- Thread starter
- #121
I do it all the time...
Anyone into astronomy "Star Gazing"
- Thread starter Billbickman
- Start date
Conjunction of Mars, Venus and the moon tonight. Unfortunately for me, I will be dealing with freezing rain...
Comet dive bombing the sun: http://spaceweather.com/
How did the Astronomy thread get passed me? Hmmm, well I'll jump in and say I'm VERY amatuer at it, but I have Iron Patience and passion enough to keep me trying for many years to figure it all out. I'm not really into astro-photography but from time to time I hold my phone over the eye piece as steady as I can. Here's my usual gear and a couple shots...
Those are great.
Thank You Sir 
Jupiter and a few moons
D600, 200mm zoom, F2.8 about 120 seconds
Awesome!
That's awesome Mark! It got me thinking. Is getting features (gas bands, great red spot, etc) to resolve a matter of filtering, more magnification, or something else?
it's a combination of more magnification in my case, and a series of lower exposure settings and stacking
Tonight I found the Beehive Cluster, Messier 44. I have never seen it before...very cool.
- Thread starter
- #132
As soon as I get back from this deployment its new telescope time!!!!!!
I enjoy doing both repeated solar and Polaris observations for determination of astronomic north. Becoming a lost art since the advent of GPS, however.
As with astronomy, shaving, music and etc., etc., etc.. Removing the 'lost art' aspect is removing the fun.
Here's how I like to get around...
Here's how I like to get around...
I used to major in Astronomy(well astrophysics), then I got into engineering.
I had the opportunity to stay a night or two at the lick observatory and look and work a real telescope. Man it's cold up in that mountain.
I had the opportunity to stay a night or two at the lick observatory and look and work a real telescope. Man it's cold up in that mountain.
Wow! Nights at the Lick! Lucky bugger!
HAHAHA, hardly, I was just assisting the grad students in research. I got to look through the telescope maybe 5 times? for a minuet each time...But damn, the solar system looks amazing through those huge puppies(but really hardly any different from amateur telescopes once you get past Uranus). They use a TON of stacking to get images from deep space.Wow! Nights at the Lick! Lucky bugger!
I would go there just to look through once, have a coffee, and enjoy the experience just to say I did.
It was more fun assisting scientists at NASA though. It was tougher, but more fun.
Astronomy is really just number crunching and hours of boring stuff. Nasa is more like "think, damn it, THINK!"...Every time I would open my mouth and they looked at me, I feel like they were thinking "seriously, what is this guy even talking about?", you just have to make very, very good educated guesses at both places
