The Astronomy Thread

I look thru a telescope quite often. Just posted in here about grinding a new mirrior at the moment. Have two now. A refractor i don't use much and a 10" reflector for deep space viewing which is pretty nice and the part I enjoy. Not big on planetary stuff. If you live someplace you don't have outside lights in your backyard in your eyes you can see quite a bit with a good pair of binos. Personally recommend binos as a first step for most people. But people think they'll get a $50 scope, $25 mount and be able to see stuff like the hubble, or take images that look like it was taken with a $25k setup.

all depends on what you get to use-ie how much automation you use.

most telescopes are good, the mounts AND OR eyepieces suck. getting a good mount can alleviate some issues-getting good eyepieces does the rest.

this is a good/decent intermediate mount

Astronomics - iOptron CEM25P "Center Balanced" Go-To German Equatorial Mount with 1.5" Tripod

just THE mount IS 900 DOLLARS

but it has built in gps etc. so that it should know exactly where you are and setup isn't that bad.

for scopes,,, there are lots and LOTS of styles. generally the larger the scope the more expensive it is....

Orion Apex 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope | Orion Telescopes

is decent for the price.

then there are eye pieces...lots and LOTS and lots OF EYEPIECES...EYEPIECE MAKES the system, the better the eyepiece, the better the view(within limits)...

figure from 75 - 800 dollars PER eyepiece depending on the brand/style i am partial to ~68degree view

but Telescope Eyepieces | Orion Telescopes: Shop

do not get the cheap ones, they are ok but the higher the price the better the eyepiece,,,


figure about 2000 dollars gets you the mount, scope and 5-6 eyepieces...

You use a reflector of size, say 8" or larger and you can see really start to see the deep sky stuff.

Here's some examples of what you can actually see as opposed to images over multiple days and multiple hours of explosure.

Sketching - Cloudy Nights

What peopel actually see on specific things and specific equipment. A 8-10" newt on a dob mount is not all that expensive and sets up incredibly fast. You can look thru the sketches to get realistic ideas of what you can actually see from a variety of size/types of scopes. The bigger the mirror the more you see (all things being equal, which they aren't).


NGC 3079 on a 10" Newt.




M101 (Messier Object 101) with a 14.5" newt on dob mount.

I like looking at what they call the faint and fuzzies. You can get some reallyl incredible views with relatively small telescopes on the brighter stuff. The faint and fuzzier the larger the scope works better. You let your eyes settle into the dark and have a relatively dark area you can some pretty good detail and some color on some sites. I'm not great at seeing color but the good part is I have an extremely dark area to gaze from.

M31/32 sketched on what is a <$200 scope.

8" Newt. Just to give you some ideas/comparisons of stuff.

I am partial to planets galaxies clusters and nebulae etc, it is interesting to look though the eyepiece and seeing a mass of stars or seeing a shape formed by a nebula.(oxygen filter needed) first one I looked at was m42

With a good tracking mount, and a ~3 mm eyepiece Saturn and Jupiter are easy to see and make out details.

Next step is photography. A friend gave me her ~$500 setup, but I can tell the mount is total crap once I have my heavy Canon 5D attached. Slightest breeze and the view is all over the place. You need a rock solid setup to get some nice clear shots. I am probably going to invest in my own scope and setup specifically for astrophotography. It was damn cool just slapping an SLR mount and snapping pics of giant craters of the moon within about an hour of messing with the thing as a complete novice.

Telescope I was given:
Celestron NexStar 127SLT 127mm f/12 Maksutov-Cassegrain 22097

Jysin said:

Next step is photography. A friend gave me her ~$500 setup, but I can tell the mount is total crap once I have my heavy Canon 5D attached. Slightest breeze and the view is all over the place. You need a rock solid setup to get some nice clear shots. I am probably going to invest in my own scope and setup specifically for astrophotography. It was damn cool just slapping an SLR mount and snapping pics of giant craters of the moon within about an hour of messing with the thing as a complete novice.

Telescope I was given:
Celestron NexStar 127SLT 127mm f/12 Maksutov-Cassegrain 22097

Click to expand...

Star gazing is like a lot of other things. You can spend $50 or spend $25k. Worst part is some people see astrophotography done with a $25k setup and think they can get a really cheap scope/mount/camera and produce the same results. When you get into astrophotography much the price can go up astronomically quickly, mounts, cameras, scopes etc....

I used to be big in astrophotography but the last place I could send slide film off to be developed finally stopped taking them. Didn't really get into the digital age with it much. Some people have had good luck using a digital DSLR for astrophotography but I haven't looked into it much.

Big Phoenix said:

IMO its the personal satisfaction you get when you use an instrument to find an object in the sky and look at the light coming from it with your own eyes.

Kind of like the difference between eating a good tasting meal and cooking then eating a good tasting meal.

Click to expand...

You should be right int he middle of a lot of telescope users. From looking online in the last 20 years whole lot seem to be centered around AZ.

Borzak said:

...
I used to be big in astrophotography but the last place I could send slide film off to be developed finally stopped taking them. Didn't really get into the digital age with it much. Some people have had good luck using a digital DSLR for astrophotography but I haven't looked into it much.

Click to expand...

Best thing about digital and astro is the stacking you can do. Take 30 - 50 very low detail / mediocre shots and stack them in Photoshop and the results are stunning.

Milky Way Exposure Stacking with Manual Alignment in Adobe Photoshop – Lonely Speck

Another example:

Before:


After:

Is why I haven't owned one in many years. How far away can light reach you? Sometimes I think I can see the glow from Nashville 50 miles away but I'm sure it is Franklin or another city which is 15 or so. Not sure how many miles light can affect you on a clear night, that would be my first need to know before dumping money on a awesome setup for me.

Well lights from a city are another deal entirely, the biggest complaint I hear locally is people literally can't turn off the niehgbors outside light or their own security light.

BrutulTM said:

I think this thread should be changed to "The space thread" or something similar. There is nothing about astronomy in here.

Honestly, does anyone actually spend time looking through a personal telescope as a hobby, or do people just buy them and then realize that magnified stars look exactly like unmagnified stars? My brother asked for a telescope for Christmas a couple years ago and I did a fair amount of research and bought him a decent beginner model. He used it a couple times, looked at the moon, Mars, and the rings of Saturn, which I'll admit was pretty cool, but he has never even set it up again and I don't really see why you would. There's really not much that's interesting to look at and even that stuff you don't need to see more than once.

Click to expand...

Good point. Just rename this thread to "Space the final frontier".