Posts
69108
Joined
8/16/2006
Location
Redding, CA
US
Edited Date/Time
1/27/2012 12:25am
Showing how big the Sun is, and how its actually very small compared to others out there, pretty mind blowing shit! I took a class in college and it was one of my favorite classes. I would get baked before class on nights when we had videos.
Cliick Here
Cliick Here
The Shop
Andromeda galaxy. 2 1/2 million light years away.
Moon during eclipse.
Comet Hale-Bopp. (Camera shot)
Whirlpool galaxy. 23 million light years away. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. This photo is actually what this galaxy looked like 23 million years ago.
M81 and M82 Galaxies.
Did you get those shots out in the local desert?
You didn't take those in HB.
The eclipse shot was taken from Signal Hill In Long Beach.
The others were all taken from the desert. Some from Joshua Tree and others from Wild Horse Canyon about 30 miles from Needles, CA
If you want to see a shitload of astrogeeks. Go to the top of Mt. Pinos near Gorman. On a new moon, weekend night, there will be at least a hundred scopes. Kill the headlights before you enter the parking lot or you will be burned at the stake. Put some red tail light tape over your flashlight too. Just about everybody there will let you look through their scope.
One thing that messes with my head, is that if we could see as far in light years as the universe is old in regular years, we would be able to see the beginning of it!
This object is also visible with the naked eye. Binoculars are always better:
This is M42, the Orion Nebula. It's actually a star nursery. Stars being born. Once you learn how to locate deep sky objects it adds a little to a camping trip. Most of this stuff is not visible from the city.
Ive gone to that sight (Heavens Above I think it was called) and found the times that satellites come by. Thats fun too. In fact I can walk out side most any night and if I spend 5 minutes looking straight up Im often rewarded seeing some man made object screaming across the sky.
Then I started looking around and I found a star and looked just above it and found a fuzzy cirlce of light and as you described it was like a fuzzy smudge. I hadnt spent 2 minutes outside when I found it (whatever it was) Dumb luck? At any rate I grabbed a compass for the hell of it and found it was between NNE and NE about 1/2 way between the horizon and straight up. Any idea what I found? Just guessing (duh) but since youre in HB and Im in Temecula we should see the same thing at the same time right?
Post a reply to: Some trippy astronomy vids/facts