If you're a night owl or an early riser, consider staying up later and/or getting up extra early to see a very bright meteor shower. The peak occurs at about 2:30am EST, roughly coinciding with moonset on the East coast. West coasters, well, you just aren't very lucky this time. However you'll have a much better view of the transit of Venus in June.

http://www.space.com/14104-strong-quadrantid-meteor-shower-peaks-wednesday.html

Also, if you have a telescope, two of Jupiter's moons (Europa and Ganymede) will be casting shadows on Jupiter around that time.

 

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Thanks for the head's up!

n00b question inc:

What sort of telescope would let you see the Jupiter moon shadows (there's a song in that somewhere)? I mean, how much would one cost roughly? Would you just go into a store that sold them and say "I want a telescope that would let me see the shadow of Ganymeade on Jupiter tonight"?

 

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Well, I don't know what the lower limit is, but I recently inherited an 8-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector from my grandfather (he was a physics professor). When pointed at Jupiter, it shows the cloud bands, moons, and their shadows quite nicely, although I have yet to see the Great Red Spot.

You probably need something with at least a 3" (about 70mm) aperture. The most important number for most stargazing equipment is really light-gathering power (ie, aperture diameter) more than magnification. Many advertisements aimed towards astronomy n00bs will gush over their product's maximum magnification power, but this number really means little if you can't resolve the details of what you're seeing. A high magnification with low light-gathering power will give you a large, blurry image.

The 8-inch Celestron I have would cost you about $1200 new, with tripod, equatorial mount, and lenses (the mount and a clock motor are necessary to keep objects within the field of view as the Earth turns - the motor is built into the C8). My C8 is from the late 70's and still works great, so if you can find a used one that has been well taken care of, you'd probably spend significantly less.

Prices fall pretty quickly as you decrease aperture size - looks like the 6-inch reflector by celestron is a little over half as much as the C8. If you are looking for something far cheaper, go for a simple refractor - these are generally in the neighborhood of $100 and I have read several books which are geared towards small (3" refractors. I only have a more expensive 'scope because, as I said, it was an inheritance.

Light pollution also plays a role in resolution - if you live in a place with dark skies, you can probably get away with a smaller aperture.

Take everything I just posted with a big grain of salt, since I have only ever used one telescope. If you're really interested in shopping for a telescope, check out an astronomy forum like the one here.

 

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Thanks for the info!

With respect to light gathering, some of those principles apply to firearms optics as well, so that is a familiar concept.

I suppose $1200 seems like a lot, but seems like a lot less than I expected too. Good info, thank you again.

 

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I was just looking around that site I linked you to, and they suggest a pretty good Sky and Telescope article which suggests that before you get a telescope, you get some good binoculars. I could not agree more. A nice pair of binoculars will put you out about $50, they are much more portable than a telescope, and have a much wider range of applications.

Try to get some that have at least a 50mm aperture. This is generally the largest size that "sport" binoculars come in - much larger than this and they start to get marketed as "astronomy" binoculars which tend to run a bit more expensive and are also a little too big to hold comfortably in your hands for long, thus requiring a tripod (which in my opinion is an indication that you should have just bought a telescope).

Binoculars are listed as (N1)x(N2), where N1 is the magnification and N2 is the aperture size, in millimeters. So you want to focus on the ones which have a second number of 50 or greater. 8x50 is better for viewing stars than 12x42.

edit - Of course, if you're a hunter, then you probably already have your own pair of binoculars and this doesn't apply to you

 

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My 10x50 binoculars cost me about $40 on Amazon and allow me to see the moons of Jupiter as tiny specks in a plane near the planet. I don't think I've been able to see shadows on the planet yet, but I'll try it out tonight and let you know.

 

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FYI, firearms optics follow basically the same nomenclature to my knowledge.

My 3.5-10 X 40 scope has variable magnification (N1) of 3.5 to 10x with a 40mm (N2) aperture.

 

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A spotting scope makes a pretty decent telescope. The problem is the mount, if your target isn't near the horizon, good luck looking thru it.

 

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Yep

I have a 20-60 x 60 spotting scope, but there's no way I can hold it still enough freehand to see anything worth seeing at 20x and the mount I have for it is a little 10 inch high bench tripod... The thing doesn't even have the 90 degree jointed ocular... serves me right for going cheap. I wonder if I could put it on one of my camera tripods. Hmmm... will have to check on that.

 

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