Moon watching.

[ryan]

Hey guys, i was looking at the moon through my telescope last night, and i just wanted to say this, i saw the Apollo 12 landing site, ocean of storms and Apollo 14 landing sites, Fra Muara. The picture looked so close that i felt like i got go through that telescope and walk on the face of it. So the point of this thread im asking everyone what have you seen through a telescope did you see a real planet, comets or something, does not count if its your next door neighbour.

 

[Andy44]

Back in the 90's when Shoemaker-Levy 9 was crashing into Jupiter, me and my Dad watched it through his telescope in his front yard. We could clearly make out some of the stripes and the big spot, but if we saw the comet impacts it was in our heads. Not really enough detail.

I also "discovered" Saturn one night. I was looking at this star, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get it in focus; it looked oval-shaped. So I did the best I could and put a higher-mag eyepeice in, and bingo! A planet with great big rings around it.

The Moon is a natural favorite, because it's always easy to find and track. And you're right about the way it looks, like you could go there and walk around the mountains. Beautiful.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

I viewed the recent eclipse through a 4" reflector and used 22 and 9mm eyepieces. The thing was amazing! The contrast between the shadowed and bright parts early on was incredible and the copper color it took on when the eclipse was in totality was pretty neat too!
I also used the moon that night to look at Saturn as I used the moon and another star to position my 'scope to the position of Saturn instead of using the computer finder thing.

 

[ryan]

Well my telescope have all that stuff that controls the telescope and all that, i have to manually point it at a star. I like hard work.

 

[thomasantony]

Hello,
My first usually target was of course the Moon. Tycho and the ray-system around it being one of the first things I noticed. I haven't looked for any of the Apollo landing sites now that I think of it. I have tried Mars but only got a tiny red disc, no details at all.

Jupiter too I could barely make out the cloud layers and saw the four major satellites as star-like points. But that was just after I had bought the telescope and didn't know how to properly focus with high mag eyepieces. My eyepieces suck a lot and the Barlows even more so. So the rest of the things I saw were DSOs.

The Great Orion Nebula ( M42) looked awesome though in "grayscale". Pleides star cluster looked even more awesome . I have also seen some other Messier objects, mainly star clusters. but none of them as impressive as the above two.

~
Thomas

 

[unussapiens]

I have seen Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, various nebulae and stars (globular clusters are always good), various eclipses (lunar and solar) and the transits of both Mercury and Venus.

 

[spcefrk]

Astrophotography

There are a handful of people on deviantART that are into Astrophotography and being interested in aerospace and art, it's a natural interest. Unfortunately working on higher education doesn't leave a lot of time to get into it, and the fact that my entry level digital SLR doesn't allow for computer control of the shutter has kept me out of really getting into astronomy again.

It's my goal, though, to take astronomy off the back burner of the back burner as soon as I can learn enough about telescopes to hook up my SLR to one. For now it's just my zoom lens and a steady hand. And for reference, a 300mm zoom lens on a digital SLR doesn't get you anywhere close to the moon like a pretty basic telescope does.

I bought my camera for airshows anyway -- and for that it excels. I'll have to get a new Nikon body when I want to really get into astrophotography. But by then I'll be a high paid engineer...

At any rate, some links you might be interested in:

A Science Forum we started on deviantART for the artistically inclined or interested with science questions: http://dapf-science-forum.deviantart.com/journal/forum/
The thread on Astrophotography: http://dapf-science-forum.deviantart.com/journal/forum/1038661/
Constellation Orion: http://jeremyti.deviantart.com/art/Constellation-Portrait-Orion-76959106
Partial Solar Eclipse: http://chrissyo.deviantart.com/art/Partial-Solar-Eclipse-07-02-08-77084472
^ That guy's 18 and he's got a great portfolio of space photos: http://chrissyo.deviantart.com/

 

[bujin]

I had a really cheap telescope (50mm refractor) as a kid, and I managed to see Saturn and Jupiter through it - probably at considerable cost to my eyesight!

Straining my eyes, I could just about make out the rings of Saturn and the dark north and south equatorial bands on Jupiter. Of course, being completely manual, I had a matter of seconds before the planet had drifted out of view, which was a bit annoying!

 

[Brad]

Let me first start off by saying it is always a pleasure to follow a fellow Welshman.


The first object I remember observing as a boy was the comet Kohoutek it was very visable to the human eye, and even more impressive in the eye piece of my telescope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Kohoutek

 

[SiberianTiger]

Have been a while since I blown the dust off my telescope. In addition, it's located in a diffirent city than me right now. Moon is a great sight almost in every phase except the full Moon. The Lunar Appeninnes are my love (especially when the ridge is crossing the terminator!)

Another special thing to see are red giant stars: Betelgeuse, Antares, Aldebaran.

There are some beautiful star couples with rich colouration, like Albireo.

eace:

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

I've looked to the Moon, Venus, Mars, the Jovian system, Saturn (and it's rings), some nebula, and also the sun.
For watching the sun, be carefull to not watch it directly, but projecting the image at the eye piece on a paper. This way, you can see the changing sunspots, and see planets in transit. Still planing to get a meade ETX, so I can finally make some better photographs, and also be able to autotrack the ISS.
I once tried to track the ISS with my manual telescope, but it's way too fast, and once you finally appear to lock on it, it goes into the shadow of the earth most of the times .

regards,
mcduck

 

[dutchpirate]

I only have a small refractor as well, but it came with a nice moon filter that screws into the back of an eyepiece so it tones down the glare of the full moon. Makes it look like green cheese, though:lol:

I've been meaning to try and capture the Orion Nebula, but I've never hit the combination of clear sky, light wind, and remembering to bring my telescope along!

I do enjoy the fact that I have a equatorial mount so that once I've set it up correctly, it's easy to track objects for extended periods of time. I think I'll go dust it off this evening and maybe go gazing for a while

 

[simonpro]

What's quite good fun is just pointing a telescope at a bit of sky and watching satellites fly over.
I remember being up on svalbard in sping (so the sun was always around the hoziron, great for satellite reflections) and you in the space of a minute or two you can usually see two or three fly past. Makes you realise just how much we've put up there.

 

[Bj]

I have a cheepy walmart telescope, and one night I was looking up somewhere, and I glimpsed a shooting star. :beach:

I also looked at the moon when in a waning stage. Its really cool looking at the craters.

 

[MJR]

I don't even have a telescope. I hope I get a pretty decent one for Christmas.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I've seen the moon various times with telescopes. The craters are neat. I think I once saw Mars(or some other planet ) with a telescope before. I've watched the ISS three or four times with my eyes. I watched it pass yesterday very bright and saw something unusual. While the ISS moved southeast, a satellite(SeaSat 1 as I later found) moved northwest and the two completely intersected moving along the same path in opposite directions.

 

[YL3GDY]

I have seen the Moon many times. But I find astrophotography more exciting - managing the exposure, using different methods of shooting you can get really fascinating picture, which you can't see using only your eye.

I am using Meade 112mm Newtonian reflector with computer-controlled mounting, camera - Nikon D40 + telescope adapter.

 

[simonpro]

Actually, on that subject, does anyone have tips for shooting the moon with a standard digital camera? I have one with a decent zoom function (x10) so I should be able to get a good picture.
Problem is, no matter what I set the exposure to (I can set it ISO50 to ISO1600, but not the shutter speed unfortunately) all I get in the output image is a big white blob, no features can be distinguished

 

[ijuin]

If it's all wihite, then either you are over-exposing it, or you are not holding the camera steady enough while exposing.

I tend to use the Moon as my first target whenever I use my six-inch Newtonian scope. Doing so lets me calibrate my viewfinder and focus before I go hunting for the harder-to-see targets.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Actually, on that subject, does anyone have tips for shooting the moon with a standard digital camera? I have one with a decent zoom function (x10) so I should be able to get a good picture.
Problem is, no matter what I set the exposure to (I can set it ISO50 to ISO1600, but not the shutter speed unfortunately) all I get in the output image is a big white blob, no features can be distinguished

I managed to get maria recognizable on the full Moon's images which I took using a very simple 5 megapixel digital camera with 3x zoom. It had the shutter speed controllable, though. Try to keep it so low that landscape features would be quite dark beyond visibility and you'll possibly get the right exposure. Of course, you need to fix your camera well.