Saturn, ring and moons...Wow!

Last night I got to see Saturn, its rings and moons.
(sidewalk astro event, Cambridge, ma)

Even though it appears way small, it is a whole lot different than quality pics, a sense of tangible reality right there.

Any amateur astronomers here..?
You would think some to the .edu crowd would have access to decent observatories..?

I now have access to an area where light pollution is very minimal and plan on getting into it soon! Working on a binocular suspension system right now... I will make a two-way pivot head out of a chop saw base parts.
I would love to find a front surface mirror, like 4 x10 for not too much money, for a tabletop setup as well...

I had a good scope when I was a kid. 4 or 5" mirror I could see the spot on saturn and the ring on saturn. Maybe in the future I will get another one.

Make one!

Google "dobplans".

I've had a mirror blank in process for several years. Built a trepanning system for my drill press and drilled out a 7.25 blank. Just about got to polishing stage before stopping. Cheap way to build a high quality telescope if you are a DIY person. I'm thinking about starting back up when I clean out the side shed and make it into a clean room again.

Binocular looks a bit daunting to me. A simple Dob mount will be a good start. Too many projects and hobbies ATM. Speaking of ATM, amateur telescope makers has their own clubs.

Homercidal said:

Binocular looks a bit daunting to me. A simple Dob mount will be a good start. .... amateur telescope makers has their own clubs.

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When I spoke of binoculars, I meant making a parallelogram mount to 'suspend" the binos (less shake, more comfort)

ATMers sure do have an online presence. cloudynights forums are fun!

For grins, search for "PortaBowl".

Check out today's Astronomy Picture of the Day, taken from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. That is Titan in the background, with Saturn's rings in front of it, and the small moon Epimethius floating over them. Amazing!

I bought what turns out to be a 1950's vintage reflector, 6" f6 mirror witha GEM (thats "German equatorial mount").

Hand built by a nerd of the day (single guy, engineer), using the classic book from Allyn Thompson -classic in the sense that is it one of the best ever written in grinding mirrors in your workshop...

I will seek the help of a local astronomy club to make sure I care for it properly.
The finder is an old Kodak military surplus type, I am told. Chunky!

Beerthoven said:

... Titan in the background, with Saturn's rings in front of it, and the small moon Epimethius floating over them. Amazing!

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Yep, and the Saturn ring material (rocks, ice, etc) is only 150 meters thick..!

I was told that this summer. the ring formation will present itself on a straight line to us (layman's terms) and will effectively appear as gone, being so thin..!

That's no moon. That's a mellon.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiJ8jQZCfjY]YouTube - veggie wars[/ame]

I was in Moab this weekend and got to see the entire Milky Way stretched all the way across the sky. Pretty cool

Having grown up in the dark (eastern Montana) and now living in Silicon Valley, I wonder how many people live their entire lives never knowing what's up there.

I had a pretty nice schmidt-cassegrain however you spell it 12" back in high school. Actually I still have it, but it's at my parent's house and hasn't been used in years. I was big into astronomy for a while but ended up a bit disappointed with it. Despite what the pictures look like, most everything is black and white through a telescope to the naked eye. And although mine had a tracking system, I never could get it set up quite right, so everything would go flying across the field of view and you'd constantly have to adjust the aim. Then you go to show somebody what's in there and by the time they look it's out of the frame and good luck finding it again. That or they lightly bump it when they go to look and the object is now way out of frame. Maybe a more sophisticated tracking setup would be less frustrating but I was lucky my parents bought me the telescope so I wasn't gonna push it for the awesome mount.

As far as access to good telescopes goes, we have some great stuff here in RI. In Ninigret Park (Charlestown, RI) there's a 12m scope with the full laptop hookup for finding objects. The observatory is small, but open to the public every Friday night year round. Attendance can be hit or miss - sometimes you get stuck with big groups, but there have been plenty of times where it's just been me and my two girls. Les, the guy that runs the place, has been an amateur astronomer for 50+ years, and does a fantactic job of pointing things out and explaning things to both the adults and kids in the group. It's a monthly Friday eve thing for us, and all they ask for is whatever donation you feel like giving.

I have a nice 6" Newtonian reflector, trouble is it's so light polluted around here, I have to drive an hour to see anything but the moon and planets with it.

I always wanted to get into it, but we have so much light pollution I think it would be pointless here. My wife almost bought me a dob style one a few years ago but decided it would be a waste.

light pollution issues:

http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/gnol.pdf

Locally, in the Northeast, there is a loose group fighting light pollution -name escapes me right now.

Cool docs on astronomy here form local Tufts U.;

Wright Center - Starfinder

I took this image of Saturn about 2 years ago from my backyard through my 10" Newtonian Reflector.


This one of Jupiter was taken about 2 years ago also from the same spot.

Holy crap that's awesome!

You you look at Jupiter can you actually see it swirling about?

You can detect visually that the bands are moving over a period of time. If you want a representation of what the 2 planets look like through the viewfinder of a 10" Reflector, I actually made 2 pictures that represent what you would expect to see through my telescope.