The Spankmeister's Guide to the Galaxies

[tot_Ou_tard]

Wow, Planky! I just saw your 'scope
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a36/axepilot/100_0579.jpg
in the What Makes You Happy thread.

I'd like to hear more about the celestial objects that you lust after. Neme them nebulae, & pics too if you've got 'em!

[Robert]

I saw on the news there had been UFO sightings in Texas. I bet Spanky took em all down with that mortar of his... :)

[Plank_Spanker]

LOL! :D

The scope is not set up for photography, but I want to do it at some point. My objects of desire are called DSO's - Deep Sky Objects. That's galaxies, clusters, nebulae and the such. Visually, you don't see those amazing colors you see on the pictures - they're more like "faint fuzzies". The pictures that look so amazing are long exposure stacked frames that take hours to expose. It's still a treat to know that you are looking at light that left said galaxy 30 million years ago - and you're looking at an entire galaxy full frame.

Sort of puts life's little problems in perspective.....................

It's a great hobby, and you don't need a scope like mine to get out and view the wonders. I just "kick it up a notch". :D

Here's one pic right through the eyepiece of a lunar ecplipse. It was also through a building cloud layer, so it isn't that great:

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a36/axepilot/Eclipsehalfway-NS11.jpg

[just strum]

Plank,

I also live on the edge of a State Park so we get pretty dark over here in strumland. Last night I walk out back and the sky is crystal clear and I thought to myself, "Boy, I wish I had Plank's Gatling gun right now".

That picture makes me want a new toy, but not this year.

[tot_Ou_tard]

I've been called a Deep Sky Object before. My wife usually puctuates any statement that I make with

"Yes, but you're not from this planet." :D

What was the farthest (read most ancient) object that you've seen? Do these fill up the view on your gattling gun, or are they itsy-bitsy?

[Plank_Spanker]

I honestly can't say what the most distant object is I've ever viewed. I'd have to look through my logs. With DSO's, you really can't push a large amount of magnification. The incoming light is dim enough that it would be squashed by it. Some galaxies are just at the edge of your vision, some are so large, you can't get the entire thing in the field of view - the Andromeda galaxy is like that.

The Orion nebula is another spectacular sight that won't fit into the FOV. It extends like wings. The Ring nebula is an awesome sight - a smoke ring suspended in space.

Planet's are different. On a night with great seeing conditions, I can push up the magnification and see some good detail. Saturn is always smile inducing. On a good night, I can see the Cassinni division between the rings and cloud detail on it's surface. I can make out different land masses on Mars and Jupiter's cloud belts and Great Red Spot.

The Moon - awesome on a clear night. I can literally look into craters.

There is just so much to see up there, and I have my favorites that I revisit.

Now I'm jonesing to take the scope out, but it's cloudy here.........

[Tone2TheBone]

Wow. I'm still impressed by Spanky's rig! Even the lingo man that's something that I can totally get into. I was telling Spank that my youngest daughter and I love to star gaze. Since I'm "almost" caught up with my guitar stuff I may just start investing in some sweet telescope soon. Been wanting to get one for awhile now.

[tot_Ou_tard]

What impresses me about amateur astronomy is the hands-on (or should I say eyes-on) experience of our deep neighborhood. There's a real sense of place in that.

[Plank_Spanker]

I dabbled with amateur astronomy as a kid and liked it. I decided to get back into it about ten years ago and bought an decent little reflector that really got me into it again. A couple of years later, I bought the "Big Glass" and spent another year tricking it out. The scope mounted on top isn't finder. It's a rich field scope - I can get a wide field view of the field I'm in to go along with what I'm viewing on the main tube. The little box with the HUD glass is a Telrad finder. It projects a calibrated bulleye on the glass that I can point to use as a finder. The velcro you see on the tubes is actually dew heater strips. I heat the optics to keep dew from forming on them - a neccessity for all-nighters. The wire bundles at the bottom are the dew heaters leads and they connect to two controller boxes where I control the amount of heat that I need. I counter-weighted the tube to compensate for all of that gear mounted on top.

I use a binocular viewer that really sweetens the experience -no squinting one-eyed into an eyepiece. It gives you the impression that you're floating in space. I have two kits of eyepieces (panoptics and plossls) to choose from depending on what I'm viewing and what magnification I need. Believe it or not, most of my viewing is done at fairly low magnification since I'm dealing with very dim objects.

Once I get the scope aligned, it's just a matter of entering the object I wish to view into the hand controller and the scope drives right to it. I use a planetarium program on my PC to develop my list of what I want to see, and it's just a matter of working through the list. I keep a log of every night's viewing to refer back to. It also forces me to really work the view I have and write down all of the detail I'm seeing.

Most folks have no idea what's over their heads on a clear night. It's filled with wonders.........................:D

Here's another shot of the scope:

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a36/axepilot/100_0578.jpg

[tjcurtin1]

I was an amatuer stargazer as a kid, too. This OCtober, I took my class camping for two days in the New Hamphire mountains so that we could see a really dark sky as part of our astronomy block. It was magnificent - they were really awed! THe milky Way was streaming overhead, and it was almost difficult to find some of the constellations we had studied because so many stars were visible. We had some binocs, but our study was naked-eye based - just giving the kids a snse of the sky over their heads, and the movement of the stars, sun, moon and planets over the course of the year. It was a great experience.

[Plank_Spanker]

I need to get some decent binoculars. When I'm out with the scope, I don't spend all my time at the eyepieces. Sometimes, I like to sit in lounge chair and just take it all in naked eye. Binos would be great for that and a quick peek without having to set up the scope.