Free Guide to Naked-Eye Astronomy

Tammy Plotner, president of Warren Rupp Observatory, writes "Are you looking for all the best of what's up in the night sky for the year 2007? Then be my guest and download my free e.book — '365 Days of SkyWatching'! (Brought to you courtesy of The Universe Today.) Each day is specifically geared to give you the best of what can be seen with the unaided eye, binoculars, and small telescopes and even has challenge objects for seasoned observers. It's beautifully illustrated and contains many special features, such as anotated lunar maps. Please feel free to pass it along to anyone in the astronomy community and enjoy!" For anyone who'll be in that neck of the woods (central Ohio) next October, Warren Rupp's Hidden Hollow event looks really fun.

Comments

SECRET TRICK TO SKYWATCHING!

[LiquidCoooled]

Even though the title says 365 days of sky watching, I feel I must let you in on a secret:

Wait until night time to do your sky watching, it will be better than staring at a blue screen ;)

Please note also, the police will not believe your story about downloading a book from the internet which told you to stand naked in the neighbours garden at 3am with binoculars and a camera (don't ask how I know this).

Re:SECRET TRICK TO SKYWATCHING!

[slughead]

Wait until night time to do your sky watching, it will be better than staring at a blue screen

Nonsense! You can see at least 1 star during the day.

For those who don't wish to click on the link, here's the article text:

Free Guide to Naked-Eye Astronomy
 
LOOK UP!

You'll need these

[chanrobi]

Although each day is fairly descriptive and tells you about a new object, it doesn't tell you where to find it. Here's what the book recommended:

www.astrosurf.com/astropc/cartes
www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky

The first one is a downloadable program, the second is web based. For the open source crowd i'd recommend Stellarium.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Celestia is also interesting in that it allows you to travel off the surface the earth. More akin to Starry Night pro. Not as useful to accompany the guide but fun to play around with. Also open source.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html

Have Fun!

Fun Observing Light Pollution

[burris]

Good luck getting your neighbors to turn off their "security" lights.

Re:Fun Observing Light Pollution

[east coast]

Good luck getting your neighbors to turn off their "security" lights.

Well, now that I got my Red Rider 200-shot lever action air rifle that won't be as hard as it was last summer.

Re:Fun Observing Light Pollution

[dan dan the dna man]

From my local astro mailing list:

"My real bug bear are security lights. I believe that the government has
introduced legislation so that troublesome security lights can be removed.

About 20 years ago, one of my neighbours - Brian - installed a security
light over his garage. It provided no real protection for the house and the
only real benefit was to provide Brian's dog with some illumination for his
noctural pee.

And every time Brian's security light went on, oops, there goes any dark
adaption or time exposure. Discussions with Brian proved 'ineffective'. The
only solution was the one recommended by Patrick Moore - an airgun. He
could never figure why so many of his bulbs died so frequently and so
spectacularly. (They really do go with a fearsome bang!)" :)

I'm impressed...

[east coast]

Wow, a story that doesn't involve the **AA, bashing MS or being "censored" by the government? A story that actually involves geekdom beyond Star Wars? I'm impressed.

Even the tin foil hat types will be at ease with this.

BTW: I noted that the poster mentioned that they are from Ohio. I'm from Pittsburgh myself. Has anyone here gone to Cherry Springs for their star parties? It's only a few hours away and I hear it's fantastic because of a lack of light pollution. I'd be interested in hearing from others who have been there and how they felt about the area.

Re:I'm impressed...

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

I've been to Cherry Springs several times and also attended the event at Spruce Knob in WV. They sky is absolutely incredible to the point of the Milky Way actually casting a shadow. You'll often find dozens of astronomers on both fields during the new moon.

Check out the Yahoo group for Cherry Springs if you are interested in venturing up.

Did Anyone Else...

[d3ac0n]

read that as "Naked Astronomy" at first, or was it just me?

Re:You had me at "naked"

[WormholeFiend]

I'm with you on that one... if only cities would implement street lights and other infrastructure light fixtures that reflect light downward, they'd be able to use lower wattage bulbs and not only save lots of money in electricity, but give us darker night skies too.

I tried it last year

[Anonymous Coward]

I used the 2006 ebook and I can say that this is pretty good stuff. There is content for many kind of instruments: double stars that require a 12" to separate to interesting phases of planets visible with binoculars. Did you know that you can see the Saturn rings with a 4"? Me neither but thanks to Tammy Plotner I was able to look at them. Next time that you are awake at 2am, take 30 mins, the ebook and binoculars and let the universe unravel before your eyes.

You will want to upgrade your instrument after a few nights and you'll find plenty of tips on picking the right telescope in the ebook.

Re:I tried it last year

[Abcd1234]

Did you know that you can see the Saturn rings with a 4"?

Absolutely. In fact, if the seeing is good, you can even make out the Encke Gap. Not to mention detail you can make out in the atmospheres of both Saturn and Jupiter. Oh, and the phases of Venus. And a ton of deepsky objects, too (there are some lovely nebulae and globular clusters well within reach of a 4" reflector, even under light-polluted skies. Objects like the Wild Duck Cluster or Hercules Cluster are really quite breathtaking, especially after spending 20 minutes starhopping trying to track them down).

Really, a decent 4" reflector coupled with a pair of lenses, which can be had for a few hundred bucks, can withstand many many nights of observing before a larger instrument becomes necessary.

Re:I tried it last year

[haystor]

I was looking at Saturn last night with a 3" refractor. At only 80x magnification I could clearly see the rings (as one solid ring). There was clear separation of the rings from the planet. I was also able to see what I think were a few moons, I'm not too sure until I check the next few nights to see if they're moving with Saturn.

Re:I tried it last year

[Abcd1234]

Well, assuming the other poster was using a reflector, it's probably not a good one-to-one comparison, as refractors will provide a sharper image at a given aperture, which is why they're favourable for planetary observation (where their inherent problems with chromatic aberation are less of an issue).

Reflectors, OTOH, allow for much larger apertures, making them favourable for deepsky observation.

Orange glow

[PsyQo]

The only thing I see in the sky atm is an orange glow. Could it be a burning webserver?

WARNING

[LiquidCoooled]

WARNING: Do not look at the day-star with your remaining eye.

Specifically, do not use binoculars or a telescope.

Re:WARNING

[teknopagan]

WARNING: Do not look at the day-star with your remaining eye.

Specifically, do not use binoculars or a telescope.

Ya know, people joke about this, but it's no lie. When I got my 8" Celestron Starhopper, one of the first things I did after collimating (which I did in the daytime) was check to see what happens when you point a telescope at the sun. I wasn't dumb enough to use my eye to line it up, fortunately; I placed my hand about 6" from the eyepiece and adjusted the tube until I had a circle of (hot!) light in my palm. I then pulled out a cigarette and was able to light it at the focal point of the light coming through the eyepiece in about 3 seconds. That focal point is right about where your retina would be when looking through the eyepiece. Bad news, for sure.

WordPress + Slashdot

[Rob T Firefly]

To all my other fellow WordPress nuts out there, please take the necessary precautions before submitting your site to Slashdot with "download my free" anything.

Additionally, just stick said freebie in a torrent to change all the panicked "Fucksocks, I'm Slashdotted!" screams into happy "Woo and Yay, I'm Slashdotted!" chirps.

Re:Wow. Slashdotted WordPress

[cpm]

Web page:
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/d836baa0e91f81cdd 5e6e15dbc88fa61/index.html

PDF [Size: 23.3Mb]:
http://www.mirrordot.org/media/6eeaa081830de8a6476 656a76d6ae669/365days2007.pdf

H.A. Rey

[ajsnow]

I flipped through a few pages (at amazon; it was already /.ed by the time I visited the link). Those star maps are ok. But for my money, by far the best guides to stargazing are the two books H.A. Rey wrote about it: The Stars: A New Way to See Them and Find the Constellations . I've never seen anyone else who actually makes stargazing as accessible they way he did -- his renderings of the consetllations actually make sense, unlike almost all the others I've seen. The books are for true beginners but The Stars also provides plenty of information to geek out on once you've figured out what you're doing. I read these as a kid 'til my copies were tattered and have never found anything better.

(Most of you know Rey by his much more famous works: he and his wife wrote the Curious George books.)

Direct link to the book.

[Fraser Cain]

Wow, I didn't think this would get onto Slashdot. Anyway, I enabled WP-cache, so the server can handle the load now.

Here's a direct link to the book, just in case the server goes down again:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/astronomycast/365day s2007.pdf

Re:Why do all astronomy books...

[Fraser Cain]

The cover picture was taken by R. Jay Gabany, using nice equipment, but nothing too extravagant - 20-inch reflector, I believe. The telescope he uses can be booked by the public, and controlled through the Internet.

Here's more of his work:
http://www.cosmotography.com/