my astro photos

[barman]

7 days ago, the planet Mercury passed in front of the Sun one week ago for the first time since 2006. Here's my photo of the event


Equipment pic:

[theredi]

:OOO

[Chelsea]

Why did you shot down plane over Ukraine? ( Malaysia airlines flight MH17)
damn terrorist 

[Kaleu]

Are you going to take pics from Mars today?  I hope so.

[barman]

Are you going to take pics from Mars today?  I hope so.

Took one a couple of days ago, here it is:


The problem with Mars is that it shines in the southern part of the sky this year, and I'm placed quite far in the northern hemisphere (my geographic latitude is 51 degrees). Which means it doesn't rise too high in the sky in Poland, and since the atmosphere near the horizon is always turbulent, the image is considerably blurry. Need to wait until 2020 for favorable observational conditions of Mars from my location

[Kaleu]

Still good to see ty 

[Anubis]

I wonder, barman, since you watch night sky so often, can you share some UFO stories with us? Or has everything been quite. Back when I was younger I spent a lot of time outside watching the sky and spotting unusual lights/movements has always been interesting to me.

[nino]

nice ae barman, just curious, how much did you spend on that? seems very expensive stuff.

btw did you see god ae? huhauh

[XanKriegor]

btw did you see god ae? huhauh

Wahahahaha)))))

[barman]

nice ae barman, just curious, how much did you spend on that? seems very expensive stuff.

btw did you see god ae? huhauh

About $3000. Brand new is more like $4000, but I bought some of the parts used. I'm currently saving for a full blown pro camera which costs more than my entire current setup combined

Never seen any aliens, gods or UFOs. People claiming they saw this sort of stuff are simply misidentifying natural or man-made lights due to the lack of experience. I once saw a slowly moving light and was quite confused about what it was, since the flashing pattern was irregular and not characteristic for an airplane. Later I found that it was just a damaged satellite in orbit reflecting sunlight into the surface of Earth with its solar panels, something like this:

[Chelsea]

gravity 

[barman]

This gif is zero percent scence and 100 percent bullshit. First of all, rockets can produce continuous thrust, so you can leave any object at any speed as long as the net force points up. Second, even without continuous thrust, you don't need these speeds if staying in orbit is all you want. Low Earth orbit satellites move at about 8 km/s (17900 mph). 25031 mph is what you need to get out of our planet's gravitational well altogether.
And these rockets don't even represent the escape velocities written below the planets. Earth's is over twice as large as that of Mars, yet the rockets seem to be moving at roughly the same speed

[Chelsea]

haha

dunno why, but I knew, that gif is shit (like everything at demotywatory.pl) but wanted to know your opinion

[XanKriegor]

Low Earth orbit satellites move at about 8 km/s (17900 mph).

Wait, its an orbiting speed, not speed "fromwards" Earth.