here we go again!!! -- country clubs under threat???

Thanks for the welcome... and the link!

As I said before, I'm completely new to this so I'd be grateful forany tips, hints or advice that anyone can give me. I've decided to start out with 10x50 binoculars and Patrick moores book "Exploring the Night Sky with Binoculars". I do have a telescope (of sorts). It's a Tacsco 60mm but I've pretty much given up on it. However, it did give me my firsts view of Saturn and it's rings so I shouldn't complain.... anyway, all advice welcome.

Leo @ lionsden.

First piece of advice. Warm Hat, warm coat, warm jumper, warm socks, warm shoes. Ireland is not known for warm nights and anyway some of the best viewing is cold nights some people would say the colder the better. :lol:

Hi out there! I guess I'm the newest member here. I'm a complete newcomer to astronomy (about a month) and I can't get enough of it.

welcome on board! As Albert mentioned earlier, the Arcturus newsletter in the Resources section of the board has current skynotes but if you download the archived ones there are a few with articles on binocular tours of the night sky.

the big problem with P.M.s book is the quality of the star charts. I'd use it in conjunction with the Collins GEM guide series book "Stars" by Ian Ridpath. It's the little pocket-sized tome that is part of the set on everything from Trees to Spaceflight (cost is about 7 euro). The charts are fantastic and list lots of binocular and small scope objects. It's so good I have THREE copies (one in the car permanently)!

any sort of astro software (such as SkyMap Pro) will generate very good star charts too. Phil Harrington has written a book called "Touring the Universe through Binoculars" which is very detailed and lists over a 1000 objects for binocs. There is also a CD-ROM star atlas of every object in the book.

for a general overview of the joy of observing get "Spacewatching" by Robert Burnham jr., Robert Garfinkle, David Levy, et al. It's a great intro to actual observing of stuff along with a quarter of the book devoted to "star hops" of interesting celestial sights. Again, Collins publish the book.

finally, a Moon map of some sort is a must -- plenty to explore on lovely Luna with binocs as well!

John Flannery,
SDAS

First piece of advice. Warm Hat, warm coat, warm jumper, warm socks, warm shoes. Ireland is not known for warm nights and anyway some of the best viewing is cold nights some people would say the colder the better. :lol:

Don't forget the wellies!!!

Welcome Aboard Leo. As you are in Athlone, did you know that Tullamore Astronomical Society meets on a regular basis? Here are two links for you...

www.seanie-m.com/astro.htm

www.iol.ie/~seanmck/tas.htm

Clear Skies!

Seanie.

skynotes wrote:

The big problem with P.M.s book is the quality of the star charts. I'd use it in conjunction with the Collins GEM guide series book "Stars" by Ian Ridpath. It's the little pocket-sized tome that is part of the set on everything from Trees to Spaceflight (cost is about 7 euro)

Thanks to "skynotes" (or do I call you John?) for all the advice. I actually already have the Collins "Guide to Stars" book and your right, it is a geat little book! I've also download (free) a sky charts / planetarium program from the internet called Winstars. It seems fairly good to me, (not that I would have much to compare it with...) and its easy to use and understand. Does anyone else know of it? I found it at www.winstars.net

Thanks also to Seanie, I'm going to take a look at those web-sites just as soon as I've finished here...

Leo @ Lionsden

For those of you who were following this thread yesterday I would just like to point out that I have deleted a number of posts on it following an incident where one member of the boards made an unsubstanciated alegation against AI which people took exception to. The user voluntarily removed the allegation and I have deleted all posts that quoted the original allegation. Below is my resoning behind doining this.

Under Irish Law you cannot make unsubstanciated allegations on boards like this because the Law in Ireland is a bit archeic and does not have proper regulations for the internet. Any content published on message boards like this is treated exactly as if it were published in print. Therefore if you make unsubstanciated alegations against someone they can sue for liable.

If it were the case that just the person who wrote the comment got sued I would not care, that would be entirely up to the person in question but that is not the case. According to Irish Law if someone tried to sue the original poster over something they posted here they would legally HAVE to also sue myself (the "Editor"), IFAS (the "publisher") and our web hosting comapany (the "printer"). That is why I made it so very clear in the rules that anything even mildly liableous simply cannot be tolerated. I cannot afford the time, hastle and above all money to deal with legal trouble, IFAS canot afford that either and our hosting comapany will refuse to host us in future if they get any legal hastle caused by us.

I know I am not a lawyer but I have had quite a bit of experience with liable laws over the past few years through my time with the Students Union in NUI Maynooth and through my work with a number of other online communities like this one.

I do not like having to sensor people but the simple fact is that I am a volunteer who dedicates vast quantities of his very scarce free time to create, run and update this site. I will not allow all my hard work to be put in jeopardy and I am not prepared to run the risk of getting sued.

I would also like to point out that you are free to say that you suspect that so and so are doing something or that you believe that so and so are doing what ever but you cannot say that So and so ARE doing something without backing it up.

Hope that clears things up a bit,

Bart B.,
IFAS Webmaster.

Thanks for the welcome... and the link!

It's a Tacsco 60mm but I've pretty much given up on it. However, it did give me my firsts view of Saturn and it's rings so I shouldn't complain.... anyway, all advice welcome.

Leo @ lionsden.

Welcome,
Brings back memories of my first scope which was also a 60mm tasco ( I still have it), you'd be amazed and I really mean amazed what you can see with it under a dark sky, with abit of effort you nail the ring nebula and a number of globular clusters such as M13, now lets not get carried away, you'll see them, thats about it.
As for detail, that what your imaginations for, but the planets will look nice through it.