Amateur astronomy

Starry Night 8 seems good but it is very expensive. What are some good (free) programs for my new hobby? Opinions on Stellarium, Celestia, Gaia sky or Space engine? Something other?

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New to town, came over from Seattle a few weeks ago.

I’ve spent my share of time up in the mountains, and have seen some incredible night skies here in WA, but even in town I’m blown away by the drastic difference in light pollution vs. back in Seattle (there’s ALOT less here, unsurprisingly).

Anyone in this sub into night sky stuff? I did some astrophotography studies WAAAY back in undergrad, and have always wanted to build a scope, but there have always been other more pressing projects/to-do’s. Seeing the skies out here is bringing some of those desires back, curious to meet up and shiver on a hilltop with a crew of people staring in awe at cool stuff billions of miles away.

I’d also be interested in hearing any rec’s for a decent scope that could be tossed in/on a backpack. I’d love to bring something along during some backpacking trips, curious if anyone else does this.

Stupid, simple but serious question here. What do you like about amateur astronomy? When I saw some pictures of what is possible to see with amateur telescopes, well, i was a bit dissapointed (for example this: Planets are almost like dots ..and better not to mention nebulas or galaxies... Many people must go and they really go out of cities, like many many km by car to dark place, to actually see something (a dot). Why do they do that? Is it just the visual part of it what you appreciate? Or do you like the process itself of finding objects? (Then why someone would buy those goto telescopes?) Or what do you actually like? Sorry if the question seems a bit dishonouring, I do not mean it, I am just curious :) also note that I have never watched the sky through telescope, so maybe this is why i need to even ask such a obvious question.

I created this collection of comments 2 years ago but I haven't posted it to this sub yet. I keep coming back to it from time to time. As an amateur astronomer myself it was a real eye opener at the time to see so many accounts from different amateur astronomers. A lot of these have similarities which was pretty incredible to see after collecting the comments. There are a lot of similarities with sightings of members of this subreddit as well.

There are definitely more comments like this describing UFO sightings and I might update it in the future. I'm a sceptic but for me personally these comments are one of the most compelling things I've ever seen. It was the reason why I decided to collect them. I have no reason to believe that all of these people just made it up.

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Original post: April 30, 2021

I've recently been reading a lot of threads on forums where amateur astronomers describe their UFO sightings. Some of these were very interesting so I thought I'd share these with you. Keep in mind these are people that in some cases have spent their entire lives looking at the sky and can distinguish between different types of phenomena and objects but couldn't figure out what these objects were.

Please note the OPs aren't aware of this but their comments can be easily found by anyone who wishes to do so. I picked a few interesting ones to post here. I personally enjoy reading about sightings more than I do just seeing (in most cases) blurry photos that aren't simply as compelling to me. These threads usually started by someone asking whether anyone has seen a UFO. Please let me know what you think.

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Posted in 2018

I live a few miles from Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee. Six years ago I was outside on my deck at around midnight looking up, searching for my next target. A black triangle flew over head, completely silent, at a fair rate of speed. It was low. There is is light pollution in my area with considerable sky glow on most nights. The black triangle stood out from the sky glow. It was an eerie experience. I assume it was some type of military craft. But something I never forgot.

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Yes , totally dark and silent , 'V' shaped travelling east to west blocking out the milkyway's stars as it moved , took probably 3 minutes to cross the whole sky , gave me the heeby-jeebies .

Looked about 1/2 a degree across in relationship to the stars behind it ..

Broad day lite, less than 500yds away about the size of a school bus, all silver with no wings, rotors, no markings or even rivets or panel lines and most of all, no sound! My crew and I watched it maneuver up and over a ridge for about 1/2 mile. Sorry, but anyone who thinks they are not here is just fooling themselves...

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I am not prepared to say that I saw a U.F.O. I just don't know what it was. One night I was at work and I saw something very bright and big out of the corner of my eye, it seemed to be hovering right above me. When I looked up it was a bright green orb, that seemed to be floating for and instant. After a few seconds, it just took off at a very high speed and was out of sight within seconds. Afterwords there were reports of meteors, but it certainly didn't look or move like a meteor to me.

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Regarding have I seen a UFO, yeah , I have. A few years ago when one of the ,Hale-bop maybe,great comets was off ot the north west I was out with a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars chicking it out.

All of a sudden a large dark object ,with no running lights or sound went through my field of view.it had a v shape. I spun around and found it again and followed it completely across the sky till it went behind some trees and buildings.

What was it, is any bodys guess.Do I think it was piloted by aliens, I dunno.

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My sighting was back in 1996, and came only a few months after the military airbase was closed-down and put in moth-balls. I was outside observing with a pair of 8x30 binoculars on clear winter's evening, when low-down to my north I observed a triangular formation of lights. I continued to observe the object/s only to very quickly realise that it was going to pass extremely close to me.

As it approached I could see that it was a single Black triangular object that had a series (around 8-10) of soft illuminated lights running along each edge. There were no other forms of lights on this craft.

As it encountered the boundary of the town the underside became illuminated by the stray light- pollution that was shining upwards. The underside was not a shiny black surface but rather had a mat appearance.

I could not see any protrusions i.e. landing gear etc. It appeared as a flat bottom. As it went overhead I could see that the lights running down the edge were in-fact ports or openings in the edge of the wing, out of these ports came a soft type of light, it was not harsh or over bright.

It was totally silent, as it moved away to my south I followed it with the binoculars and got a very good look. It appeared to have two outer wings that were bent over in a curve. Again absolutely no engine noise.

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Late '70s, wife and I are at the beach late at night, enjoying the coolish breeze and the sounds of the surf. Our "activity" was interrupted by "something"... it was LARGE, and flying low and slow, practically soundless, dark, but with what appeared to be lit portholes around its perimeter. It was bowl shaped, wingless. It went directly over us. I did not know what it was, but I was pretty sure what it wasn't.

This was near a USAF base. USAF craft were a regular sight and I knew many of the planes flown out of there. This thing matched nothing I was familiar with, and it was not a blimp, as I knew and could identify those as well. It was soon gone, disappearing over the Gulf, but in an unusual way... it did not break the horizon, but instead seemed to drop vertically into the water and was gone.

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About 25 years ago, I was living in rural Kansas, way out miles of dirt roads where it was DARK. I had a 16" Orion telescope that my son and I frequently hauled out in to the back yard for an evening's viewing. On this particular evening, I swung the Dob over to Saturn, as I have never been able to resist a look at that jewel of the heavens. On this evening, the seeing was exceptional and as a result, I was using close to 300X with near razor sharp views.

To my amazement, I saw a moon. It was above and traveling parallel to the rings. I hit the stopwatch and timed the rest of its transit, including the time it took for the 'moon' to disappear behind the planet. Looking at the time, I did some quick mental arithmetic and figured out what its orbital period should be +/- , and waited for it to re-appear on the other side of Saturn. While waiting, it dawned on me that it was impossible for a moon to have an orbital plane that was only about 1/3 of a planet diameter from the pole and did not pass through the physical center of the planet. I also re-visited my earlier calculations, only to discover that the speed of this 'moon' had to be insanely high to have made the transit in the time I had measured.

An hour after I had calculated the 'moon' should re-appear, I still had not seen it and finally gave up waiting.

This thing was huge. It was big enough to be visually round, like a sphere.

Fortunately, I had a sketch and my notes, so I took them to work with me the next day to share them with a couple of my friends. This turned out to be a most excellent decision, as three days later, one of them brought in an article they had found where some professional observatories had reported detecting an object in the vicinity of Saturn the same night and at the same time as my observation.

Did I mention that I have been an aerospace engineer for over 40 years?

That's my best and nearly my only story and having it validated by a third party only sweetens things. I do not know what it was and wouldn't care to speculate. It was absolutely huge. It was FAST. It was bright. Its trajectory was not that of an orbiting body. That's the best I can do.

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Posted in 2018

Never seen anything at night but did see something interesting during the day 10 or 12 years ago. Was driving east on I-10 between El Paso and Fort Stockton and watched an object to the east way off in the distance dancing around above some hills at a fairly high altitude. I assumed it was sunlight glancing off something, as all I could see while driving was tiny light speck. After 20 minutes of watching through the windshield I was startled by a couple of sonic booms as 3 fighter jets flew overhead towards the object. I pulled over and got out my binoculars but could only see the jets making wild manuevers when they reached whatever it was. The object seemed to dart in various directions much faster than the fighters, then went straight up and dissappeared. The fighters continued to circle the area for several minutes than flew back west over me. No idea what it was, but was something for the airforce to scramble fighters for.

Also it was crisp and cold, deep blue sky. The fighters were leaving contrails, the object was not. Maybe it was some sort of training exercise, or maybe not. Was all very strange to me.

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It's unfortunate that people's bravery, honesty and objectivity with this subject are often met with ridicule and dismissal.

Ten years ago, I took a friend observing at the dark, western end of a residential development south of Phoenix. While enjoying the views of a pair of planets setting in the west, we were startled to see three amber colored orbs (not point sources of light) that appeared to be connected to a common structure. The lights were stationary relative to each other, and all three were motionless just above my line of sight to a distant mountain ridge. Each light flashed one at a time in a cyclic sequence 3X before turning off. I know estimating distances in a dark sky is challenging, but the span of these lights was clearly enormous. My friend was so shaken he insisted we leave. Interestingly, there was an uncorroborated report from someone 100 miles away in Tucson seeing a "immense, massive triangle" just 30 minutes prior to our sighting. I worked with missiles in the military. I've seen the U-2 and SR-71 in flight, a myriad of aircraft foreign and domestic, and many weapons systems in action during the first Gulf War. I'm at a loss!

In 1954, my mother, aunt and both grandparents witnessed two disc shaped objects maneuvering around a Navy cargo plane flying overhead, in the middle of the day. My grandfather was a 26-year Navy and Coast Guard aviator. He would speak of this in amazement, and this was one of my mother's favorite topics of discussion.

I suppose you just have to be in the right place at the right time?

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When I was 12 I witnessed an aircraft of some type that exhibited flight characteristics that couldn't be explained (at least by me). I later worked on military aircraft for 6 years in the Marine Corps and nothing in my experience during that time could explain what I observed when I was 12. At night (approximately 2100 hours) on my parents' property in Mississippi the dogs began barking and whining at the back door. As I let the dogs out I observed a single aircraft with multiple lights hovering above the treeline about 150 yards behind my parents' house and approximately 150 yards in elevation. The aircraft did not emit any detectable sound and was hovering perfectly still above the treeline. It was clear by the dogs' behavior that the aircraft was what had them wound up. The aircraft was dark, with the exception of the non-blinking lights, and the shape could not be determined.

I then went inside and grabbed a concentrated spotlight (headlamp) and as soon as I aimed the light at the hovering aircraft it sped off to the right with instant top speed (not gradual) acceleration until it was out of sight within 2-3 seconds. At no time did the aircraft make any noise at all.

I have no idea what type of aircraft I observed. The flight characteristics don't match anything I have ever observed or even read about related to a variety of military (or civilian) aircraft.

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Laugh if it pleases you, In the summer of 1959, I observed a light about the size of an airplane with no flashing wing lights moving from East to West, I was looking South, at about the same speed an airplane would have been traveling. I was just watching it, when all of a sudden it just stopped moving. It stayed still for maybe 5 seconds, then it shot straight up at a very high rate of speed and was gone out of sight in, I would guess, less than just a few seconds.

I remember it was around 9:30, maybe 10:00, clear unobstructed view across farm fields. I will never forget it, and I have never seen anything like it since. I was almost 13 years old at the time and have wondered my whole life what I witnessed that summer night.

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…Having said that, 40 years ago my father and I were out fishing about 10 miles west of the Coronado Islands off Mexico (which was not far from where the Nimitz pilots had their encounter). It was about 3:00 AM and very dark but something either came up out of the water and hovered behind the boat or came down to the surface and hovered for a minute or so then we believe it went into the water. It made no sound and had no lights and the shape was hard to distinguish. We think it was fairly large but not huge and it shook us up pretty good until it was light out. It might have been a submarine but we are pretty sure it was airborne. We reported it to Mufon and they came out and talked to us but of course nothing ever came of it.

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First one I saw was triangular white lights with one red light in the middle. I watched it for about 15 minutes. That one was seen by so many other people that it made the front page of the newspaper. It was there one minute, began slowing moving and about 5 seconds later it just instantly disappeared.

Second one was a daytime sighting. It looked like a small silvery disk very high in the sky. Binoculars showed no details, just made it bigger (but still pretty small). The object was moving fairly slowly and perpendicular to the direction of the wind. I grabbed the camera and shot a few images to get exposure right. Then I set the camera in burst mode so I could be zoomed in all the way (202.5mm equivalent, 24MP APS sensor). The object was very high in the sky making it impossible to lean the camera against anything and, even with image stabilization, it was tough to keep things rock steady. So I figured that, with a 10-shot burst, I would be guaranteed of getting one or more razor-sharp images (I did). Image #7 of the 10-shot burst (at 10 frames per second) was the last to show the object. It simply vanished completely. It should have still been visible naked eye but I could see nothing. Tried binoculars all over the sky, still nothing.

So for what it's worth, those are my experiences. I have had friends over the years, including a military pilot and a commercial pilot, that have had some pretty exotic experiences. I'm pretty confident that anyone who has done the least bit of homework in this area (fake YouTube CGI videos aside) would have no doubts that these craft are real and that some are ours and some aren't.

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In 1976 my fire crew and I drove up on an object out in the woods in broad daylite that was no more than 400yds away at a altitude of about 150ft. It was about the size, color and shape of a 45ft airstream travel trailer. I stopped the truck and turned it off and we got out and watched this object for 5 plus minutes. It hovered and maneuvered and was obviously under someone’s control. This thing had no wings, rotors, fins or any markings or windows, nor did it have panel lines or rivets. most striking of all, it was completely silent. We watched it slowly travel uphill for about a half mile before dropping out of site behind the hill.

UFO? Call it what what you want but no one here even to this day has a machine that can fly like this thing did.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who thinks these things aren’t real are just fooling themselves...

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My fiancé and I really want to bust out our telescope on Monday for the Saturn/Jupiter thing. But we don't really know of any places where there's low light pollution.

Plus, I was curious if Athens had an astronomy club or anything and would like to meet up with some other hobbyists!

Recommendations for places or any info is much appreciated!

Before the pandemic, there was a monthly (?) amateur astronomy and stargazing event held on friday night in the parking lot of Jean Lafitte national park. i really loved going, there were some crazy expensive telescopes people would let you look through

it stopped with covid. does anyone know if its back, and if so, where, how often, and at what time?

thanks in advance!

Hello! I recently had my proposal for a new club on camps approved. I started the Mountaineer Skywatching Club this month. I want to be able to share my love of the night sky with App State and the Boone community as a whole, and have a place for astronomy enthusiasts to gather. We'll go stargazing on the Parkway, set up telescopes to look at planets on the Sanford Mall, learn about the basics of the fun side of astronomy, and maybe even travel to places like the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. If you're interested in the club, send me a PM with your app state email so I can send you an invite to the appsync page. We also have a discord server.

Keep looking up!

I'm looking to get a nice pair of binoculars (maybe a good portable telescope down the line) for some night sky viewing. Anyone know a good spot with low light pollution? I don't have a car but don't mind a little bit of a hike for good opportunities. Any tips appreciated!

Why does everything feel so overpriced? Why do amateurs continue to pay ridiculous premium on AP gear? Even my government charges almost 45% custom duty and taxes on the product+shipping cost, which ends up raising the prices of AP products in local stores.

Two years!! That's how long I've been trying to save up and complete my AP rig!! I'm not exactly rich, but I feel I make enough.

Earlier I would try to make do with what equipment I have. But after you've spent months reading, learning, and watching great images & tutorials by other people, you start losing interest when you can't own gear!

Hopefully one where people speak english :) Or Spanish or Portuguese, although I think those might be more unlikely lol

I've tried looking at the sky last night around 9. I've heard that Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, and Venus would all be visible in July. I thought I only saw one really bright "star", but I couldn't tell if it was a planet. It couldn't have been Polaris, I was looking west. Do I need a sky map? Any additional advice for a beginner? Thanks.

I have a starter telescope. Seeking to find a local amateur astronomy club to learn more about observing skies & about gear (want to upgrade).