Astronomy

[Devlyn]

I'm getting too old and well, old to hunch over a telescope on a cold winter night anymore, but I can still come up with the gumption to get in a sleeping bag with hot coffee in a lawn chair for meteor showers. Who's a stargazer?

[cindianna_jones]

I am. Hard core.

[Jamie D]

I am too.  But I am too close to a major metropolitan area for good viewing.  I have to go up the coast, into the mountains, or out to the desert for good viewing.

[Sara Thomas]

I keep my eyes skyward - and wow, this has been a heckuva year for it! 

I'm fortunate to be in West Texas, which I recently read has the darkest skies in the CONUS (not sure how that was info was arrived at...).

[Joelene9]

  I am, big time.  I got a star party to go to next week and I am helping them set up.  I get an extra night to observe from that.  My club has a dark sky site 50 miles out of town that I go to from Sept. through May.  I'm also a DSS committee member and a board member of my club.  I also do some maintenance out there.  I am an astro-imager and done so since 1984.  I've been in astronomy since 1962 when John Glenn went into orbit.  I've been confirming asteroids the past 10 years using my portable 18" Newtonian telescope.  That scope and the smaller 10" scope have literally been in places from Key West to Fresno the past 10 years.
  I've been in West Texas and observed on a guest ranch near Fort Davis a week or two per year during the years 1991- 2007.  This year I imaged the solar annular eclipse in Page, AZ and the Venus Transit on Grand Mesa, CO with the 10" with a solar filter.  Two major solar events within 16 days!  There won't be another Venus transit until 2117. 
  Joelene

[MariaMx]

I love looking up at the stars but I rarely get a good view. There's something about seeing them that makes the universe "real".

[Sara Thomas]

Wow - Yeah, Joelene! I had forgot all about the eclipse. We were on our way to Taos, NM., for a little vacation - and were able to pull off the road outside Santa Fe to watch the eclipse (I had some welding lens')... that was great!

[Jamie D]

"Blue Moon" tonight

[Kitteh Engimeer]

Stargazing/hobbyist astronomy is something I'd love to do.

Since I'd be starting out, could anyone suggest good beginner/intermediate telescopes? I'm not expecting to look into deep space, but I would like to see distant planets... maybe more than just the tiny-speck version of Andromeda

[cindianna_jones]

Binoculars is a great place to start. You can see a lot of stuff with binoculars. I started out with an expensive telescope and regretted it. I should have purchased a reasonable refractor or reflector. You get more bang for the buck with a reflector. The best value is usually a model called a "Dob" or a "Dobsonian."  Don't buy a scope from a department store and especially don't buy one that advertises its magnification. Those are all garbage. telescope.com has some good articles on choosing a telescope. They are good articles. Look down on the left side of the page and you'll see their featured article. From there, you can navigate to the others.

[Joelene9]

Binoculars is a great place to start. You can see a lot of stuff with binoculars. I started out with an expensive telescope and regretted it. I should have purchased a reasonable refractor or reflector. You get more bang for the buck with a reflector. The best value is usually a model called a "Dob" or a "Dobsonian."  Don't buy a scope from a department store and especially don't buy one that advertises its magnification. Those are all garbage. telescope.com has some good articles on choosing a telescope. They are good articles. Look down on the left side of the page and you'll see their featured article. From there, you can navigate to the others.

I agree.  Go to a public starparty or open house sponsored by a club.  The ones sponsored by an observatory or nature center may only have a handful or less telescopes outside.  The members bring their telescopes to these events and they will have a variety of the different types.  Start small!  Go to a telescope shop.  They may have some good used starter scopes on consignment. 
  Remember, the deep sky objects you'll find up there are faint and are unlike the bright Hubble pictures.  We call these objects "Faint Fuzzies".  The planets are bright, but DO NOT get sucked in by the claims of "power".   We have ovserving lists for the smaller scopes and binoculars and if you complete the list, you can get a certificate and/or a pin.  Remember, astronomy takes patience as well as the other observational natural sciences. 
  Joining a club will help you choose what type of scope and the terminology is easy to learn.  Some clubs have a "beginner's corner" with ages from elementary school to the retirees.  Some clubs such as mine do have a dark sky site out of town for better viewing.  Some sites are owned by the club or on a lease from a farmer.  Others are merely a turn on a country road.  Get outta town!  Light pollution is one of the causes for the low numbers of people getting interested in astronomy. 
  Joelene

[ohkaye]

Stargazing/hobbyist astronomy is something I'd love to do.

Since I'd be starting out, could anyone suggest good beginner/intermediate telescopes? I'm not expecting to look into deep space, but I would like to see distant planets... maybe more than just the tiny-speck version of Andromeda

There are plenty of websites (spaceweather.com, astrobob.areavoices.com, etc) that talk about what's happening in the sky, a lot of which can be seen with the naked eye or just binoculars.

[tekla]

And we all have free access to the telescopes that we all own collectively.


http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/

http://www.skyimagelab.com/chandraimages.html

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/search_grid.php?mission=Chandra+X-ray+Observatory%2C+Spitzer+Space+Telescope

[WildThing]

I stare at the night sky and I can see Saturn with my naked eye. It's beautiful.

[esther22]

I have always loved looking at the sky even before I could spell the word "planets"  I bought one of those cheap 300 power telescopes & couldn't see a thing. Finally I met a guy that had built a 8" reflector telescope, & after looking through it several times, I knew I had to build one for me. So in 1970, I got a mirror grinding kit from Edmund scientific  & spent 70 hours grinding my own then sent it off to a company to put the silver coating on it , & making the rest from homemade. I lived in N mexico then, so I had the astronomy dept at their university check my mirror & they told me mine was better than their *8 " scope!  Even with the power I have , My favorite eye piece is a wide angle with 50 power. I even saw Uranius by accident one night! My scope is too big to set up by myself, so I always have to finf friends to go dky watching with me.  Esther

[Joelene9]

  Pluto bump. You may have heard about the New Horizons space probe that flew by Pluto on July 14. The images and data are coming in and it will be 16 months to download all of the data and images from that encounter. Pluto was one of the objects that I have imaged over the years. It is not that hard to image with the technology we have available to amateurs today. This gif animation was taken with an old CCD camera with rectangular pixels and the chip was made for the security cams that were out around 1995. This is one of the cameras available for amateurs at that time. Most of us cut our teeth with this camera before the larger and better chips came out later.
  Transitioning from film to CCD was easier than to transition from male to female! I got one of the better cameras a few months after I have taken that image.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/starphot/19765637525/sizes/o/

Link to the New Horizons page with updates coming almost daily
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html#.VOaqms-DsbM

[cindianna_jones]

For those of you scratching your heads watching the above referenced video, Pluto is the object moving in the lower right quadrant of the image frame.

Very cool, by the way. I haven't touched my camera gear for years. I've been looking up instead.

[frances_larina]

My daughter and I have gone out every night (weather permitting) since she was maybe a week old.  Over the last decade we've accumulated enough simple (read: not terribly expensive, just capable) equipment to be able to comfortably watch solar eclipses & transits, turn DSO's into fuzzballs, look at planets and the like.   We built a dob, modified or restored other equipment.  It's more of a connecting to the universe & learning the map of the sky sort of experience, along with ISS & satellite sightings.  And of course a nightly tradition, a time to talk about the day.  Nothing computer controlled other than the occasional camera w/ adapter for special events.  Oh, and my phone, to let us know when the orbiting stuff is expected.   

[frances_larina]

  Pluto bump.

My daughter was Pluto for Halloween one year when she was maybe 6.  The NH flyby was a BIG event in our household.  I left work early & we even baked a Pluto cake (and a smaller Charon, and 4 cupcakes for Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx)... 

[cindianna_jones]

My daughter and I have gone out every night (weather permitting) since she was maybe a week old.  Over the last decade we've accumulated enough simple (read: not terribly expensive, just capable) equipment to be able to comfortably watch solar eclipses & transits, turn DSO's into fuzzballs, look at planets and the like.   We built a dob, modified or restored other equipment.  It's more of a connecting to the universe & learning the map of the sky sort of experience, along with ISS & satellite sightings.  And of course a nightly tradition, a time to talk about the day.  Nothing computer controlled other than the occasional camera w/ adapter for special events.  Oh, and my phone, to let us know when the orbiting stuff is expected.

Astronomy can be one of the cheapest hobbies there is. I love to get together with close friends and we share views. I used to make big dobsonian reflectors and sell them. Unfortunately I sold even my last one which was mine because some rich guy offered me an insane amount of money for it. Now I use smaller scopes on an equatorial mount and share views with friends. I have a nice 130mm refractor and my friends have the big guns. Planets and some star clusters are much better through my smaller scope.

Cindi