Amateur astronomy

Mar 20, 2015 at 3:41 PM
Hyperbolic
"What're YOU lookin' at?"
Join Date: Jul 10, 2009
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Posts: 1004
Age: 39
Hi, my hobby is amateur astronomy and I have some cool things for you which you can see with your unaided eye and simple binoculars:

Unaided eye:
-Do you want to see Jupiter, Venus, Mars or Saturn with your own unaided eyes? Did you know that they are usually they are the brightest "stars" on the night sky? To find them download the freeware, very easy to use Stellarium
-Do you want to see a space cloud with your unaided eyes? This is the place where stars are born. They are young stars and their high energy makes the cloud glow so you can see it. You probably know the constellation Orion. You will see a faint cloud which is "Orion's sword"
-Do you want to see how our Sun will die with your unaided eyes? Our sun will die if we don't stop it in the far future. It will "swell", become a red giant and engulf the near planets. Life on Earth will cease if we will not intervene. If you want to see a a red giant, look up the bright star Aldebaran in Stellarium
-Do you want to see an open cluster? You have probably heard of or seen the "Seven sisters" or the Pleiades. This is an "open cluster". If you have seen the Orion nebula this is the continuation of the story. Stars which are born from a nebula like that, furing their formation "blow away" the surrounding space cloud. Many young stars which were born together stay close to their place of birth, they will gradually "go apart" though
-Do you want to see 2 galaxies with your unaided eye? Well, the first one is our galaxy, seen sideways, and it is a nice spiral galaxy called the Milky way. Maybe you can also see the Andromeda galaxy with the help of Stellarium with your unaided eye, but surely with binoculars.

Simple binoculars:
-Looking at Jupiter you will see it's awesome moons. Their are 4 in total, but sometimes some of them are behind the planet so you see less than 4.
-Globular clusters: they are a group of stars which are usually around the center of our galaxy. Scientist believe there might be a black hole in their centre. Watching them and knowing this is awesome
-Moon craters - huge craters may be spotted by binoculars.
-Asteroids - you can see a few asteroids with binoculars too. Use Stellarium.
-Neptune and Uranus are binocular targets too
You can see many open clusters nicely too, plus some galaxies with simple binoculars, using Stellarium
 
Mar 20, 2015 at 3:43 PM
thinks dogs are cool
"All your forum are belong to us!"
Join Date: Apr 6, 2014
Location: a bathroom
Posts: 620
my dad used to have this on his old PC; it was fun to play around with but i never actually examined everything about everything
nonetheless this is cool i guess
 
Mar 21, 2015 at 10:19 AM
Bonds that separate us
Forum Administrator
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Aug 20, 2006
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Hello unknown member :debug:

I used Stellarium for an optional astronomy course I took while I was still studying. It's a very nice little program, especially how it lets you set the location to Neptune or Europa or something and check out the view. Speaking of which, the New Horizons probe is set to reach Pluto this year :cool:
 
Jul 15, 2015 at 5:06 AM
Bonds that separate us
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"Life begins and ends with Nu."
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Jul 17, 2015 at 9:21 PM
Amaya
Discord Group Moderator
"What're YOU lookin' at?"
Join Date: Jan 18, 2013
Location: Somewhere quiet with many birds
Posts: 1118
Age: 25
Pluto is surprisingly adorable. That heart-shaped light patch is really cute :3
 
Jul 27, 2015 at 3:35 PM
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"Fly, Fly, Fly!"
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Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4_SH0pgQfw
 
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