[thechat] speaking of meteors....

javier velasco lists at mantruc.com
Fri Jan 3 13:58:00 CST 2003


Cheryl Baringer wrote:
>
> Is anyone here into astronomy? I got a lovely old telescope for
> Christmas, but I know nothing about it. It's an orange-tube C8 (and if
> you know what that means, you're ahead of where I was two weeks ago).
> Been reading like crazy on the 'net for the last week, of course.

hi Cheryl:

i'm not really into astronomy but i once took an intro course, what i
learned there is that before using a telescope you need to know where to
point it.

i don't mean to disencourage you, the lesson was you first have to learn
about the sky as you can see it with your naked eye, learn to recognize
the constellations and find out what corners you find most interesting.
later you can look at the same things through binoculars, then the
telescope, and a bigger one, and a larger one :)

but before you loose the drive you can point it to the penumbra of the
half moon, or check if it's powerful enough to see Jupiter's moons, you
can look at Saturn's rings.

i'm sure someone else can point you to some nice websites.

astronomers have these maps where you can estimate the position of the
stars in a given day/time according to your location, but mine would be
no use for you, it's based on the southern hemisphere :)



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