I was laying in the back yard last night (it was really warm and clear) admiring the stars and almost full moon and thought "hey, I should throw a "star party" for my friends"... "Start Parties", which is what people in the astronomy crowd call them are just a gathering of people who get together somewhere dark with good sky observing conditions and look through telescopes at various objects in the sky.

It's been a long time since I've brought out my telescope. I have a 10" reflector on an EQ (equatorial) mount with auto tracking and such. It's so big that I hardly every bring it out... It weighs like 200lbs and requires 2 people to set up, so it just sits in my living room and looks fancy unfortunately.


Anyone here an amateur astronomer/someone who likes observing the night sky? Anyone have a telescope?


If we have enough people and get some good scopes together, we should all have a late night meet somewhere really dark where there is no moon out (moon creates light pollution and washes out the stars and planets).

Post up what you have!

 

Don't have a fancy telescope. But I took an Astronomy class last Spring, and I've always been interested in the Cosmos. I could probably borrow a nice one like you have if you do setup a "Star Party"

Side note: I was watching Into the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman last night and got the "bug" again to keep learning about space.

 

im not into it but my GF uncle has a unit that allows you to look directly at the sun and another telescope tha lets you see craters inside craters on the moon.he has 50k easy in telescopes,

 

You can look directly at the sun with any telescope, all you need is a solar filter to fit to the end of your telescope. It's basically like adding a VERY dark tinted window to the end of your telescope so that you can loo into it. It's quite interesting to see the sun with all of it's spots and such... I always wanted a solar filter but the bigger your telescope is the bigger of a filter you need and a 10" filter is expensive as hell, especially if you get quality optics which I'm all about. (Why buy a great telescope and use really crappy eye pieces/optics for it?)