Sunday, April 11, 2010

Science, at home

Today we put together our new telescope.  It can do 50x, which is pretty cool.  I also downloaded a sky map on my HTC Hero phone.  It is one of these apps that you can tilt the phone up and move it around and it will show you what you are looking at in the sky.  The app is really freaking cool.

Anyways, the app told us that Saturn was to the south east, so we tried to find it through the 50x zoom, which was quite hard.  You can take the doubler off the telescope, to make it 25x, which makes it much easier to find things.  I located a bright star in the field of view, then put the doubler back on.  After fiddling around for a while, Crab Girl saw rings!  I looked though and saw them too!  Then Crab Boy whacked the thing, and I had to readjust.  After that he saw Saturn's Rings too!  Crab Mama saw a blurred object, but wasn't really able to see rings.

I can appreciate how people would spend a fair bit of money on a nice telescope with a very nice tripod.  We have a $30 telescope and a $20 tripod.  Hard to see anything in focus.  But, it was UberCool!

1 comment:

spacecataz said...

Alright! More Android users! Most people with newish phones that I know have gone either iPhone or Android.

Anyway, is the telescope you are using the "Galileoscope" sponsored by the IYA? If so, last fall I was able to see all four Galilean/Jovian moons as well as the major cloud bands on Jupiter with the same scope. For $20, it's a great telescope.