Ok, here's a party trick that's one step up from "how to find the north star".
Start at the end of the handle. That's al-kaid. The second star in is Mizar. If you look close at that star, you'll see there are actually two stars there. the dim one is Alcor, and it's name, appropriately, means, "the overlooked one".
Ok, here's a party trick that's one step up from "how to find the north star".
Start at the end of the handle. That's al-kaid. The second star in is Mizar. If you look close at that star, you'll see there are actually two stars there. the dim one is Alcor, and it's name, appropriately, means, "the overlooked one".
also, in Arabic folk stories about the constellation, the handle of the big dipper are 3 daughters of a man who has died, and they are visiting the funeral bier of their father. (the cup of the dipper is the bier.)
No they don't. Every time I'm out with normies and I point out simple constellations like the big dipper, they never know them.
I have military friends and even they don't know how to navigate at night.
I literally have never identified the southern cross in the sky before until now. I feel like a doofus for that but thank you anon. I'm okay with the big dibber and orion but then I get lost
1 year ago
Anonymous
>I literally have never identified the southern cross in the sky before until now
To be honest I wouldn't be able to do it either without a star chart. I can point out all of the northern constellations but if you were to put me in the southern hemisphere I would not be able to identify a single one except for those that are on and to the north of the celestial equator, though they would appear upside down to me which would be pretty wonky.
It's funny to think that I would feel more at home in the northern hemisphere on Mars than in the bush of Australia or New Zealand.
you either need very vivid night sky (i.e. clear, no light pollution, bright milky way, etc) or very dark foreground, or both.
in this case I was way tf out beyond the mountains in Australia and although I was at a campground where people had lights on as you can see, the night sky was so bright out there that even with lighting around the sky still stands out.
it's just a wide open aperture and exposed for 30s. the acceptable exposure time changes depending on your focal length, but at 10mm I could let it run a long time
i mean it's better than just picking a random direction but the best you can get with celestial (and no equipment) is like +-45 degrees from where you think you're heading. this assumes you have knowledge to actually pick out certain stars, know where they stars are in the sky at all times of the night, and have a clear view of the sky the entire time. even sailing which is the one place i've successfully used the stars/sun those are just a reference point and you are still primarily relying on the compass.
the lost art of finding our way is a good book on the history of navigation and goes over some of the different ways people used stars but it definitely drives home how vague most forms of navigation are.
>the best you can get with celestial (and no equipment) is like +-45 degrees
You can easily find north to within 1 degree. How hard is it to judge other angles from that?
Yeah I do it but I'm an amateur astronomer. If you can recognize the big dipper you're good. If you know where Scorpio (summer) or Orion (winter) is, that's generally in the southern sky
As a navigator on a ship who knows astronavigation don't be moronic. You won't get a precise bearing. It's fun if you're hiking in a safe place and can afford to get lost for a while though
>universe is billions of years old >trillions of stars, 100 billion in our galazy alone >plenty of time for mighty civilizations to rise and fall >almost no chance we aren't being watched by someone >almost no chance our solar won't someday be subject to a superior civilization
>he thinks we won't have figured out how to warp speed to other planets by then >he thinks we'll survive the next 1000 years much less many-billions of years
pick one
On a more serious note, we're in a dangerous position. One super nova, gamma ray burst or just a couple hundred thousands tons of meteorite could extinguish the whole of humanity in mere hours.
Sure, we're mostly inane bullshit, but there's plenty of beauty that deserves to be preserved, plus the potential for much more.
So yes, we have to move our ass off this fricking planet asap, common sense demands it!
Compared to the useless bullshit we keep going down here, it doesn't even cost much.
11 months ago
Anonymous
That's the deal, right? Can't have a prison planet if people can go offworld
He makes the most vapid creatures on earth (women) beautiful and men looking like lotr ogres. Don't remember exactly what those were called though. Yet even then he is only truly sought after by those same men he made ugly and gave horrible lives
Btw which god are we talking about? Humans have come up with quite a few.
He makes the most vapid creatures on earth (women) beautiful and men looking like lotr ogres. Don't remember exactly what those were called though. Yet even then he is only truly sought after by those same men he made ugly and gave horrible lives
Was backpacking up nort a couple of weekends ago. Ate some THC gummies and leaned back against a rock at night. Tripped on the Milky Way and the unfathomable smallness of my existence until I couldn't stand it any more and hide to hide my eyes.
no no, dont avoid it. walk forward into it like a kid fascinated by her first encounter with fire. you were this close to learning something. the burn is temporary
Dude, you were missing one thing that would have blown you away: A hammock.
If you wanted maximum existential crisis, you should bring a pair of binoculars and look at the Milky Way. You will trip balls and realize you're smaller than you ever imagined when you see what's in our galaxy that your eye can't see
I hate when im looking into the night sky and see one of those fricking satelites zooming about and think for a split second it's a meteor or a planet. Not even the nigh sky is untouched by human technology.
I will curbstomp this fricking nerd if he starts posting his shitty reddit doge memes in the sky.
https://i.imgur.com/ySjircm.jpg
For me, it's the Pleiades.
Same, they are so pretty and have cool mythology connected to them
Of all the sources of light pollution you pick on the most mild and probably one of the most useful, because you’re either an urbanite or Elon man bad.
never said anything about offgrid anon.
but yeah, i need internet access.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Then get fibre, move to somewhere there's fibre. Or just use the already available satellite internet. Don't frick over the entire planet and destroy the oldest leisure activity known to man all because of your selfish need to have the internet and LARP as a farmer.
11 months ago
Anonymous
No.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>the oldest leisure activity known to man
astrophotography isn't that old, anon. You can still stargaze just fine with your eyes
Satcom is a fricking meme for consumer level infrastructure. Enjoy your 120ms ping and weather unreliability. Satellite internet has been a thing for ages and it never has worked well. Musky boy being a marketing pro doesn't change the inherent flaws at the microwave bands they are using.
If you're going to be doing two way communications over wireless, it's much better to use ground based 5g, where you'll get the speed with none of the lag. In the event you can't put 5g towers for some reason. I remember when rural towns would have a massive directional dish up on a hill, and that would be the "down" connection, and you'd have a phone line for your "up" connection dial up at the house. It was faster than straight dialup and before DSL.
>Satcom is a fricking meme for consumer level infrastructure. Enjoy your 120ms ping and weather unreliability.
okay, but we're talking StarLink here, not ViaSat. (although to be fair, ViaSat's ping times were ~600ms, best case scenario)
I've been using StarLinkfor over a year now, and it's been pretty much bulletproof in terms of reliability and speed (regardless of the weather). The latency isn't quite as good as cable in town, but it's more than serviceable -- much better performance than cellular or ViaSat (and still cheaper than both, with no real cap.)
Aside from cost, the problem with cellular is mainly topography. We're in the middle of a forest with 100+' trees in all directions, while being inside a valley. the signal booster i installed on our roof is already blocked by trees; after only a few years.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Satcom is good for very specific instances where traditional non-wireless communication isn't available or not cost effective to install. For your case, where you live in the middle of a forest away from everyone, Satcom is the best option assuming there's not 5g towers nearby. 5g's biggest downside over LTE is penetration, so trees can be an issue assuming you're reaching the limits of it's range.
People who are buying starlink when they have cable/fiber available is just dumb though. Wireless will NEVER EVER be superior to a hard connection in terms of service, period. The only reason to chose a wireless solution is price/availability concerns.
this shit scared the hell out of me on memorial day
>be innadesert near Mexico border >buddies facing camp fire while I sit facing the sky watching stars/meteors/small satellites >see a string of bright lights in a perfect line come zipping over the west horizon right at us. >Me and on buddy start freaking out while the other cant see shit because he was staring at the fire >buddy says its aliens while I say its a military convoy going to Mexico or something >watch the lights zip right over the Mexican border then disappear before they even reach the southern horizon >"holy shit anon we had an ayyy encounter" >we later look it up and it turns out its just Elon's low altitude satellites we had heard of but never actually seen a photo of >our faces when
Yeah for the first time in like 10 years I got away from light pollution and was kind of disgusted by just how many more satellites there were. When I was a kid they were almost difficult to spot but now it's like a fricking infestation of ants crawling across my field of vision
[...]
~~*Elons*~~ robots are coming for you, the rope is the only escape you have.
McRapebots?
>Be you in 2033 >Try to steal an old, rickety 2022 Tesla >You accidentally set off the alarm >The McPolice have already been notified >They send out the camera drones and the McRape bots >You see the McRape bots come running around the corner of block in your rearview mirror >their wieners flapping as they run >One of the Drones EMPs the car killing it and causing the doors to lock >feeling of panic, and raw fear swells up in your chest right as the McRape bots make it the car >They surround it and one smashes the windshield and grabs you by the collar >You try to break free but it has a grip of iron >Two other McRape bots come over and help the first pin you to the ground ass up >The firs one rips of your clothing while the others restrain you > As you strain your neck trying to see what is going on you see their 9 inch silicon dicks beginning to grow and harden >The first one now mounting your naked ass, presses its rubber hardon into you >Another one uses its wiener to gag you by gaping your throat with its 8 inch silicon girth >The camera drones begin recording and live streaming to all the smart billboads nearby >It begins thrusting using its McVax fluid mixed with blood for lube >After 30 minutes it finishes, filling you with its McFlurry goodness >the bots sprint away to the scene of another crime as quickly as they came >You lay there a traumatized, McBuckbroken shell of a man
The future of policing is going to be interesting.
Anywhere with good darkness near SLC? Just moved here and feel like I never see the stars compared to where I used to live in TX, and that was right outside a major city
You'll have to go out into the west desert if you want really good darkness. Either the area northeast of Wendover, or out west past Delta. Pretty long drive from SLC, but it's worth it.
Through naked eye you want to sit there and let your eyes adjust. Don't frick around with your camera constantly like a typical aurora nerd. Then the beams can get pretty bright and the depth the show up in the stratosphere is spectacular, makes you feel very small.
Another equally bad picture of Bode's galaxy. For anyone wondering what a galaxy looks like in person, they are very faint grey smudges. The colorful pictures you see on the internet are the result of long exposures and a bit of photo editing to bring out the colors.
starlink's great.
an extremely minor and temporary marring of the night sky, compared to all the other forms of light pollution -- there's a huge upside to it.
but you live in the city/suburbs, so you wouldn't understand.
One thing that is nice about being out in the sticks is seeing the stars at night. Just seeing the stars in the Milky Way is a simple and silent pleasure or the countryside.
>Just seeing the stars and the Milky Way is a simple and silent pleasure of the countryside.
Going on long backpacking trips and laying down at night to look up at the night sky in the middle of complete undeveloped wilderness is nice.
The fact that you can do this just made me think of something.
Can you just....see all the just we left up there?
Sure we left a flag up there, but we also left bigger stuff like the luna rover and other junk. Can't we the average person with an expensive lens just zoom way the frick in on the junk we left on the moon.
not that anon but the moon moves across the sky too quickly. the closer you zoom into the surface the more it's flying past your lens. if you zoom in so close that your entire FOV is 1km or less it'll very super hard to snap a "still" photo, much less a still photo of a specific spot.
my understanding is that yes it's possible with highly specialized equipment but also that the best/clearest images of moon sites is accomplished from either satellites we deployed around the moon or the multi-billion dollar satellites around the earth than can accurately track their targets.
almost none of the google earth images are taken by satellites, the ones that are detailed enough to show street features (like cars for example) are aerial and not satellite. when you find these dead regions around the planet that haven't been updated in 10 years, those are blurry satellite images and you can barely make out city features.
tl:dr: you have get much closer to catch it or spent a buttload. these images DO EXIST but very few my amateurs
>Can you just....see all the just we left up there?
It's tricky. Easier would be to shine laser at reflectors and measure travel time back. the stuff is so small, so very small. and what
not that anon but the moon moves across the sky too quickly. the closer you zoom into the surface the more it's flying past your lens. if you zoom in so close that your entire FOV is 1km or less it'll very super hard to snap a "still" photo, much less a still photo of a specific spot.
my understanding is that yes it's possible with highly specialized equipment but also that the best/clearest images of moon sites is accomplished from either satellites we deployed around the moon or the multi-billion dollar satellites around the earth than can accurately track their targets.
almost none of the google earth images are taken by satellites, the ones that are detailed enough to show street features (like cars for example) are aerial and not satellite. when you find these dead regions around the planet that haven't been updated in 10 years, those are blurry satellite images and you can barely make out city features.
tl:dr: you have get much closer to catch it or spent a buttload. these images DO EXIST but very few my amateurs
Man I can't explain how good it is. I've posted a few times before about living in an alpine village in NE Victoria in Australia. I burned a huge pile of greenwaste last night and sat on a tree stump drinking a beer or 5 and staring at the ecliptic plane. At around midnight there was a bright star on the horizon and I was like "Oh here come dat boi...". Checked Stellarium. Right through the fire the sky was clear enough to see Saturn rising. "Oh shit whaddup!"
Man I can't explain how good it is. I've posted a few times before about living in an alpine village in NE Victoria in Australia. I burned a huge pile of greenwaste last night and sat on a tree stump drinking a beer or 5 and staring at the ecliptic plane. At around midnight there was a bright star on the horizon and I was like "Oh here come dat boi...". Checked Stellarium. Right through the fire the sky was clear enough to see Saturn rising. "Oh shit whaddup!"
Holy shit, wtf is up with that? Do you just get rid off excessive energy by pointing it at the sky? Is that whole homegrown business light poorly adjusted?
I'm in Switzerland, unless you're in one of the hotspots, it isn't too bad. As you can see from your Map (sure, most people live in the light), it's easy to get somewhere really dark.
Best stuff I've experienced was vacation in the greek northern sporades when all the power went out. No light for 50km+, a meteor shower overhead, absolutely insane. One goes down every couple seconds, the whole milky way just overhead. Pure bliss.
Based navigator, my merchant marine school dropped astronavigation. Kind of sad, luckily we still have meteo. You still go on contracts?
NTA, my dad is a qualified high sea (spelling, english fifth language) captain. I probably could extrude some information regarding the topic if so desired.
Cities + Largest port in Europe (Rotterdam), Amsterdam port is up there too along with Antwerp, general skyline lights, high population density, one of the largest airports of Europe and greenhouses upon greenhouses (if you live near them you have to close the curtains at night when there's clouds because of the orange glow they produce.)
Blackouts! Well, around here that doesn't happen too often.
>wtf is up with that?
What about it? The Rhine river and its delta are a very densely populated area, as is common for major rivers in the Old World.
Good point, if you look at the map though, there's a weird bright delta up there in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and such. Doesn't quite work out when you look at population density I believe.
>Blackouts! Well, around here that doesn't happen too often.
That was always the bright side of getting hit by a hurricane kek
Anywhere with good darkness near SLC? Just moved here and feel like I never see the stars compared to where I used to live in TX, and that was right outside a major city
Utah has some of the darkest skies in the country, but you'll need to drive a ways away from the city
Me too. I've been debating getting telescope for my niece for her birthday because she's getting more into science stuff lately. But I don't know if it's really worth it to get one.
Had to sell it after I moved to a light polluted place.
But I've checked out the messiers, seen binaries, nebulas in actual color, the Moon up close, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, their moons...
Kind of a freaky hobby, spending nights sitting outside, only using red light to keep light sensitivity of the eyes, but there are some breathtaking things to see.
Yeah, you use read light to not lose your night vision, which takes like 20 minutes to fully establish. Astronomy software with maps and stuff also has a red mode because of that.
What‘s the best software for this? Are there any mobile apps I can look at while outside that will tell me what constellations/planets/nebulas I‘m looking at? Also, what‘s the best way to escape light pollution? I already live on the countryside but there seems to still be quite some pollution.
This is pretty much it. PrepHole moves too fast with shitposts for one to exist, and the infrequent threads on astronomy related topics are more about the numbers than actual stargazing
I don't understand how these work and it pisses me off.
I have been trying to do nught photography for years and I can never get it to work. Nothing does. Light sources like this make everything work. No matter what I do with the settings and changing ISO or exposure nothing fricking results in photos like this. Nothing I change actually results in anything other than a completely black photo or a blown out sky where it looks like bombs are going off. If there's another light source like that house then the camera will just focus on that and the sky it just a sheet of black.
https://i.imgur.com/qSZ9Itz.jpg
aurora australis is way better than borealis you cant change my mind
And this one just is insane. I don't understand how the hell this works. I've tried doing long exposures at night to get starlight that that didn't work either, and other lighsources like a campfire would blow out the long exposure photos and make them a sheet of yellow. Of course if anything moves you get a huge blur. But you just have a guy there and he's not blurry and yet you capured all this detail and color and it's not blown out. Yeah I'm pissed. Nothing I've tried works across multiple cameras over the years. Then I see people easily posting photos like this is normal.
Planets are short exposures (1/30-1/400th of a second, more or less), capturing widefield is quite a bit more involved.
This image of the big dipper asterism was captured with about 100 5-second exposures with a DSLR mounted to a stationary tripod. These are RAW CR2 images. While the sky is moving, the short focal length of the lens minimized it within the image. I specifically travelled to a location without many artificial light sources. I then stacked it all together in Deep Sky Stacker.
Notice how it kind of looks awful, and very red. Thankfully, this is a high bitdepth image, so we can do some work to it.
I put the image through Siril. Using color correction, noise reduction, etc. I'm able to virtually remove all of the awful red tint. The image is still really dim, though. But again, we're working with high bit-depth images, so we can correct for that.
Normally, most people would finalize their image by "stretching". Essentially, you take a small ranges of brightnesses within your image, and blow them up so they accompany the entire range of brightnesses of your display. I like to do things differently, though. I apply a mild Bloom filter to the image, then, using a tonemapper, I render out the image. This has the advantage of capturing the brightness of very bright stars (that would get clipped with a simple stretch) while still showcasing the dimmer stars.
I suppose the point I want to make is that astrophotography is rarely ever a point-and-click endeavor, and in many ways, it's an art form. This is especially true for truly dim deep space objects, where False Color is frequently used to demonstrate and illuminate gas clouds and regions of a specific chemical.
10 months ago
Anonymous
that looks great! I'm impressed at what you have accomplished there.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks. I hope to one day employ a similar workflow for an actual DSO target, like a galaxy. One of the things I find most compelling is just how dim the sky truly is. You have all these bright, gorgeous images out there, but when you look through a telescope at an object, you might be able to see only the faintest whisper of an object. I hope one of these days we can create an HDR sky catalog, and using an exposure slider, you can brighten and darken the night sky to reveal objects in relative true luminosity.
> If there's another light source like that house then the camera will just focus on that and the sky it just a sheet of black.
In particular example I was using 12mm f2.0 (maybe aperture was closed a bit, don't remember) manual lens, focused on infinity, ISO of 1600, 26sec exposure time. As for lighting the gazebo-like-structure - there was small mosquito candle placed inside.
As for tips on making light "balanced" between two subjects - as others mentioned you could try stacking multiple photos. Or just find dark subject, set long exposure (30sec and above) and flash phone/flashlight like paintbrush over the subject. It doesn't have to be constantly lit, or it's just get overblown in comparison to sky which is way dimmer. But few seconds of flashlight from interesting angle (don't just stand behind camera, try lighting subject from side/under for shadows to be visible) may be enough so it'll look like it was light and not seem way too bright compared to stars.
I have a question about the galactic center. Can you actually see dimension to it in a suitably dark area, or does it not really pop without astrophotography?
>tfw got my scope so well collimated I was able to easily split Epsilon Lyrae (the Double-Double) and see diffraction patterns
Maybe I underestimated this little piece of junk.
Too bad globulars are still blurry. I need to try to restore and modify my Odyssey 13.1 inch scope and figure out how to lug it around in my coupe.
I am also curious. If it isn't already a thing can we make it happen? I cant PrepHole if I can't stargaze. >Shitty phone pic
Jupiter?
Then get fibre, move to somewhere there's fibre. Or just use the already available satellite internet. Don't frick over the entire planet and destroy the oldest leisure activity known to man all because of your selfish need to have the internet and LARP as a farmer.
Too late.
Anyways, they're in a 550km low earth orbit, so I don't know the math exactly, but shouldn't they only be visible for some time after the sun went down/up, then not be visible during most of the night as they're in the earth's shadow?
Surely, foto stacking software should also having got features to filter them out now. Assuming, as I haven't used them for a while.
It's an Orion SpaceProbe 130 (130mm/5.1" Aperture, 900mm FL). Cheap synta tube, got for $350 with an awful tripod during the pandemic. Stopped using it when I got a Startravel 120. Started using it again because my tripod and mount are better. I used it to get this 225x shot of the moon.
Also yes, that's how satellite flares work. Even still, depending on your latitude, where you're pointing, and the time of year, they could theoretically appear all night.
>Even still, depending on your latitude, where you're pointing, and the time of year, they could theoretically appear all night.
Yeah, I guess the further north or south, it would be more of a problem during summer when the sun doesn't actually go low below the horizon. Indeed.
Similar pic, 8" again. Gotta dig out those I made with DSL and adapter.
Thanks anon!
I will never have to move it more than 30 feet at a time, max, and will drive it to observation points so weight isn't on the list of concerns.
You might be able to get away with a larger scope with more aperture, but even still, the "8inch dob" currently occupies the astronomy sweet spot of price, weight, and aperture. And the fact most go for around $700 leaves you with extra to spend on quality accessories, such as actually good eyepieces, filters, or finders/TELRADs/etc.
>dob = Dobsonian
Thanks anons, I literally don't know shit about telescopes other than my friend and uncle have them and they're fricking amazing.
I basically live next to a west coast version of pikes peak except with much less light pollution (there are actually two "pikes peak" drive to mountains near me.
There used to be this old dude that would go up to the national park parking lot (entry is free if you go after 6pm) and he would set up in the parking lot and let people look through his telascope.
I aspire to become him when he's to old to do it anymore--and he's like 80 already.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>, I literally don't know shit about telescopes
Watch Ed Ting on youtube.
10 months ago
Anonymous
There's a lot to learn, when you get into it. Many different ways of looking at the stars, each with their pros and cons. And a massive rabbit hole of subcategories and variations for each category.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I don't want to master optical physics and cosmology
I just want to spend a grand to have a better look at the night sky while drinking from a flask and probably smoking a joint on the top of a mountain I just drove up in the middle of the night so I can meet strangers and pass out in my car.
10 months ago
Anonymous
ngmi
10 months ago
Anonymous
oh, I'll make it my dude
I'll make it with it to spare.
https://i.imgur.com/kkyPc0S.png
Okay, 8 inch dob then. Great for complete noobs, yet it finds its place as an essential component in many grandmaster observers' collections.
A good pair of binoculars should not be underestimated, either. You can get some 7x50s for under 100 and they're fantastic for scouting out the sky. I always bring my binocs with me when observing.
You will also want some high-quality eyepieces, one high-power (within 8-13mm), one low-power (within 23-35mm), both of which ought to have a high "apparent FoV" (higher is better, 68deg aFoV is pretty economical). Most scopes will come with some eyepieces, which are "fine" but usually have restrictive aFoVs.
A good barlow could be useful, but is not necessary. Barlows will change the power of any eyepiece installed in it (usually doubling, sometimes tripling it) and are an effective way to essentially "double" your eyepiece count and available magnifications (more, if you unscrew the actual barlow element from the housing and screw it into the filter threads of your eyepieces).
But definitely start with the scope and the binocs first. If you have leftover money, consider eyepieces.
Thanks for the rundown anon--I have a super nice pair of binoculars already
I'd go with a 10 but that's just me with a 6"
Also binoculars too. You can get cheap marine binoculars and they're great.
I think I'm going for a 10 inch...it's so fricking sexy it's unreal. I'm going to stare at Jupiter so hard It'll try to get a restraining order.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I'm going to stare at Jupiter so hard It'll try to get a restraining order.
FYI if you're going to be mostly hunting planets you don't need a huge mirror. Bigger mirrors make dim things bright, and planets are plenty bright already. They benefit from higher power scopes with large focal lengths.
Which one are you thinking of getting? Post a link so I can berate your choice of scope.
10 months ago
Anonymous
This, though you still need SOME aperture for planetary in order to have enough resolving power for those high magnifications. But at the same time, planets can get dull pretty quickly, so having the aperture for the truly dim objects is nice, and you can always stop down your aperture to decrease the amount of light, and filters for planetary and munar also exist.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I'm going to look at more than planets. Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope. Curious.
This, though you still need SOME aperture for planetary in order to have enough resolving power for those high magnifications. But at the same time, planets can get dull pretty quickly, so having the aperture for the truly dim objects is nice, and you can always stop down your aperture to decrease the amount of light, and filters for planetary and munar also exist.
I'm not going to just stare at plants my dude.
Yeah, seeing nebulae (sic!) in actual color is really cool. Worked on my 8", but of course bigger is always better for that stuff.
Plus you have to follow the light adaption rules, no bright light, only use a red lamp, set your phone's or tablet astronomical map software to red mode.
I use dim red-light already. I rarely use flashlights at night because I have crazy good low light vision.
I use the Astronometria 2000 books and use a red flashlight with these, but the books aren't cheap for sure
I already have the books. My brother studied astronomy as an undergraduate before moving to Civil Engineering. I have his old books which are more than good enough for me. I'm not trying to study Cephieds.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope.
There are good beginner scopes and there are absolutely trash department store toys that are known as Hobby Killers for their elevated ability to turn people off from the hobby. It's very much a hobby that requires at least a bit of cash to get into the door (not as much as Astrophotography, which requires literal thousands of dollars for even a basic entry-level setup), so seeing trash scopes being sold for a hundo which are inexplicably designed to provide their users the absolute worst experience possible (our 50mm scope can provide up to 566x magnification! wow! See the aliums fapping to human porn on mars!) is something that hurts my soul.
And it's not JUST department store scopes, too. Celestron managed to make a hobby killer that looks like an actually decent scope, but it's a Bird-Jones design (sacrifices optical quality for more focal length) and packages it with too many high-power eyepieces and barlows. The average user is gonna set it up, put some stuff in, and isn't going to see shit, then write off the scope, and the hobby itself, as being a waste of time.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks for the insight anon
I would hope a grand is enough to get something someone more knowledgeable than me would approve of, I'm not looking to flex on anyone.
https://i.imgur.com/4BCi41I.jpg
*uranometria how did I frick that up kek
[...]
Those books are all you'll ever need imo
Ohhhh, those are sexy
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope. Curious.
Where do you think you are?
10 months ago
Anonymous
newbie
10 months ago
Anonymous
Okay, 8 inch dob then. Great for complete noobs, yet it finds its place as an essential component in many grandmaster observers' collections.
A good pair of binoculars should not be underestimated, either. You can get some 7x50s for under 100 and they're fantastic for scouting out the sky. I always bring my binocs with me when observing.
You will also want some high-quality eyepieces, one high-power (within 8-13mm), one low-power (within 23-35mm), both of which ought to have a high "apparent FoV" (higher is better, 68deg aFoV is pretty economical). Most scopes will come with some eyepieces, which are "fine" but usually have restrictive aFoVs.
A good barlow could be useful, but is not necessary. Barlows will change the power of any eyepiece installed in it (usually doubling, sometimes tripling it) and are an effective way to essentially "double" your eyepiece count and available magnifications (more, if you unscrew the actual barlow element from the housing and screw it into the filter threads of your eyepieces).
But definitely start with the scope and the binocs first. If you have leftover money, consider eyepieces.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I'd go with a 10 but that's just me with a 6"
Also binoculars too. You can get cheap marine binoculars and they're great.
That's what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket. Try different activities when the skies aren't conducive to stargazing. Fishing, for example, is actually better on cloudy and rainy weekends like these.
Anyone have any tips on where to get thin wall aluminum tube to make a telescope tube? Some people say to use those heavy card forms for concrete but I'm iffy about using cardboard.
Any local fabrication shop or metal working shop will be able to get you something. My town is only 14,000 but there are three metal working shops here and any one of them can get tube stock in any material you want in any size available or they can roll a custom tube to specifications.
I don't know shit about astronomy but me and my metal working buddies go way back.
Yeah, seeing nebulae (sic!) in actual color is really cool. Worked on my 8", but of course bigger is always better for that stuff.
Plus you have to follow the light adaption rules, no bright light, only use a red lamp, set your phone's or tablet astronomical map software to red mode.
I'm going to look at more than planets. Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope. Curious.
[...]
I'm not going to just stare at plants my dude.
[...]
I use dim red-light already. I rarely use flashlights at night because I have crazy good low light vision.
[...]
I already have the books. My brother studied astronomy as an undergraduate before moving to Civil Engineering. I have his old books which are more than good enough for me. I'm not trying to study Cephieds.
I don't understand how these work and it pisses me off.
I have been trying to do nught photography for years and I can never get it to work. Nothing does. Light sources like this make everything work. No matter what I do with the settings and changing ISO or exposure nothing fricking results in photos like this. Nothing I change actually results in anything other than a completely black photo or a blown out sky where it looks like bombs are going off. If there's another light source like that house then the camera will just focus on that and the sky it just a sheet of black.
[...]
And this one just is insane. I don't understand how the hell this works. I've tried doing long exposures at night to get starlight that that didn't work either, and other lighsources like a campfire would blow out the long exposure photos and make them a sheet of yellow. Of course if anything moves you get a huge blur. But you just have a guy there and he's not blurry and yet you capured all this detail and color and it's not blown out. Yeah I'm pissed. Nothing I've tried works across multiple cameras over the years. Then I see people easily posting photos like this is normal.
https://i.imgur.com/xP4LGIA.png
You don't take a single long exposure to take multiple (sometimes hundreds) shorter exposures and stack them with autostakkert or Registax
this photo of the moon is a stack of a few hundred images captured through my Chinese astrophotography camera (SVBony something or other)
Here's an example
I'm not the guy that cares about pictures but >the following is sarcasm
basically learn Photoshop is what I got out of that
I took some more images and stacked them last Friday with my CCD instead of using my phone camera through the eyepiece.
First time I did some serious solar photography and it turned out pretty nice.
I also made a colorized version since the camera takes monochrome images which isn't such a big deal for solar observing since the Sun appears white anyway through the solar filter.
The combination of humidity-saturated atmosphere and the smoke from Canada is making it impossible to observe. Normally, the milky way is usually faintly glimpsed from my usual observing spot, and Polaris is visible with concentration from my city-bound workplace. But last week the conditions were so bad I couldn't even see Polaris from the place I can usually see some of the Milky Way from.
>Anon why are you outside late?!?? It's 2AM >My silent stargazing keeps the house awake
Another reason I move out and live by myself. Why are some people so bothered by others idgi
Right smack dab in the middle of sunset and sunrise. Or, in more technical terms, when the sun is at its closest to "nadir" (the point on the celestial sphere directly below you) for the night.
The two biggest concentrations of satellites are LEO satellites and Geostationary satellites. GS sats are too far away to give off bright flares, so we'll focus on LEO satellites. LEO is defined as below 1,200 miles ASL. I couldn't find data on the average orbital altitude for LEO satellites, but SpaceX Starlink satellites orbit roughly around 350 miles.
You see satellites because of sunlight reflecting off the body and solar panels. In order for Earth's shadow to obscure every LEO satellite in your entire sky, the sun has to be within 10 degrees of Nadir. In order to not see Starlink sats, the sun must be within 42 deg of Nadir. If you can even see Geostationary satellites, any GS sat within 8.4 degrees of the antisolar point will be in shadow.
That said, any location above 33.5 degrees (or below -33.5 degrees) in latitude will never be able to fully escape LEO satellite hell, as there will always be a portion of the night sky where satellites can exit Earth's shadow.
Thanks, that was pretty informative. I live in San Diego so I just might be far enough south for that cutoff. Anyway I think they should be putting good antireflective coatings on these satellites either way.
I forgot to mention that even if you fall into that zone, you'll only be able to escape it during certain times of the year during winter, peaking at the winter solstice. And only if you fall within the Tropics can you actually enjoy the longest period of occlusion, which maxes out at around 80 minutes.
And you still have MEO satellites to contend with as well.
if you live in SD, the terrestrial light pollution will vastly, vastly outstrip anything starlink or other sats do for your stargazing.
before astrological twilight there's still too much ambient light to really see anything worthwhile via small scope or naked eye/binos anyways.
it's honestly just a bunch of shitty "Elon man bad" fud.
strangely enough I have a better view of the sky where I live in SD than you might expect. There are enough mountains that a lot of light gets blocked out, it's still not great but despite living like 20 minutes from downtown I have a decent night sky.
I did see some satellites when I went camping near yosemite and that actually made me livid.
I thought most of the light pollution of concern was from atmospheric scatter, not the reflections. I can't imagine mountains doing anything if you're that close to the city.
I love you made a thread instead of posting your shit facebook status - on ya know, facebook.
>
What child doesn't know this? This is like the first thing anyone in the northern hemisphere learns about the night sky.
You obviously don't go out with friends. Nobody knows this unless I tell them
Maybe stop being friends with the undereducated?
Ok, here's a party trick that's one step up from "how to find the north star".
Start at the end of the handle. That's al-kaid. The second star in is Mizar. If you look close at that star, you'll see there are actually two stars there. the dim one is Alcor, and it's name, appropriately, means, "the overlooked one".
>it's name, appropriately, means, "the overlooked one"
A more precise translation would be the chad and virgin star.
also, in Arabic folk stories about the constellation, the handle of the big dipper are 3 daughters of a man who has died, and they are visiting the funeral bier of their father. (the cup of the dipper is the bier.)
No they don't. Every time I'm out with normies and I point out simple constellations like the big dipper, they never know them.
I have military friends and even they don't know how to navigate at night.
Well 90% or more of the military are mouth breathing morons so that makes sense
People in dense cities won't because they can't even see the stars
This kind of content is going to get shoved down your frickin' throat until you like it.
oWo
Bunp
ppl like u are the reason this board has such low traffic
The night sky is indeed a beautiful thing that makes usually up 50% of your view at night.
Has any anon ever tried a hike using the stars instead of a compass?
Same anon. Night sky is best sky.
I'm not competent enough to do this
>I'm not competent enough to do this
Here's south in your image.
I wasn't implying anything I just like the night sky is all.
I know nothing of constellations though so thank you anon, this is interesting :]
>I wasn't implying anything I just like the night sky is all.
I just wanted to have an excuse to post the image I spent 5mins on in paint.
All good man I'm glad you did
I literally have never identified the southern cross in the sky before until now. I feel like a doofus for that but thank you anon. I'm okay with the big dibber and orion but then I get lost
>I literally have never identified the southern cross in the sky before until now
To be honest I wouldn't be able to do it either without a star chart. I can point out all of the northern constellations but if you were to put me in the southern hemisphere I would not be able to identify a single one except for those that are on and to the north of the celestial equator, though they would appear upside down to me which would be pretty wonky.
It's funny to think that I would feel more at home in the northern hemisphere on Mars than in the bush of Australia or New Zealand.
how do you get good astrophotography with a foreground light like that? when we tried it, we could only get decent results with lights-out
you either need very vivid night sky (i.e. clear, no light pollution, bright milky way, etc) or very dark foreground, or both.
in this case I was way tf out beyond the mountains in Australia and although I was at a campground where people had lights on as you can see, the night sky was so bright out there that even with lighting around the sky still stands out.
it's just a wide open aperture and exposed for 30s. the acceptable exposure time changes depending on your focal length, but at 10mm I could let it run a long time
I think some people take a normal picture of the foreground and then take a long exposure and then you combine them.
this is true, otherwise it's often way too hard or flat out impossible to get a balanced exposure
No, I'm moronic.
i mean it's better than just picking a random direction but the best you can get with celestial (and no equipment) is like +-45 degrees from where you think you're heading. this assumes you have knowledge to actually pick out certain stars, know where they stars are in the sky at all times of the night, and have a clear view of the sky the entire time. even sailing which is the one place i've successfully used the stars/sun those are just a reference point and you are still primarily relying on the compass.
the lost art of finding our way is a good book on the history of navigation and goes over some of the different ways people used stars but it definitely drives home how vague most forms of navigation are.
>the best you can get with celestial (and no equipment) is like +-45 degrees
You can easily find north to within 1 degree. How hard is it to judge other angles from that?
Yeah I do it but I'm an amateur astronomer. If you can recognize the big dipper you're good. If you know where Scorpio (summer) or Orion (winter) is, that's generally in the southern sky
I've never not known where north was at any point in my life, sept maybe when I was in Tokyo. I take a compass incase I need it though.
As a navigator on a ship who knows astronavigation don't be moronic. You won't get a precise bearing. It's fun if you're hiking in a safe place and can afford to get lost for a while though
Based navigator, my merchant marine school dropped astronavigation. Kind of sad, luckily we still have meteo. You still go on contracts?
I do too but it also fills me with existential dread
>universe is billions of years old
>trillions of stars, 100 billion in our galazy alone
>plenty of time for mighty civilizations to rise and fall
>almost no chance we aren't being watched by someone
>almost no chance our solar won't someday be subject to a superior civilization
>the sun will ultimately expand enough to swallow the planet or at least burn it to a crisp
>nothing that happened here will have mattered
We have about 4 billion years to get off this rock. If we fail, we deserve irrelevance.
>he thinks we won't have figured out how to warp speed to other planets by then
>he thinks we'll survive the next 1000 years much less many-billions of years
pick one
If we put our resources towards it, we could already reach other star systems in our lifetime.
Why
To spread over the galaxy like a virus, duh.
On a more serious note, we're in a dangerous position. One super nova, gamma ray burst or just a couple hundred thousands tons of meteorite could extinguish the whole of humanity in mere hours.
Sure, we're mostly inane bullshit, but there's plenty of beauty that deserves to be preserved, plus the potential for much more.
So yes, we have to move our ass off this fricking planet asap, common sense demands it!
Compared to the useless bullshit we keep going down here, it doesn't even cost much.
That's the deal, right? Can't have a prison planet if people can go offworld
By this logic anything that happens anywhere doesn’t matter get laid you smelly nihilist
>have all the opportunity in the world to go outdoors
>stay indoors shitposting about being depressed on an anime website instead of going outdoors
It's Sunday night
oh hey, I stumbled across an old thread! This was posted on my birthday :3.
meme related, but t-bh I know what you mean
Why did ~~*god*~~ make me so ugly? Doesn't seem to serve any purpose besides suffering and loneliness.
fricken moron
Not an argument
Btw which god are we talking about? Humans have come up with quite a few.
Ea
He makes the most vapid creatures on earth (women) beautiful and men looking like lotr ogres. Don't remember exactly what those were called though. Yet even then he is only truly sought after by those same men he made ugly and gave horrible lives
>god is not allowed to punish bad people
>people are bad before they're born
>people only started existing when they were born
>people were born to exist
>people exist to shitpost on astronomy threads on PrepHole.
Same
Was backpacking up nort a couple of weekends ago. Ate some THC gummies and leaned back against a rock at night. Tripped on the Milky Way and the unfathomable smallness of my existence until I couldn't stand it any more and hide to hide my eyes.
no no, dont avoid it. walk forward into it like a kid fascinated by her first encounter with fire. you were this close to learning something. the burn is temporary
Dude, you were missing one thing that would have blown you away: A hammock.
If you wanted maximum existential crisis, you should bring a pair of binoculars and look at the Milky Way. You will trip balls and realize you're smaller than you ever imagined when you see what's in our galaxy that your eye can't see
why? I like it
>takes a picture
>cuts his head off
Good job, grandma.
I hope you're mentally prepared for SpaceX space billboards.
I hate watching them crawl across the sky like ticks
~~*Elons*~~ robots are coming for you, the rope is the only escape you have.
anti-satellite missiles are 2A
I hate when im looking into the night sky and see one of those fricking satelites zooming about and think for a split second it's a meteor or a planet. Not even the nigh sky is untouched by human technology.
I will curbstomp this fricking nerd if he starts posting his shitty reddit doge memes in the sky.
Same, they are so pretty and have cool mythology connected to them
Next it'll be fricking adverts in space. We need a treaty ASAP to stop this shit. Musk's fricking internet everywhere bullshit needs to gtfo.
Of all the sources of light pollution you pick on the most mild and probably one of the most useful, because you’re either an urbanite or Elon man bad.
Oh you need the internet in your offgrid LARP?
never said anything about offgrid anon.
but yeah, i need internet access.
Then get fibre, move to somewhere there's fibre. Or just use the already available satellite internet. Don't frick over the entire planet and destroy the oldest leisure activity known to man all because of your selfish need to have the internet and LARP as a farmer.
No.
>the oldest leisure activity known to man
astrophotography isn't that old, anon. You can still stargaze just fine with your eyes
Satcom is a fricking meme for consumer level infrastructure. Enjoy your 120ms ping and weather unreliability. Satellite internet has been a thing for ages and it never has worked well. Musky boy being a marketing pro doesn't change the inherent flaws at the microwave bands they are using.
If you're going to be doing two way communications over wireless, it's much better to use ground based 5g, where you'll get the speed with none of the lag. In the event you can't put 5g towers for some reason. I remember when rural towns would have a massive directional dish up on a hill, and that would be the "down" connection, and you'd have a phone line for your "up" connection dial up at the house. It was faster than straight dialup and before DSL.
>Satcom is a fricking meme for consumer level infrastructure. Enjoy your 120ms ping and weather unreliability.
okay, but we're talking StarLink here, not ViaSat. (although to be fair, ViaSat's ping times were ~600ms, best case scenario)
I've been using StarLinkfor over a year now, and it's been pretty much bulletproof in terms of reliability and speed (regardless of the weather). The latency isn't quite as good as cable in town, but it's more than serviceable -- much better performance than cellular or ViaSat (and still cheaper than both, with no real cap.)
Aside from cost, the problem with cellular is mainly topography. We're in the middle of a forest with 100+' trees in all directions, while being inside a valley. the signal booster i installed on our roof is already blocked by trees; after only a few years.
Satcom is good for very specific instances where traditional non-wireless communication isn't available or not cost effective to install. For your case, where you live in the middle of a forest away from everyone, Satcom is the best option assuming there's not 5g towers nearby. 5g's biggest downside over LTE is penetration, so trees can be an issue assuming you're reaching the limits of it's range.
People who are buying starlink when they have cable/fiber available is just dumb though. Wireless will NEVER EVER be superior to a hard connection in terms of service, period. The only reason to chose a wireless solution is price/availability concerns.
this shit scared the hell out of me on memorial day
>be innadesert near Mexico border
>buddies facing camp fire while I sit facing the sky watching stars/meteors/small satellites
>see a string of bright lights in a perfect line come zipping over the west horizon right at us.
>Me and on buddy start freaking out while the other cant see shit because he was staring at the fire
>buddy says its aliens while I say its a military convoy going to Mexico or something
>watch the lights zip right over the Mexican border then disappear before they even reach the southern horizon
>"holy shit anon we had an ayyy encounter"
>we later look it up and it turns out its just Elon's low altitude satellites we had heard of but never actually seen a photo of
>our faces when
Shit looks like a chinese dragon when they are all in a line. Or a ghost train.
Yea perfectly straight line but oddly spaced
I think I’ll remember the fist time I saw that for the rest of my life, a real holy shit I’m living in the future moment
>holy shit I’m living in the future
>and it's fricking terrible
Oooo. Cyberpunk.
Yeah for the first time in like 10 years I got away from light pollution and was kind of disgusted by just how many more satellites there were. When I was a kid they were almost difficult to spot but now it's like a fricking infestation of ants crawling across my field of vision
For me, it's the Pleiades.
Pleiadeeeeeez nuts
>home
Pardon the blurriness of the pic, my nikon didn't have a remote at the time so the long exposure shots get a little fiddly
nice
McRapebots?
>Be you in 2033
>Try to steal an old, rickety 2022 Tesla
>You accidentally set off the alarm
>The McPolice have already been notified
>They send out the camera drones and the McRape bots
>You see the McRape bots come running around the corner of block in your rearview mirror
>their wieners flapping as they run
>One of the Drones EMPs the car killing it and causing the doors to lock
>feeling of panic, and raw fear swells up in your chest right as the McRape bots make it the car
>They surround it and one smashes the windshield and grabs you by the collar
>You try to break free but it has a grip of iron
>Two other McRape bots come over and help the first pin you to the ground ass up
>The firs one rips of your clothing while the others restrain you
> As you strain your neck trying to see what is going on you see their 9 inch silicon dicks beginning to grow and harden
>The first one now mounting your naked ass, presses its rubber hardon into you
>Another one uses its wiener to gag you by gaping your throat with its 8 inch silicon girth
>The camera drones begin recording and live streaming to all the smart billboads nearby
>It begins thrusting using its McVax fluid mixed with blood for lube
>After 30 minutes it finishes, filling you with its McFlurry goodness
>the bots sprint away to the scene of another crime as quickly as they came
>You lay there a traumatized, McBuckbroken shell of a man
The future of policing is going to be interesting.
This is probucopypasta but I'd not seen it before and it made me laugh
Sorta looks like a Black Panther fist
>light pollution has all but guaranteed we will never see the sky the way we should
It sickens me bros
My backyard is bortle 4 but I have bortle 1 30 mins in any direction.
Here's a picture I took of orion's neb
Sometimes the moon is so bright I can't see properly the sky
but Sometimes the sky is just on point and you can even see the nebulas and new stars
good site to see the light pollution and help decide where to stargaze
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/
shame most of the world is light polluted
San Rafael Swell, UT
Anywhere with good darkness near SLC? Just moved here and feel like I never see the stars compared to where I used to live in TX, and that was right outside a major city
You'll have to go out into the west desert if you want really good darkness. Either the area northeast of Wendover, or out west past Delta. Pretty long drive from SLC, but it's worth it.
Sweet thanks anon
Or raft Desolation Canyon.
>tfw missed the G5 last week
How bright are auroras compared to the surrounding stars? Compared to light polluted skies?
Through naked eye you want to sit there and let your eyes adjust. Don't frick around with your camera constantly like a typical aurora nerd. Then the beams can get pretty bright and the depth the show up in the stratosphere is spectacular, makes you feel very small.
I mean thermosphere/exosphere, frick.
Here's a shitty picture of the Andromeda galaxy I took a few months ago through my telescope.
Another equally bad picture of Bode's galaxy. For anyone wondering what a galaxy looks like in person, they are very faint grey smudges. The colorful pictures you see on the internet are the result of long exposures and a bit of photo editing to bring out the colors.
>Bode's galaxy
Here's my picture of M81 that I took with my phone through the eyepiece. I was using an equatorial mount.
nice pics and respect for the effort taking them
M51
C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
Orion Nebula
starlink's great.
an extremely minor and temporary marring of the night sky, compared to all the other forms of light pollution -- there's a huge upside to it.
but you live in the city/suburbs, so you wouldn't understand.
Same. Pic from last year
One thing that is nice about being out in the sticks is seeing the stars at night. Just seeing the stars in the Milky Way is a simple and silent pleasure or the countryside.
>Just seeing the stars and the Milky Way is a simple and silent pleasure of the countryside.
Going on long backpacking trips and laying down at night to look up at the night sky in the middle of complete undeveloped wilderness is nice.
In Norway you can do that just by walking right outside your door.
It’s like that as well for lots of us rural bros in the US too.
Oh yeah? Well I can go to school without being shot. Take that. b***h.
>he doesn't know about rural schools
Oh, my sweet summer scandi
There are few places more comfy than white, middle class, rural US anon.
Norweigians are homosexual ass b***hes for no reason
Thats what I learned today
I'm sorry, that was rude of me. I was in a bad mood.
I have learned a great many things today anon, thank you
Hercules globular cluster through my 6" dob 🙂
Same telescope but I used a dedicated camera for this one. Tycho crater on the moon.
this is bortle class 6 btw
That's cool bæns! I just deal in normal lenses so nothing terribly exciting
The fact that you can do this just made me think of something.
Can you just....see all the just we left up there?
Sure we left a flag up there, but we also left bigger stuff like the luna rover and other junk. Can't we the average person with an expensive lens just zoom way the frick in on the junk we left on the moon.
not that anon but the moon moves across the sky too quickly. the closer you zoom into the surface the more it's flying past your lens. if you zoom in so close that your entire FOV is 1km or less it'll very super hard to snap a "still" photo, much less a still photo of a specific spot.
my understanding is that yes it's possible with highly specialized equipment but also that the best/clearest images of moon sites is accomplished from either satellites we deployed around the moon or the multi-billion dollar satellites around the earth than can accurately track their targets.
almost none of the google earth images are taken by satellites, the ones that are detailed enough to show street features (like cars for example) are aerial and not satellite. when you find these dead regions around the planet that haven't been updated in 10 years, those are blurry satellite images and you can barely make out city features.
tl:dr: you have get much closer to catch it or spent a buttload. these images DO EXIST but very few my amateurs
>Can you just....see all the just we left up there?
It's tricky. Easier would be to shine laser at reflectors and measure travel time back. the stuff is so small, so very small. and what
this guy said.
I prefer that it spins and turns into an O.
Cloudy night but I got to see the rings of Saturn for the first time.
My homie
Shit, sorry about the trip
Man I can't explain how good it is. I've posted a few times before about living in an alpine village in NE Victoria in Australia. I burned a huge pile of greenwaste last night and sat on a tree stump drinking a beer or 5 and staring at the ecliptic plane. At around midnight there was a bright star on the horizon and I was like "Oh here come dat boi...". Checked Stellarium. Right through the fire the sky was clear enough to see Saturn rising. "Oh shit whaddup!"
aurora australis is way better than borealis you cant change my mind
Hello again. A shitty picture I took while I was on lunch the other night. M13
Edited and stuff. Not bad for a phone camera eh?
Looks good anon!
I live in the Netherlands 🙁
Holy shit, wtf is up with that? Do you just get rid off excessive energy by pointing it at the sky? Is that whole homegrown business light poorly adjusted?
I'm in Switzerland, unless you're in one of the hotspots, it isn't too bad. As you can see from your Map (sure, most people live in the light), it's easy to get somewhere really dark.
Best stuff I've experienced was vacation in the greek northern sporades when all the power went out. No light for 50km+, a meteor shower overhead, absolutely insane. One goes down every couple seconds, the whole milky way just overhead. Pure bliss.
NTA, my dad is a qualified high sea (spelling, english fifth language) captain. I probably could extrude some information regarding the topic if so desired.
Cities + Largest port in Europe (Rotterdam), Amsterdam port is up there too along with Antwerp, general skyline lights, high population density, one of the largest airports of Europe and greenhouses upon greenhouses (if you live near them you have to close the curtains at night when there's clouds because of the orange glow they produce.)
Is there a way to reduce light pollution? So much of the sky has been washed out, and most haven't seen the actual night sky
Blackouts! Well, around here that doesn't happen too often.
Good point, if you look at the map though, there's a weird bright delta up there in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and such. Doesn't quite work out when you look at population density I believe.
>Blackouts! Well, around here that doesn't happen too often.
That was always the bright side of getting hit by a hurricane kek
Utah has some of the darkest skies in the country, but you'll need to drive a ways away from the city
>wtf is up with that?
What about it? The Rhine river and its delta are a very densely populated area, as is common for major rivers in the Old World.
Where is the map from?
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/
Me too. I've been debating getting telescope for my niece for her birthday because she's getting more into science stuff lately. But I don't know if it's really worth it to get one.
>Canadian smoke blocking out the entire sky
I don't live on the east coast, sorry.
The night sky is fricking beautiful, I bought a 8"/20cm dubsonian just to aim at some random stars.
(Bump)
Have you looked at M57/Ring Nebula? It's very easy to find.
Had to sell it after I moved to a light polluted place.
But I've checked out the messiers, seen binaries, nebulas in actual color, the Moon up close, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, their moons...
Kind of a freaky hobby, spending nights sitting outside, only using red light to keep light sensitivity of the eyes, but there are some breathtaking things to see.
Explain what you mean about the red light.
Red light diminishes your night vision the leastn
Yeah, you use read light to not lose your night vision, which takes like 20 minutes to fully establish. Astronomy software with maps and stuff also has a red mode because of that.
What‘s the best software for this? Are there any mobile apps I can look at while outside that will tell me what constellations/planets/nebulas I‘m looking at? Also, what‘s the best way to escape light pollution? I already live on the countryside but there seems to still be quite some pollution.
Sky Map, Stellarium I use.
Thanks
red is da fastest
Looking at the night sky under nods is pure kino
is there an amateur astronomy general anywhere on PrepHole or is this it?
This is pretty much it. PrepHole moves too fast with shitposts for one to exist, and the infrequent threads on astronomy related topics are more about the numbers than actual stargazing
I am also curious. If it isn't already a thing can we make it happen? I cant PrepHole if I can't stargaze.
>Shitty phone pic
They should update all the constellations to things that are relevant today. Like black penises and black men having sex
I do too.
Few photos from last summer.
And this one from same spot, different angle.
I don't understand how these work and it pisses me off.
I have been trying to do nught photography for years and I can never get it to work. Nothing does. Light sources like this make everything work. No matter what I do with the settings and changing ISO or exposure nothing fricking results in photos like this. Nothing I change actually results in anything other than a completely black photo or a blown out sky where it looks like bombs are going off. If there's another light source like that house then the camera will just focus on that and the sky it just a sheet of black.
And this one just is insane. I don't understand how the hell this works. I've tried doing long exposures at night to get starlight that that didn't work either, and other lighsources like a campfire would blow out the long exposure photos and make them a sheet of yellow. Of course if anything moves you get a huge blur. But you just have a guy there and he's not blurry and yet you capured all this detail and color and it's not blown out. Yeah I'm pissed. Nothing I've tried works across multiple cameras over the years. Then I see people easily posting photos like this is normal.
You don't take a single long exposure to take multiple (sometimes hundreds) shorter exposures and stack them with autostakkert or Registax
this photo of the moon is a stack of a few hundred images captured through my Chinese astrophotography camera (SVBony something or other)
Here's an example
Planets are short exposures (1/30-1/400th of a second, more or less), capturing widefield is quite a bit more involved.
This image of the big dipper asterism was captured with about 100 5-second exposures with a DSLR mounted to a stationary tripod. These are RAW CR2 images. While the sky is moving, the short focal length of the lens minimized it within the image. I specifically travelled to a location without many artificial light sources. I then stacked it all together in Deep Sky Stacker.
Notice how it kind of looks awful, and very red. Thankfully, this is a high bitdepth image, so we can do some work to it.
I put the image through Siril. Using color correction, noise reduction, etc. I'm able to virtually remove all of the awful red tint. The image is still really dim, though. But again, we're working with high bit-depth images, so we can correct for that.
Normally, most people would finalize their image by "stretching". Essentially, you take a small ranges of brightnesses within your image, and blow them up so they accompany the entire range of brightnesses of your display. I like to do things differently, though. I apply a mild Bloom filter to the image, then, using a tonemapper, I render out the image. This has the advantage of capturing the brightness of very bright stars (that would get clipped with a simple stretch) while still showcasing the dimmer stars.
I suppose the point I want to make is that astrophotography is rarely ever a point-and-click endeavor, and in many ways, it's an art form. This is especially true for truly dim deep space objects, where False Color is frequently used to demonstrate and illuminate gas clouds and regions of a specific chemical.
that looks great! I'm impressed at what you have accomplished there.
Thanks. I hope to one day employ a similar workflow for an actual DSO target, like a galaxy. One of the things I find most compelling is just how dim the sky truly is. You have all these bright, gorgeous images out there, but when you look through a telescope at an object, you might be able to see only the faintest whisper of an object. I hope one of these days we can create an HDR sky catalog, and using an exposure slider, you can brighten and darken the night sky to reveal objects in relative true luminosity.
Pinwheel is not my photo.
> If there's another light source like that house then the camera will just focus on that and the sky it just a sheet of black.
In particular example I was using 12mm f2.0 (maybe aperture was closed a bit, don't remember) manual lens, focused on infinity, ISO of 1600, 26sec exposure time. As for lighting the gazebo-like-structure - there was small mosquito candle placed inside.
As for tips on making light "balanced" between two subjects - as others mentioned you could try stacking multiple photos. Or just find dark subject, set long exposure (30sec and above) and flash phone/flashlight like paintbrush over the subject. It doesn't have to be constantly lit, or it's just get overblown in comparison to sky which is way dimmer. But few seconds of flashlight from interesting angle (don't just stand behind camera, try lighting subject from side/under for shadows to be visible) may be enough so it'll look like it was light and not seem way too bright compared to stars.
ahhhh, milky way.... home...
I have a question about the galactic center. Can you actually see dimension to it in a suitably dark area, or does it not really pop without astrophotography?
You can see it pretty well in the dark with just your eyes.
It has some form but most of it is hidden, the Sagittarius star cloud acts as a window if you wish to see what the center looks like.
I hope someone bumps this great outdoors thread soon.
>want to look at night sky
>It's full of smoke last few weeks
kill me
>tfw got my scope so well collimated I was able to easily split Epsilon Lyrae (the Double-Double) and see diffraction patterns
Maybe I underestimated this little piece of junk.
Too bad globulars are still blurry. I need to try to restore and modify my Odyssey 13.1 inch scope and figure out how to lug it around in my coupe.
4 inch?
Jupiter?
Too late.
Anyways, they're in a 550km low earth orbit, so I don't know the math exactly, but shouldn't they only be visible for some time after the sun went down/up, then not be visible during most of the night as they're in the earth's shadow?
Surely, foto stacking software should also having got features to filter them out now. Assuming, as I haven't used them for a while.
Pic, moon through 8" with phone.
It's an Orion SpaceProbe 130 (130mm/5.1" Aperture, 900mm FL). Cheap synta tube, got for $350 with an awful tripod during the pandemic. Stopped using it when I got a Startravel 120. Started using it again because my tripod and mount are better. I used it to get this 225x shot of the moon.
Also yes, that's how satellite flares work. Even still, depending on your latitude, where you're pointing, and the time of year, they could theoretically appear all night.
Nice!
>Even still, depending on your latitude, where you're pointing, and the time of year, they could theoretically appear all night.
Yeah, I guess the further north or south, it would be more of a problem during summer when the sun doesn't actually go low below the horizon. Indeed.
Similar pic, 8" again. Gotta dig out those I made with DSL and adapter.
I have 1,000 USD
tell me what telescope to buy
t. redneck with 1k for a telescope and acksess' to places with almost no light pollution.
8 inch dob
Perfect balance of aperture and actually being able to lug it around.
Thanks anon!
I will never have to move it more than 30 feet at a time, max, and will drive it to observation points so weight isn't on the list of concerns.
You might be able to get away with a larger scope with more aperture, but even still, the "8inch dob" currently occupies the astronomy sweet spot of price, weight, and aperture. And the fact most go for around $700 leaves you with extra to spend on quality accessories, such as actually good eyepieces, filters, or finders/TELRADs/etc.
>dob = Dobsonian
Thanks anons, I literally don't know shit about telescopes other than my friend and uncle have them and they're fricking amazing.
I basically live next to a west coast version of pikes peak except with much less light pollution (there are actually two "pikes peak" drive to mountains near me.
There used to be this old dude that would go up to the national park parking lot (entry is free if you go after 6pm) and he would set up in the parking lot and let people look through his telascope.
I aspire to become him when he's to old to do it anymore--and he's like 80 already.
>, I literally don't know shit about telescopes
Watch Ed Ting on youtube.
There's a lot to learn, when you get into it. Many different ways of looking at the stars, each with their pros and cons. And a massive rabbit hole of subcategories and variations for each category.
I don't want to master optical physics and cosmology
I just want to spend a grand to have a better look at the night sky while drinking from a flask and probably smoking a joint on the top of a mountain I just drove up in the middle of the night so I can meet strangers and pass out in my car.
ngmi
oh, I'll make it my dude
I'll make it with it to spare.
Thanks for the rundown anon--I have a super nice pair of binoculars already
I think I'm going for a 10 inch...it's so fricking sexy it's unreal. I'm going to stare at Jupiter so hard It'll try to get a restraining order.
>I'm going to stare at Jupiter so hard It'll try to get a restraining order.
FYI if you're going to be mostly hunting planets you don't need a huge mirror. Bigger mirrors make dim things bright, and planets are plenty bright already. They benefit from higher power scopes with large focal lengths.
Which one are you thinking of getting? Post a link so I can berate your choice of scope.
This, though you still need SOME aperture for planetary in order to have enough resolving power for those high magnifications. But at the same time, planets can get dull pretty quickly, so having the aperture for the truly dim objects is nice, and you can always stop down your aperture to decrease the amount of light, and filters for planetary and munar also exist.
I'm going to look at more than planets. Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope. Curious.
I'm not going to just stare at plants my dude.
I use dim red-light already. I rarely use flashlights at night because I have crazy good low light vision.
I already have the books. My brother studied astronomy as an undergraduate before moving to Civil Engineering. I have his old books which are more than good enough for me. I'm not trying to study Cephieds.
>Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope.
There are good beginner scopes and there are absolutely trash department store toys that are known as Hobby Killers for their elevated ability to turn people off from the hobby. It's very much a hobby that requires at least a bit of cash to get into the door (not as much as Astrophotography, which requires literal thousands of dollars for even a basic entry-level setup), so seeing trash scopes being sold for a hundo which are inexplicably designed to provide their users the absolute worst experience possible (our 50mm scope can provide up to 566x magnification! wow! See the aliums fapping to human porn on mars!) is something that hurts my soul.
And it's not JUST department store scopes, too. Celestron managed to make a hobby killer that looks like an actually decent scope, but it's a Bird-Jones design (sacrifices optical quality for more focal length) and packages it with too many high-power eyepieces and barlows. The average user is gonna set it up, put some stuff in, and isn't going to see shit, then write off the scope, and the hobby itself, as being a waste of time.
Thanks for the insight anon
I would hope a grand is enough to get something someone more knowledgeable than me would approve of, I'm not looking to flex on anyone.
Ohhhh, those are sexy
>Odd that someone who claims to enjoy astronomy would mock an amateur for having an amateur scope. Curious.
Where do you think you are?
newbie
Okay, 8 inch dob then. Great for complete noobs, yet it finds its place as an essential component in many grandmaster observers' collections.
A good pair of binoculars should not be underestimated, either. You can get some 7x50s for under 100 and they're fantastic for scouting out the sky. I always bring my binocs with me when observing.
You will also want some high-quality eyepieces, one high-power (within 8-13mm), one low-power (within 23-35mm), both of which ought to have a high "apparent FoV" (higher is better, 68deg aFoV is pretty economical). Most scopes will come with some eyepieces, which are "fine" but usually have restrictive aFoVs.
A good barlow could be useful, but is not necessary. Barlows will change the power of any eyepiece installed in it (usually doubling, sometimes tripling it) and are an effective way to essentially "double" your eyepiece count and available magnifications (more, if you unscrew the actual barlow element from the housing and screw it into the filter threads of your eyepieces).
But definitely start with the scope and the binocs first. If you have leftover money, consider eyepieces.
I'd go with a 10 but that's just me with a 6"
Also binoculars too. You can get cheap marine binoculars and they're great.
Largest dobsonian you can comfortably move.
I really just want to go into the middle of the desert and see the sky
>can only take the 'scope out on weekends
>cloudy every single weekend for the past 2 months
Hatred increasing
That's what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket. Try different activities when the skies aren't conducive to stargazing. Fishing, for example, is actually better on cloudy and rainy weekends like these.
>tfw smoke and murky atmosphere is making DSO difficult
Ree, etc. Might as well use this time splitting doubles.
this smoke has been shit for months and I hate it.
Anyone have any tips on where to get thin wall aluminum tube to make a telescope tube? Some people say to use those heavy card forms for concrete but I'm iffy about using cardboard.
Any local fabrication shop or metal working shop will be able to get you something. My town is only 14,000 but there are three metal working shops here and any one of them can get tube stock in any material you want in any size available or they can roll a custom tube to specifications.
I don't know shit about astronomy but me and my metal working buddies go way back.
Yeah, seeing nebulae (sic!) in actual color is really cool. Worked on my 8", but of course bigger is always better for that stuff.
Plus you have to follow the light adaption rules, no bright light, only use a red lamp, set your phone's or tablet astronomical map software to red mode.
I use the Astronometria 2000 books and use a red flashlight with these, but the books aren't cheap for sure
*uranometria how did I frick that up kek
Those books are all you'll ever need imo
well jokes on you because that's all god's jizz
The scope I used. But I imported it for like 200.- less, heh.
Has anyone else been observing the sun for the last couple of days?
There's a decent sized sunspot on the surface right now.
I'm not smart enough to do this myself
I check the SDO feed on NOAA though
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
2 ways
Solar filter securely fastened to aperture of telescope
or
Eyepiece projection through a disposable scope or bi/monoculars.
holy shit that's so fricking sexy
thanks anon
I'm not the guy that cares about pictures but
>the following is sarcasm
basically learn Photoshop is what I got out of that
I took some more images and stacked them last Friday with my CCD instead of using my phone camera through the eyepiece.
First time I did some serious solar photography and it turned out pretty nice.
I also made a colorized version since the camera takes monochrome images which isn't such a big deal for solar observing since the Sun appears white anyway through the solar filter.
I fear the sun.
I too am a ginger
Such a lovely thread btw.
The combination of humidity-saturated atmosphere and the smoke from Canada is making it impossible to observe. Normally, the milky way is usually faintly glimpsed from my usual observing spot, and Polaris is visible with concentration from my city-bound workplace. But last week the conditions were so bad I couldn't even see Polaris from the place I can usually see some of the Milky Way from.
Still more than a week until the sun sets here, so I still have to wait about a month to see any other stars.
>Anon why are you outside late?!?? It's 2AM
>My silent stargazing keeps the house awake
Another reason I move out and live by myself. Why are some people so bothered by others idgi
I fricking love the North Cascades bros. Greatest area in the lower 48
huh
Can't see the stars with my eyes. All I see are eye floaters and noise (like on an old TV). Why is this?
do you live in a big city ?
The floaters go away if you drink enough.
Is there any time period of the night in which you're less likely to see satellites?
Right smack dab in the middle of sunset and sunrise. Or, in more technical terms, when the sun is at its closest to "nadir" (the point on the celestial sphere directly below you) for the night.
The two biggest concentrations of satellites are LEO satellites and Geostationary satellites. GS sats are too far away to give off bright flares, so we'll focus on LEO satellites. LEO is defined as below 1,200 miles ASL. I couldn't find data on the average orbital altitude for LEO satellites, but SpaceX Starlink satellites orbit roughly around 350 miles.
You see satellites because of sunlight reflecting off the body and solar panels. In order for Earth's shadow to obscure every LEO satellite in your entire sky, the sun has to be within 10 degrees of Nadir. In order to not see Starlink sats, the sun must be within 42 deg of Nadir. If you can even see Geostationary satellites, any GS sat within 8.4 degrees of the antisolar point will be in shadow.
That said, any location above 33.5 degrees (or below -33.5 degrees) in latitude will never be able to fully escape LEO satellite hell, as there will always be a portion of the night sky where satellites can exit Earth's shadow.
Thanks, that was pretty informative. I live in San Diego so I just might be far enough south for that cutoff. Anyway I think they should be putting good antireflective coatings on these satellites either way.
I forgot to mention that even if you fall into that zone, you'll only be able to escape it during certain times of the year during winter, peaking at the winter solstice. And only if you fall within the Tropics can you actually enjoy the longest period of occlusion, which maxes out at around 80 minutes.
And you still have MEO satellites to contend with as well.
if you live in SD, the terrestrial light pollution will vastly, vastly outstrip anything starlink or other sats do for your stargazing.
before astrological twilight there's still too much ambient light to really see anything worthwhile via small scope or naked eye/binos anyways.
it's honestly just a bunch of shitty "Elon man bad" fud.
strangely enough I have a better view of the sky where I live in SD than you might expect. There are enough mountains that a lot of light gets blocked out, it's still not great but despite living like 20 minutes from downtown I have a decent night sky.
I did see some satellites when I went camping near yosemite and that actually made me livid.
I thought most of the light pollution of concern was from atmospheric scatter, not the reflections. I can't imagine mountains doing anything if you're that close to the city.
Orion constellation is te closest thing to some kind of god
fingers crossed yellowish green bortle is fairly good