Tips for looking through a telescope

Last weekend was the first time I was looking through my telescope. I had to drive 2 Hrs to get to a star party. It was fun looking at the amazing stuff people had. I looked at Jupiter(my first object through my Zhumell 10 inch) and the Orion nebule.

I knew all my theoretical stuff.. how to read a sky map? What is altitude and Azmuth? How to focus on an object and things like that... but I bet there are tons of other things that you will learn when you are actually operating the scope. Here are a few tips for people who are looking through their telescopes for the first time:

1. To start with... Always, colliminate your scope before you start. That is because when you are setting up your scope(or during logistics), chances are that the collimination is lost.

2. Find your object using the "finder scope". Next...start with the lowest magnification(say 35mm). Bring the object of observation to the center of the screen and adjuct the focus using your eyepiece. You could now, increase the magnification to the next level(say 12.5mm)... your view through the scope might not be in the center now and might be blurry. You now need to get it to the center of the screen again and focus it. You are now ready to increase it to the next magnification(say 6mm or 4mm). You need to now again bring it back to the center of the screen and re-focus it.

Note: One important thing here is to bring the image to the near perfect center of your view. Because when you go from magnification 12.5mm to 6mm or 4 mm... you are going from 96X magnification to 300X magnification. So, if the image is not in the near perfect center, you might loose the image in the 300X view.

My gateway to the Heavens!!

Check this out guys... my first telescope. A birthday gift from one of my cousins. Its a Dobsonian 10 inch Zhumell. There is a star party on the 4th of November. Cant wait to get a view through this beauty!!

Good news - Its a 10 inch, so it has got a lot of light gathering capacity... hope to get some nice views of our moon, Jupiter, some nebula and a few galaxies.

Bad news - Its a Dobsonian... does not have an equatorial mount. Since the relative position of stars, planets and our Earth keeps changing, tracking though this telescope would be tough. Taking pictures is almost impossible.

Bottom line - Great telescope for starter amateur astronomers.

Clear Skies!

Opportunity's latest picture of Mars

This image from the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" shows surroundings of the rover's location following an 81-meter (266-foot) drive during the 2,363rd Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's mission on Mars (that was as of Sept. 16, 2010). The terrain includes light-toned bedrock and darker ripples of wind-blown sand. Today it is the 2380th Martian day. By the way a Sol means Solar day.
FYI - 1 year on Mars in around 668 Sols.

Source: nasa.gov

Life on Alien Planet near Earth???

This is in continuation to my previous blog... Help yourself reading my previous blog too.

One of the planet's discoverers said in a briefing yesterday that "the chances of life on this planet(Gliese 581g) are 100 percent." How do we prove this? Scientists say there are several ways, but the best approach is as simple as "Listening for signals". This planet is 20.5 light years away from Earth, so human built probes won't be getting out there anytime soon :) By the way a light year is the distance traveled by light in 1 year.

Chances of life on an Earth size planet

An Earth-size planet(Gliese 581g) has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold- just good enough for life to exist. Though there are 400 other planets that might have a life sustaining capability, scientists say, Gliese stands a very high chance.

Below is an artists illustration of how the planet might appear.

NASA's footage of first man on moon...LOST!

Really??? May be you knew, but I did not..

I cant believe this! NASA's footage of the historic Apollo 11 1969 mookwalk was lost somewhere in NASA's archives or it got erased(???) during reuse, and was found only recently...in bad shape!

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

Great Man Hawking!

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

Origin of our universe - a new thought!

Many of us now tend to believe that the origin of our universe is the big bang. Recently I had a thought ... What if big bang was not the origin? What if it were just one of the events or for that matter one of the millions of big bangs that might have taken place? What if the universe was contracting and expanding?
All these were questions that came to my mind until I realized that scientists were already working on this thought of mine...$&;#%#

An attempt to understand the "Theory of Relativity"

I found this theory very interesting. This was developed by the great "Einstein". While I was reading about it and was trying to understand it... it all sounded very unnatural(if you would!).

Example of the theory:

Assume that you(A) are sitting in car A traveling at 500 miles/hr and one of your friend(B) is in Car B traveling at 1000 miles/hr and another friend(C) is on the ground stationary. Also assume that a light beam passes you all at that instance.

Of course, every atom of our body was once part of a star!

This is the end to one of my favorite movies, GATTACA. This is part that contains my favorite quote where Vincent says, "For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess, I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say that every atom of our body was once part of a star. Maybe I am not leaving.......maybe I'm going home."

Just a while ago... Endeavour docks at ISS

Early hours on Wednesday (12:06am EST), Endeavour docks at ISS.

Purpose of the mission: The STS-130 mission of space shuttle Endeavour will deliver a third connecting module - the Tranquility node - to the International Space Station and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics.

Image above: (From left) Mission Specialist Nicholas Patrick, Pilot Terry Virts, Mission Specialists Robert Behnken and Kathryn Hire, Commander George Zamka and Mission Specialist Stephen Robinson. Image credit: NASA

Hubble takes pictures of Pluto

Our most distant planet Pluto gets photographed by Hubble. The photographs that you see is a set of many pictures taken by Hubble.

Understanding telescopes - Basics

There are two major types of telescopes.
1. Reflective (Uses lenses and mirrors to reflect light on to the eye peace) - Generally smaller in size.
2. Refractive(Uses lenses only) - Generally larger in size.

There is a third type called the Catadioptric telescope. It uses both the properties of Reflective and Refractive telescopes. Generally not used by ametures.

If you are planning to buy a telescope don't get too confused with what kind of telescope to buy. First things first.. try to understand how telescopes work. You would need to know a few terms before you understand its functioning.

1. Aperture: A telescope's most important attribute is its aperture, which determines the brightness and sharpness of everything you see through your scope. Inreal simple terms this is the diameter of the main lense(or the Objective lense). Here is what most of the ameture astronomers tend to believe... "getting a bigger objective lense or a larger aperture would mean a better telescope". That would be a mistake! The size of objective lense that you want also depends on what you want to observe in space? If you just want to observe the moon and some nearby planets like Mars and Jupiter - a 3" Objective is good enough, however, if you wanted to observe galaxies you would need a much larger telescope that can accommodate a large Objective(at least 6" and above).

2. Power of Magnification: This is a critical factor since it decides how close a view you can get of the space and planets. You can make any telescope magnify at effectively any power you want by using different eyepieces. An eyepiece is the small removable lens assembly you look into.

Few myths that need clarification:

Don't buy a "department store" telescope: While the price may seem right, and the pictures on the box look compelling, small telescopes found in retail stores are of consistently poor quality.So, dont buy them.

It's not about magnification: It is actually one of the least important aspects, and is something you control based on your choice of eyepieces.

Computer pointing is not necessary: These systems increase the cost of the telescope significantly, and don't add much value for beginners. In fact, my personal suggestion is to begin with a manual telescope. When you struggle hard to focus on an object of your interest... you learn the most. So, dont go the easy way... there is less learning.