well... since you turned me onto that NASA site that sends out the update emails... they said something about Jupiter being very close to us... it's supposed to be 'just below' the moon right? the way they had the drawing sized it looked like it would be really big... can it be seen fairly well with binocs? and for how long? it's cloudy here tonight! dangit!
She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World" Yes you could say she was attractively built.
Tom: Luckily, Jupiter will be a fine sight well into the summer, it just plods along in its 12-year orbit!
Yes, it's an easy binocular target, but the real trick is seeing the four Galilean moons of Jupiter in binocs. That's the fun bit about Jupiter--those four moons zip around the planet so they're in different places every night!
Here's what Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn look like through my telescope (although the Saturn pic is half the scale of the other two--didn't Barlow the camera) If you look closely at the big Jupiter pic, you can see one of the moons to the left, and it's casting a shadow on the lower right of the planet--a Jovian total eclipse! :)-->
The big one is about $3,000, the little one about $500. There are a couple of smaller ETX scopes, a 60 and a 70, but they don't have quite the same pointing capabilities as the 90 and up, and certainly not as good optics as the 90.
The big one is fully automatic. You just point it north, turn it on, and it gets a GPS fix to know its exact position and time, then compensates for uneven ground with tip and tilt sensors.
The small one you have to enter the time and location manually, and it's best to level the tripod or table (or car trunk) first, but otherwise both then slew to two different bright stars, which you center in the eyepiece with the hand controller, the scope calculates for a second, and voila! The scope will then automatically slew to any object or coordinate you punch in on the keypad, and what's more, automatically rotate slowly to keep the scope LOCKED on that object until you decide to look at something else.
The earth rotates, of course, and if the scope doesn't have tracking capabilities, the image tends to slide right across the field of view, faster at higher magnification!
These scopes eliminate that. Extremely cool, and they hold their value well. A good scope is a good investment, and one you can pass down to your kids.
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Tom Strange
well... since you turned me onto that NASA site that sends out the update emails... they said something about Jupiter being very close to us... it's supposed to be 'just below' the moon right? the way they had the drawing sized it looked like it would be really big... can it be seen fairly well with binocs? and for how long? it's cloudy here tonight! dangit!
She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World" Yes you could say she was attractively built.
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Zixar
Tom: Luckily, Jupiter will be a fine sight well into the summer, it just plods along in its 12-year orbit!
Yes, it's an easy binocular target, but the real trick is seeing the four Galilean moons of Jupiter in binocs. That's the fun bit about Jupiter--those four moons zip around the planet so they're in different places every night!
Here's what Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn look like through my telescope (although the Saturn pic is half the scale of the other two--didn't Barlow the camera) If you look closely at the big Jupiter pic, you can see one of the moons to the left, and it's casting a shadow on the lower right of the planet--a Jovian total eclipse!
:)-->
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Tom Strange
cool!
what magnification is that telescope? or size? or whatever you call it...
She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World" Yes you could say she was attractively built.
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tcat5
Way too cool!! A lot better than my telescope. But I did see a moon of Jupiter.
And the University here has an astronomy club that anybody can join. So we have. Won't have to keep bugging you Zixar.
:)-->
NOw just have to wait for spring when the night clouds go away. tcat
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Zixar
Tom: Mine's the one on the left, a 10" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain. The pic of Saturn is about 60x, the other two about 120x.
Meade LX200-GPS
The images look similar in my little 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain, only dimmer. It's the smallest one, the one in the middle of this page:
Meade ETX telescopes
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Tom Strange
those are really cool... they point themselves? how cool... how much $$$???
She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World" Yes you could say she was attractively built.
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Zixar
Tom: Yes, they do, and yes, it's VERY cool!
:)-->
The big one is about $3,000, the little one about $500. There are a couple of smaller ETX scopes, a 60 and a 70, but they don't have quite the same pointing capabilities as the 90 and up, and certainly not as good optics as the 90.
The big one is fully automatic. You just point it north, turn it on, and it gets a GPS fix to know its exact position and time, then compensates for uneven ground with tip and tilt sensors.
The small one you have to enter the time and location manually, and it's best to level the tripod or table (or car trunk) first, but otherwise both then slew to two different bright stars, which you center in the eyepiece with the hand controller, the scope calculates for a second, and voila! The scope will then automatically slew to any object or coordinate you punch in on the keypad, and what's more, automatically rotate slowly to keep the scope LOCKED on that object until you decide to look at something else.
The earth rotates, of course, and if the scope doesn't have tracking capabilities, the image tends to slide right across the field of view, faster at higher magnification!
These scopes eliminate that. Extremely cool, and they hold their value well. A good scope is a good investment, and one you can pass down to your kids.
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