I recently purchased a 127 mm telescope from Orion that comes with some pretty good upgrades including the EQ 3 sidereal slow motion tracker as as well as a camera to take live motion videos of the stars and Moon with.
Are there any players who are also interested in astronomy and have their own rig who would like to start an Eve Online Astronomy Club.
The Club itself would take images of the stars both deep sky and lunar along with the planets as well as helping others understand astronomy and help get others involved.
I think an Eve Online Astronomy Club would be a good way to add realism to the game where members of the club the could host their own Astronomy Twitch and answer questions for their subs.
I donāt have a telescope myself yet, but I do intend to get one soon for the grandson as he gets older. I would be very interested to see the results of pics taken with personal telescopes and to know the rigs that were used. Astronomy of our local system would be informative and to see community involvement would be really cool.
I got my nephew a cheapie scope for christmas and showed him some stuff I remember from when I was his age, his knowledge now far outstrips mine when it comes to our place in the solar system.
Dammit Dryson, you made me like one of your posts.
I got the Star Max 127 mm with EQ 3 slow motion controls plus the Star Shoot USB camera that I am still learning to use plus a Barlow 3x and two Moon filters. Not a cheap rig for certain.
But there are rigs that cost under $300 which you can set up on a payment plan.
Here are two of my first captures with the camera. Not very good as the stars are feint. I am still learning how to use the system together. The biggest issue I am facing now is the condensation that builds up on the telescope and laptop from being outside.
There are covers that you can purchase to keep that condensation off of the scope and the glass which is the main reason the images I took were so blurry. Keeping your telescope free of condensation while viewing is a must especially if when you are using the camera connected to the laptop.
I had to purchase a new mouse because the condensation got so bad it fried the circuits from just sitting on the table. I got captivated looking at the Moon and didnāt realize that the table was soaking wet with condensation. When I did, everything got taken into the house right away and let dry. So be careful, even with a cheap telescope.
A good cleaning kit along with a star guide such the Orion Telescope Observerās Guide are also necessary.
Some things to remember when buying a telescope and eyepieces. The focal length is the most important.
You have two telescopes with the same aperture (90, 120, 127mm etc.) but different focal lengths (127 mm with 500 focal length and a 127 mm with 1540 focal length <ā which mine has). The one with the longer focus (that is, a higher-numbered f/ratio) will generally lend itself better to high-magnification viewing.
When purchasing eyepieces remember the eyepiece magnifies the focal length, if I have read correctly, Iām sure the Geten will correct if I am wrong.
If you have a 127mm/1540 f/l telescope and use a 25mm lens you get 61.6 magnification of the object that you are looking at.
Finding the true magnification of the telescope is easy.
Simply divide the f/l by the eyepiece. So 1540 f/l divided by a 25mm lens equals a 61.6 magnification. The smaller eyepiece you use the more magnification.
A 3 mm eyepiece will result in a 513.3 percent magnification of the object that you are looking at.
With the rig I have now I can see the Moon very well but need to get smaller eyepieces to get into its niches to see where they are hiding at.
The telescope that I have can see as far Jupiter and Saturn very clearly. But I havenāt got the polar axis set up to locate both planets using the EQ 3.
If you are looking for a Goto Telescope that has an automatic drive motor and control that finds what you are looking for by simply imputing a number then here is the telescope for you.
The difference between the EQ and GoTo is the mount. The EQ is manually adjusted using control cables while the GoTo is computerized.
Its the AAA (anti-aircraft) mount from a World War II Battleship versus the computerized mount from a modern day Guided Missile Destroyer.
OP looks like they are that telescope shop manager/employee trying to advertise/promote their shop and merchandise on 3rd party resources (this forum)ā¦ and going into full defense mode when a fun typo on their shop page gets poked at.
I like the step by steps. Iāve read a few guides before, but I donāt recall seeing tips like about condensation for example. The little things that we canāt always anticipateā¦
Believe it or not just a little condensation on the eyepiece lens or the telescopes optics is more than enough to block your view. Condensation is like fog for a telescope. The more fog there is the less light is able to be seen.
On a brighter note I finally saw Saturn and its rings for the first time in my life tonight. The image was beautiful and I would have stayed out all night looking at it but I had to come in due to the condensation on the electronics.
I figured out why my USB camera doesnāt work at night, not enough light or maybe I donāt the parameters set correctly.
But I was able to take some snapshots of the stars with my G7 ThinQ.
I found an app that is pretty good for taking shots of the night sky.
Its almost impossible to take a steady video of the brighter stars at higher magnifactions, its like playing the old black and white pong on a t.v. Nope, over here, wait no there it is, no there it is, gone, ah. Ohhhā¦ bleepā¦motherā¦bleepā¦bleepā¦bleepā¦bugā¦bleepā¦turn the bleep headlights off bleepā¦ You get the idea.
But if your have a tripod mount for the phone and use the app you should be in there like swimwear.
Ones I havenāt tried yet.
Now lets say you had another smart phone yet could set up with this app to point out the constellations.
Using the gimbal mount above with one phone on a tri-pod would be great. But just imagine three of these gimbal mounts connected to one processing laptop where the keyboard controls operate the gimbal for each mount either separately or as one unit. Two gimbal mounts on the left or right having its own app track to the constellations with while the center smartphone or tablet is used to tack pictures with.
This system would start out very cheap but could get costly with the addition of the captains chair on its own 360 degree rotating column.
Okay, for the Android this is the app that I think is going to be the most beneficial as your star tracker camera.
Once you have it set to your location that camera will track your movements by placing a tracking reticle over the star that your camera is looking at.
I found Saturn and Jupiter using it tonight and canāt wait until this weekend to the telescope out and look at both of them.
The first image is Jupiter. A few weeks ago I watched Jupiter through my telescope and noticed that there were what looked like other stars showing up, those were in fact the moon of Jupiter.
The second image is Saturn. If you have GIMP 2.8 and upload the image and then zoom in, you can see the ring around Saturn, not very good though, that is making the planet look like it is somewhat squashed.
