Sydney Star Gazers

[sydneystargazer]

I have been working on a site for a few months now which i believe may be of help to people who classify themselves as beginners in astronomy.

This site gets updated each and every day and is divided into separate sections based on what your interests are.

Sydney Star Gazers itself includes a Clear Sky chart I update frequently during the day to indicate what the observing conditions will be like in Sydney NSW. I also am producing cloud maps using a weather prediction model to show what the cloud is doing between sunset and midnight which is when I believe most of us would be star gazing. The cloud map shows the majority of the east coast of australia so it may be of help to others living outside Sydney as well.

The Clear Sky Chart for Sydney shows an hourly forecast of cloud cover, seeing, transparency and shows if the Moon is in our night sky and will it's illumination effect observing. But I only look at the hours after sunset and before sunrise.

What is perhaps more helpful to beginners is that I am posting articles such as how to clean your lens, how to collimate the telescope, etc. I am trying to put in some interesting facts as well about black holes, nebulae, star clusters and the such in hopefully a non-boring way. This will hopefully help people understand the nature of our Universe.

And if beginners do not know what objects to look at during a night of observing, I am posting daily targets in a section called Sydney Universe Watch to look at which are the best targets to see for the month we are currently in. So if you do not have a list of objects to look at , universe Watch will explain what you can loom at and where you can find it. Generally I look at objects visible at 9pm Sydney time but that is flexible.

If people want to learn about comets I have recently added a section called Sydney Comet Watch. That is still in it's early stages.

And one of my interests at the moment are near earth asteroids which i look at in a section called Sydney Asteroid Watch. Here I plot the paths of the Earth of the asteroid over a couple of days and show where their paths cross and exactly how close this near earth object was. I also give an asteroids eye view of the Earth from it's nearest point of approach to our planet and look at asteroids that have entered out atmosphere and what happened to them.

i am hoping that this site is of help to people who want to learn more about astronomy.

If anyone wants to check the site it can be found at
http://sydneystargazers.wordpress.com/

Links to my blogs for Universe Watch, Comet Watch and Asteroid Watch are found on the menu to the right of the page.

Hopefully my site will be of help to beginners out there.

[Clarry]

Great site there Roy, I will be bookmarking it for future reference. If I can offer a little advice, currently when you "Click on a Photo for Enlargement" it opens it in the active window. I think you should change it to open in a new window. It's too easy to close it by pressing the red cross without thinking and then you're off the site.

[telecasterguru]

Roy,

This is a great resource for observers in Sydney.

Thanks

Frank

[sydneystargazer]

Thanks Clarry..... i will have a think about that option. I left it as open in the current window as people generally do not like new windows to pop up and a lot of people use plugins to prevent popup windows.

Thanks for the bookmarking the site. Hope you find it of value as the site develops further.

[sydneystargazer]

Thanks Frank....... I have got some catch up articles to post over the next few days as I originally had it as one site and had to separate it into 4 sites due to too much information in various topics.

It would have been hard to find articles if you just wanted to look at something like comets or asteroids and had to wade through articles on star clusters and galaxies.

[Clarry]

It's not a pop-up as the user has initiated it themselves. It's just like when you click on a photo on IIS.

[Kal]

Cheers mate, bookmarked

[lacad01]

Great stuff Roy, another good resource to have handy :thumbsup:

[Darth Wader]

Nice work Roy! Bookmarked.:thumbsup:

[Manav]

I like the "Observing Conditions for Tonight - OVERCAST" :lol:

Good site, I like the cloud cover section showing the map with grey blobs on top. It helps outline what is coming your way and what to expect for the hours ahead.

An idea to consider (expanding) marking areas where you can have good safe viewing.

[Wavytone]

The site might be useful if you live in a building with no windows or doors... however I personally don't need to consult website to tell me what I can find much faster by looking out the window.

[sydneystargazer]

With the good safe viewing, I would probably need feedback from people in the forum to have a list of areas that people go to to be able to map it. Maybe if people in the forum can list areas they go to observe around Sydney. I personally attend observing sessions with the Northern Sydney Astronomical Society which has it's observing events during the month. With joining a Society, you get an idea of good areas to observe from in your area and you also get safety in numbers.

It's a good idea to mark the areas for viewing but I will need a list of areas people use as well as any restrictive conditions on when those areas are available to observers. I can then maybe incorporate that into the Sydney map i am doing which shows light pollution levels around Sydney and what magnitude objects you can see from particular areas.

[sydneystargazer]

Thanks Darth Wader, Manav, lacad01 and Kal. Hope you get something out of the site and please let me know if you think anything could be added.

At the moment I am seriously behind in posting articles after upgrading the site but should be up to date in a few days.:)

[freespace]

Thanks, added to my dashboard :)

[lacad01]

Aww common every bit of help is good :lol:

[Lyinxz]

:screwy:




He did say the website is intended for beginners..
Nice website Roy, bookmarked and can see it being helpful for me :):thumbsup:

[sydneystargazer]

Thanks Lyinxz




I am going to add a new feature to the site where I let people know of events happening on a nightly basis. It will include things like where and when Iridium flares will occour, when the ISS is visible from Sydney, when transits occour on Jupiter,etc.

I have taken an interest in Iridium flares after seeing abright one on Wednesday night but I also understand that some astronomers have had sensitive equipment damaged by such flares. So I will add these flares to the event list.

[Chippy]

I like it. Thanks!

[sydneystargazer]

I have started processing raw images from large ground based telescopes and space telescopes such as the Hubble, processing the image so that I get color and more detail out of a set of 4 or more black and white pictures.

A couple of results have already being posted in the last week or so and I will be adding these images to the Stargazers site tomorrow in a seperate CCD gallery.

This gives me some practical experience in processing images through photoshop and it is pretty fun to try and bring out the details of something like the Orion Nebula. I am processing the raw data images which are freely available on the Internet so that when I upgrade my telescope and camera in the coming months I will be able to process my own pictures.

I was thinking that this might be something that beginners might be interested in as it gives people an idea exactly how the color images are created.

If anyone is interested in learning how to process astronomy pictures using photoshop, please let me know and I will add a tutorial to my site.

This is one of the images I processed.

http://sydneystargazers.files.wordpress.co m/2009/12/ngc-1068-processed.jpg

[sydneystargazer]

What a great observing night we had in Sydney last night. I managed to take my first shots of Mars this morning. Still some work to do on the images but not bad for a first attempt.

Images posted at
http://sydneystargazers.wordpress.com/

[telecasterguru]

Roy,

Of course it was perfect weather last night, I had to go out.

I was going to go out to Crago observatory at North Richmond tonight, will it be worth it?

What about next weekend at Wiruna?

Thanks

Frank

[icytailmark]

finally a crystal clear night last night. I got to see saturn for the first time!!!! WOW it looked amazing. However i dont think the seeing was that great because i kept getting a shimmering watery effect when looking at mars.

[lacad01]

I might pop up to Crago tonight if it's clear :):astron:

[freespace]

Agreed Roy :D Hope we get more nights just like it.

Managed to somehow flounder my way through a new mount and camera and got some shots of M42:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sentientintelligence/4256912912/

It is nothing spectacular, I am just happy I managed to get something :P

[mithrandir]

How can you tell? From Castle Hill at the moment it looks pretty cloudy in the direction of Richmond/Bowen Mountain.

I could come & drive everyone batty with Bob's Knobs and SCT collimation questions. :P

[lacad01]

Well, just take a punt and hope. Clear out my way in the Inner West but that means nothing. Over an hour for me to get there so bit of a gamble...

[Lumen Miner]

Great site mate, the more localised info on Sydney the better.

Thanks and bookmarked.

[telecasterguru]

Went up to Crago Observatory at Bowen Mountain last night and the sky was clear all night and the seeing was fabulous. Got some decent imaging done for the first time in months.

There was a good roll up too.

Frank

[Manav]

The site is no longer there :(

[mithrandir]

The DNS registration is still current.

Domain Name: SYDNEYSTARGAZERS.COM
Created on: 19-Jan-10
Expires on: 19-Jan-13
Last Updated on: 01-Mar-12

The forward "looks" valid

SYDNEYSTARGAZERS.COM. 1969 IN A 68.178.232.100

however

100.232.178.68.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN PTR parkwebwin-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net.

so I'd guess someone hasn't paid the bills.

[Manav]

Thanks Andrew - I need an accurate cloud forecast and the sydney star gazers was it :(