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What true amateur astronomer notices the cold if their eyeball is squished against a lens, staring at the Orion Nebula
?One of the reasons I rail about overpopulation and the unhealthy high population density of cities is because I grew up in NY and it is so hard to see any stars around hereWhat true amateur astronomer notices the cold if their eyeball is squished against a lens, staring at the Orion Nebula
Anyway, you're really lucky with all your windows - on a clear night without glass condensation I can usually see the dim constellations of Ophiuchus and the Serpens Caput & Cauda.
Ha, you just reminded me of this one time when I was a kid and I use my 12 inch reflector in my parents living room to observe Mars at opposition.
I remember when I was in middle school I used to get so infuriated I considered throwing bricks at street lamps and then thought better of it. It's also for health reasons, with all the lights outside it's really hard to get a good night's sleep. There is a post office a block away which has a parking lot with a huge strobing light and then there is a neighbor with a motion detector and whenever the breeze picks up the lights in his yard turn on. I actually need those binoculars or a telescope to see anything more than a few of the brightest stars. When I go to the mountains, wow, I see things I have never seen before. I had never seen the Milky Way until I took my first trip out there, sad to say. I also sleep and breathe much better there, as a matter of fact, I sleep so deeply when I'm up in the mountains it feels like I was drugged, except it's not that artificial energy zapping groggy kind of sleep, it's the kind where you wake up invigorated and energized. I was always deeply depressed when I had to work in the cities or other such high-ambient environments for those exact reasons. My beloved astronomy hobby had to be put on hold for the duration of my stay, plus I was just too exhausted at night to do any casual binocular sessions. And yes, camping out in the mountains really does zen you right out.
Living here is how I got obsessed with computer astronomy. Although it really cant ever replace visual astronomy, which will always come first, because it gives you a sense of wonder because you are "out there" actually experiencing space. The ironic thing is the county where I go to where the mountains are, the visual limiting magnitude is only 6.5 there, which is supposed to be "average" (during the time of the ancient Greeks I guess) and yet that 6.5 is considered to be the best for the entire eastern part of the US! Once upon a time, the skies all over the planet were really that dark lol. I have no idea what the visual limiting magnitude is where I live in NY, but it can't be higher than 4. I can barely make out the stars of the Big Dipper and Orion.I was always deeply depressed when I had to work in the cities or other such high-ambient environments for those exact reasons. My beloved astronomy hobby had to be put on hold for the duration of my stay, plus I was just too exhausted at night to do any casual binocular sessions. And yes, camping out in the mountains really does zen you right out.
After using DSS you can also use Sequator to show even more stars and control light pollution at the same time. I first use DSS and then run Sequator after that.yeah deep sky stacker is what I used.
My friend is looking to get a tracker for low ISO high exposures to get better images in the first place. Most pics here weren't more than 2 sec exposure on 25600 iso due to the narrow FOV on the 600mm lens. Even with 2 sec there is smear. Once a tracker is used then the noise floor can be over come but using a lower ISO and collecting photos over a longer time period. 30 sec exposures and higher are what we aim to do.
On the wide angle we used about 10-20 sec, but such wide angles the smear is not noticeable much.
