Heh! Case of GMTA, relly.
I've been playing with the space-images-to-sound thing for a while. Since first hearing Tomita's "Canon of the Three Stars" album, in fact. :-D Though at the time I hadn't access to equipment capable of doing much about doing the conversion.
Things have got much better of late, to the point that a couple years ago I discovered the extraordinary csound and did some very... uh, let's say "academic-sounding" compositions based on lunar landscapes and different kinds of astronomical curve data. One barely-regular variable star provided an amazing polyrhythm; wish I could remember which.
The plastic will have to wait a few more months, but M42 is definitely on my short list. I decided when reading the thread about its having been cracked. I'm a contrary cuss, and that got my fur floofed the wrong way. =^_^=
Meffy
ornery skunk hybrid
P.S.: When you look at the Moon with the biggest, lowest powered "beer bottle" Nagler in the Celestron and the clock drive turned off, it's as if you were floating over the surface while it drifted past beneath. It's hard getting the eye's pupil to match the Nagler's huge exit pupil but when you hit it, WOW. =@_@=
The edges of the eyepiece's visual field practically disappear and you're immersed in the scene. The sensation is indescribable. "Backyard spaceflight" is the closest I can come to putting it into words.
how big is yours? ( The M42 Astronomy Thread)
-
- Banned
- 6127 posts since 1 Apr, 2004 from Et in Arcadia Ego
Okey Dokey, here goes..
In my time I have owned the following:
4 inch reflector on a german equitorial that I replaced within 2 months with a:
10 inch Dobsonian, which I used in tandem with a pair of:
Celestron 9x62mm binoculars. For deep sky viewing, those are in my opinion the best pair of field lenses made, bar none. Lower magnification coupled with expanded lense diameter means greatly amplified light reception.
I probably enjoyed my Dobsonian more than all my other instruments. Dobs are light cannons for the same reason as the 9x63 binos; you get a very wide field & have maxxed out your light gathering. I love em, but just like here in softsynth land I suffered from gear lust & wound up with a:
11 inch Celestron Shmidt Cassegraine. This was near the peak of my love affair with astronomical viewing. At this point I was ready to take on Astro-photography, the Holy Grail of the ametuer astronomer. In order to do this as best as I could, I comissioned an extremely nice german equitorial semi-potrable pier from Mountain Instruments. This brute stood at 5 feet for the mounting plate & it's main axis was driven by a Starmaster 11' worm gear. [that means it kicked serious ass.] This piece of equipment cost me nearly $5,000 for the equitorial ALONE, & it was worth it. I have never used a rock stable mount like that again in my life. You could fall asleep with your head at the eyepiece guiding & not lose your tracked object. We put a 14 inch Celestron on it to test it's breaking point, but I could have jumped on it with the C-11 & riden it like a mechanical bull without the mount losing any drive accuracy. Truly amazing. As this was my little monster rig, I of course had to continue enhancing it, so I wound up adding a:
4 inch Celestron ED refractor. If you know anything about ED or Flourite glass, they're the ultimate in light transmission & optical accuracy. You can expect to pay somewhere around $1,000 per inch of glass on a quality refractor, & mine was even then still middle of the road.
The accessories I used on this were:
Takahasi eyepieces (extremely good Plossl style, best actually, IMO)
Several Vixen long eye relief lenses in the shorter focal range for best eye releif at max magnification. If you are into planetary viewing, these are your best choice.
TeleVue Naglers & PanOptics. My 22mm pineapple grenade was probably my most used eyepiece. Every scope owner should have one of these. They are your perfect starter lense in your scope when you're sky hopping. VAST field of view.
I still have a collector's Astrophysics 32mm Orthoscopic lense that is the sole survivor of my gear collection. These were made as a limited run by the Baader planetarium in conjunction with Ziess optical & were literaly devoured within weeks. I am positive this lense is worth triple it's value by now.
I had several other's, nothing major as I collected lenses for a few years, but one worth mentioning was a Celestron SIXTY MILLIMETER EYEPIECE. That's right..it was a f**king eyepiece with the apeture of a small refractor! You could not use this lense in most scopes & if you were dumb enough to use it to look at the moon even in a tiny instrument you had a very good chance of punching a 60mm hole through your occular socket & clean out the back of your head. I mean this thing was HUGE! And VERY rare, I might add.
Also in my collection were all 2 inch housing star diagnols, barlows, & field correctors from Astrophysics. These guys make the best glass in the amateur market. If you're serious about your viewing, you already own something of thiers. If not, it's time you looked into it.
For battling light pollution, just get yourself some deep sky filters, really. These things are tuned to knock out everything but specific wave lenth transmission of emmision nebulae, notthing else gets through, period. Get a good brand, though. I recommend Lumicon. They practically introduced them.
For view finders, there's only one choice, which Tim is now a convert of at my suggestion, I might add. That's the Telrad.
Don't ask. Just get one.
One more thing you'll need if you want to have a pleasant viewing experience that doesn't get prematurely cut short is some lense & scope heaters. Your eye alone can fog a lense depending on humidity ratios in less than 30 seconds.
Anyways, I went a little berserk one night during a small star party hoping to catch the Nov 7th meteor storm that was predicted back in 98. I don't really want to get into the details, but my behavior banned me from the oldest ametuer astronomical group in the US. I got pretty sour about it & wound up selling off my gear & finding a new obsession, which was heavy drugs for a few years, but now it's back to music again, as it was many years ago.
I plan on returning to that fantastic hobby again one day, when I'm a bit more mature. It's not a gentleman's hobby for nothing. Considering the fact that I absorbed almost everything relating to astronomy I could get my hands on for about 4 years, I'm almost a qualified Astronomer, so if any one has any scope questions or the like, lemme know. I had many great discussions with Tim regarding scopes & all, & I had forgotten how much I missed talking about it. It truly is one of the greatest things you can experience.
Now you guys know why I didn't wanna post.
Here's a few shots of the beautiful MI-250 german Equitorial I used to use, taken from the Mountain Instrument's web site. You can see a 4 inch astrophysics refractor on it's mounting plate. Picture if you will an 11 inch Shmidt cassegraine mounted with that refractor on top of it & you have a decent idea of what my rig looked like. These instrument are hand built in batch #'s as low as 5 per run. There is not a finer quality german eq made in the world at that size. To assist you in scale interpretation, that pier column is 6 inches wide & is 4 feet tall by itself without the actual mechanism attatched.
Here's a close up of the eq main body. It's about the size of you chest cavity & wieghs about 30 pounds or more. Doesn't it look like it a prop from a lost 50's Sci-Fi flick?
Ok, enough of me.
So...who's next?
In my time I have owned the following:
4 inch reflector on a german equitorial that I replaced within 2 months with a:
10 inch Dobsonian, which I used in tandem with a pair of:
Celestron 9x62mm binoculars. For deep sky viewing, those are in my opinion the best pair of field lenses made, bar none. Lower magnification coupled with expanded lense diameter means greatly amplified light reception.
I probably enjoyed my Dobsonian more than all my other instruments. Dobs are light cannons for the same reason as the 9x63 binos; you get a very wide field & have maxxed out your light gathering. I love em, but just like here in softsynth land I suffered from gear lust & wound up with a:
11 inch Celestron Shmidt Cassegraine. This was near the peak of my love affair with astronomical viewing. At this point I was ready to take on Astro-photography, the Holy Grail of the ametuer astronomer. In order to do this as best as I could, I comissioned an extremely nice german equitorial semi-potrable pier from Mountain Instruments. This brute stood at 5 feet for the mounting plate & it's main axis was driven by a Starmaster 11' worm gear. [that means it kicked serious ass.] This piece of equipment cost me nearly $5,000 for the equitorial ALONE, & it was worth it. I have never used a rock stable mount like that again in my life. You could fall asleep with your head at the eyepiece guiding & not lose your tracked object. We put a 14 inch Celestron on it to test it's breaking point, but I could have jumped on it with the C-11 & riden it like a mechanical bull without the mount losing any drive accuracy. Truly amazing. As this was my little monster rig, I of course had to continue enhancing it, so I wound up adding a:
4 inch Celestron ED refractor. If you know anything about ED or Flourite glass, they're the ultimate in light transmission & optical accuracy. You can expect to pay somewhere around $1,000 per inch of glass on a quality refractor, & mine was even then still middle of the road.
The accessories I used on this were:
Takahasi eyepieces (extremely good Plossl style, best actually, IMO)
Several Vixen long eye relief lenses in the shorter focal range for best eye releif at max magnification. If you are into planetary viewing, these are your best choice.
TeleVue Naglers & PanOptics. My 22mm pineapple grenade was probably my most used eyepiece. Every scope owner should have one of these. They are your perfect starter lense in your scope when you're sky hopping. VAST field of view.
I still have a collector's Astrophysics 32mm Orthoscopic lense that is the sole survivor of my gear collection. These were made as a limited run by the Baader planetarium in conjunction with Ziess optical & were literaly devoured within weeks. I am positive this lense is worth triple it's value by now.
I had several other's, nothing major as I collected lenses for a few years, but one worth mentioning was a Celestron SIXTY MILLIMETER EYEPIECE. That's right..it was a f**king eyepiece with the apeture of a small refractor! You could not use this lense in most scopes & if you were dumb enough to use it to look at the moon even in a tiny instrument you had a very good chance of punching a 60mm hole through your occular socket & clean out the back of your head. I mean this thing was HUGE! And VERY rare, I might add.
Also in my collection were all 2 inch housing star diagnols, barlows, & field correctors from Astrophysics. These guys make the best glass in the amateur market. If you're serious about your viewing, you already own something of thiers. If not, it's time you looked into it.
For battling light pollution, just get yourself some deep sky filters, really. These things are tuned to knock out everything but specific wave lenth transmission of emmision nebulae, notthing else gets through, period. Get a good brand, though. I recommend Lumicon. They practically introduced them.
For view finders, there's only one choice, which Tim is now a convert of at my suggestion, I might add. That's the Telrad.
Don't ask. Just get one.
One more thing you'll need if you want to have a pleasant viewing experience that doesn't get prematurely cut short is some lense & scope heaters. Your eye alone can fog a lense depending on humidity ratios in less than 30 seconds.
Anyways, I went a little berserk one night during a small star party hoping to catch the Nov 7th meteor storm that was predicted back in 98. I don't really want to get into the details, but my behavior banned me from the oldest ametuer astronomical group in the US. I got pretty sour about it & wound up selling off my gear & finding a new obsession, which was heavy drugs for a few years, but now it's back to music again, as it was many years ago.
I plan on returning to that fantastic hobby again one day, when I'm a bit more mature. It's not a gentleman's hobby for nothing. Considering the fact that I absorbed almost everything relating to astronomy I could get my hands on for about 4 years, I'm almost a qualified Astronomer, so if any one has any scope questions or the like, lemme know. I had many great discussions with Tim regarding scopes & all, & I had forgotten how much I missed talking about it. It truly is one of the greatest things you can experience.
Now you guys know why I didn't wanna post.
Here's a few shots of the beautiful MI-250 german Equitorial I used to use, taken from the Mountain Instrument's web site. You can see a 4 inch astrophysics refractor on it's mounting plate. Picture if you will an 11 inch Shmidt cassegraine mounted with that refractor on top of it & you have a decent idea of what my rig looked like. These instrument are hand built in batch #'s as low as 5 per run. There is not a finer quality german eq made in the world at that size. To assist you in scale interpretation, that pier column is 6 inches wide & is 4 feet tall by itself without the actual mechanism attatched.
Here's a close up of the eq main body. It's about the size of you chest cavity & wieghs about 30 pounds or more. Doesn't it look like it a prop from a lost 50's Sci-Fi flick?
Ok, enough of me.
So...who's next?
-
- Mod-ulator
- 2895 posts since 31 Oct, 2000 from "Where I'm to, There I'll be"
I used to own a retail Telescope shop in Calgary for 6 years... At any 1 time i usually had about 5 - 10 scopes ready to haul out the back of the shop for a viewing. I closed the shop down a year or so ago as the market got to a bad spot after Sept 11th. No Kidding .... I went from selling a few scopes a week to not selling any for months at a time. I still own the website and the name.... www.canadatelescope.com and may be back in business or get the site up for Fun again one day. I had a Huge astronomy website before i shut down the store.
I even have a few accessories like full aperture solar filters and color filters, Diagonals, etc. around here that i want to get rid of. Not much but a few items are still about. Let me know if any of you are interested and I can get a list of what i got left.
Right now for myself, I have a 6" Reflector on an EQ mount which is about as big as i want to go as i am usually hauling it out to the Dark skies in our Rocky Mountains.
Also I use a small 60 mm "go to" scope and some Big Binocs for Quick views.
Do i win a Prize???
To the universe and beyond!!!!!
I even have a few accessories like full aperture solar filters and color filters, Diagonals, etc. around here that i want to get rid of. Not much but a few items are still about. Let me know if any of you are interested and I can get a list of what i got left.
Right now for myself, I have a 6" Reflector on an EQ mount which is about as big as i want to go as i am usually hauling it out to the Dark skies in our Rocky Mountains.
Also I use a small 60 mm "go to" scope and some Big Binocs for Quick views.
Do i win a Prize???
To the universe and beyond!!!!!
-
- R.I.P.
- 3833 posts since 8 Sep, 2003 from Santa Clara, CA, USA
manytone wrote: I even have a few accessories like full aperture solar filters and color filters, Diagonals, etc. around here that i want to get rid of. Not much but a few items are still about. Let me know if any of you are interested and I can get a list of what i got left.
Right now for myself, I have a 6" Reflector on an EQ mount which is about as big as i want to go as i am usually hauling it out to the Dark skies in our Rocky Mountains.
Also I use a small 60 mm "go to" scope and some Big Binocs for Quick views.
Do i win a Prize???
To the universe and beyond!!!!!
yep...you win a prize! Can you post some of those items? We might be interested. Right now, I am looking for some accesories. Maybe you can get everyone here to buy your whole stock and get you back in buisness again
I find my 6" very adaquate, and easier to pull to the backyard. I haven't taken it to a star party yet, but I'm glad I don't have a 32" to do that!
Thanks Sickle for your great post. Had a good time reading it..and thanks for the sugg on the Telrad...my best purchase yet for my scope. I hope you can get back into it some day soon. I think it's just part of you. Maybe some good binocs would be good...or something to use that unique eyepiece in.
BTW: did you ever take notes or do sketches...or have any of the pics you did? That would be cool.
Meffy: yeah: I used to play with Atari C-Sound and now I have Symbolic Composer for Atari which can do those types of things. ( freeware now...see my site..will run on PC with Steem)
keep 'em coming! This is a great thread!
TC
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 199 posts since 19 Sep, 2002
nice posts guys, that mount is a beaut sickle. just how the hell did you get barred from an astro club 
(ok ok, no details)
i've been doing my best to keep the gear lust to a minimum on the astro stuff, just because i know if i let myself go i'd be approaching your spending (and a divorce):o
i'm going to try and get some images though my newt and if it works then i may think about adding a few more filters etc and that telrad (bastards you've got me started already)
in my uni days i had access to a host of fun stuff including a 14-inch SC and a 24-inch Newtonian
[edit not a refractor that was a typo on the uni's website that i just cut and pasted without reading lol 
i think we had a 4.5 inch refractor when i was there aswell ], then for a few years i stuck with just a pair of bino's unitl i got my grubby mitt's on the 10inch. just to make you jealous i'm currently getting a 16inch Dall Kirkham built, but unfortunately that's for work (and not even astronomy either)
manytone - don't even think about showing me the list of stuf you've got for sale
..... oh go on then
(ok ok, no details)i've been doing my best to keep the gear lust to a minimum on the astro stuff, just because i know if i let myself go i'd be approaching your spending (and a divorce):o
i'm going to try and get some images though my newt and if it works then i may think about adding a few more filters etc and that telrad (bastards you've got me started already)
in my uni days i had access to a host of fun stuff including a 14-inch SC and a 24-inch Newtonian
[edit not a refractor that was a typo on the uni's website that i just cut and pasted without reading lol i think we had a 4.5 inch refractor when i was there aswell ], then for a few years i stuck with just a pair of bino's unitl i got my grubby mitt's on the 10inch. just to make you jealous i'm currently getting a 16inch Dall Kirkham built, but unfortunately that's for work (and not even astronomy either)manytone - don't even think about showing me the list of stuf you've got for sale
..... oh go on then
-
- R.I.P.
- 3833 posts since 8 Sep, 2003 from Santa Clara, CA, USA
Hengy wrote:nice posts guys, that mount is a beaut sickle. just how the hell did you get barred from an astro club
i've been doing my best to keep the gear lust to a minimum on the astro stuff, just because i know if i let myself go i'd be approaching your spending (and a divorce):o
i'm going to try and get some images though my newt and if it works then i may think about adding a few more filters etc and that telrad (bastards you've got me started already)
in my uni days i had access to a host of fun stuff including a 14-inch SC and a 24-inch Newtonian
manytone - don't even think about showing me the list of stuf you've got for sale
..... oh go on then
Just get the telrad for starters! and..I WANNA SEE THE LIST!
BTW: a 16" and not used for astronomy? What else would it be used for? Spying ??
TC
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- KVRian
- 1460 posts since 26 Nov, 2002
Does anybody know of any good star chart applications for pc, I use to have Hinsky (I think that is what it is called) which was really good (I had a HD crash that lost the app) It had the ability to do Night vision and had photos inserted when looking for Nebulae and other objects.
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- Mod-ulator
- 2895 posts since 31 Oct, 2000 from "Where I'm to, There I'll be"
I just found one box , this may be all thats left. Here is a bit of a list.
I did see
a few full aperture JMB solar filters ...smaller apertures.... a 76mm scope version and 2 - for 5" scopes. These are new unopened so would have to pop the box open to get exact diameter to see if it could be adapted to your scope. I would need your outside diameter of your dew shield or the end of your scope.
a few 1.25" diagonals
a few 1.25" Erect image diagonals ..... for making your refractor usable as a correct image spotting scope.
a few color eyepiece filters
think i saw a couple of standard plossls 1.25" in there. 25mm and 10mm. these were about $35.00 US new
a few higher quality Antares plossls ... these sold for about $100 US new a 10mm and a 7.5mm
a few red LED starchart lights
a polar finder scope that i think is for an orion or skywatcher eq mount
a couple camera adapters for 1.25" 35mm camera use. these are for direct photography or you can insert an eyepiece in the chamber. you need a t ring for your make of 35mm camera to go with these. you can get the t ring from almost any camera shop for about $10.00
a few Equatorial Heads ...not complete ...i think i have 2 EQ heads here somewhere ... similiar to EQ2 style.
1 is a better Japanese version i think.
maybe a reflector collimator here too.
i will see if i can find any more.
Email me if interested.
will trade for VST or whatever you may have.
LOL
maybe i should put this in a seperate thread?
oh well .... you guys get first crack.
Paul
I did see
a few full aperture JMB solar filters ...smaller apertures.... a 76mm scope version and 2 - for 5" scopes. These are new unopened so would have to pop the box open to get exact diameter to see if it could be adapted to your scope. I would need your outside diameter of your dew shield or the end of your scope.
a few 1.25" diagonals
a few 1.25" Erect image diagonals ..... for making your refractor usable as a correct image spotting scope.
a few color eyepiece filters
think i saw a couple of standard plossls 1.25" in there. 25mm and 10mm. these were about $35.00 US new
a few higher quality Antares plossls ... these sold for about $100 US new a 10mm and a 7.5mm
a few red LED starchart lights
a polar finder scope that i think is for an orion or skywatcher eq mount
a couple camera adapters for 1.25" 35mm camera use. these are for direct photography or you can insert an eyepiece in the chamber. you need a t ring for your make of 35mm camera to go with these. you can get the t ring from almost any camera shop for about $10.00
a few Equatorial Heads ...not complete ...i think i have 2 EQ heads here somewhere ... similiar to EQ2 style.
1 is a better Japanese version i think.
maybe a reflector collimator here too.
i will see if i can find any more.
Email me if interested.
will trade for VST or whatever you may have.
LOL
maybe i should put this in a seperate thread?
oh well .... you guys get first crack.
Paul
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- KVRian
- 1460 posts since 26 Nov, 2002
Found it here
http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm#hnsky
I am sure everyone knows about this app. but posted the link anyway in case there are any beginners here. Cool app for running a telescope and pc together.
http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm#hnsky
I am sure everyone knows about this app. but posted the link anyway in case there are any beginners here. Cool app for running a telescope and pc together.
-
- R.I.P.
- 3833 posts since 8 Sep, 2003 from Santa Clara, CA, USA
Soniccat wrote:Found it here
http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm#hnsky
I am sure everyone knows about this app. but posted the link anyway in case there are any beginners here. Cool app for running a telescope and pc together.
Yeah...just installed this...its one of the better free star apps I have seen. There is another one I use called Cartes du Ciel ( french) but is english too..excellent! However with HnSky, you can print out telrad charts as you can superimpose an eyepiece on any object. Nice printouts as well.Thanks for the link!
TC
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- KVRist
- 97 posts since 26 Sep, 2003
Yeah, same here, too much light pollution here in Amsterdam for the real thing...Soniccat wrote:Still neat to browse through the sky on computer.
BTW: Lot of views on this thread... Have you noticed? Very suspicious. They probably expected it to be about V***A
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 199 posts since 19 Sep, 2002
i could tell you, but then i'd have to kill youBTW: a 16" and not used for astronomy? What else would it be used for? Spying ?? Shit!
but no not spying
sonicat - you'd have found hnsky even quicker if you'd read my post earlier in the thread
and if you install all the deepsky images and star catalogues you really don't need a telescope lol virtual astronomy, i wonder if there's a vst version, perhaps you could add it to M42
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- addled muppet weed
- 106147 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
i havent got one
i also have no hope of getting a decent one but am very interested in astronomy.can we hav a list of observatory sites?are there any where you can look through the scope live?
i also have no hope of getting a decent one but am very interested in astronomy.can we hav a list of observatory sites?are there any where you can look through the scope live?
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 199 posts since 19 Sep, 2002
there should be a site active on this most times of the day, it's not through a telescope though, just a whole sky image, but it's quite fun as it overlays the object names so you know what you're looking at.
http://nightskylive.net
this one isn't finished but might be fun when it is
http://www.telescope.org/
http://nightskylive.net
this one isn't finished but might be fun when it is
http://www.telescope.org/
