Anyone here like stargazing & astronomy - maybe with a binoculars or telescope?

I don't have a telescope yet. I just got some light, low magnification binoculars (7 x 35) and am planning to start stargazing (in my garden) when I get them.

I do and have a telescope.

Oh cool what kind of telescope? Have you been able to see the planets with it?

My binoculars arrived in the mail today, so I will start my first stargazing this weekend if the skies are clear.

The binoculars I got are low magnification ones (7 x 35), with a very wide field of view. So I think they will be perfect (because of the wide field of view) - just it might be hard to hold them steady when looking at the stars.

I have an 8 inch dobsonian. I think that's a good size/design for the performance you get.

It doesn't have a tracking motor, that may be a future projects for astrophotography. I may get a solar filter one day to look at the sun and watch sunspots.

Planets are cool to look at, especially Jupiter and Saturn. You can see their moons too where there may be life. The moon can be pretty spectacular also.

I enjoy a good look at the moon through my binoculars, especially when the terminator line is highlighting some craters. Particularly fun is when a high crater rim is catching the sun's rays on the far side of a shadowy crater. I'll take a look at planets also, but the binoculars (10x42, FOV 114/1000) aren't really up to it. Nonetheless, it was rather disappointing to miss the recent Venus/Jupiter conjunction due to overcast skies.

A proper telescope is a distant dream at the moment.

So my binoculars arrived today, and it was a very clear night.

They are 7 x 35 (and lightweight), but I could only hold them steady by lying on the lawn and resting them on my face.

With the binoculars I could see far more stars, than I ever have before.

I spent a couple of hours in the garden, and I was able to locate a lot of cool things - like the pleiades star cluster.

Do you use a tripod for your binoculars? Considering they are quite high magnification?

I got 7x35 binoculars, and I have to lie down on the lawn and rest them on my eyes, to keep them really steady. (I need to get a lawn chair!).

I could see so many more stars though than with my bare eyes. (With my bare eyes the Pleiades just look like a smudge, whereas with the 7x32s I could easily see all the individual stars in the cluster).

As for a telescope, I think you can get a refractor telescope for about $100?

Do you have any trouble collimating it? I was thinking about getting a refractor telescope because they are less likely to need collimation.

No issues at all. The brand I have is Orion.

I have the same telescope and have had great experiences with it. As someone totally new to stargazing/astronomy I was worried there'd be a steep learning curve to actually see anything cool, but it really can be as simple as "point and look" if that's all you want to do - but the telescope is powerful enough to let you do all kinds of neat things if you have the time and know-how.

One of my fondest memories with my father is when we stumbled across Saturn one night. I think we were looking for Jupiter (also an incredible sight) and pointed the telescope at a nearby "star" that looked too bright to actually be a star. After messing with the lenses a bit to get a clearer image, we had the perfect (only slightly fuzzy) view of Saturn and its rings. Not that I ever doubted the existence of other planets, but it's really something else to see an object so massive and so distant with your own eyes. It's hard to explain, but it almost feels psychedelic in its own way

I typically lean on a railing or window frame to steady the binoculars. They don't appear to have a dedicated tripod mounting point - or would a tripod suffice as a portable 'railing'?

And regardless of telescope prices, cash flow is prioritised in other directions. We just spent €250 on polycarbonate glazing to turn our porch into a greenhouse for the cacti At least I have a lawn chair!

I've had one of the cheaper meade refracting teles for a number of years now, a 70mm. Have a few different lenses and filters for it.

Tbh I haven't used it a whole bunch, aside from the times when some of the planets happened to be close.

My favorite were the couple times I was coming down from lsd and was able to check out jupiter when it was close, it's color bands and the moons. A very hard thing to articulate when you're staring down the eyehole looking at it.

There's something about visually seeing it yourself in person, versus on a tv or something, aside from the fact that my tele's view's a faint low-res image compared to the former.

Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life and astronomy were my first steps into cosmic love at 16.

In my wildest dreams could I have imagined that looking up at the stars would turn into looking up at hyperspace. In retrospect it seems like fate...

My teenage stoned out dream...to have an observatory up in the Andes! I had it all planned out. I would be a famous writer and with that money would construct an observatory dedicated to breaking through the final frontier.

Now a days I think the final frontier is actually the pyschic realm.

What a pleasant suprise it was to discover that I didnt need $50 million dollars to discover what no one had discovered before...what I was looking for was all here in plain site, or inside of me.

Ah DMT. What a pleasant suprise to discover it existed...I'll always be grateful for that, no matter what.

I like to use Stellarium, it's a software for both Windows and Linux.

Whenever I reinstall my OS the first thing I do is download a starmap, like the one found in the Wikipedia article for the Milky Way.

I sometimes read stories about "citizen" research in astronomy, and contributions made by non-professional astronomers https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/education/citizen

I haven't had many opportunities this year so far.

I was pretty stoked to see the faint smudges of comet NEOWISE a few months back, through some fairly meh binoculars. Watched a few stars and satellites one night. The early part of covid lockdown was great because of the virtual absence of air traffic. Skies were clearer than I'd seen in decades.

When the moons up it's always nice to look at the crater rims highlighted around the terminator line, or otherwise marvel at its full magnificence.

And a few months back, when Saturn and, particularly, Jupiter were in full view there was some amazing viewing of the Galilean moons of Jupiter to be had through the same meh binoculars.

I was able to spot neowise with basic field binoculars also, then we were able to dial in the reflector scope. I have a new telescope on backorder to arrive in November and me and my wife are really excited to upgrade! Love star watching.......

Anyone catch the conjunction tonight? Clouded up here just before sunset......

Yeah, I watched it on my telescope with the kids. It was pretty cool, never seen two planets in the field of view together, sounds like it won't happen again for several lifetimes.

Managed to get an out of focus picture of on my phone, sorry for the poor quality 🙃

You got two moons also. Nice shot!