Amateur Astronomy Images and Resources
In mid-August 2003, not entirely due to Mars mania (but mostly
so), I decided to fulfill a lifelong yearning to get more involved
in amateur astronomy. I visited Boston
Telescope with a vague plan to either repair my crippled Celestron
FirstScope 114 (Hale-Bopp mania...) or upgrade to something more
interesting. I had no idea how evolved modern amateur telescopes
have become, and walked out of there with a Meade
LX200GPS 8" and a grin on my face from ear to ear. My ten-year-old
son, Ray, who had accompanied me on the trip, was giving me some
really funny looks...
While I try to learn the constellations and figure out how to observe,
I also dabble a bit in astrophotography. Right now I'm using a Philips
ToUCam Pro webcam and Registax
1.1 for image selection and stacking.
Images are listed in reverse-chronological order. Some useful resources
follow.
2003 Images
[For a great explanation of sunspots, see this.]
October 30: Sunspot groups 486
and 488
October 25: Sunspot groups 484
and 486
October 20: Sunspot
group 484
October 6: Moon
September 24: Mars
Amateur Astronomy Resources
[More to come. This is just a start.]
Clubs
North
Shore Amateur Astronomy Club - My local club. Very friendly
(and tolerant!) group (after all, they tolerate me as the
newsletter editor and web site maintainer...)
Software
Registax:
Freeware image processing utility
Scott
Pinkham's page: Freeware LX200 remote-control utilities
RAMDisk: It
took me a while, but I finally found a RAM Disk utility for XP Home
that runs reliably and allows a large (~256M or more) device size.
A RAM Disk can speed up Registax processing by around 30%. The version
downloadable on this page is limited to 64M, but you can email the
author and request the version that allows larger sizes. There is
a suggested donation of $10 or so, but the software is fully functional
whether or not you pay it (he says there's a nag screen, but I've
never seen it)
LX200 Resources
Peterson
Engineering: Great, useful mod kits for the LX200
Must-Have Books
Choosing
and Using a Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope by Rod Mollise: If
I'd read this before running out to buy doodads for my LX200, I
would've saved myself some money and lots of grief. Reading this
book feels like having my own personal amateur telescope expert
guardian angel to put me on track...
Nightwatch:
Probably the best "first" book on astronomy there is.
Richly detailed, plenty of useful (but not intimidating) star charts,
fun to read.
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