More Scopin' Fun

I've continued to play with the Galileoscope over the weekend. I will say this again, it has been the best $15 I've spent in my life. While I will certainly be looking for a high end 'scope when I can afford it, the Galileoscope does what a good intro telescope should. At both 25x and 50x, you can aim at any dark spot in the sky and see dozens of stars that were not visible with the naked eye. You can clearly see the 4 largest Jovian moons, and I was even able to make out the main cloud bands on Jupiter.

I've made -some- progress on the video capture front. I've given up on using my hand-held digital camera and have decided to try to mount a webcam to the eyepiece (ala Thunderf00t, a man who clearly knows his astronomy.) I was having troubles getting my external webcam to work with my Macbook, but blogger Sidiasus stepped up to the plate and suggested using a memory-stick based Ubuntu Linux distribution. This works great, and has the additional benefit of command-line control over the webcam image. I'll try to test this sometime this week. In the end, the case may be that I will need better equipment to capture some of the images I've witnessed over the past several weeks.

As Advertised.

The Galileoscope came out again last night. It was not the best night for observing, however- nearly full moon washed out many objects, and there was a bit of cloud cover that cut the night short. Despite this, for the first time I found Jupiter! Sure enough, just as claimed, I was able to see 4-5 moons. It was incredible. I could not see the cloud bands, and the Jovian moons were just specs, but I was excited none the less.

As I admitted to a good friend of mine, astronomy is NOT a strong point of mine, so I had to use a nifty iPhone/iPod touch app to help me find things (Planets by Dana Peters - free and recommended.)

I am trying to jury rig a camera to the 'scope to get some images here, but it hasn't gone well so far. I'll try a few new things tonight.

Telescoping

Tonight was the second night that I was able to take out my "Galileoscope" and take a look at the moon. I have a shameful confession to make- not only is this my first telescope, it is also my first time outside of an undergrad intro to astronomy class that I've spent some quality time looking at the night sky. Pretty bad for a space scientist...

Anyhow, the 'scope is everything for which I had hoped. At 25x and 50x, the moon was amazing. Many of the smaller craters are easily visible, as well as the rays coming off of the larger ones. The detail is stunning and inspiring. The challenges with the smaller scope are focusing (performed by pushing/pulling/twisting the inner tube in and out of the larger one) and keeping the scope steady on a cheap camera tripod.

Tonight, feeling a bit more confident with my ability to find objects in the sky, I turned toward some of the brighter stars. Although I couldn't line them up, I was amazed at the number of stars that I could see through the 'scope in areas that appeared empty with the naked eye. I was taken aback by the thought that in each empty space I could see with the telescope, there were an infinite number of objects waiting to be seen. Of course this should be obvious, but until you finally look yourself, it is hard to fathom.

This is the best fifteen bucks I've spent in a long, long time.

HUZZAH!

I've taken a short vacation, hence the lag in posts lately. However, I do have plenty to talk about.

The first item is the arrival of my Galileoscope last Friday!

Some assembly required, eh? Wasn't too bad, however, and soon I was spying on the neighbors looking at the night sky.

Unfortunately, the moon hasn't been out early enough to test the 'scope yet. Being a cheap instrument on a cheaper tripod, I had a lot of trouble getting stars into focus as well. Additionally, this is my first telescope, so I'm still learning how to use it properly. At this point, I'm waiting for the next night where I can get a good, clear shot at the moon. This will make for a much easier time getting objects in focus.