What is Reddit's opinion of
Star Walk (series)?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
13 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
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.
No problem. I've got two bodies, a 5D3 (which will be catching the wide angles) with my 24-105, and a 60D (which I'll set up in a specific area of the sky or off into the distance with an interesting object) using my 70-200.
The 5D will be triggered using a wired intervalometer, and magic lantern will be driving my 60D. To figure out my positioning, I use StarWalk, an awesome app that shows me where the Milky Way is and which constellation the meteors will be coming out of.
Using mirror lock up will make sure that there aren't any added vibrations when the shutter opens. Also, your on board meter is going to be worthless when you're out there. Really, set your iso to ~3200 and your aperture all way open and then play around with shutter speed until you get a good exposure. From there, increase or decrease iso to give you the shutter speed you want. Check your histogram, seriously.
PetaPixel just posted this, it's worth taking a look at.
FYI, the app Star Walk can help you identify stars and planets. It has a mode where you can point your phone/tablet in any direction and it'll display the star map of what's there... IIRC, it can overlay the star map over the picture from your camera.
StarWalk http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html is pretty intuative, and the "augmented stargazing" tool is quite nice, especially for orientation and a quick "what am I actually seeing" answer or two. The app has a good deal of detail, and links through to Wikipedia for many objects.
For the cloudy nights how about an ongoing project to build their own telescopes using cardboard tubes and mirrors.
Oh, and I have to say that as an amateur (in my 40s) my appreciation of astronomy has been rekindled by http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html Starwalk on my iPad.
Personally my 8 year old is pretty awstruck by looking through a telescope at the moon.
there are tons of apps that will alert you when something cool is about to happen.
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I've had at least one app from these guys on my phone since version 1
http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html
there's free versions, so you can try them too.
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I'll bet this Waco thing has a bunch of telescopes you can look through.. and observatories are full of people with advice for the curious.. it's pretty cool to see Jupiter's Big Red Spot with your own eyes.
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https://www.centexastronomy.org/
Meyer Observatory Open House
When:
Saturday, February 16, 2019, 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM
Where:
Turner Research Station
14801 FM 182
Clifton, TX 76634
Waco Sidewalk Star Party
When:Saturday, March 16, 2019, 8:00 PM until 10:00 PM
Where:Heritage Square, 3rd & Austin Ave, Waco
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Star Walk makes it easy to figure out where the stars and planets are in the sky. It's awesome to know what you are looking at in the night sky.
Soundhound same as above, but with music on the radio.
If you're completely new to it, what a friend of mine did was buy an app on his iphone like Star Walk and mount it to the telescope to use as a viewfinder. Spend some time in daylight setting it up and aligning it. Check out a Sky This Week to get a good list of objects to find, then take it out somewhere dark on a clear night. A lot of the apps have "best of tonight" feature too.
I really like Sky Walk for iPhone. I use it all the time to figure out the names of stars and to see where what will be located and when. There are other apps, I have them installed, but I always to go Sky Walk
There are some augmented reality apps like Star Walk that can integrate the back camera in a very cool fashion. As a student I often use it as a quick alternative to a scanner, for instance if I need to store a page of notes or record what I was doing on a whiteboard... apps like goodreader can import pictures and store them like you would notes.
Well, if you want to spring for an iPad or another IOS device (I'd recommend iPad because of screen size) there's Star Walk. Hold your iPad up to the sky and it'll show you astronomical features, and even use the camera to compare what the camera sees with that the astronomical database says is there.
It's fairly magical.
Do you have a iphone/ipad? You can grab Star Walk and see if that helps you identify.
If I remember to, I'll fire it up and go outside to check. If it's at the same time every night, it could be a geosynchronous satellite, but I'm not sure we'd see the reflections off one.