking the scope up a bit to like Glen Island, or maybe up to Mahopac. Shame really, but when I do get great viewing it's always a blast. Saturn was great last week, opposition and all that.

I want to start taking photos, I am using a Meade ETX-90EC, what gear should I get for the most basic stuff. Also, AutoStar may be busted, is it even worth it at that rate since there is no mechanical slewing? I line up through the spotter and then manually move the scope to view the object.

Funkysauce fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Mar 23, 2010

JihadforChrist
Mar 19, 2010
I recentley dug out a childrens 50X-100X refracting telescope with a 3x finder scope and a small tripod that I had since I was a kid.

What can I expect to see with it and how can I make my viewing with it better? I haven't even been able to see the moon because its so short I can't point it up high enough.

JihadforChrist fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Mar 26, 2010

the
Jul 18, 2004

by Cowcaster
Sup I'll just leave this here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30721501@N05/collections/72157621244472915/?page_id=2

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

JihadforChrist posted:

I recentley dug out a childrens 50X-100X refracting telescope with a 3x finder scope and a small tripod that I had since I was a kid.

What can I expect to see with it and how can I make my viewing with it better? I haven't even been able to see the moon because its so short I can't point it up high enough.

Since it's a refractor, I'm assuming it's around 50mm aperture. Assuming it's a typical department store refractor, you're pretty much limited to the moon. If you have decent quality optics, you can see Saturn and Jupiter at around 100x quite well, but I'd be surprised if that scope could handle it.

The two big challenges are going to be optical quality and mount stability. Optical quality you can't do too much about, just try to stick to lower magnifications. The mount can be reinforced to be more stable, but I can't say how without seeing the scope.

Dassiell
Apr 3, 2009

octane2 posted:

I've been involved in astrophotography for a number of years now.

I, personally feel that astrophotography is the most difficult discipline in the realm of photography, where the factors of environment, technology, patience, and the labour of love (or, should that be love of labour?) all must combine for an effort to pay off dividends.

There's been countless times where I've driven several hundred kilometres out into the bush for a weekend of camping and imaging only to be met by cloud and rain. It just comes with the hobby, I suppose. I only just had to cancel today a four day trip out 600km away as the forecast is non-stop cloud and rain until Sunday. Fail.

Anyways, thought I'd share a few images. If you'd like to see some more, or have specific gear-related questions, just ask.

The Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372) in Carina - Mark II
24 x 300 seconds (2 hours)


Delle Caustiche, The Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (M24) in Sagittarius
16 x 240 seconds (1 hour and 4 minutes)


The Rho Ophiuchus Complex in Ophiuchus
35 x 240 seconds (2 hours and 20 minutes)


Thanks for looking.

Just wanted to chime in to say these are some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. I made one my desktop. Keep doing what you do.

micron
Nov 15, 2005


After a few ebay, craigslist failures and also due to cold weather I gave up looking for a bit. I'm now in the race for a telescope again and have a few more dollars to spend. Recently there was an ETX-125 from meade on ebay for $325 plus shipping which I didn't pull the trigger on (which I'm kicking myself in the rear end for now). Why is it that even the little meade's etx's like the 90 are so drat expensive compared to any other scope around the same size?

edit: Anyone know anything about hardin optical? Their website doesn't reveal too much telescope infromation. There is a 10" Dob for $300 locally.

micron fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Apr 2, 2010

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

micron posted:

After a few ebay, craigslist failures and also due to cold weather I gave up looking for a bit. I'm now in the race for a telescope again and have a few more dollars to spend. Recently there was an ETX-125 from meade on ebay for $325 plus shipping which I didn't pull the trigger on (which I'm kicking myself in the rear end for now). Why is it that even the little meade's etx's like the 90 are so drat expensive compared to any other scope around the same size?

edit: Anyone know anything about hardin optical? Their website doesn't reveal too much telescope infromation. There is a 10" Dob for $300 locally.

It depends on the model of the dob, but a lot of their scopes were made out of sonotube instead of aluminum, which makes them significantly heavier.

Dobs are hard to gently caress up, so as long as the mirrors are in good shape, the focuser works well, and it holds collimation, you should be set. Just be sure you're willing to handle a 10" dob, it's probably larger and heavier than you think it is.

micron
Nov 15, 2005


Loztblaz posted:

It depends on the model of the dob, but a lot of their scopes were made out of sonotube instead of aluminum, which makes them significantly heavier.

Dobs are hard to gently caress up, so as long as the mirrors are in good shape, the focuser works well, and it holds collimation, you should be set. Just be sure you're willing to handle a 10" dob, it's probably larger and heavier than you think it is.

Anyone have any opinions on the meade etx-125? I originally wanted a big dob but I'm still kinda :wtc:. I live in an orange to yellow area (12524) but live near a fairly big mall and I can see how it washes out the sky (green on the scale is about an hour drive). I'll assume the dark sky map is fairly general and doesn't account that you live next to a walmart or something in a complete rural town? Also is the goto and tracking on the meade enough that I could take some simple photos of just the moon or planets?

I'm leaning on the smaller goto scope due to a child and wife that I would like to include in a new hobby but don't want my "other" to shoot me when I go and blow another 500-600 bucks on something in the garage. How fast do things "generally" move out of the FOV on a big dob looking at planets? This could lead to me beating my wife in my driveway.

:smug: Look at this
:j: What
:smug: It's right here
:j: You're dumb, I'm going inside.

Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.
You're right, the dark sky map is only an average, if you have some jerkass with lawn floodlights in an otherwise great area it won't show up.

I have next to no experience with astrophotography, but the moon and planets are doable on a dob with no tracking, so the ETX-125 would have no problem with it.

On a clear night when I would be using 300x on my dob, I had trouble showing planets to people because of the speed. By the time they sat down and adjusted the focus, they would only get maybe 10 seconds of viewing before it was going out of the FOV of the eyepiece. You can adjust this by moving "ahead" of the object so it just enters the eyepiece when they look at it, but overall it's a hassle unless the people you observe with know how to track an object with a dob (not hard at all, but it would take maybe 10 minutes of practice, much more for a kid).

A small goto scope will make it easy to see lots of objects easily, and you'll end up using it a lot more than some giant tube. You'd be able to see more things with a larger dob, but if you hardly ever get it out, that aperture is going to waste.

Jekub
Jul 21, 2006

April, May, June, July and August fool

micron posted:

Also is the goto and tracking on the meade enough that I could take some simple photos of just the moon or planets?

Moon and planet photography is normally done using a high speed camera, either a webcam or a dedicated astronomy camera. You capture a lot of frames, depending on the quality of the camera and then stack them all together to bring out the detail. With planets this can be done with an untracked scope, I've managed it. The stacking software such as registacks has a 'centre of gravity' mode for stacking where it aligns the images based of the brightest object, which is always going to be the planet. It's the same method I use for stacking manually tracked ISS images. With basic tracking both lunar and planetary photography is much easier as you can take more frames.

But yeah, big dobs are not very child or wife friendly, go-to makes life much easier in that respect though you do get less scope for your money. A friend of my wife's wanted a telescope so her husband went out and spent a couple of grand on a big Meade scope, it's been sitting in her loft ever since as she has no idea how to use it and it's to big for her to manage.

I don't know how much the new Meade Lightswitch scopes are in your part of the world but they look like an absolute dream for quickly and easily getting started. Just plug it in and turn it on, the onboard GPS works out where it is, and a small camera takes basic pictures of the sky to work out it's alignment based on the stars it captures. After that you have a full audio guide to tell you what you're looking at.

micron
Nov 15, 2005


Anyone see this yet or care to comment?

http://www.imax.com/hubble/

I have a 3D I-max about 30 minutes away and pretty excited.

the
Jul 18, 2004

by Cowcaster
My first astrophotography. Taken off my deck with a Canon Rebel XTi with a standard lens. 30 second timer.



The Moon and Venus.

INTJ Mastermind
Dec 30, 2004

It's a radial!
How do I balance my telescope in declination? The problem I'm having is that by sliding the tube back and forth, I can get it to balance when it's level. However, when I rotate the tube slightly on the declination axis, which ever side points towards the ground wants to drop.



It's a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ with a Telrad attached.

The RA axis (adjusted by sliding counterweights up/down) balances just fine.

Mortanis
Dec 28, 2005

It's your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight.
College Slice
Just posting to keep this thread alive. It's rekindled my love for all things space. Once I get a bit more finances under my belt, it's time to pick up a scope I can use to take some pictures with. The pacific northwest is a but rainy at times, but when things clear up, it's pretty beautiful at night.

Don't let this thread die!

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Loztblaz
Sep 8, 2004
1-14-04, Never Forget.

INTJ Mastermind posted:

How do I balance my telescope in declination? The problem I'm having is that by sliding the tube back and forth, I can get it to balance when it's level. However, when I rotate the tube slightly on the declination axis, which ever side points towards the ground wants to drop.



It's a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ with a Telrad attached.

The RA axis (adjusted by sliding counterweights up/down) balances just fine.

It sounds like the Telrad may have thrown off your declination balance. I have very limited experience with equatorials, but try sliding the tube back a little in the rings. Here's the 130eq manual, page 10 talks about balancing it in declination.

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