A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

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!

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