Astro Links

This page provides a more structured list of Astronomy related links and resources which I find useful.

Beginner Research:

I found the following websites particularly useful for learning and helping me come to decisions on what telescope I should go for.

Orion Skyquest related sites:

Astronomy Observatories and Societys:

  • http://www.ccastronomy.org/ - CENTRAL COAST ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY Sharing the night sky above San Luis Obispo County, California, since 1979
  • Stargazer’s Lounge forum.
  • NRAO Very Large Array - The National Radio Astronomy Observatory - Very Large Array
  • ESO, the European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.
  • The Faulkes Telescope Project
  • ORION OBSERVATORY - The observatory of Russ M Genet, Santa Margarita CA. Dr. Russell Genet, an astronomer, is the author or editor of over a dozen books on astronomy, cosmic evolution, and robotics.  His pioneering development of robotic telescopes was featured in the PBS documentary, The Perfect Stargazer. Russ was the 51st President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Photographic Image and Video Collections:

Technical Discussion:

Suppliers:

Cameras:

Maintenance:

Software:

  • Carte du Ciel [free]
  • The Sky 6
  • ASCOM driver - Astronomy Common Object Model
  • Stellarium - excellent free software, highly recommended!
  • Starry Night Pro
  • K3CCDTools - This software allows you to take better control over your webcam to capture movie footage or still shots to your computer for later enhancement by K3CCDTools, or another software such as Registax. It is reasonably priced and has many advanced features that give special control over exposure and gain that your standard Webcam software may not provide. K3CCDTools is particularly of interest because it includes settings that hook into a “long exposure modified” webcam (Note that long exposures are useless without proper equatorial tracking).
  • K3CCDTools Deep Sky Processing Tutorial - a good article summarising how to use K3CCDTools (which can be tricky to learn) for DSO photography image enhancement.
  • Virtual Moon Atlas - this is an excellent piece of software for learning about the various craters, mountains, valleys, mares and rilles that make up the surface of the moon. It will calculate and show the current phase of the moon, showing the position of the terminator (shadow of the sun) and will indicate interesting features along the terminator. For each object you look at it will explain its age, how it was formed and various other interesting facts. And its Free!
  • Telescope Simulator from www.scopesim.com - great little software, reasonably priced to help you visualize what stars and planets will actually look like through the eyepiece, for beginners this really helps you understand the relationships between telescope focal length/aperture, and eyepiece focal length/aperture, apparent and true field of view, the effect a Barlow will have, and displays the resulting magnification, focal ratio, exit pupil, effective focal length and field stop. Ideal for helping you make choices as to what eyepiece you should buy next.
  • Astronomy Software List - This list by Dan Bruton must be the most extensive and complete list of astronomy related software I have come across. My personal list above pales into comparison, so if you’re looking for something specific I suggest you try this list first!
  • Carsten Arnholms Astronomy Software List - another very useful list of software.

Manuals:

Terms:

Binocular Astro Lounge Chairs:

That’s the list, I hope you enjoy them!

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