The Universe

[Newbornbairn]

On 07/07/2020 at 13:10, tamthebam said:

The Horizon programme on Pluto that was on last night is worth catching up with if you missed it 

Rather than a dull frozen waste that could be twinned with Harthill it is a more interesting place than people thought 

Just watched it - wow! Organic compounds, liquid water, ice volcanos. 

[tamthebam]

I managed to see the comet last night- it was a bit faint but I saw it through binoculars just above a bank of cloud. It looked very comet-like i.e. a dirty iceball with a wispy tail.

I also looked at Jupiter for the first time in my life. My binoculars aren't particularly powerful but I could make out the disc and the Jovan moons looked like little stars next to it. I feel inspired to have a look through a telescope now.

[Dee Man]

59 minutes ago, tamthebam said:

I managed to see the comet last night- it was a bit faint but I saw it through binoculars just above a bank of cloud. It looked very comet-like i.e. a dirty iceball with a wispy tail.

I also looked at Jupiter for the first time in my life. My binoculars aren't particularly powerful but I could make out the disc and the Jovan moons looked like little stars next to it. I feel inspired to have a look through a telescope now.

I looked at Jupiter and it's moons through a telescope at an observatory a couple of years ago - mind blowing stuff. Our guide told us that the storm will die out within the next 100 years. Not long after being told it was a gas planet, an old dear in our group asked if there were any "trees or foliage" on Jupiter 

[Hamish's Passenger]

Was undecided between here and photography thread but I’m considering buying a telescope for night sky viewing mainly. It seems a bit of a maze with the options available and i have no experience of stargazing. Anyone here have their own equipment and offer an opinion for a starter kit?

 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

On 20/07/2020 at 00:45, tamthebam said:

I managed to see the comet last night- it was a bit faint but I saw it through binoculars just above a bank of cloud. It looked very comet-like i.e. a dirty iceball with a wispy tail.

I also looked at Jupiter for the first time in my life. My binoculars aren't particularly powerful but I could make out the disc and the Jovan moons looked like little stars next to it. I feel inspired to have a look through a telescope now.

Go a bit left and Saturn is there just now. Depending on the power of your binos you may be able to spot a lovely ring or two.

However, ignore those, point your binos to the sky again and try and find Saturn. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

14 minutes ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

Was undecided between here and photography thread but I’m considering buying a telescope for night sky viewing mainly. It seems a bit of a maze with the options available and i have no experience of stargazing. Anyone here have their own equipment and offer an opinion for a starter kit?

 

I have a fairly powerful 4 incher. Does me fine.

Spoiler

A 4 inch reflector that is.  If you can get one with  mag Of x200 that would show you lots of immense stuff. To be honest x100 with a wider view is probably more interesting for a scan across the sky. Cheaper scopes tend to be refractors which are fine as well.

 

[Hamish's Passenger]

I have a fairly powerful 4 incher. Does me fine.
Spoiler

A 4 inch reflector that is.  If you can get one with  mag Of x200 that would show you lots of immense stuff. To be honest x100 with a wider view is probably more interesting for a scan across the sky. Cheaper scopes tend to be refractors which are fine as well.

 

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/sky-watcher-explorer-130m-eq2-motorised-newtonian-reflector-telescope-1524210/?mkwid=s_dm&pcrid=310558796305&kword=&match=&plid=&si=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpNr4BRDYARIsAADIx9xPTKsa0e9uTJ8ydkgAuXRbwKBcgghpJdF0eTYxyz_oJC6rX-aNaJQaArtQEALw_wcB

This one has caught my eye and probably at limit of what I’d start with.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

7 hours ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

 

 

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/sky-watcher-explorer-130m-eq2-motorised-newtonian-reflector-telescope-1524210/?mkwid=s_dm&pcrid=310558796305&kword=&match=&plid=&si=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpNr4BRDYARIsAADIx9xPTKsa0e9uTJ8ydkgAuXRbwKBcgghpJdF0eTYxyz_oJC6rX-aNaJQaArtQEALw_wcB

This one has caught my eye and probably at limit of what I’d start with.

 

 

Looks decent.

[Crawford Bridge]

17 hours ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

Was undecided between here and photography thread but I’m considering buying a telescope for night sky viewing mainly. It seems a bit of a maze with the options available and i have no experience of stargazing. Anyone here have their own equipment and offer an opinion for a starter kit?

 

I only paid £70 for my 4" reflector.

Other than being a bit difficult to calibrate and not having much weight to it (moves easily in the wind) it's been worth every penny.

[Hamish's Passenger]

I only paid £70 for my 4" reflector.
Other than being a bit difficult to calibrate and not having much weight to it (moves easily in the wind) it's been worth every penny.

Yeah the stability issue is one of many things i seem to be coming up against. Wanting something that’s heavy, easy to use with good magnification and aperture is going to cost a fortune. I guess i need to just pick one and commit. Do you have a link to the one you own so i can have a look?

[Crawford Bridge]

1 minute ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

 

Yeah the stability issue is one of many things i seem to be coming up against. Wanting something that’s heavy, easy to use with good magnification and aperture is going to cost a fortune. I guess i need to just pick one and commit. Do you have a link to the one you own so i can have a look?

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Telescope-700-76-Smartphone-Camera-Adapter/dp/B01I3BWICA/ref=sr_1_8?crid=ZIVAVXX2RF4U&dchild=1&keywords=seben+telescope&qid=1595433702&sprefix=seben+telescop%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-8

It's £90 now.

I'm going to get a Dobsonian soon because of the stability and ease of use. Could be worth checking out for yourself?

[Hamish's Passenger]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Telescope-700-76-Smartphone-Camera-Adapter/dp/B01I3BWICA/ref=sr_1_8?crid=ZIVAVXX2RF4U&dchild=1&keywords=seben+telescope&qid=1595433702&sprefix=seben+telescop%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-8
It's £90 now.
I'm going to get a Dobsonian soon because of the stability and ease of use. Could be worth checking out for yourself?

Thanks for that. Initially what stuck out was the low aperture and almost the first thing i read when looking up telescopes was getting a higher value was pretty much the most important factor. For example, have you been able to make out Saturns rings and the lines around Jupiter with this?

Apologies for all the questions, I’m just a bit of a fish out of water here.

[Crawford Bridge]

14 minutes ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

have you been able to make out Saturns rings and the lines around Jupiter with this?

Absolutely. Both are stunning.

[MuckleMoo]

4k images of the surface of Mars

The narration is a bit shit but the images are stunning

[Hamish's Passenger]

Telescope arrived yesterday so i had to set it up like a child on Christmas day. Managed to catch a glimpse of the moon by taking a photo through eye piece.



Best purchase I’ve ever made.

[welshbairn]

6 minutes ago, Hamish's Passenger said:

Telescope arrived yesterday so i had to set it up like a child on Christmas day. Managed to catch a glimpse of the moon by taking a photo through eye piece.



Best purchase I’ve ever made.

Can you plug your laptop into it?

[Hamish's Passenger]

Can you plug your laptop into it?

No unfortunately not. I’m going to get an adapter which can hold my phone at the eye piece. Trying to take these photo’s free hand is solid.

[dorlomin]

Busy week or two in space launch.

The Mars window is open for the lowest energy trip to Mars for the next two years so we had 3 missions head out. 

The UAE launched an orbiter on a Japanese launch vehicle. 

The Chinese made their second attempt at an orbiter on their Long March 5 with a small rover attached. 

And the US launched another isotope powered rover based on the Curiosity rover. It includes a mission to do some very small scale drilling in the hope a follow up mission will pick up the drilled samples. All missions are now headed to Mars. 

On top of that the US has gotten a bit sniffy about a Russian satellite. It appeared to be a spy satellite with a minisat of some sort. The minisat tried to tag behind a US Keyhole 11 spy sat trying for pictures and the like. The US is relatively open that it does have some satellites that are intended to image other satellites. The US then claimed this minisat launched a small object that it took to be an anti-satellite test. It did not destroy anything but it does look like they have such a system. They also have a air launched anti-satellite project based on something the US tried in the 80s. 

For the US this will mean a few extra kilos of on board fuel. Its pretty easy to dodge these kind of things, when you are banging along at 7000m/s its kind of easy not to be in the same square metre the asat weapon is trying to be in that second. 

All this arrives as SpaceX and OneWeb are launching clusters in the thousands and tens of thousands. If you are paying $75 million to launch an antisatellite weapon that now has thousands of targets it needs to hit..... your obsolete. 

The arrival of SpaceX and potentially Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are a huge shakedown of the "militarisation of space" or some kind of new "space race". A report a few years ago put the global space industry at about £300 billion a year. That is things like comms satellites, Earth observation, military sats and the like. Of that about $3 billion is launches, split about $1.5 billion commercial and about $1.5 defence. Most of the defence is US. This is why Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin do not launch commercial payloads. The margins are way too tight compared to the US Defence industry while Arianspace, Roskosmos and the bit part players like India, Japan and RoK try to pick up the scraps in the commercial launch space. China does launch a lot but that is Chinese companies locked into Chinese government rules plus some heavily subsidised commercial win. That was your basic global space launch market until Musk hired Glynn Shotwell. She plus a few very smart people prevented SpaceX from being yet another flabby and failing US "new space" startup into being the titan it is today. Now they charge what they like (no one knows that their actual costs are) and have had to djinn up launches using their new Starlink network satellites. Russia relies heavily on NASA and the ISS contract. Europe is nailed on efficiency and punctuality for 2010, but its not 2010, the others are deader than ducks. (Ariane 6 has a chance)

So all the hubub about a new space race amounts to political analysts who could not tell a prograde orbit from a sustainer engine. The new space race is the Russians and Chinese catching up with 1980s America (China is finally  ditching hypergolic propellants in their new generation rockets and going for RP1 just as Arianspace and the US ditches RP1 for Methane\Oxygen).  

Sorry some of the hyperventilating news this week on space is just fucking dumb. 

[AL-FFC]

For anyone interested Crew Dragon departure ceremony (nothing much to it tbh but returns back today), splashdown tomorrow.

 

[The_Kincardine]

On 21/07/2020 at 23:34, Hamish's Passenger said:

Was undecided between here and photography thread but I’m considering buying a telescope for night sky viewing mainly. It seems a bit of a maze with the options available and i have no experience of stargazing. Anyone here have their own equipment and offer an opinion for a starter kit?

 

The thread may have moved on since your post but have you considered binoculars?

When my son went through his stargazing phase I bought him a pair of 15x70 binoculars and matched it with a good-quality tripod.  Much easier to use than a telescope.