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365 Nights of Skywatching
Fraser Cain writes "Universe Today has released a free, downloadable PDF book for its What's Up this Week astronomy column. This 400+ page ebook has an entry for what you can see in the night sky every day in 2006, as well as additional information on choosing equipment, viewing conditions, and additional resources."
Nasa has up a Skywatching site with all sorts of fancy pictures.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Was downloading at 100k now down to 25 and plummeting. Thanks to /. I should have this in time for 2007.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
The Great Stellarium (open source):
http://www.stellarium.org/
Celestia (also free):
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
NASA's astronoly picture of the day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
Stellarium is really a must-download for anyone even slightly interested in astronomy. It's another open source software success.
There is always the moon from our overlords... but moon through NASA's WorldWind too.
Animoog.org
this guy's pictures:
He lives just outside of Houston, Texas.
X
Some day's entries are visual objects, some are binocular, some are telescope, and some are 'here's what's there if you could see it.'
A great book for the casually curious. You could call it 'astronomy bait.' (Star bait?)
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
What amazes me about the images are that many are taken from peoples back gardens using relatively inexpensive equipment. The results are also in reach of most ordinary people, if your interested in advice on getting started with astronomy or even how to get results such as these then one of the contributes to the images in the book frequents this forum: http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/ and along with many others can offer you great advice, just like they have me.
Isee Stars Astro Image Hosting.
Looks like this might be a nice device for starting out if you want to get into astronomy.
a sh=N/
Might be a good product to get kids interested as well.
http://www.celestron.com/skyscout/no_flash.php?Fl
It has some pretty neat features such as:
"Tonight's Must-See List"
"Constellation Lessons"
etc
Cheers,
TimeForGuinness
This is what amateur astronomy people call it when a "regular" person looks through a five-thousand-dollar backyard telescope and is dissappointed that they can't see the US flag left on the moon.
Most astronomy photos the public sees are taken by massive professional telescopes (either Hubble or large ground based scopes) and so they have no idea what kind of results they would get out of the many many different types of amateur scope available. And of the amateur photos that are published, in my experience almost none of them are captioned with information about the equipment used, exposure times, post processing, etc.
What would be really good is a collaborative astronomy database where you could look up an astronomical object and see the results of different equipment - i.e. I could look up the Horsehead Nebula and get to see lots of photos of it all stating what equipment and settings were used. That kind of thing would certainly be really useful when deciding what equipment to buy.
you don't live in an area of high light pollution
This is a serious problem and aparantly one that the UK government/councils at least don't appear to care about. More and more street lights go up every year, few of them seem to have full cutoff shades and worryingly most of the new ones now seem to be high presure sodium lights (much less filterable than the old low pressure sodium lights). Do we really _need_ our streets to be lit so brightly at night? Some legislation designed to reduce light pollution would be a good step - i.e. requiring all lights to have full cutoff shades and putting limits on the amount of lighting used.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
you can get a printed version from print(fu) here. It costs $21 for the printing and shipping - jd
Here is a torrent download for this PDF.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/193558
{justin.filip | jfilip AT gmail DOT com} {http://jfilip.ca/}
It looks like you're not the only one sick of brightly-lit nights. There is an article in the Independent here on moves to change the situation. And the Campaign for Dark Skies covers any developments on their, quite frankly, rather ugly website.
So there is hope.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
If the Whats Up 2006 whetted your appetite for free downloadable astronomy guides you might like to take a look at some handbooks that the folks in the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies have been working on.
IFAS Observing handbooks.
At the moment there are 3 handbooks written, we are working on more.
1. The Novice Observing Challenge
Compiled by Seanie Morris this handbook provides the perfect introduction to the hobby and science of astronomy. Everything that a beginner, or nearly-new, astronomer needs to know is covered here with explanations and advice as well as practical observing projects.
2. The Binocular Observing Challenge
Subtitled "110 extraordinary objects to see through ordinary binoculars" this handbook, which was compiled by John Flannery, serves as an excellent incentive to dust off the binoculars and see what you can really see through them. John's handbook has diagrams and charts to help find the objects as well as detailed descriptions to help appreciate what you are seeing.
3. The Messier Objects Observing Challenge
Mick O'Connell has put together a lavish observing guide to the next level of observing. This book gives detailed background information on Charles Messier, his catalogue of objects, and the deep-sky as well as star-charts and guides to help navigate your way through the most famous list of deep-sky splendours.
The center of our galaxy lies roughly in Sagittarius, which, as a Zodiacal constellation, is visible in most of the northern hemisphere. Maybe not as directly, and maybe not as often, but it's visible. See http://www.seds.org/messier/more/mw.html for more information.
Were you possibly referring to the Magellanic clouds?
In any case, there's lots & lots of Good Stuff to see in the night sky, regardless of the hemisphere in which you live. Given the choice of some super-dark area of northern Canada or Alaska or a static location in the center of downtown [pick your large, southern hemisphere city, here], I'd take the north.
Of course, an ulimited travel budget would be even better.... :-)