Gregoria Luna's Astronomy Blog

I really like the Galileoscope. It's the only scope I have which can be used with no table, chair, or any surface other than the ground. It has two accessories which are sturdy enough I feel comfortable putting them in my pocket. And it's surprisingly capable for planets.

I sort of procrastinated writing this and it is now kind of leaving my mind, so here's a very rough and quick summary of my sidewalk astronomy adventure on September 26th, 2020, or International Observe The Moon Night. I had been aware of NASA's Observe The Moon Night for about a month, but I was gonna let it slip by with perhaps just a passing glance through my Galileoscope. It was just too dangerous to do a sidewalk astronomy session during the pandemic. But that all changed two days before the night. I saw this reddit post about a Radical Astronomy Vehicle for Educating Neighbors, a sidewalk astronomy setup on a push-trolley which included a 10" Dobsonian, a homemade radio telescope, a laptop, a phone camera on the dob, and a large monitor to display the phone picture. After messing around trying to find a solution for showing my phone's view on the television screen, I realized I had everything I needed to make a video astronomy setup myself. One which would be co

Time to tell you of the story of my first telescope. I was never super into visual astronomy as a kid. Dunno why. Maybe it was a combination of suburban light pollution, poor vision which often went uncorrected, and a really disappointing experience with a lunar eclipse in first or second grade (they show the eclipsed moon as being so red on tv! I was expecting a colorful show! My second total eclipse, the January 2019 one, was a lot more fun since I knew what to expect). I appreciated the Moon in the sky, and I could identify one (1) constellation, or rather, an asterism within it: Orion's Belt (for some reason not his body, though).

Back in early July, I found a hell of a deal on a telescope tube on craigslist. The Omni XLT 150 optical tube, for $60 bucks. It sells new for $290. (OTA only) I picked it up and brought it home, with the plan being that I would embark in my first journey into Amateur Telescope Making and build a Dobsonian Mount for it, based upon this blog post from 10 Minute Astronomy.

An aperture mask is a simple cap you place over the telescope to cut down the aperture. The reasons why you might want to do this are not obvious, but in short, they cut down on optical aberrations significantly. This is especially important in a telescope with flawed optics--specifically those with spherical mirrors. This article will be about masking down a FirstScope, but the same principle could apply to any telescope with a spherical mirror, including telescopes that for the price have no right to have one, such as the deplorable PowerSeeker 127EQ and the AstroMaster 114EQ. The Celestron FirstScope is one of my favorite small telescopes, and it's pretty good for scanning around for bright DSOs, glancing at the Moon, etc. Its stock eyepieces are utter garbage, and when combined with the fast spherical mirror (76mm f/4), the Huygens 20mm is almost unusable.

I had no idea, going in to creating a blog, that my very first observing report for this blog would be so eventful. Not only did I have an amazing night, but it had a rocky start. I got great observing done tonight in the end.

This is a short report of an experiment I attempted on 2020 July 14, wherein I tilt a tabletop dob so it becomes equatorial mounted.

What does an average viewing session look like for me? What equipment do I use? How do I sketch? Where do I go, what are my skies like?

I recently realized that I have close to enough money to get an 8" or 10" full-sized ground Dob, which would be a serious upgrade from my 6" dob. The only other two full-size Dobs I have had any experience with so far have been the SkyWatcher FlexTube 8", which we use outside at the Observatory, and my own Apertura DT6 which I received in March. In both cases I had little choice in which they were--the Eight Inchers were bought well before I started volunteering at the Observatory, and my Six Incher was bought during and open box sale at a significant discount--the only way I'd have been able to afford it at the time. It normally costs $300, but it only cost me about $230, which is quite a steal! Now that I'm looking into an upgrade with a heftier budget, I'm in a position to make a more informed decision.

This is an article I wrote for Telescopic Watch that I'm genuinely proud of. Other than the inherent pointlessness of ranking Deep Sky Objects on a tiered list like this. If I could post it in full on my blog, I would. Instead, I'll have to link it here. https://telescopicwatch.com/top-deep-sky-objects-for-beginners/  I would love to share my sketches in their final form on the blog, but I suspect that would cause problems. Instead I'll share the unedited version of three of my sketches. You can see how well they turned out in inverted form in the article linked above.

This post is copied from a Reddit post I recently made on r/telescopes.  First, a message of scope, so to speak. I am a budget astronomer, as such I have little experience with expensive specialized eyepiece designs. The most I've paid for an eyepiece is about 50 dollars. However I think most people who want to know about beginner eyepieces would probably be looking for a guide to affordable eyepieces anyway, so I hope this remains useful.

I intended to post my guide to eyepieces first, but there's something that came up that I just have to make better known. WALL-E is an excellent movie, and I think it still holds up as one of Pixar's best. About a year ago, I rewatched it again for the first time in years, and I was floored when I found out a special treat was waiting for me in  the first 20 seconds of the film. Let's watch that opening.   WALL-E (2008) Opening Scene   Give it a watch before reading on.   We're greeted with the charming sound of a 1950s musical and a star field.     Nothing special, just random stars. We then see increasingly interesting space fields, changing in tune with the music.    "Full of shine and full of sparkle " and then, our attention is drawn to a bright orange ball, quickly understood to be a Sun.