Link to my slideshow presentation.
This blog records various activities that my wife and I enjoy within one day's drive of our cabin on Lake Norfork in the Arkansas Ozarks. Of course, many of these activities take place right on the lake outside our window, so the earliest entry begins with a little factual information (culled from various web sites) about the lake and its history.
Friday, May 31, 2024
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
A Phone or Tablet Guide to the Essential Dark Sky Objects
By clicking here you should be able to download a pdf file I have created from the online version of my Guide to Essential Dark Sky Objects. The images have been drawn from a variety of Internet sources -- but primarily from astrobin.com. I focus on the wonderful astrophotography of amateurs -- and increasingly on what can be seen with inexpensive imaging equipment like the Dwarf2 and the SeeStar S50. I have consciously avoided using images from the huge cutting-edge telescopes like the Hubble, the JWST, the VLT, etc. This file shows what can be done with small telescopes used by talented amateurs.
The data is also drawn from many sources. The Hipparchos and Gaia space telescopes are now giving us more accurate distances to stars in the Milky Way, but even so many stellar distances and masses have considerable uncertainty.
Thus, this guide is just a tool for observing the sky at night. It is not encyclopedic or authoritative. It is designed to be used with a basic monthly star chart like the ones available online from Orion or Skymaps.com. Because Orion Telescopes has gone out of business, I am making six bimonthly star charts available here. Note that, while the planetary and lunar data are now out-of-date, the charts are still useful for locating the stars and deep-sky objects.