What size telescope is recommended for amateur asteroid hunting at home?
I'm new to astronomy I just bought Celestron PowerSeeker 127 Eq to get startedI wanted the omni 150 but that was a little out of my price range.I know nothing about this I was just curious and if y'all know any good forms for newbies let me know. :)
If it were discovered that an asteroid was going to wipe humanity out, say in 2 months, how would the governments of the world respond? How would people respond? How would you?
At the beginning millions would probably refuse to believe it, and keep hoping someone (the US perhaps, will somehow find a way out). Conspiracy theorists will claim it is a diabolical plan by the Free Mason's, the Templars or some secret organisation to finally create a new world order. Some people in the developing countries (e.g. some countries in Africa) might also add that it was planned by the CIA to wipe them out in order to have direct access to their oil and other minerals. As the realisation of the inevitable outcome sets in, several economies would collapse amid uncontrollable inflation, as people lose the will to amass wealth, millions would empty their accounts and go on buying sprees, millions would stop working and travel to be with family.There would be widespread riots all over the world as many lose respect for authority and all semblance of order breaks down. At this point, some developed countries 'hopefully' launch several space shuttles into space containing samples of several earth lifeforms, materials, historical artifacts, literature, artworks, and detailed chronological accounts of earth's history from the Big Bang to the demise of the earth, so that perhaps a future species or aliens in some other universe might someday discover them. The shuttle launched by the United States would probably include a speech by the president too. As the countdown date to impact draws near, there would be a sudden calm. People would treat each other nicer; racial, religious and other divides would be forgotten, as people regard one another as a member of a collective humanity facing the same fate. Several atheists would suddenly find God at this point too. Erm, the North Koreans would probably never know till it hit, as their leaders would keep it from them till the end. However, their leader and his most trusted cabinet will take a trip to Mars, the moon or somewhere they 'think' might be safe. Hmm, I wonder what the aftermath of IT all turning out to be a massive miscalculation will be however, when the countdown gets to zero and nothing happens!
What's the point of buying a telescope with under 8 inches of aperture if most deep sky objects will just be seen as smudges?
Because, the size of the telescope isn't the most important factor in determining how clear any astronomical objects, including deep sky objects, appear. No, the most important thing is how clear the sky is!Here's picture of me and my Orion Xt6 telescope (image courtesy of my mom’s Facebook)With that telescope, I'm capable of getting views like these:(Note, these images are not mine, but I have seen similar things through my telescope)Do those pictures look blurry to you? So, you might ask how come some views in a telescope look blurry. The answer, as I said earlier, is the sky! Yes, the limiting factor isn't the size of the telescopes aperture, but the sky. You see, no telescope, no matter how powerful, can get a clear image on a cloudy day. It's just not possible. That's why the biggest telescopes, like the Hubble, are in space so that they are unaffected by sky turbulence. But here on Earth, we don't have that luxury, so we are susceptible to clouds disrupting our view.Plus, telescopes can be expensive, and there's no point in spending $500 on an 8″ telescope that you'll only use once a week. So that's another reason that some people don't buy telescopes that big.So, the answer to your question is the size of the telescope isn't what determines how blurry deep sky objects are. You could get astonishing views with a 4.5″ telescope if you find skies clear enough. It's all about the sky!Hope that answered your question!
How do I make an astronomic discovery at home as an amateur? How to best contribute to the field?
Here are 2 ways to determine the distance to the sun, both using triangulation, yet only one of them can be true. #1. You can use a location on the ball earth as one corner of the triangle, then you can use Venus and the Sun as the two other corners. When the degrees of all three of those corners add up to 180 degrees, we find the distance to the sun to be around 93,000,000 miles away. #2. On March 22 along the equator, you can choose two cities and take measurements at the same point in time. The first city (in Brazil) sees the sun rising at 10:30 AM when it is at 60 degrees above the horizon; the second city (in Africa) sees the sun going down at 2:30 PM at 60 degrees above the horizon. Using those coordinates, it plots the sun’s third corner of the triangle to be approximately 3000 mile above a flat earth. The problem with #1 is that the 2 distances to corners of Venus and the Sun are “educated guesses”. While the known terrestrial distances between two corners of a flat earth’s 180 degree triangle calculating the distance to the sun are not guesses.
Would NASA be able to keep an asteroid secret?
The Russian meteor was quite small - it didn't even make it to the ground. Many small meteors hit the Earth's atmosphere every day, and NASA doesn't have the budget to keep track of them all. A large, potentially catastrophic asteroid is another matter, and would be likely to be observed well before it approached the Earth. An approaching star would have been observed long before now. The most dangerous potential impactor, which could remain unobserved until as little as two months before impact, would be a long-period comet originating from the Oort cloud. To answer your main question, no; any large asteroid on a collision course with Earth would be observed by astronomers all over the world, including thousands of amateur astronomers, none of whom NASA has any authority or control over, so there's no way they could keep it secret. Update: I checked out the claim about a 'second Sun' designated GTY421. If you google it, you'll find a website "Grace To You" with an apocalyptic fundamentalist sermon numbered 421 - I can't say I was surprised!
What are the limitations of this telescope?
I found this review of the telescope- I recommend you skip it. Look at the Specifications: The focal length is 1000mm. but the tube is 20" only about half long enough to house a 1000mm focal length. That means it is a Bird-Jones, not a regular Newtonian - There is some sort of barlow or doubler lens built into the focuser, (I would guess) and that will make collimation er, let's say, a significant challenge. I've never seen an inexpensive Bird-Jones scope that performed decently. If you want a 114 short tube Newtonian, bite the bullet and get an Orion Starblast. Quality optics, a focal length/ratio that fits the tube. At f4, it would benefit from a 1.25" Paracorr, which you would have to hunt for in the classifieds, and JUMP on it if one shows up. But the scope is quite usable without the PC, too. An Orion XT4.5 costs just a few bucks more, but at an honest f8, it will be easy on the eyepiece budget. Anyhow, I say skip the Bird-Jones with the short tube and long focal length. As for the mount, you would find the Right Ascension slo mo cable/knob stays horizontal, doesn't follow the mount; so when the OTA is pointed at the zenith, it will bump into the cable. My guess would be the dovetail isn't a standard size, though I could be wrong about that, but if it isn't you'd have to get the ST80's rings onto the dovetail that comes with the Astromaster. It might work, but I've found too often that these inexpensive entry level telescope packages have fittings that are non-standard and don't lend themselves to multiple uses. Hope this helps, Wally Edit:You already own the telescope go out and push it to its limits.
Is there a way to track and destroy near-Earth asteroids earlier?
As Ken Lawton said, the “destroy” part is really tricky. However, there is a semi-organized effort to track them and discover new ones: NASA Software Lets You Hunt Dangerous Asteroids from Home. The trick is plotting orbits as accurately as possible so that we have a long lead time for the most dangerous ones. Since an NEO (near-Earth object) that could hit the Earth is likely to be in our neighborhood for several orbits before the actual collision occurs, there is a good possibility for early intervention by using a gentle nudge well in advance. This would require extremely accurate knowledge of the NEO’s orbit. As an algorithm, the search would go like this:Identify as many candidates larger than a certain size as possible.Using the best available orbital data, generate a large set of coordinates in space and time for each NEO. (This would be a 3.5-dimensional problem since there is not much variation in the space coordinate off the ecliptic.Bin the (huge) amount of data in 4-dimensional “stoxels” (space-time pixels). Prune points not in the Earth’s orbital envelope due to total (T+V) energy considerations.Store data per bin indicating sizes, etc. to rank which bins are important.Track the orbit of the Earth through bins, paying special attention to the threat associated with each bin.If the threat for a given space-time bin is significant, mark the threatening NEOs for further refinement of their orbits.Iterate over years, gaining accuracy all the time.As a Big Data-type problem, this isn’t overwhelming. The real expense is the data-collection budget. Luckily, there are plenty of amateurs to help out and plenty of data byproducts from other observations.
What are some cheap and good quality telescopes? How far can they see?
‘Cheap’ and ‘Good Quality’ don’t go together very well with astro telescopes (I’m assuming you want to look at the heavens).The very very cheap scopes are always crap, with poor assembly and even plastic lenses.If your budget is limited you need first to make a decision about whether you want mainly to look at bright objects like the planets and the moon. In that case a relatively smaller diameter scope will suit, like this oneCelestron AstroMaster 90AZ TelescopeOne advantage of this one is that with an ‘erecting prism’ you can use it for surface, or terrestrial, viewing.If you want to view fainter objects in the night sky, the best for the money is a ‘Dobsonian’ type reflector, like this oneMeade 130mm LightBridge Mini TelescopeThese cannot so readily be used for terrestrial viewing.There is such a range of scopes that probably the best thing to do is to contact your nearest astronomy club and ask to go to a viewing night where you can get some advice on scopes large and small.Another avenue is to look at the thriving second-hand market in scopes. People buy a better scope all the time, and leave a trail of ‘for sale adverts’ as they move up the market.