The Sky At Night

[Noodley]

...it's difficult to maintain an affection for someone who clearly regards you as a different and inferior species.

I'd best keep my views on the Welsh to myself...

 

[Christopher]

Fair enough & well said tc - I hadn't known of his attitude to anything outside astronomny. FWIW I am not interested in stargazing as such, but what little I can grasp of astrophysics and black holes.

 

[col]

A sad and great loss to astronomy.

 

[Jenkins]

Went out for a ride this evening and, after a hail shower had passed, the sky cleared.With the stars visible thanks to unlit roads a drinks bottle was raised in the direction of Orion in memory of Sir Patrick.

 

[Stephenite]

TBH, the problem with that scope is that the mount is pretty poor. It's fine having a decent scope (which I'm not sure this one is either) but if the mount wobbles in the slightest breeze then it's pointless. What sort of budget do you have in mind?




If you look out of the window right now, the bright 'star' next to the moon is Venus. FWIW, you can always tell a planet from a star as planets never 'twinkle' as they're discs of light not points.


Tony.

Budget-wise.. (as it's a present to me) i've been informed it may be a little more than the £130ish you would have to give for the Astromaster - which is the amount my dad paid for my first telescope 30 years ago, as it happens. A Tasco refractor. Loved it. Spent ages looking at the moon and discovering galaxies i didn't know existed before. I could just make out the bands of Jupiter. Well i thought i could. The adults who were with me at the time couldn't make them out. It may have been because I was 14 years old with perfect vision and they were half-drunk with 30-odd years of self-abuse behind them (much as i am now ). Anyway, i digress.

I've taken onboard what you've said and looked around the net. It appears to be one of those cases where if you spend a little more, you get something better and it goes on and on ad infinitum. Until you own Hubble.. and an overdraft.

As it turns out i'm allowed more than i deserve, but value-for-money is important - I hate throwing away daft money for something i'm not going to use, or be able to work out how to use. So, after a bit of umming and ahhing i've chosen the Dobsonian Orion Skyquest XT8. What do you think?

I think it's a telescope that will give me what i want right now as a budding observer, whilst allowing for future improvements, if and when. £300 or thereabouts, plus shipping. I was going to spend more on her/them anyway.

What kind of telescopes do other people have? I should have maybe started a new thread with the "What 'scope?" title but i liked Riever's idea.

 

[Doseone]

I've just been out for a walk and it is the most beautiful crystal clear dark starry night, milky way and all. Wish I had a telescope, but it takes your breath away even with the naked eye.

 

[Stephenite]

Cos you live in Brecon, Doseone. The best skies i've seen were there. Magnificent,.

 

[Doseone]

Cos you live in Brecon, Doseone. The best skies i've seen were there. Magnificent,.

I am very lucky. I'm actually a few miles out of Brecon so there really is no light pollution here. The Brecon Beacons National Park has applied for Dark Sky status, although I'm not quite sure what that will mean!
I would have thought you must get some great night sky in Norway too.

 

[BluesDave]

I'd love to take up stargazing again but the ridiculous amount of light pollution in London is a real hinderance.

 

[slowmotion]

I'd love to take up stargazing again but the ridiculous amount of light pollution in London is a real hinderance.

The strange thing is that even the most unlikely places suffer from it. You would have thought that Cornwall wouldn't be too bad but the sky around Truro and Falmouth is quite dreadful.

 

[Stephenite]

i'm just a little south of Oslo centre. So there is a fair amount of light pollution.

I'd have to get on the bike/in the car and travel 10km for pitch blackness.

 

[outlash]

As it turns out i'm allowed more than i deserve, but value-for-money is important - I hate throwing away daft money for something i'm not going to use, or be able to work out how to use. So, after a bit of umming and ahhing i've chosen the Dobsonian Orion Skyquest XT8. What do you think?

I think it's a telescope that will give me what i want right now as a budding observer, whilst allowing for future improvements, if and when. £300 or thereabouts, plus shipping. I was going to spend more on her/them anyway.

What kind of telescopes do other people have? I should have maybe started a new thread with the "What 'scope?" title but i liked Riever's idea.

In term of VFM, the Orion Dobsonian (dob) is excellent in that it offers a fairly large aperture for not a lot of cash. The downside is that the mount is basically a rocker box so you have to learn how to 'nudge' the scope while you're looking at something. But it's very easy to setup.

A very brief rundown:

Scopes:

Newtonian: Cheapest in terms of £ (or Euro!) per inch of aperture, but they can get bulky when they get bigger, the eyepiece position can be odd when you use an EQ mount and you have to learn the art of collimation (mirror alignment).

Refractor: Most expensive in terms of £ per aperture (don't even look at ones over 6", especially apochromat designs), but they give the best view in terms of contrast and almost never need collimation. Good for deep sky imaging too.

Schmidt-Cassegrain/Maksutov-Cassegrain: Both these designs work on the same principle by using a combination of mirrors and a corrector plate to give a big scope with a long focal length in a very short tube (the light path is 'folded' inside the scope). A bit of an all-rounder but not great at anything. Very popular for Solar system imaging.

Mounts:

German Equatorial (GEM/EQ): IMO, the best mount available but also the trickest to setup. You have to align it with the celestial pole (marked with Polaris) to make it work correctly and balance it correctly otherwise it just doesn't work. Once you've done it a few times though, it's pretty intuitive.

Alt/Az: Works on a simple up/down left/right principle as does the Dobsonian but an Alt/Az is on a tripod while the dob stis on the floor. Easy to setup but a bit of a PITA to track objects with, especially at high magnification.

The cheap option is to get a manual mount, but you can get GOTO which will find objects for you.

There are other options/designs/combinations of mount and scope, but these ones above are the most common. And you thought choosing a bike was tricky....


Tony.

 

[ASC1951]

..... upthread ....

Love it!

 

[Over The Hill]

most people that age are... sign of their times.

Agreed.
Back then we has far left politics and far right politics rather than this grey middle ground now. It is easy to forget how far views have changed in say 50 years. The old often get left behind in this change.

 

[rich p]

My mate is heavily into astronomy and has all the gear, computerised scopes and so on. He invited me round to have a look one evening but I was bored rigid after less than 30 minutes. For all the supposed differences and nuances, every little white dot looks much like another from 189 billion light years away.
In truth, the moon and the planets are the only things that are worth looking at, and not for too long if the pubs are open.