What are Reddit's favorite Star Map Apps?
Stellarium
Solar System Scope
Celestia
Star Walk (series)
SkyMap
Sky Map
KStars
Gaia Sky
Sky Guide
SkEye
SkyView
StarCalc
WinStars
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Star Map Apps:
To be clear, the orbital periods of the planets are not neat ratios of one another, with regular perfect alignments. I assume it was portrayed that way just to show one revolution of each planet and/or make the graphic loop better. (In the graphic Neptune completes one revolution in the time it takes Earth to make six; in reality a Neptunian year lasts about 165 Earth years.)
For a more accurate representation of the orbits in our system check out this visualizer: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/
Zoom out, view it from the "top," speed it up, and set the orbits to realistic. Edit: Actually, the Orrery model may be better for getting the initial impression of orbital periods; just know that it's not at all accurate regarding size and shape of orbits.
Astronomy can start out inexpensive but can become prohibitively expensive. Get some decent binoculars and a sky map, you can see stuff like the Pleadies, Andromeda, Orion Nebula, etc. My binoculars were around $30, sky maps are free: http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html or download a program called Stellarium: http://www.stellarium.org/
I wanted to see more stuff and found a decent telescope on Craigslist for $75 or so.
Venus and Jupiter are the easiest to spot right now. As soon as the sun goes down, if you look to the West before it's even fully dark, the brightest object in the sky is Venus, a few minutes later to the right of it will be a much fainter Jupiter. When it is fully dark and you can see all the stars, Saturn is just hanging out at the top of and following the Scorpio constellation right now. For a synopsis of easy things to see in the sky check out Sky at a Glance on Sky and Telescope
The thing that made it easiest for me to start tracking things though was this program - Stellarium, you can track where everything is and can manipulate the time to see where things will be in the future.
here's another example using Solar System Scope[1] with 'realistic orbits' selected. Planets enlarged for emphasis. As you can see, from the Earth's point of view, the planets seem to be in line at this current position of their orbit.
![here's another example using Solar System Scope[1]](http://i.imgur.com/1YTooU5.jpg){kind=link}
I'll say the same thing now that I did the last time I saw this posted here:
The orbital periods of the planets are not neat ratios of one another as they appear in the left side of this gif. The orbits do not increase in size with that regularity, the planets do not all move at the same speed along those orbits, and they do not all perfectly align every time Neptune completes a revolution.
For example: in the graphic Neptune completes one revolution in the time it takes Earth to complete six; in reality a Neptunian year lasts about 165 Earth years.
I assume this graphic portrays the solar system the way it does in order to cram a single revolution of each planet into a short gif and/or make the graphic loop better. I understand that the orbital periods are beside the point of the gif and that it still makes its main point about the sensibility of heliocentrism over geocentrism, but every time it's posted I see people assume it is completely accurate. It really needs a footnote explaining that essentially nothing in the graphic is to scale.
For a more accurate representation of the orbits in our system check out this visualizer: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ Zoom out, view it from the "top," and speed up the simulation. That will give you an idea of the relative time involved, and after that you can set the orbits to "Realistic" rather than "Orrery" to get a better idea the sizes and shapes of the orbits.
Yes, it could well have been Mars, as it would have been visible due south from your location at that time.
How do I know that? There is a free, open source item of software called Stellarium which can show you exactly what the sky outside looks like from any place on the planet at any time or date.
And I'd add Stellarium to the list of Space software you can toy around with. As the name suggests, it won't let you explore space, but rather will show you what's visible in the sky at a given time and location on Earth.
Quite nice for wannabe stargazers. I learned of its existence in high school when they made us work with some automatic telescope similar to that one. We could even connect the telescope to a PC and see where it was pointing at inside Stellarium.
According to the EXIF data on his Flickr page, it was taken November 2, 2012 at roughly 1:20 AM. Using Stellarium to go back in time I can see exactly what stars they are.
The lower star is HIP 22838, an 8th magnitude star. It's invisible to the naked eye. The middle star doesn't have any reference according to Stellarium at magnitude 8.45, and the top star is HIP 22947 at magnitude 7.35, still invisible to the naked eye.
If someone wanted to know, from left to right the Galilean moons are Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Io.
If you want to get a visual representation of what he's saying, try using Stellarium (freeware).
It allows you to see the stars, and zoom in on any one of them. Alternatively, you can zoom out (as if you are falling backwards towards the Earth, while still looking at the sky). If you keep zooming out, the night sky will begin to fish eye, and you will be surrounded by void, as he said, until the visible universe coalesces into a single point.
Not an exact simulation of the subject at hand, but a pretty fun substitute.
Stellarium is a great, free plane_arium software that does a good job of showing apparent sizes of any celestial object. I'm sure you can add this object, if it's not already there for that date.
One feature of Stellarium is that you can click on planets, moons, or asteroids within our solar system and then hit CTRL-G (CMD-G on Macs) to make that your home planet. If you select Callisto or Io and hit CTRL-G, you'll be able to see what the sky looks like from either of those moons.
Pretty narrow, only a few degrees across, therefor: tan(theta)*(distance to supernova) = diameter
So, assuming 8,000 LY we get: tan (2 degrees) = 0.017 * 8000LY = 136 LY across.
Basically enough to fry us and a few hundred other star systems at the same time
I pulled the beam with info from this conversation.
Celestron SkyMaster 15x (I bought these back in college). They are ~$70, but I think they are worth it. You will see Jupiter's largest moons, hanging out around Jupiter (it's stunning). I recommend looking around Orion's Belt and Sirius also. You'll find clusters and nebulas which are jawdropping. I never thought I'd see so many stars/galaxies in such a dense area. I've spent hours at the window with these binoculars. I also highly recommend downloading Stellarium. I mentioned Stellarium to one of the other astrophysics majors, and by the end of the week, everyone in our major was talking about it. You'll see why once you download it.
They are Venus and Jupiter - Venus is the brighter one.
Try looking at Jupiter with binoculars, you should be able to see 1-4 of its moons. They are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto - we call them the Galilean moons after Galileo Galilei, who first observed them away back in 1610 after developing, or at least perfecting, the telescope.
If you look towards the east (south-east later on at night) there should be an object that looks distinctly red; that's Mars.
If you're keen to learn your way around the night sky then there's a great piece of software that can help you out. It's called Stellarium and it's free to download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
For the uninformed, why exactly is it way cooler? I looked it up and it doesn't seem to do anything different besides looking a little less polished (in my opinion) and costing infinitely more.
edit: Grammar.
Amateur astronomy.
Download Stellarium and start learning constellations and stellar geography. Start spotting planets and learning to name stars, no telescope required.
Nice.
Folks, check out Stellarium, an open-souce planetarium program.
edit: This similar grouping of the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter will be visible again in the early morning hours in mid-July: http://i.imgur.com/MXlL9.png (as seen from where I live)
There's also a great free computer program I've used called Stellarium, allows you to adjust date and time as well as location so you can know ahead of time where things will be.
http://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=2&lat=5396499.63301&lon=590622.69407&layers=B0TFFFTT
1. go stand in one of the dark areas, away from any bright lights
2. look up for about 30 minutes to see milky way.
you might want to check if you can see the milky way from the time and place you will be standing using stellarium.
If the location is correct, looking north, morning time, the rockets were launched towards the west. I'm using Stellarium to determine the appox. time from the shadow angles: It would have been about 7 to 8 am.
Edit: Looks like they were launched towards Dobropillya, or the Road (T0515) leading away from the town.
Edit 2: I was correct, here is a video titled "Terrorists Burned And Left BM Grad In Dobropillya" uploaded yesterday... The guy talks about Dobropillya receiving a Grad rocket attack yesterday from the separatists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUUdM6C2cM
Seems like the separatists retreated from Dobropillya, left behind one of their Grad launchers, and use another Grad to launch rockets from Dorozhnje train depot yesterday.
"But the second one withdrew, we can see it on the traces and local confirmed."
Use Stellarium and a projector!
It has lots of info about celestial bodies which may be interesting to him. You can also turn on constellation pictures to make those arbitrary lines more vivid. Time, date, location, and atmospheric conditions (you can even remove the atmosphere) can be adjusted. The best part is, it's all free!
I haven't used space engine yet, but I have used Stellarium which is really cool for seeing the night sky from anywhere on Earth. You can also speed up time to see a planet's path through the sky. I spent like 2 hours using it when I first installed it. Free too, and works with all OS.
I have the same scope. You can actually use Stellarium to drive the scope and point to whatever star you want after alignment.
To do so, you'll need the cable, or you can make your own serial port (DB9) to telephone cord (RJ11) if you have the parts. It's relatively simple to make, it's just 3 solder points. A great resource is here: http://www.nexstarsite.com/
There are also some minor issues with the mount if you live in a windy area. It's relatively light and not a solid stand. But you can fix that by tightening all the screws on along the posts, and filling the steel tubes with sand or something heavy. If you don't want to do that, you can always put a heavy sand bag on the accessory tray on the tripod. If there is still a lot of motion, you can use vibration suppression pads to dampen the ground a tiny bit.
I highly suggest you find a 12v power adapter to go along with this guy. It eats up AAs relatively quickly if you use it often.
I've had mine for 3-years now. It's a pretty decent scope for a beginner, and i'm starting to get into astrophotography with it. I've managed to get it to prime focus with my DSLR with a little bit of modification. I ended up needing to move the primary forward about 2cm in order to bring the focus to the camera. It uses M5 screws by the way.
Also, You're the best uncle ever!
I've been doing this for a while but it's not crazy complicated although it does take a DSLR or mirrorless camera, although some point and shoot cameras are good enough. The short version of it is, wait until the moon is not full (the best is when it's a new moon), go to a very dark place (a couple hours outside any major city), figure out where/when the galactic center of the milky way is using stallarium then go outside in the right place/right time. Once you're out you need to focus your camera on infinity, set it to the largest aperture your lens has (smallest f stop), a shutter speed around 10-30 and an ISO above 1600.
This one specifically was shot a few days after the full moon but before it rose above the horizon, using a Nikon D600 and a 24mm F1.4 lens at F1.4/20 seconds/ISO 4500). This was actually a panorama stitched from about 6 images to get a wide field of view and a larger resulting image.
A great resource on how to do this is http://www.lonelyspeck.com/
Obligatory plug for Stellarium. It's a particularly awesome app which models what you'll see in the sky from any given location at any given time, and it'll tell you everything you could hope to know.
If you have a computer, get Stellarium! Play with the program and get a feeling of how the solar system physically works. Get a feeling of the earth's axis and rotation too. It helps me 'predict' positions of the sun, moon and planets! As well as times and periods during the year when they're visible or not!
You might also take a look at NASA’s Eyes. There are also apps for mobile phones which you can aim to the sky and will show you the current locations.
Besides software you can print out star charts, buy a globe, binoculars, etc.
Link for Stellarium, mentioned by /u/schorhr: http://www.stellarium.org/ (free for Win/Linux/Mac, I think $5 for Android, but it's very good on both). It takes latitude/longitude for location rather than zip code.
In addition to the jshine map you should also download Stellarium. It will show you when/if there is a moon rise and will show you how the milky way will appear on any given day. It's a really useful program.
Not to steal from your work, but this is an open-source Java app with 1 billion stars:
https://zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreach/gaiasky/
Properly optimised, Java apps can definitely work great.
Yup, almost certainly the ISS. The ISS can be very bright because it is huge compared to normal satellites and thus reflects a lot more sunlight. It also appears to move faster than many satellites due to it's low orbit. I used Stellarium to simulate the night sky from your location, and you can see the ISS pass overhead and then disappear as it passes into the Earth's shadow.
Edit: My best guess is that you mistook Jupiter for it after it disappeared, as Jupiter is most similar in brightness.
Celestia is open source so it can be extended.
Have a look at Universe Sandbox which is better at aspects of stellar scale modelling than Celestia, and at Stellarium for sky views as seen from Earth.
An "accurate" representation of our solar system
With decent background music, make sure you play around with the settings to your left and turn on "Realistic Model" and "Realistic Sizes" Also the pathing on comets/planets/etc. is fun to see.
Go to the 24th of May 2014 to see how "close" "209P/LINEAR" was to us!
It was "only" 0.0554 AU (8'290'000 km) away from us. That's about 650 Earths from us! It is however not the closest comet in recorded history though, that goes to "D/1770 L1" which passed at 0.0151 AU (~2'260'000 km) which is about 180 Earths from us.
Yup. Any astronomy software/apps can do this.
I use Sky Safari on my phone.
Stellarium is a free PC program.
Just enter the time, date and location you want and it will show you the sky at that point.
Also just to note, the north star (Polaris) would only ever be at zenith from the north pole.
I know it's not the same as reality, but there is a free open source program called Stellarium that allows you to input your location and view the night sky from your location as if there were not light pollution, smog, fog and clouds. It's a virtual planetarium with an impressive list of features and many ways to customize it. You can even import a panorama photo of your backyard.
IF you have a PC/Laptop, I would download and use Stellarium
If you are using a smartphone of some sort, there are many many apps available that will allow you to find many many things.
first off hunt out a program called stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) its a great reference to have for navigating the sky and if you give that program enough information about your scope it will help set expectations on what you can see on a clear night. and best of all its free.
but at first glance a scope that size should be good for seeing the rings of Saturn (a personal favorite of mine to hunt out)
best of luck and have fun.
>Without a star-map, I mean
The best way to learn the constellations (what I think you mean by "star signs") is with a star map of some kind.
Some options:
Install Stellarium. It is free software for PC, Mac, and Linux.
Download a monthly sky map from skymaps.com
Download this program. Put in your zip/postal code. It helps if you know the cardinal directions.
FYI: the star you're seeing probably isn't a star. You're probably seeing Jupiter or Mars
I got 7 minutes before I can post again... I'll address some comments while I'm waiting.
@everyone suggesting phone apps. They're great but unnecessary. Trust me all you need is stellarium. Get a netbook/laptop and some binoculars and prepare to get blown away.
@chomps that is awesome. I'd say it would be better to get a compass and stellarium. You could cut out that process entirely.
@cbfreder Venus is usually only out for a short period of time usually just around dusk/dawn. That being said it is exceptionally bright. Here is a picture I took 3 days ago @ 5am. http://i.imgur.com/13qzY.jpg Venus is in the dead center above the bright light. All the other stars got washed out from all the light in the foreground... but venus showed up clearly.
If I were a betting man I'd say you saw Jupiter.
Here you go:
http://i.imgur.com/s2DjRIo.png
That's from the open source Stellarium - runs on nearly all PCs.
Great program for anyone new, or familiar with the night sky:
Yep, Jupiter! Happy cake day!
Source: the wonderful and free Stellarium.
I moved location to UK, rewound time a bit, found the moon, and saw Jupiter there.
Indeed. The Sun is a rather un-assuming G-class star. When you go outside and look up at the night sky, the vast, vast majority of the stars you see are either O- and B-class stars or giant stars, all of which are very hot and bright.
O/B stars are also extremely short-lived, and giant phases are just a small fraction of a main-sequence star's lifetime. Because of this, the vast, vast majority (these numbers are called "astronomical" for a reason) of stars in our galaxy and in the universe are actually small, cool, dim, very long-lived red dwarfs.
That is, when you look up at the night sky, by a selection effect you see an extremely un-representative sample of the stars in our Milky Way and the Universe. O/B stars and giants are a "vocal minority."
We do a really interesting 101 lab here on campus where students each pick a star by eye from a planetarium program (Stellarium; it's free! Go get it!) and calculate its size, and then draw it to scale on a 10m-long markerboard. At the start of the lab I show them the Sun, which is only 1cm across. Why so small, they wonder? All of the stars they wind up drawing are larger than 3cm across, but the average is about 15cm. There are a number of 2- and 3-meter stars that are wider than the board is tall. The stars are chosen by eye to demonstrate the selection effect: they simply wouldn't be able to see the dimmer stars without zooming in or asking the program to bring them out.
If you're into astronomy, Stellarium is a really nice free software that shows you the sky and all the stars, planets, etc. Basically a virtual planetarium but shows the viewpoint from wherever you want it to and you can speed up time to see orbits and stuff.
It's pretty nifty. My professor used it a lot in our class last semester.
Have you looked at Stellarium? It's got some various options to view constellations in different ways. I'd recommend even if it's just for looking at our sky in general!
Personally I'd use Stellarium.
Much more powerful and I think prettier than most programs. Not only is it super detailed and useful, but it can actually plug into a motorized telescope and control it.
I would recommend a book called "Turn Left at Orion". It is intended for people like yourself, who are just learning how to navigate the skies.
Also a sky map or a planetarium program, like Stellarium will help you a lot!
One of the nice things about winter coming is that the skies are generally clearer. The top star is Jupiter, then Venus (brighter) and then Mars will be at the 8 O'clock position to Venus.
Stellarium: http://www.stellarium.org is a great way to check whats is visible in the sky and at what time!
Stellarium is also a great, free planetarium that has satellite info, which is also useful, of course. http://www.stellarium.org
There's also this satellite database, includes info in iridium flares and ISS fly-bys http://www.heavens-above.com/
The program is Stellarium, and yes, it does exactly as you say:
http://www.stellarium.org/en_CA/
Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
Brady, so what do you think about your "how to cut cake" video going viral?
I've been facepalming hard nearly every time someone (like FOXNEWS... yeah Alex "numberphile" Bellos :D ) made an article about it.
Then there was view... er freebooting! Also people not aware that it was video mainly about math and not cooking advice, all raging in the comments sections bellow the articles.
Nevertheless, Steven Fry retweeted it so Congratulations :D
.
edit: oh wow you've talked about it on podcast, and you answered everything.
btw: for stargazing you can use free opensource program Stellarium. I use it every time I want to find something on the night sky.
http://skymaps.com/ is a good printable resource. Otherwise I would say go with something like http://www.stellarium.org/ , which is a simulation of what you can see from your house at any given time.
if you plug the coordinates from the paste bin into a star map and go to the time at which the files on the server are last modified, you find a constellation similar to the one in the image: http://www.skymaponline.net/view.aspx?r=9611&x=9652&y=8386&lat=47.378049&long=-122.169226&time=20150310191500&rotation=90&w=960&h=500&gmtoffset=-240&loc=Kent,%20United%20States&id=76fed8eb78
Actually it can be night in South and Central America while it's night in Europe. http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/
I guess the title goes to the Mongols. If you can even call theirs an empire.
Venus is below and to the right. Mars is above and to the left. There is a star immediately below the Moon, Sigma Aquarii, which may or may not be what you're looking at.
Stellarium is a great little astronomy program, 100% free.
If you got this as an assignment, then your task probably isn't to find the answer, but also how work it out yourself. This is an important skill, not only when getting to know the night sky. I bet your teacher also wanted you to learn self reliance. If you would have searched for yourself, you would have come across valuable resources like Stellarium, or a site like this. You won't always be able to ask someone else. [/teachermode]
Your eyes are a good place to start :-)
My early forays into astronomy were summer nights, rolling a blanket out on the lawn and just lying back and looking. After a while you start to recognize the patterns and learn your way around the sky. And it's not only stars you'll see, you can see, for example, the great nebula in Orion with the naked eye from a dark place. You can also see the Andromeda galaxy and numerous bright star clusters like the Pleiades, plus Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Saturn. If you know where and when to look you can even see the ISS.
If you've got $15 buy a copy of Nightwatch which is a great introductory text to astronomy.
You can also do astronomy without even leaving your armchair. Just download Stellarium and kiss goodbye to all your spare time.
If you can save up between $50 and $100, it will be time to get a pair of 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars and blow your mind out by looking at the lunar craters.
Try the freeware package Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) if you are interested in what is in the sky on any given night. Very useful if you have kids, to show them what they should be looking at.
Globular clusters are always nice to explore at lower powers. M13 (Hercules globular cluster) should be easy to see and find. M5 is another nice one.
M31 (Andromeda galaxy) near Cassiopeia is another good one since its so large.
For planets, you should be able to get nice views of Jupiter and Saturn. The moon (I know it's not a planet but I'm putting it here anyway) is another great thing to look at -- there is a lot to explore there. Try to focus around the terminator (dark/light line) for more contrast and detail.
There are a few binary stars you should be able to resolve as well.
Other than that, a lot of the time I just pick an area of the sky to look at and slowly look around. If I see something interesting, I'll figure out where I'm pointing and use Stellarium to figure out what it is (if anything). For me I have more fun just exploring randomly.
Planets each move on their own orbit around the Sun, so they move at different speeds relative to the background stars. That speed depends on their distance from Earth and the Sun, so the nearby planets like Mars and Venus may be in completely different places just a few months later, while Uranus and Neptune will still be in almost the same spot.
Best way to find them is with software like Stellarium.
I have learned the most about the night sky and the location of various objects with a free software called Stellarium. This is a fantastic tool!
Also, reading the book "Turn Left at Orion" has been really helpful for me.
By using the telescopes from earth and in orbit we can measure distance and position of many stars in the solar system. We then put it together to have map of the solar system with our own solar system included. Besides google sky we have Celestia which is a space simulator and Stellarium a planetarium. Both are multi-platform and free
During my re-watch I used this one to check for daylight continuities. I found that for the most part they did a very good job of keeping the right (or at least plausible) daylight hours. There were some scenes, though, that just wouldn't be possible. Also, Kala and her family are up at 2-4 in the morning almost every night :P
You can simulate this in your computer. You can download Celestia, an astronomy software that lets you travel between the stars and explore the Milky Way in 3D space. You can star-hop around and see that, within the Solar System, even within the Local group, most of the constellations remain largely intact. It's when you travel to distant stars that the constellations are distorted, because they're Solar-centric.
There's no such thing as "above", "below", or "horizontally parallel to Earth" in space. There are telescopes looking in every direction, from the North Celestial Pole to the South Celestial Pole. There are stars, dust, nebulae, and galaxies in every direction. If you'd like to see for yourself what the sky looks like from any point on Earth, looking in any direction you choose, I'd recommend downloading Stellarium.
You're very welcome.
If you have a smartphone you might prefer an astronomy app to the book. I use Sky Safari.
Stellarium is planetarium software that provides a simulation of the night sky on your computer. It's fun to just look around, and useful for finding when and where the planets, nebula, star clusters, etc. are going to be.
An accessory you might like is a smartphone holder like this one from GoSky. You can take a picture by just holding your phone to the eyepiece, but a holder helps.
Clear skies!
You can confirm what you're looking at with Stellarium. Set it to your location, set it to the time of your observation, and find Jupiter, and you'll be able to see what was in your eyepiece.
If you ever see an object and are curious as to what it is, you can use a free program called Stellarium to see what it is. It has a lot of neat features like being able to set the view location on any location on the planet, set any date or time, track satellites, etc.
There are other similar "virtual planetarium" programs that do the same thing, but that's the one I personally prefer.
Yeah during southern hemisphere winter. That's when it will be overhead. You can get pictures of it during the early morning of autumn and early night of spring, but during the winter it will rise and set during the night.
I'd recommend downloading Stellarium so you can see for yourself where the core will be at what times of the year.
You need an unobstructed view of the southern sky. This will be limited at Rooster Rock. If you're chasing Saturn and it's low on either end of the ecliptic, you may not see anything at all (depending on when you go viewing).
For what it's worth, Saturn is a very bright object and not really subject to light pollution. You can view it from anywhere in Portland with a reasonably unobstructed view of the sky.
For planning your viewing I recommend Stellarium: http://www.stellarium.org/
That would be Venus. May I recommend Stellarium, fantastic (and free) program to help identify or plan star gazing. You can even see what would be visible on other bodies in the solar system.
Here's the "maximum fun, minimum effort" method:
Install Stellarium, put it in night vision, take your laptop outside and start picking out the constellations and planets.
Acquire binoculars and practice locating Jupiter and it's moons, other planets, Pleiades, Andromeda, etc.
Do this a couple of times and you'll find yourself knowing where things are.
Subscribe to /r/space, /r/astronomy and wikipedia is your friend when it comes to basic facts.
What is Jupiter made of? Wiki.
How far is Andromeda? Wiki.
What's a parsec? Wiki.
What the heck is gravitational time dilation? Wiki.
If you want space related news there's Scishow Space.
Congrats! I suggest SkyMaps (printable maps) or Stellarium (program) for seeing what's up in the night sky. Or just going outside every night and taking a good look around :)
I really wish articles wouldn't flat-out lie in their headlines just to get views. Of course there will be tons of planets on the ecliptic. Our Solar System is a disk. By definition (by necessity), planets are located near the ecliptic. This is not the same as being aligned.
If you go out to the beach and take a picture of the ocean, you'll see that all the boats are near the horizon. Does that mean that the boats are aligned?
It seems like you're pretty well set. Even though you may not need the computer for art class, I would still suggest GIMP. It might be helpful for conceptualising some of the pieces.
For astronomy, you most definitely can't go wrong with Stellarium :-)
Try looking at this: http://www.stellarium.org/
I did a quick search and didn't find it precisely but there was one very close to those coordinates which might be a good candidate.
Here's a few screenshots:
Good luck!
Why not try going to some star parties? You can try out looking through a scope and see how you like it before investing any money. You might also try downloading Stellarium, both to figure out what you're looking at and to find things to try to look at.
There is a free program called "Stellarium". There you can view the nightsky from your PC and it shows you what star/planet it is (right now) from any location on the earth and also at what time. You should really check it out. I first discoverd it when they had installed it on our school computers. It's pretty nice and simple.
Best place to start is to go outside at night and look up and start noticing where the bright stars are and see if you can identify a few asterisms and constellations, like orion and the Big and little dippers, which are asterisms not constellations. Stellarium is pretty awesome, and it's it is freeware, but there is more than one download. You might want to get planisphere, but pay attention which latitude wht Planisphere is for.. i was in New orleans, using my father's plan shop here, whic was for 40 degrees north latitude,. New Orleans ist at 30 degrees north latitude.
All the equipment you need is your brain, your eyes and maybe some binoculars and a mount to hold th the binoculars steady.
Check at the the right column where there is link for first time telescope buyers. Hopefully you can afford to get a telescope with a clock drive. Don't forget pawn shops.
Here are some nice ones you could use, but they are non-commercial licenses so you'd have to talk to the people who made them if you want to monetize.
I just downloaded this awesome open source "stellarium" that lets you set your location and time of day and it shows you what the sky looks like. According to it, Venus would not have been visible at 11pm in Michigan facing East. In fact, it wouldn't even be visible in the sky from any direction. Venus would have "set" by then. I, personally, know nothing of astronomy so I'm just trusting the software.
BTW, very cool program, I recommend:
EDIT: When using the software, I assumed the sighting was recent so I didn't adjust for time of year. If you're reporting a sighting that happened some time ago I suppose that might impact whether or not Venus would be visible.
The bright planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus) are usually the easiest to find in the sky, in my opinion (well, other than the moon :))
Download Stellarium to see where and when everything is.
If you're observing from your backyard, you can also make a custom panorama backdrop of the backyard to import into Stellarium, so you can see what the buildings/houses will block out of view.
Hi there,
With your scope, the amount of stuff you'll get to see will be pretty limited by the fact that you only have 60mm of aperture (aperture is the diameter of the front lens of the scope and is the main thing that determines how much you'll get to see). You're going to mainly want to focus on the Moon, the planets, and the brighter deep-sky objects in the night sky (such as the Orion Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, open clusters, etc), as most of the dimmer objects probably won't show up in your scope very well, if at all. Also, be aware that pushing the magnification over about 120x probably won't give you very good views, as you'll be pushing the maximum magnification of your scope (general rule of thumb is that the maximum magnification is 2x per millimeter of aperture, or 50x per inch of aperture). So, therefore, you won't want to use any eyepieces with focal lengths less than about 6mm (magnification = telescope focal length / eyepiece focal length).
One recommendation I have is to download Stellarium, a free planetarium program that will allow you to see how the sky looks at any given time from any given location. This will allow you to see what's up in the sky and where objects are located.
For upgrades, I'd probably suggest getting used to the scope first and figuring out how everything works before buying more accessories for it. It's up to you, but that'd be my recommendation.
Hope that helps, and feel free to ask anything other questions you might have both here and on the /r/telescopes subreddit - we're always glad to help out! :)
That's the planet Venus. You can download Stellarium to identify stars and planets -- it will show you what's in the sky at any given date and time.
It looks like it was out of focus in the zoomed in picture.
I recommend using the program Stellarium (there's an Android and Iphone app as well, although it costs a bit) to plan your stargazing. You can get an accurate map of the night sky for wherever you are at any time.
From my own experience: SkySafari is hands down the best app i've used on a mobile device.
For those using less mobile gadgets (as in, computers, laptops, netbooks) the Stellarium is a very good (and free, as in freedom) choice.
Think that's cool? Try this:
- Turn on satellites (to the left of the arrow buttons on bottom menu)
- search on the ISS (control+F to bring up the find dialog)
- set Stellarium to a time when the ISS will appear in your sky (if you are on the east coast of the United States, try 2/21 around 7:45)
http://i.imgur.com/eES95Up.png
As great as this package is, it doesn't have a lot of help right in the program, you might find this helpful: http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Interface_Guide
> Is Alt-AZ worse than equatorial for astrophotgraphy?
Yes, AltAz isn't suitable at all for long exposure tracked AP, unless an Equatorial Wedge can be added. This is because of...
> Can you explain field rotation?
Yep. :)
Fire up Stellarium and center on a large object with some shape. M42 is a good candidate.
Hit F5 to bring up the "Date and Time" control, and start rolling time forward and back. Watch M42 rotate in the field of view.
If we think about the stars rotating around a fixed point (the celestial pole), then we realize that their orientation, with respect to the pole, stays the same. In other words...the part pointing at the pole is ALWAYS pointing at the pole. Meaning, from our "fixed" point of view, the object rotates.
AltAz scopes track the sky the same way Stellarium does in its "default" view...by simply moving Up/Down (Alt) and Left/Right (Az). They keep the scope pointed at the object...but they don't rotate the scope with the object.
You can, if you desire, put Stellarium into "Equatorial" mode (Ctrl-M on the PC) and you'll see that the field rotation stops. The equatorial mount's RA axis is the same as the Earth's...that is, both axes point at the same spot...the celestial pole...so the scope "rolls" around the path, just as the objects in the sky do. :)
Well Stellarium looks a lot like Star Walk, only it's for PC. What's sweet is that it also indicates satellites. Once I saw the ISS passing in the sky and on the screen at the same time. Shit was so cool.
Celestia allows you to fly through the known universe; to other planets, stars, galaxies... It gave me an idea of its mind-bending size much better than any documentary :) Highly recommended!
Probably will get buried, but anyone remotely interested in astronomy should download Stellarium for sky viewing and Celestia to explore the whole fucking universe. Both totally free and awesome.
You may have some luck trying to identify it on planetarium software—an excellent free choice is Stellarium. You can set the date, time and location and then see what the sky looked like at that point. It does both stars and planets, and can do satellites with a nifty plugin.
Get yourself a free copy of Stellarium and have a play with that. Set up your home location and time to see exactly what is what in your backyard. In fact a new version is out so I'll download a copy myself ;)
I would suggest that you start learning the constellations with a planisphere
Also, you might want to download Stellarium which is a great free planetarium program. You can set it to your location and it will show you what is in the night sky at any given time.
Not much I can add to this great list but there is free software out there as well. Stellarium is like a planetarium and Carte du Ciel is a good map program.
Also Internet forums.
If you are at all interested in Astronomy, try Celestia.
Stellarium is pretty sweet too, although (unlike with Celestia) you are bound to the surface of the Earth.
OK, I'm using GMT/UTC, which seems to work better, as well as being more sensible.
If you look in Hercules, epsilon and rho are right next to each other, which is promising. Haven't figured the others out yet, though.
I'm using http://www.skymaponline.net/skymap.aspx with 15:15 on the 10th of March 2015, and the coordinates from the link.
Please note that many stars on the map are given by name, not identifier.
Solar System Scope is a great resource that can show you the positions of all the planets, their major moons, the five official dwarf planets, several comets, the constellations, and a few dozen of the named stars.
You can change the date, play it forward or backward as much as you want. If you click on a planet it will also show you information about the planet and a cutaway view of the planet's interior structure. You can click on a planet or moon and drag it around in its orbit, and the time/date will be adjusted accordingly, and all the other bodies will move with it. Be sure to select 'realistic model' in the options to get a picture of the actual scale of the solar system (although the size of the planets will still appear larger-than-life since you couldn't see them otherwise).
It also gives you a visualization of where these objects appear on our night sky, from a vantage point anywhere on Earth (the telescope button on the left panel).
Be aware that when you zoom in on the dwarf planets, it gives a visualization of their surface that has some fictionalized texture and detail, since we can't actually get detailed images of the dwarf planets due to their distance and tininess. At least not until the New Horizons probe reaches Pluto this July.
Well for one thing Pluto orbits in a different plane than the planets. You can play with this and see that the paths don't cross.
Even if they were in the same plane, Neptune orbits the sun exactly three times every time Pluto does twice. That means that every two Plutonian years the relative positions of the two are reset, so if they don't crash then, they never will.
Another answer is that there's speculation that Pluto used to be a moon of Neptune. In those days they were pretty close.
The sine wave is the disk of the Milky Way; it appears as a circle (distorted into a sine) because we're inside of it, looking outwards. You can actually see three other galaxies in the picture; the Magellanic Clouds, small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, are the two spots near the bottom under the highest part of the sine wave, and the Andromeda Galaxy is barely visible close under the peak (here). The Milky Way is just much more prominent in the picture than they are, because the Magellanic Clouds are much smaller than our galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy (which is the same size as the Milky Way, roughly) is rather far away.
I'd recommend taking a look at Celestia, a free program that renders the universe in 3D. If you look around from Earth, you can see the sky as it appears in Google Sky, but you can also zoom out to see the galaxy from the outside. The demo (under the help menu) is also pretty cool.
Give Stellarium ( http://www.stellarium.org/ ) a try. This is open source software, and is a great way to get familiar with what's in the sky day to day. It would be more helpful to plan an observation than using a paper star chart, unless you can print one out for the time of day that you go observing.
You should get a tripod and a pair of binoculars. It'll cost you maybe around 150€ but it'll be worth it. Plus, you can watch birds with it. A dobsonian would also be great, but let's not get carried away. If you speak German, do try the Kosmos Himmelsjahr. It's a book that is released annually. It has a chapter for each month, features an article about an interesting topic in every chapter and shows you the night sky any how the moons of Jupiter will progress throughout the month. It's a bit old-fashioned but it's a nice thing to go through. You could also get stelarium, which is free. It's a bit convoluted and intimidating to a beginner, but the site got a wiki and a forum and what not, so you can read up on what ever problem you may have. It's a planetarium app that can show you what's in the sky at your location and when. I use it to plan in advance what I want to look at. It also shows you planets and of course naked-eye things like the pleiades and constellations. It can be infuriating to set up, but it's a wonderful too and it's 100% free, both as in freedom and free beer.
Download a program called Stellarium. http://www.stellarium.org
Set the time and date to when you were at the festival, and adjust the location to match where you were. Then, scan the sky in the direction you were looking when you saw it. It'll help if you remember other celestial features that were nearby.
In half an hour, it should've moved a bit if it was anything celestial, but you may not have been able to discern the movement.