I recently purchased a computer program called Starry Night, which allows you to enter in your location (by closest major city), and it shows you the things that you "should" be able to see, realtime, "from your own backyard." It's amazing! Not only can you get a good idea of what's up above your house, but, via the Hubble, the software allows you to zoom extremely close to differnt objects (to the point where you can practically kiss the craters on the moon). In addition, it allows you to capture and export images of the different things you see. Below is a short strip of the few items I was exploring last night and this morning.
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Anthony, have you heard of Google Sky? It's now part of Google Earth, from what I hear. Not sure how cool it is compared to your program, but you might want to check it out.
Hey Anna. Yes. As a matter of fact, I read about Google Sky the day after I ordered Starry Night. Dooh! Oh well. I'll definitely have to check out Google Sky and see how it compares. I really enjoy the gadgets Google puts out so I'm sure it'll be pretty neat. However, even though it wasn't free, Starry Night is still a load of fun. Lizz makes fun of me because I'm constantly running between the computer and the back door to see if I can identify in the sky what I see on the computer. Yep...certified dork.
Well, you know Matt is an astronomy dork, too! He's always bringing out the (admittedly very cool) computerized telescope I got him for his 30th birthday 18 months ago. You point it at three objects in the sky and then it'll find everything else for you cause it knows where you are. He even goes to these "star parties" held once a month at the new moon out on the coast in a state park. He's really become quite the amateur astronomer over the past few years, and I've learned a lot from him. Outer space is so cool!
Sweet! You'll have to let me know the model of the scope you bought him. I've been doing some browsing on-line lately, but I figured I had a lot to learn before I bought one. Hence why I bought the software. Do you know if Matt is able to caputre the images with the computer, or is the computer only used to help find things?
Here's the link:
http://www.celestron.com/c2/product.php?ProdID=31
I think if he hooks up a laptop he might be able to take pics. I know it came with software to hook a laptop up to it, but he's never done that.
One thing that he doesn't like about his scope is the mount - because of it, he can't point the scope straight up at something directly overhead. But other than that, it's pretty cool. I had never heard of computerized telescopes til he told me about them, so I was amazed.
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