* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Amateur Astronomy

Blobrana · L

There are thousands of asteroids bright enough for medium-sized telescopes equipped with CCD cameras to measure the variations in the amount of light they reflect to Earth. Many of these have never been studied, with their rotation periods and shapes completely unknown. Others have been only briefly monitored, with the results unreliable.
My research is to find rotation periods and elongations of asteroids not previously studied, or with poorly known values. For the latter in several cases I found that the published period was wrong and was able to correct it. I use a 14-inch Meade telescope, CCD camera and specialised software for obtaining the data and analysing them. The procedure is simple. I take 54 digital images each hour of the asteroid and nearby stars, all night long. On each image, I record the exact time of exposure, then measure the brightness of the asteroid and nearby stars. By comparing the brightness of the asteroid with that of the fixed stars, I find the changes in asteroid brightness. The software then draws the lightcurve.
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Blobrana · L

In darkest East Anglia, Ross Clark and his son reach for the sky with 'the People's Astronomer', Mark Thompson .

You have to make your own fun in rural Norfolk, but it turns out that stargazing is one hobby better practised here than anywhere else in southern England. We are 20 miles from any sizeable town and the orange glow that permeates the sky over most of Britain is mercifully over the horizon. In spite of a thin sheen of cloud that is creating a halo around the moon we are almost immediately treated to a sight denied to big city-dwellers: Saturn's rings.
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Blobrana · L

Stargazing

Blobrana · L

RE: Amateur Astronomy

Blobrana · L

Over the years, I've bought a few stargazing accessories from Orion Telescopes and Binoculars, so I'm unavoidably on the company's mailing list. The latest catalogue just arrived and includes three new - really large - scopes. The largest (50-inch aperture) is advertised as "the biggest amateur telescope in the world." Price? $123,000. Shipping and handling (at the factory and delivery site) are extra and certainly no small amount. The primary mirror assembly weighs 500 pounds; the fully assembled scope 900 pounds.
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Blobrana · L

Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way.
His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.
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Blobrana · L

Is astronomy a field that is fit only for intellectuals, great scientists and physicians? Well, if you think so, then you are mistaken as I was, earlier. I realised that it was not a fact. The fact actually is that the field is open to all, even if they are not trained or qualified; if you can keep gazing into the sky a lot or if you are interested in knowing what lies beyond our own earth, its good enough. For all such people there is this new area - astronomy for the amateurs.

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