The Astronomy Thread

Borzak

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Big Phoenix

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This has been discussed before, obviously. I can't wait for video of the inevitable mechanical failures while the boom is moving 2+ km/s.

Utterly impractical launch method for Earth, but cool theyve actually but some stuff with that venture capital. Kinetic launch systems like this will be amazing on airless, low gravity worlds though.
 
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Crone

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Wife, after years of wanting one, has decided to get a telescope. Being able to see Jupiter with the naked eye and missing out on seeing it with a telescope this past week pushed her over the edge to wanting one. Any recommendations for a beginner telescope? Thanks guys!
 
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meStevo

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im close to just dumping mine on facebook or something for whatever I can get for it. 10" light bucket that I suck at collimating. Been years since I tried, figure I'll give it another shot soon and do exactly that if I still cant. Think the finderscope got misplaced in the last move too, so probably need to order one.

If one of the kids show interest I'll pick up a starter scope for them. If I ever get back into it I'd rather have the right gear for photography than a big dob.
 

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Already had way better photos of Jupiter than this a decade ago

This telescope is sucking hard thus far
It's the best pics we got with a telescope, but not as good as we get when we send a probe to take pictures.

JWST is really good for looking at things we can't send a probe to.
 
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Lenardo

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Wife, after years of wanting one, has decided to get a telescope. Being able to see Jupiter with the naked eye and missing out on seeing it with a telescope this past week pushed her over the edge to wanting one. Any recommendations for a beginner telescope? Thanks guys!
what is your budget?
do you want "goto" (motorized) or manual

advantage with goto is. once it is calibrated, you GENERALLY (depending on the quality) can just tell it, point to jupiter and it will point at jupiter and then track it across the sky and all you have to worry about is focusing and deciding what lens to use/changing eyepiece out to enhance the view (the smaller the number the higher the magnification.)

prices start at about 450 for a cheap good small goto telescope and go UP

manual telescopes start with relative trash at under 100 bucks and go UP
manual anything say 150 or higher should be decent enough.

eye pieces can be cheap or good or great. prices start at about 20 each the price climbs depending on the quality 600+ each can get really good ~50-82degree eyepieces for around 75-120 each.... note eyepieces if well cared for...generally can be sold for almost what you bought it for, even 10 or so years later....


or
are decent beginner scopes- has goto etc..

then the eyepieces...
i would suggest



to start. 90 bucks but a zoom, can use the 24 mm size to "find it", then zoom in to 8mm for a larger view.

orion makes good eyepieces or explore scientific

astronomics.com
telescope.com
or just use amazon

to find your accessories...

advantage of goto though, find what is out at the time and you can find lots of things to locate. m52, galaxies nebulas etc..... not JUST planets.
 
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Loser Araysar

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JWST is really good for looking at things we can't send a probe to.

yeah maybe they should use it for that then. i swear these people have zero idea about what people actually want to see. next thing theyre going to use the JWST for is to show me a pimple on an elephants ass
 

Tripamang

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They are not even close to throwing anything fast enough to be useful for this purpose. Materials science is not up to the challenge.

They built a test machine to make sure they could get it to work, now they're scaling it up for bigger payloads. It replaces the first stage of the rocket, so it still requires a second stage to get to orbit. What the fuck are you talking about?
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

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They built a test machine to make sure they could get it to work, now they're scaling it up for bigger payloads. It replaces the first stage of the rocket, so it still requires a second stage to get to orbit. What the fuck are you talking about?

The amount of energy required to replace a first stage is vastly more than their scale model. They're not going to be able to make a rocket able to take that, as well as the fact that any payload better be ok with the stress of launch.

Good luck with that.
 
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Tripamang

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The amount of energy required to replace a first stage is vastly more than their scale model. They're not going to be able to make a rocket able to take that, as well as the fact that any payload better be ok with the stress of launch.

Good luck with that.

Clearly you've done zero research into this and you're talking out your ass. Just go back to negging everything your menial mind fails to grasp.
 
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MusicForFish

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Clearly you've done zero research into this and you're talking out your ass. Just go back to negging everything your menial mind fails to grasp.
He's a great candidate for the retard removal program. Pretty much this on high until death.

Go Around Space Science GIF by European Space Agency - ESA
 
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Borzak

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Wife, after years of wanting one, has decided to get a telescope. Being able to see Jupiter with the naked eye and missing out on seeing it with a telescope this past week pushed her over the edge to wanting one. Any recommendations for a beginner telescope? Thanks guys!

How much room do you have and how portable do you need it to be?
An 8" dobsonian telescope is the most recommended good telescope that may last you a lifetime and not too costly. Great for deepsky stuff and okay for planets and such. Most are manual tracking.

Maybe go to a star party and look through a variety of telescopes. Do you have an idea if you want to mostly do deep sky stuff or planetary or both?

www.cloudynights.com is the best site to find info. Look into the sketching section to get an idea what you will actually see, nothing like the photographs you see posted. Astrophotography is an entirely big next step and the pool gets deep in a hurry.
 
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Big Phoenix

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Clearly you've done zero research into this and you're talking out your ass. Just go back to negging everything your menial mind fails to grasp.
Hes not wrong on this. The fact we have a nice dense atmosphere makes kinetic launch systems like that fairly pointless, thats not even getting into the incredible engineering challenges(vacuum issues, the complexity of designing an incredibly heavy rotating mechanism that can deal with the massive weight redistribution that takes place at release etc.) and power requirements for something like spin launch.


All so they can launch a tiny payload at similar costs to current launch providers.