If you hit the lottery this week, how much would you donate to Iowa?

[Fryowa]

That Celestron 8 inch is a serious telescope for the neighborhood watch party. I am sure the neighbors and you and your family had some great views of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. Saturn is in a place in its orbit and the cycle of its polar tilt so that you can see the rings very well and the gap of black space between the rings and Saturn itself

Yeah, it was pretty good. We had about 100 people stop by to check it out. A lot of people are pretty amazed when they see Saturn's rings or the Galilean moons with their own eye for the first time. I still can't get the mechanics on it fully dialed in, partially because there is so much light pollution coming from the north and west. I can't triangulate on the third star necessary to get it to really work it's magic. I'm taking it to a bald that is above the tree line in the smoky mountains in April. It's about halfway between Johnson City, TN and Asheville, NC. There's almost no light pollution up there.

That thing is my son's jam, though. Hopefully he still likes it as he gets older and if he does we'll get an equatorial mount and camera and stuff and maybe I'll buy a little piece of land 50 miles out of town so we'll have somewhere to set it up. There are so many huge trees down here and with the mountains it really cuts down on the viewing opportunities.

I know zero about astronomy, but I follow a lot of science-related YouTube channels. One of them is a guy who does a lot of telescope photography and has his own mini observatory with tons of gear.

One video that stood out to me was one where he was zoomed way in on Saturn and was demonstrating just how crazy the magnification level was. The telescope obviously looked stationary to the naked eye, but when he "turned off" the equatorial mount (not sure the technical term) Saturn looked like it was doing a thousand miles an hour across the sky. It was in the viewfinder/monitor for maybe half a second.

I don't know how many degrees per second planets are moving in the sky relative to observers, but that telescope had to be focused on just a few thousandths of a degree or maybe even less. It was wild

 

[okeefe4prez]

I know zero about astronomy, but I follow a lot of science-related YouTube channels. One of them is a guy who does a lot of telescope photography and has his own mini observatory with tons of gear.

One video that stood out to me was one where he was zoomed way in on Saturn and was demonstrating just how crazy the magnification level was. The telescope obviously looked stationary to the naked eye, but when he "turned off" the equatorial mount (not sure the technical term) Saturn looked like it was doing a thousand miles an hour across the sky. It was in the viewfinder/monitor for maybe half a second.

I don't know how many degrees per second planets are moving in the sky relative to observers, but that telescope had to be focused on just a few thousandths of a degree or maybe even less. It was wild

Yeah, my scope is electronic and really complex and it will track an object on its own, but it is super hard to dial in. I'll just look at stuff manually with a fairly wide eye piece on it and Saturn or Jupiter will move completely out of the scope's wide view within maybe 45 seconds. The movement is primarily driven by the Earth's rotation. The Earth is spinning at roughly 1,000 miles per hour, so your intuition is correct in that Saturn looked like it was doing a thousand miles an hour across the sky.

 

[Fryowa]

Yeah, my scope is electronic and really complex and it will track an object on its own, but it is super hard to dial in. I'll just look at stuff manually with a fairly wide eye piece on it and Saturn or Jupiter will move completely out of the scope's wide view within maybe 45 seconds. The movement is primarily driven by the Earth's rotation. The Earth is spinning at roughly 1,000 miles per hour, so your intuition is correct in that Saturn looked like it was doing a thousand miles an hour across the sky.

Another thing I noticed is how completely deep the rabbit hole is for these guys (and I'm assuming your son someday).

It's not just telescopes and camera gear, you need a high-end laptop, high end desktop, astronomy knowledge, photography knowledge, photo processing software knowledge, LOTS of time...it just boggles the mind. That ain't a hobby you can just decide you want to get into next Tuesday. You gotta be a renaissance man with full-nerd level abilities in a lot of topics.

The one guy I saw was on like a year-long quest to photograph a single object to a high clarity level (don't remember the details off hand), and his patience was friggin amazing. He'd have his computer crash in the middle of like an 8 hour processing session, or the one weekend he had set aside for viewing somewhere would get rained out twice in a row, or a $3 charger cable would crap out...shit like that.

 

[Fryowa]

I am sure the neighbors and you and your family had some great views of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.

Yeah, it was pretty good. We had about 100 people stop by to check it out.

So are those things hooked up to a laptop or a monitor for viewing, or is there a viewfinder on the telescope that you look through?

I would think if you so much as breathed on the thing you'd lose what you're looking at.

I'd be the guy who caught the tripod with my flip flop and knocked it over.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Another thing I noticed is how completely deep the rabbit hole is for these guys (and I'm assuming your son someday).

It's not just telescopes and camera gear, you need a high-end laptop, high end desktop, astronomy knowledge, photography knowledge, photo processing software knowledge, LOTS of time...it just boggles the mind. That ain't a hobby you can just decide you want to get into next Tuesday. You gotta be a renaissance man with full-nerd level abilities in a lot of topics.

The one guy I saw was on like a year-long quest to photograph a single object to a high clarity level (don't remember the details off hand), and his patience was friggin amazing. He'd have his computer crash in the middle of like an 8 hour processing session, or the one weekend he had set aside for viewing somewhere would get rained out twice in a row, or a $3 charger cable would crap out...shit like that.

I hope he doesn't get too much into photography. I don't think he will. He's way more into theoretical stuff.

 

[okeefe4prez]

So are those things hooked up to a laptop or a monitor for viewing, or is there a viewfinder on the telescope that you look through?

I would think if you so much as breathed on the thing you'd lose what you're looking at.

I'd be the guy who caught the tripod with my flip flop and knocked it over.

There's an eyepiece on the scope. The scope cost $1200 and the tube weighs probably 25 pounds. The tripod is ridiculous. It ain't going down without a fight and I watch it like a hawk when I have it out for guests. Biggest challenge is kids because they have to stand on a chair and instinctively want to hold the scope, which you can't do.

 

[Fryowa]

There's an eyepiece on the scope. The scope cost $1200 and the tube weighs probably 25 pounds. The tripod is ridiculous. It ain't going down without a fight and I watch it like a hawk when I have it out for guests. Biggest challenge is kids because they have to stand on a chair and instinctively want to hold the scope, which you can't do.

That's a bunch of coin, but it really seems like it'd be more for all that tech.

I just spent $600 on a 40V lithium ice auger. It's sole purpose is to put a hole in a frozen lake.

If you had told me that telescope was five grand I wouldn't have been surprised at all.

 

[okeefe4prez]

That's a bunch of coin, but it really seems like it'd be more for all that tech.

I just spent $600 on a 40V lithium ice auger. It's sole purpose is to put a hole in a frozen lake.

If you had told me that telescope was five grand I wouldn't have been surprised at all.

Scopes are like scotch, the price goes up exponentially for incremental improvements. The 4SE, which has a 4 inch mirror is $500, the 6 inch mirror is $800 and the 8 inch mirror is $1200.

 

[uihawk82]

That's a bunch of coin, but it really seems like it'd be more for all that tech.

I just spent $600 on a 40V lithium ice auger. It's sole purpose is to put a hole in a frozen lake.

If you had told me that telescope was five grand I wouldn't have been surprised at all.

That is some huge coin for ice fishing but you can catch your supper.

You are correct, the CCD charged coupled device cameras and filter wheels to allow you to capture very narrow bands or single color ranges of radiation are really expensive. CCD's of 10 to 20 K dollars for the professional type stuff. Santa Barbara Instrument Group makes and sells a lot of this stuff. And as OK4P says, the mounts with sturdy clock drives to move the scopes at the speed of the star's motion through the sky and the computer electronics are expensive as are the scopes.

But I bet if OK4P built an observatory in the mountains with nice equipment and a roll off roof or dome and after 5-10 years wanted to sell it he would have a lot of askers.

 

[okeefe4prez]

That is some huge coin for ice fishing but you can catch your supper.

You are correct, the CCD charged coupled device cameras and filter wheels to allow you to capture very narrow bands or single color ranges of radiation are really expensive. CCD's of 10 to 20 K dollars for the professional type stuff. Santa Barbara Instrument Group makes and sells a lot of this stuff. And as OK4P says, the mounts with sturdy clock drives to move the scopes at the speed of the star's motion through the sky and the computer electronics are expensive as are the scopes.

But I bet if OK4P built an observatory in the mountains with nice equipment and a roll off roof or dome and after 5-10 years wanted to sell it he would have a lot of askers.

I wish. The Smoky Mountains have plenty of clear nights when the temp drops and causes the moisture to sink, but there are a lot of extended periods of a soupy low cloud cover that gives the mountain chain its name. And I don't know how long the light pollution will be good there. Asheville has a ton of astronomy people there and they have made all sorts of ordinances about external lighting, but there is a big pro development faction that wants to steam roll all of that.

 

[Ree4]

I hope he doesn't get too much into photography. I don't think he will. He's way more into theoretical stuff.

That's how I am, while it's neat to look at Hubble images from time to time, they aren't really what I'm interested in either. Been reading about astrophysics for decades which is more my cup of tea. I don't have the patience and don't care enough to get into astrophotography. I thought about an astronomy major briefly until I realized how mundane the day to day stuff is - it would be agonizing for me, worse than accounting!

 

[uihawk82]

That's how I am, while it's neat to look at Hubble images from time to time, they aren't really what I'm interested in either. Been reading about astrophysics for decades which is more my cup of tea. I don't have the patience and don't care enough to get into astrophotography. I thought about an astronomy major briefly until I realized how mundane the day to day stuff is - it would be agonizing for me, worse than accounting!

Nothing is worse than accounting. Put in the figures, make sure they are in the right columns and buckets, total them up , rinse and repeat. Stay in your cubicle dammit.

I am kidding somewhat as I have known some nice accounting people. I took one semester of accounting, I like the accuracy and numbers part myself but not my overall cup of tea.

 

[SmokeTownHawk]

Driving into Peoria on Friday, I remember seeing a pickup with Iowa plates that said
ICE FISH. So there's that.