If You Think Shooting is Expensive, Try Star Gazing

Old CW4

Old CW4

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As some wise person said, 'we get too soon old and too late smart.' I know at my age (almost 76) I don't need another major hobby and for sure not an expensive one like amateur astronomy.

Nevertheless, I bit. Bought two Maksutov-Cassegrain scopes a few months back. One cost about $450, the other $650. Nice scopes for the price and it's a blast to inspect craters on the moon, Saturn's rings, distant nebulae, etc. However, I bought the scopes with the good but plain 'vanilla' tripods that came with them. One of the tripod mounts is even a minimal 'goto,' a computerized robot system that locates and then tracks any of 40,000 plus space objects in its database with the push of a button. Neat.

But, I was lacking a really good, strong tripod with a counter balanced equatorial mount and the goto computer system built into the tripod and not dependent on any particular scope. The tripod independent system means I can mount any scope up to 40 pounds and it becomes a 'goto tracker.' I also paid extra for a small GPS receiver which mates to the system and automatically tells the tripod computer its location, lat-long, and time. Otherwise a bit of a tedious manual process for each setup.

Ah but the cost! The heavy duty tripod with fancy mount, goto computer and motors, GPS, an outboard 12 volt rechargeable power supply, and shipping came to $1728 and change. Damn! I could have bought a couple of HK or Springfield top of the line pistols for that. Oh well. At least I helped that segment of the economy a tiny bit. Now I'll see if I can figure out how to use this miracle of science when it gets here.... Wish me luck.
 
Sounds very cool...that's certainly a hobby I think I would get interested in when I am older (and actually have money!). I fella I play Wallyball with is very big into Astronomy and spend quite a large amount of money on a similar set up.

Is there a way to take pictures of what your looking at? I know there are ways to take pictures of things your looking at through a microscope (or atleast I think I do)...so I would imagine they created a way to do the same, just on a bigger scale.
 
Re pictures through scopes. Answer is yes. Most of them are designed to couple with various camera mounts or even with adaptors that screw right into the lens. One of my scopes has a right angle view finder you look through but also a camera mount centered at the rear. There is a flipper lever to turn a small internal mirror that reflects into the eye viewer out of the way and send the focused light directly into the camera.

There are also a host of mini CCD cells that couple right onto a scope. Some of these are super expensive and have an electronic cooler on board and a mini fan to keep the CCD cool, stable, and dew free. If I get into that it will be a long ways down the road although I do have a good Nikon Coolpix I want to adapt. My other scope, BTW, has a prism for the eyepieces which erects the image you see and makes it the correct view left and right. This turns it into a terresterial spotting scope which can go up to 300 power. It is amazing to look at a bird, animal, whatever with this kind of power and clarity. I watched a pigeon on a powerline about 60 yards away and could actually see the mites crawling in and out of its feathers---Wow! That aspect of the scope is also handy for my LEO work. We've already used it to surveill suspected drug labs and so on from a distance of many hundreds of yards away (another reason I want to adapt a camera for evidence. Also a really neat spotter on the shooting range or in a SWAT situation. This particular scope will, depending on the eyepiece, go from 60 to just over 300 power.
 
Old CW4 said:
Re pictures through scopes. Answer is yes. Most of them are designed to couple with various camera mounts or even with adaptors that screw right into the lens. One of my scopes has a right angle view finder you look through but also a camera mount centered at the rear. There is a flipper lever to turn a small internal mirror that reflects into the eye viewer out of the way and send the focused light directly into the camera.

There are also a host of mini CCD cells that couple right onto a scope. Some of these are super expensive and have an electronic cooler on board and a mini fan to keep the CCD cool, stable, and dew free. If I get into that it will be a long ways down the road although I do have a good Nikon Coolpix I want to adapt. My other scope, BTW, has a prism for the eyepieces which erects the image you see and makes it the correct view left and right. This turns it into a terresterial spotting scope which can go up to 300 power. It is amazing to look at a bird, animal, whatever with this kind of power and clarity. I watched a pigeon on a powerline about 60 yards away and could actually see the mites crawling in and out of its feathers---Wow! That aspect of the scope is also handy for my LEO work. We've already used it to surveill suspected drug labs and so on from a distance of many hundreds of yards away (another reason I want to adapt a camera for evidence. Also a really neat spotter on the shooting range or in a SWAT situation. This particular scope will, depending on the eyepiece, go from 60 to just over 300 power.
Click to expand...

Interesting...very interesting. The pigeon thing is unreal. Your doing what a microscope does on a low power...FROM 60 YARDS AWAY! :p:thumbup:
 
I don't have the disposable income for either stargazing or shooting, both of which I enjoy. I minored in Physics in college and took a few astronomy classes which I really enjoyed. One day I will own a nice telescope. Please take some pics of your new toys when you get a chance.
 
Old CW4 said:
As some wise person said, 'we get too soon old and too late smart.' I know at my age (almost 76) I don't need another major hobby and for sure not an expensive one like amateur astronomy.

Nevertheless, I bit. Bought two Maksutov-Cassegrain scopes a few months back. One cost about $450, the other $650. Nice scopes for the price and it's a blast to inspect craters on the moon, Saturn's rings, distant nebulae, etc. However, I bought the scopes with the good but plain 'vanilla' tripods that came with them. One of the tripod mounts is even a minimal 'goto,' a computerized robot system that locates and then tracks any of 40,000 plus space objects in its database with the push of a button. Neat.

But, I was lacking a really good, strong tripod with a counter balanced equatorial mount and the goto computer system built into the tripod and not dependent on any particular scope. The tripod independent system means I can mount any scope up to 40 pounds and it becomes a 'goto tracker.' I also paid extra for a small GPS receiver which mates to the system and automatically tells the tripod computer its location, lat-long, and time. Otherwise a bit of a tedious manual process for each setup.

Ah but the cost! The heavy duty tripod with fancy mount, goto computer and motors, GPS, an outboard 12 volt rechargeable power supply, and shipping came to $1728 and change. Damn! I could have bought a couple of HK or Springfield top of the line pistols for that. Oh well. At least I helped that segment of the economy a tiny bit. Now I'll see if I can figure out how to use this miracle of science when it gets here.... Wish me luck.
Click to expand...

nice.. i just got back into gazing myself but my scope didnt cost that much lol. i just got an Orion starblast 6 ( i think thats what it is) its more compact so i can put it in the back seat of my truck and take it where ever. the clarity is awesome.. i am new to this so maybe you can help me out here. i have a 10x and 75x lense. i want to be able to see the rings of saturn so what will i need? supposedly i can see that with that telescope. obviously i may have to buy an eyepiece but not sure on how high i should go
 
I once helped a person setup a rather ornate stargazing kit. We set up a laptop connected to a telescope and would feed coordinated into it then take snapshots of the things we were seeing. It was actually pretty neat. Apparently a lot of people do this because I went to a couple meets (always in fast food parking lots for some reason) and watched as they traded equipment and pics.
 
hung-solo, What are the focal lengths in millimeters of your eyepieces? The rule of thumb is divide the focal length of your scope (in millimeters) by the focal length (in millimeters) of the eyepiece. This equals the power. For example, my Orion scope has a focal length of 1540 millimeters. So with a 10 millimeter eyepiece, I get 154 power. With a 20 milllimeter eyepiece 77 power and so on. Sometimes lower powers provide the best and most detailed views.

You can buy a 'Barlow lens' which fits below the eyepiece and doubles, triples, etc., the power. You can get a Barlow 2X, 3X, and up to 5X. But, you can quickly reach the 'point of diminishing returns' with a greatly magnified image but very poor resolution and detail. There are also zoom eyepieces but they are pricey, really pricey for the good ones.

Another rule of thumb for scopes is that a good one can provide a theoritical maximum magnification with acceptable resolution of about 50 power per inch (or approx 25 millimeters) of scope main lens or mirror diameter. This means a quality scope with a four inch or 100 millimeter main lens or mirror will 'max out' at about 200 power. A six inch scope at 300; eight inch at 400 and so on. Don't believe any supermarket add for a scope which claims 600 or more power and sells for less than at least a thousand bucks or double that!

Re Saturn's Rings: My 'Starry Night' software has magnification features in it. It shows me I need about 300 power to really begin to see Saturn's rings. Here are a couple of good URLs which explain the basics and provide some really good advice:

http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html
http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/telescope.html

Hope this helps, Old CW4 (also a beginner and for damned sure no expert!)
 
scotchleaf, Yes sir, I surely have. Fortunately, I live in a semi rural area and have several acres of my own so no one can get too close. I don't belong to any New Mexico astronomy groups but I guess there must be lots of them considering we have two major national labs in the state, Los Alamos and Sandia, plus lots of other high tech government agencies and private companies. Anyway, the stargazers must have some clout because NM has a law on the books entitled 'The New Mexico Night Skies Protection Act.' How about that? It bans any night time lighting that impinges on anyone else's property or vision after 11 p.m. and mandates the power of outdoor lights that may be used. Only exceptions are Federal highways and essential municipal functions. The police may give warnings the first couple of times and after that it's a $25 fine. Since I'm a member of my local sheriff's dept, I don't hesitate calling them and reporting jerks that have hundreds of watts blazing at night. If I'm on duty, I also don't mind stopping and having a chat with the light owner. There are also filters available that block mercury vapor, flourescent, and incandescent light frequencies. They're supposed to work pretty well but, of course, they're also pricey.
 
I'm hoping to pick up a 3.5 Questar Duplex next year if all goes well (financially).
 
Msgt, Man! I envy you with a Questar. We were first issued those in the Intel game in Germany back in the late 60s. I was tech chief of a CI region at the time and used the Questars a lot. A truly awesome lens and the quality is the best. We had another strictly camera lens that was a gem too, a Perkin Elmer. It looked to a casual observer just like a large 'normal' lens on a quality 35mm camera. However, it was 900 mm! You could count the nose hairs on someone blocks away and no one had a clue we were shooting hundreds of yards distant.
 
BTW, if interested, you can Google the New Mexico Night Skies Protection Act.' It's short and sweet, provides a bit of history, and is an interesting read.
 
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