Decius wrote:
] jessica wrote:
]
] ] Well it's not like I spent it all at the same time!! I've
] ] built up my collection slowly over the last few years.
]
] So, what do you do with all this stuff? Do you find specific
] stars and track them? What is it that makes the hobby
] "interesting?" What can you see?

stars are the most boring thing you can possibly look at. no matter how "powerful" your telescope is, you'll always only see a bright point of light. sometime i'd like to get reliable filters and check out our own star, but the only filters i trust for that are outrageously expensive. double stars are interesting (two stars very, very close together), so are variable stars (stars that change their brightness over the course of an evening's watching). the planets are incredible, i just shot a great picture of saturn and the rings.. if i ever post it somewhere, i'll link it. venus is interesting because it's got phases, like the moon. on a really great night, you can see the caps of mars, mars looks sort of an orange-brown color with lighter spots on the top and bottom.. jupiter and its moons are pretty cool too... the moon is always my favorite thing to observe, i can get lost just exploring the moon. i can use the telescope during the day, too, to see across the river.

it keeps me interested, just knowing how many hundreds of thousands of things are up there waiting for me to observe them. i've always been fascinated by astronomy.

RE: How To Spend $60K on Home Astronomy