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deviousGuestSo, I don't know how many of you are into astronomy? Those of you in astrology can lick my butt. I'm glad the two separated. ;>
Anyways, here's my new toy that showed up fairly recently:
[img]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1006759/mini-arrival01.JPG[/img]
All the boxes it came in =][img]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1006759/mini-arrival06.JPG[/img]
All the parts out of the box =][img]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1006759/mini-arrival07.JPG[/img]
Note the astro artwork, I have a ton of hypothetical signed/numbered prints by many artists floating around my office room ;>[img]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1006759/mini-arrival08.JPG[/img]
And the monster of the beast assembledThis is an old LX200 10″ classic. I used to dream of owning one of these back in like 97,98, but I could only at that time afford to purchase an Celestron C8 Deluxe (8″). It was lame. The LX200 mount isn't exactly my favorite, but for this to be brand new @ $1650, I was like wh0a, I can't pass it up. Duh, why do you think I'm selling off my music. My passion for space exploration (hence my domain heliospace.com) is being reignited as I clean up my lifestyle and return to purity. Jeah!
My question is, who else here is into astronomy? Exploring the vast cosmos? Now when you read geocentricity.com do you agree with what they say? That “God” created the sky anomalies basically for the pleasure of humanity to look up into the sky and see “artwork?” Or like me, do you think that's nonsense and despite this universal nothingness we vastly exist as, imagine the walks of life forms floating around on big giant celestial spheres?
Tidbit fact: The Sun is approximately 96,000,000 miles away from the Earth. This measurement is known as 1AU or 1 Astronomical Unit.
Another dvs tidbit fact: The speed of sound travels at 756MPH per sea level measurements which is scientific grounded measurement of sound. So, it would take nearly 14.5years for the sun to hear our words while the speed of light travels approximately at 186,200mps meaning if the sun burned out, it'd take approximately 8.6 minutes before we'd know it went black. Yes, it's true. 8.6 minutes our sun would be gone. So, for the record, with light, we're always traveling backwards in time. We don't see light for what it is at the particular time we're looking at it, we're always looking BACKWARDS into light. :>ANYWAYS, I was bored, Just trying to spark some conversation that would be fun. And away from weird wacky pseudo stuff. I'm trying to return to being a realist again 😉 damnit.
Aaron
deviousGuestOh yeah, this scope has some major adjustments done for my astrophotography that I love. It's great when you're trying to modify an internal part (the stock focuser) and you smash the threadings on the bolt that moves the primary mirror pusher back and forth 🙂 so you have to go off and buy an entire new focuser, but a far better one with “Feather touching” so you can do 1/10ths adjustments without mirror flop, wh0rd. HeeHee. I was thinking actually, if where this party is in Wisconsin is dark enough, I may just travel there with the scope, meet you folks and have a nice observing session without the partying of course ;> I'll do some research first and let the few who care know.
Aaron
deviousGuestOH, and for the j00nix nerds (FIXER) out there, I HIGHLY recommend using XEphem from http://www.clearskyinstitute.com — it's been around for ages and Elwood Downey is a very AWESOME programmer. He's done programming for robotic observatories and all kinds of crazy background in super advance stuff. He's a real nice down to earth guy too when you communicate with him about XEphem, I've been using it since it's birth. sattrack ALSO rules if you want to see when satellites are passing over your house. You will actually find that you can se satellites passing over you pretty damn often when you use this program, it rules.
perl -e 'while(1) {printf”astronomy will own j00 from now onn”} =[
Aaron the wannabe perlhax0r{fork}
PauldoMembersweet setup!
how does the photog part of it actually happen? is that a seperate piece from the telescope? built in camera? shooting pics directly onto film? out to a digital card?
from memory I don't think the light polution was too bad at that space and I could see stars. there are a couple open fields where you can get away from the center of the space and have no trees in the way. got a friend that lives near there, I'll ask how the night sky is looking these days.
any kind of national maps that rate light polution in different areas of the country or for specific coordinates? the middle of nowhere is getting tougher to find these days. ;D
deviousGuestsweet setup!
how does the photog part of it actually happen? is that a seperate piece from the telescope? built in camera? shooting pics directly onto film? out to a digital card?
from memory I don't think the light polution was too bad at that space and I could see stars. there are a couple open fields where you can get away from the center of the space and have no trees in the way. got a friend that lives near there, I'll ask how the night sky is looking these days.
any kind of national maps that rate light polution in different areas of the country or for specific coordinates? the middle of nowhere is getting tougher to find these days. ;D
Yo Pauldo!
Well, you have two options with photography. I'm still a manual film nut, which for astrophotography, the best film to use is slide film (who the hell uses slides still these days you ask? astrophotographers, that's who :)) Anyhow, you can do prime focus or piggyback photography. I'll explain the two.
Prime Focus is where the camera is directly connected to the telescope where the telescope becomes the actual lens of the camera. Thus you need a SLR for this. This is the most recommended method for deep space imaging of nebulae and galaxies. It's also the most difficult of the two especially since I'm oldskool and refuse autoguidance and thus have to manually guide the scope and keep making corrections manually than have a computer do it for me. ;>
Piggyback is where you mount a bracket atop the telescope and use your SLR camera with it's own mountable lenses. You can do nice shots of the milky way this way (our galaxy we're in). You won't SEE the entire milky way, but you'll get a view of the milky way “clouds.”
My telescope is a *very rare* f/6.3 10″ which aren't common at all. the LX200's primarily came in f/10. So I have a nice stock wide-view setup for photography ;> plus coupled with a f/6.3 reducer makes me have the f/4, thus reducing exposure times JEAH.
This is probably the best thing about photography, doing the sky. I did it in the past but yeah I gave it up along with everything else that was geek. So, I'm quite excited to return and bringing heliospace.com back to life online ;> again.
For the record, you can use a DSLR camera (digital), but they're no fun. Despite film processing costs and what not, you're always going to get better results on any photographic subject through the use of film, regardless. The only good digital cameras are those that run purely in black and white ;> because b&w CCDs pick up way- more light than color ever will. Hence the wide use of b&w CCD security cameras. They give more detail, though not in color *grin*. You can also purchase CCD cameras soley for the use of astrophotography. This is the most expensive route. If you can afford 15000 dollars for a camera, it's probably the best route. But any less, you're going to get not so good results, well, not professional results anyways ;>
Most of the publishers of astronomy magazines out there primarily publish film pictures. You just have no way of correcting the errors and redoing it without PAYING For the error, so people prefer digital. When you get good with a film camera, well, digital is nothing 😉 period.
Lastly, yes, there is actually a “consortium” if you will known as THE INTERNATIONAL DARK SKY ASSOCIATION, or IDSA.
all kinds of images from before and afters and satellite imagery can be found here:
http://www.darksky.org
http://www.darksky.org/images/sat
http://www.darksky.org/images/night_scapesThey predict with airplanes and the ever growing population of the world, within 40 years, a land based telescope regardless of it's size will be considered useless. 🙁
Aaron
P.S. I forgot to mention, with piggyback photography, the telescope is still tracking the object with it's motors and that is how you get your longer exposures with piggyback. errors are less obvious too ;>
Nameless OneParticipantI'll just chime in and say I'm very much into astronomy… it's one of my three primary passions in life, in fact (the other being science fiction and I guess the third is bloody obvious). I never have owned a telescope that was any good, but hope to do so one day soon… part of what discourages me is living in an urban area… when I go rural, it's at the top of my list. A year and a half ago I had the pleasure of attending a small party at a cottage where the host had an 8″ telescope (nothing automated)… everyone else ate acid and got drunk, and I just sat there it the cold checking out all sorts of things with the scope. It was fantastic… I'll certainly do it again. Perhaps next time around people will know better than to ask if M51 is a pulsar when I try to show off my find 😉 nice gear, devious!
PauldoMemberpartial eclipse of the full moon tonight in Chi. Cool orangie, yellowish color to it now. Not sure how partial it's gonna get. Now if I had your setup I'd be able to take a pic of it! ;D
so slide film really? imagine the exposure has to be pretty long.
deviousGuestI'll just chime in and say I'm very much into astronomy… it's one of my three primary passions in life, in fact (the other being science fiction and I guess the third is bloody obvious). I never have owned a telescope that was any good, but hope to do so one day soon… part of what discourages me is living in an urban area… when I go rural, it's at the top of my list. A year and a half ago I had the pleasure of attending a small party at a cottage where the host had an 8″ telescope (nothing automated)… everyone else ate acid and got drunk, and I just sat there it the cold checking out all sorts of things with the scope. It was fantastic… I'll certainly do it again. Perhaps next time around people will know better than to ask if M51 is a pulsar when I try to show off my find 😉 nice gear, devious!
Mr. Mr. Basilisk! Everyone buy your CHI-AD 12″ of neonsky from this guy ;>. Heehee,
Anyways, yes, astronomy has been a past time for so many years, but as soon as the drugs caught on and whatnot, I put all my geekdom behind me. That's over with, I've had my share, and now it's time to return to the new high of geekdom and looking “up” 🙂 Basilisk, I live in a very urban area. In fact, roughly 10 miles south of Minneapolis. The thing is, you have to spend a large amount of money on a case ;> with BIG WHEELS to haul a big telescope around, that's what I did. I do however always recommend binoculars. Perhaps you'd be interested in helping me out with doing something with heliospace.com, a joint psytrance nerd venture? :> I've been sitting on it for ages as it was a name of a envisioned company from 97-99 that had 1000 documents written but no groundwork was ever footed 🙁 between myself and all the collaborates.
It's funny when I read “nice gear” and look at what I'm looking at buying right now, ANOTHER TELESCOPE, Bwahahaha. An orion skyview pro 100mm refractor for lunar and planetary. I prefer to have the SCT as my deepsky/photography setup ;> and a refractor of course for planetary observations. Unfortunately, I can't unload 5k on a refractor after buying that LX200 *BIG GRIN*.
One day, when my gf decides we can move into the country, I'll have an observatory ;>. jEAH! That'd rule. Unfortunately, at that time, I'll no longer have any records or CDs ;-D from my psytrance days. bwahahaha.
Pauldo, exposure times vary. Digitally, you can stack frame upon frame to bring out contrast/details of an image. Unfortunately, film, you're kind of stuck with the dull pics if underexposed, or other various elements…over or underexposed. Time is key! And varies for “magnitude” of the object being photographed.
Glad there were more responses to this thread. And I'm really glad Basilisk has an interest in astronomy too ;). Them Canadians have some of the best schooling for crazy astrophysics and cosmology and shit. Hell, they get into some fun linear algebra almost as a norm it seems in highschool, dealing with matrices and crap. I know if I was a schooler in Canada, I'd probably had never dropped out based on stories I've heard from people on IRC in the 90's and crap ;> They've got a much higher degree of knowledge…or so it seems. IGNORING OF COURSE THOSE FEW WONDERFUL FEYNMAN, SAGAN, HAWKING, KAKU, etc…folks we have here 😉 😉 😉
Aaron
damonMemberMirc 🙂
deviousGuestMirc 🙂
Damon, I don't know what's going on, but do you want those Shpongle records at the least? I'm just going to keep selling those records individually =] until they're gone since nobody wants to buy them as a lot *cough cough* =]
Aaron
damonMemberDamon, I don't know what's going on, but do you want those Shpongle records at the least? I'm just going to keep selling those records individually =] until they're gone since nobody wants to buy them as a lot *cough cough* =]
Aaron
;D
Nameless OneParticipantAnyways, yes, astronomy has been a past time for so many years, but as soon as the drugs caught on and whatnot, I put all my geekdom behind me. That's over with, I've had my share, and now it's time to return to the new high of geekdom and looking “up” 🙂 Basilisk, I live in a very urban area. In fact, roughly 10 miles south of Minneapolis. The thing is, you have to spend a large amount of money on a case ;> with BIG WHEELS to haul a big telescope around, that's what I did. I do however always recommend binoculars. Perhaps you'd be interested in helping me out with doing something with heliospace.com, a joint psytrance nerd venture? :> I've been sitting on it for ages as it was a name of a envisioned company from 97-99 that had 1000 documents written but no groundwork was ever footed 🙁 between myself and all the collaborates.
Ahh, I'd need wheels to cart a scope around, and I'm quite transit-bound (perils of urban living). I do however have a nice set of binox, which always come with me on festival trips. One lucky thing is that every festival in Canada is -North- to some degree or another. The damn shame is that the one time I neglect to bring my binox (unfamiliar territory) was last year's Eclipse, about two hours North of Ottawa, and those nights had the blackest skies I've ever seen. Next year, however…
As for schooling… I really have no idea where you got that from… or maybe it's just Ontario's education system that sucks. I was in an “enriched” programme and it was still lacking. Everything I know about astronomy (and most other fields of serious inquiry) is the result of an unyielding curiousity and the marvels of books and the internet. That's probably why I have a solid conceptual foundation and don't know so much of the math behind things 🙂
What's the idea behind heliospace.com anyhow?
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