Any Astronomy Buffs/backyard Astronomers on TGO?

[RobertNashville]

Just thought I'd ask if we have any astronomy buffs/armature astronomers here on TGO?

My first exposure to astronomy was as a kid in the early 60's when I talked my dad into buying me a very used refactor that wasn't much but it allowed me to see the moon and a few planets. I was also into model rocketry at the time as well. I got my first taste of a "real" telescope as a freshman in high school. One of my classes was "Earth Science" and a teacher that was, well, just one of those you can't forget. The school had a nice 12" Celestron reflector that I'm sure at the time, was a significant hunk of change for the school system. That was the '69-'70 school year and as some of you may remember, there was total solar eclipse over a good part of North America in March of 1970 - my teacher, his son, myself and another classmate traveled from Ohio to North Carolina in a VW wagon so that we would be in the event path; camping out the night before...I'm sure in today's atmosphere such a trip wit one male teacher and three teen boys could never happen!

Anyway, while I never lost interest (I kept my subscription to Sky & Telescope going for several years) life got in the way and thoughts of building a backyard observatory and making great discoveries were replaced by military service and exotic ports of call; learning how to work on what was then fairly sophisticated radar and missile guidance systems.

An honorable discharge almost a decade later, a few degrees and an career in accounting/finance/financial modeling using the "new" personal computer at a time when most accounting was done with 13 column pads and mainframe systems filled in the intervening years. Although I've "retired" from two major corporations I still work full-time as the assistant controller of a large manufacturing plant.

I don't have any equipment right now but will likely be buying something pretty soon. One of the challenges is that I live pretty close to a metro area with plenty of ambient light pollution so I know that's going to be a challenge until I can find a location where I can get out in the country a bit...I've been far enough away from man-made light sources to have a pretty good idea of what we city/suburban dwellers miss every night!

So...anyone here with similar interests or am I just an oddball? Oh wait; maybe I shouldn't have asked that! :)

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I don't know details about the nashville amateur astronomy scene, but bought a telescope from a nashville fella a few years ago and he told me there is a fairly active, fairly large user group there. Those kinda groups are very useful if you are "sociable". I'm not particularly sociable and don't ever go anywhere or do anything, so never joined the chattanooga group, or know anything about them.

 

One thing they will typically do is have "star parties" to show off different equipment and views to school kids and the general public. Those are often held in urban accessible places, like maybe a bunch of scopes set up in a football field or a park, so you can walk around and look thru lots of scopes and see lots of scope designs close up, and talk to the owners. They will also have star parties in campgrounds and such, farther away out of the city lights, lots of people weekend camping with scopes set up, staying up most of the night.

 

I haven't set up the scopes lately. It is usually best in cold weather, so maybe I'll do some viewing later this fall. If I ever actually go camping under dark skies, will carry a scope. In the suburban back yard sometimes if the sky is fairly clear, you can see some pretty good stuff in spite of the city lights. My big scope is kinda heavy to carry a long distance. Have to go to some trouble taking it past the back yard, and my back yard has so many trees that I can't see much sky. Have the big scope permanently set up on a wheeled cart so I can roll it out of the basement onto the back pad. Recently we cut some of the scrub trees in the "near" back woods and can see a little more sky nowadays. There are about three more I mean to cut, and then most of the "core" of the sky will be visible. I want to rip into boards all the scrub trees we already cut before I finish off that last three.

 

Smaller scopes are convenient to tote around without feeling like you are moving music equipment to do a gig, or moving refrigerators or whatever. But especially in urban skies, you can't see deep space objects very well. The biguns can pick out deep space objects in clear urban skies, but are heavy.

 

I like the computerized scopes. You can easily align em to the sky, guide them pressing buttons on the remote control, and it will auto-aim to any notable object that is above the horizon. When I got the first scope since I was a kid a few years ago, got a celestron computerized 102 mm (4" objective) refractor. It is a decent enough totable scope, but I'd aim it at galaxies and nebulas, and couldn't see a damn thing in urban skies. Could get good views of the moon and planets, and bright objects like the belt of orion or the pliades. So later on got a Celestron CPC computerized 11" SCT. Now even under clear urban skies, I could easily see deep sky objects with the 11" scope, but it ain't exactly "grab and go" size.

 

After I "knew what I was looking for" using the 11" scope, discovered that I could pick out the same objects with the 4" refractor. Just in the little scope, the objects are so dim and low-contrast that unless you know you are looking for a particular tiny low-contrast smudge, you might think it is dust on the eyepiece or a bit of misty cloud rather than a galaxy or nebula. So it takes some practice to identify what you are looking for, especially in small scopes.

 

The quality of the objective lens or mirror matters, but IMO the quality of the eyepieces matters more. That is controversial and many folks believe the opposite. But I think I can see better views with a middlin-price but "decent" objective paired with an excellent eyepiece, compared to the views from a real-excellent objective paired with a cheap eyepiece.

 

On my CPC 1100, I piggyback a couple of smaller scopes. An 80mm refractor and a 50mm refractor. "relatively cheap" refractors which I've done quite a bit of modification on. They are all mounted so they point at the exact same target. I use the 50mm refractor to give a 3 to 6 degree view of the sky (depending on eyepiece), and the 80mm refractor to give about a 1 to 4 degree view of the sky, and the 11" scope runs from about 70X up to 600X magnification and isn't much good for more than a couple degrees field of view max. I like doing that so I can see a piece of sky in three different states of "zoom" without constantly juggling eyepieces in a single scope.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[RobertNashville]

One of the things I'm struggling with is what type and what size scope to buy. I really like the size for price benefits of a Dob But I also want something that I can easily move around since I'm only going to be able to do a fairly small amount of observing from my backyard.

I have learned that there is a program conducted by Middle Tennessee State a couple Of evenings each month that is open to the public that I'm going to check out!

[Mechanic_X]

Cumberland Astronomical Society does the "star parties". I haven't been in a while. I assume they still do it once a month. Last time was when Jupiter was close. It was really neat to see.

[Mechanic_X]

Bledsoe Creek State Park in Gallatin. Tomorrow(14th) at dusk. I may try and make it.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

That is why I mentioned that sometime this fall the nashville amateurs will most likely have a public star party. Excellent chance to look thru and perhaps even get hands on with a big variety of telescopes. A couple hours at a star party might be better than many hours of web research, though it pays to study anything as much as possible.

One minor thing about public star parties (from what I've read, having never attended one)-- The nicest eyepieces are dang expensive, and often at star parties they will bring their "good but not the best" eyepieces so it won't be so annoying if a kid gets fingerprints or even ice cream all over a $500 eyepiece. Or if it gets dropped or stolen. So when looking thru star party scopes, figger the view in a particular scope is probably gonna be even better with preemo eyepieces.

Dobs are the best bang for the buck, not too heavy versus aperture, purt rugged, etc. I've never used a Dob. If I had money and storage space wouldn't mind having one. 12" is a good size for a dob. Not too big and big enough to see most stuff. If you get a smaller one you will most likely get a bigger one later, so 12" might stave off GAS gear acquisition syndrome. The short focal length large dobs have the biggest potential light gathering with widest potential field of view and manageable size. But a larger F4 or F5 dob will need a field corrector lens to avoid "coma" in the periphery of the view. The phenom of stars in the periphery looking like lines rather than points.

Dobs require constant manual guiding to keep an object in view (though you can get gadgets that will auto guide). Also with any non-computerized scope, you actually have to learn the sky and refer to sky maps to find objects of interest. Orion and maybe others sell computer assisted object finding dobs, and even computer assisted tracking once an object is acquired.

I'm just lazy and picked up amateur astronomy as a relaxing light-study pastime. If the computer can find what I want to look at, why bother to learn the sky in minute detail?

[RobertNashville]

Bledsoe Creek State Park in Gallatin. Tomorrow(14th) at dusk. I may try and make it.

Darn...I've got friend in from Knoxville for dinner tomorroe night. :(

 

Oh well...it looks like there are opportunities out there...I just have to find them!