Most excellent, and thanks acid for reminding me of the Pan Galctic Gargle Baster! Which I hope to name my gold sidewinder (I may have to truncate that tho). "... Its effects are similar to "having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick"..."
Star Gazers
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
Most excellent, and thanks acid for reminding me of the Pan Galctic Gargle Baster! Which I hope to name my gold sidewinder (I may have to truncate that tho). "... Its effects are similar to "having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick"..."
oh those were the days of my youth, just don't forget your towel
And just remember the secret is to bang the rocks together guys
and definitely do not under any circumstances trust mice
I hate mice. Except, you know, the Logitech ones.
If you'll be serving Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, I'm likely to want a permanent table booked.
Favorite thing to do is sit on my back porch and watch the stars. If I watch long enough in my mind's eye I can see the depth of space. Feels like I could reach out and grab one. I'm definitely looking for that app now that i know it exists.
: ( yeah i live out in the country. Every year the light pollution increases. Used to feel like you could see everything.
I have family that lives in Northern Maine, and there is no light pollution at all. My favorite thing to do when we visit is drink some beer and sit outside and star gaze. You can see everything so clear up in those woods. I even downloaded a app that shows the exact location of the ISS and sure enough once it was in range we could see the little speck of light moving fast across the sky. Satellites, meteors, hell I have even seen the Northern Lights before during the winter. If anyone ever visits Maine, don't forget to check out the night sky, defiantly something you never forget.
I totally recommend a website called Astronomy Pic of The Day (APOD) and that you bookmark it to check it out every day. I have it set as my homepage.
And check out the archive for previous postings. I've found APOD to have awesome eye candy, excellent plain English definitions and fascinating discoveries.
And check out the archive for previous postings. I've found APOD to have awesome eye candy, excellent plain English definitions and fascinating discoveries.
I second that, I have the APODwallpaper app (https://sites.google.com/site/apodwallpaper/) that sets that days picture as your desktop wallpaper. As Essnem said the Archive is worth a browse and it has every picture, each with a decription, going back to 1995.
Yeah ok that sounds epic, will most definitely give that a few go's!
Warning: you will get funny looks and/or disparaging remarks from your wife/family/friends/neighbours when they find you standing in the garden pointing your iPad at the sky and excitedly saying things like "that's where I'm currently docked"
I've had that page bookmarked for about 6 or 7 years now. Love it.
Unfortunately, living in NYC, that website is about the only star gazing I can do. I'm lucky I can still see the moon there is so much light pollution here! The last time I truly saw the stars was about 23 years ago when I went to the Dominican Republic to spend the summer with my father. I was 10 years old and it was the first time I had seen the night sky filled with stars. Even then, my father lived in the capital, so there was light pollution, but not nearly as much as NYC. One week we went to the town he grew up in, off in the mountains, and the sky was amazing! I could see the milky way and probably millions of stars! I would lay in the grass and look at the stars for hours and imagine that Luke Skywalker was up there somewhere fighting bad guys.
I live in a rural area, far enough from the big cities that we get very pretty night skies. This is especially true in winter, when the sun sets early and the humidity is like 10%. Unfortunately my winters are very cold, so standing outside for hours gazing at the stars isn't an option unless I want frostbite. Fall, that's the best time of year for my star gazing, and by then I hopefully will have visited many of those stars in Elite!
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On Astronomy Day every year, I do a little presentation on the cities sidewalk during the day. I set up my equipment a 12inch Schmidt Cassigrain computerized telescope and aim it at the moon. The first year, I didn't keep a record, but in the following 40 years I did. I found that 90 percent of indivduals who stopped and viewed were completly astonished that one could view the moon in the day time. Often asking me if it was a photo or a time lapsed video. My answere was always the same, I simply pointed upwards.
It always surprises me how few people actually look up. A few years back, when there was a set of aurora that got south enough to be seen all over Ireland. They were even bright enough at one point to be seen from the middle of Dublin city. While I waited to get picked up to head off to the Wicklow Mountains (which are a good place to get a dark-ish sky) I was spending my time between the amazing light show, and being amazed that I was the only one watching o.0
My stepdad runs the astronomy centre in Todmorden...
http://www.astronomycentre.org.uk/
Last Christmas day I totally blew him away by showing him elite over a few beverages it was an awesome moment tbh 
http://www.astronomycentre.org.uk/
Last Christmas day I totally blew him away by showing him elite over a few beverages
it was an awesome moment tbh