Dan's Amateurish Astronomy

Archive for the ‘Equipment’ Category

Well that was fun. I had forgotten just how *dark* skies can get! Thankfully the moon didn’t rise until late in the evening, which left plenty of visual opportunities before bed.

Some of the objects I saw:

• Saturn and Titan with my 30×100 binos – it was easy to make out the rings (though not separate rings), and Titan was there in all its miniscule glory
• It was dark enough to see the Coal Stack
• I reckon I actually saw Eta Carinae without the need of the binos, and of course seeing it through the binos was great fun
• A satellite. I shall need to check stellarium to try to figure out which one it was
• some meteors

So I’m going camping up at Poona for this easter long weekend. Should be fun; fishing, relaxing, reading, relaxing, playing board games, swimming… oh and relaxing.
The skies shouldn’t be too bad except for the moon still being between about 83% and 64% luminous over the 3 nights we’re there.

My star gazing goals for the trip are:

• Obtaining data (and even submitting a report if possible) at the location for the globeatnight.org project
• Trying to pick out Saturn’s rings with my 30×100 binoculars.
• Maybe having a look at Eta Carinae or some of the other bright DSOs visible at this time of year.

I saw the ISS for about 3 minutes on Sunday April 10th. huzzah! I know it’s been there for years, and will be there for many more, but hey: this is what amateur astronomy is all about!
I’m surprised it was so bright. I saw it with the naked eye and also trained my 30×100 binos on it. It seemed to just be a bright blob; not sure whether i was out of focus, or whether my eyes were failing me (I had been inside all day staring at a computer, and for a good 5-10 mins before the sighting time everything at a distance was doubled)

Unfortunately the long April 11 sighting opportunity was a no-go due to clouds.

So it would appear there is a good 5-minute opporunity to view the ISS from Brisbane / Gold Coast region next week. Hopefully my Arnold Schwarzenegger arms (a pre-requisite for owning 30×100 binoculars without a tripod) will be up to the challenge of tracking it! I don’t think I’d be able to track it with the telescope very easily; that would involve leaning over on a weird angle, trying to find the sat through the finder scope, getting the focus right, using an appropriate eyepiece, and guiding it by hand.

We shall see.

A great night to be viewing the heavens: the temperature has dropped off, not a cloud in the sky, not too much of a breeze. Visual magnitude is about a 6, and earth hour was on lol.

Tonight I saw with my 1200mm 8″ dob (with 25 and 10mm eyepieces):

1. Saturn and four of its moons! Titan, Tethys, Dione and Rhea.  :O
   
2. Eta Carinae
   
3. Tarantula nebula
   
4. the Alpha Centauri double star
   
5. tracked a satellite for a bit across the sky with my 25mm ep from southwest to south! Thankfully I have Stellarium and there just happened to be a sat passing over the right spot at the right time – Radio-Sputnik 15!
   

Awesomesauce!

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights

I love it when NASA does this sort of thing… have a watch, it’s really good.
Here’s a direct download of the 400mb 640×480 mpeg file.

On another note it is probably worth mentioning that I saw Neptune for the first time with my 25×100 binoculars a couple of weeks ago (well, a few months ago)… and yes, it is blue!
I also saw the Galilean moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.  They were just dots, but still it was amazing. The binoculars were strong enough, though, to show Jupiter quite clearly as a small disc rather than a dot too.