One of the higher ambitions of many amateur astronomers is to have a backyard observatory. Who has available a sky with not too high light pollution in fact would like to have his telescope already installed and ready to use, without the need to assemble all the components each time to observe or…
Autoguide flexures: the use of an autoguider to improve the tracking accuracy of the telescope mount not only requires a sensitive camera and a good guide telescope (or an off-axis guider) but also a properly machined mechanical system that is able of supporting it without problems or flexures.
PHD Guiding is a free software among the most used for autoguiding since it’s very easy to use. In this tutorial we will explain how to set up this software using an Atik TITAN camera but the same steps can also be made using other autoguiding cameras.
Is it possible to make amateur radio astronomy? If you already have an equatorial mount (the one used with optical telescopes) with at least 50 kg load capacity and Losmandy dovetail clamp (like an EQ8), thanks to the products developed by Radio2Space, you can turn your telescope into an amateur radio telescope, and start your amateur radio astronomy program without the need to have extensive knowledge of radio techniques.
Largest radio telescopes in the world are used by professional radio astronomers, and often you can also visit them. Radio telescopes are extraordinary instruments, equipped with giant parabolic antennas or other, designed to work as single instruments or as interferometers. They are used to study objects in the Universe in radio waves frequencies but often are also used for satellite communication or studies of Earth’s atmosphere. Here you have a list with some of the largest radio telescopes in the world and a brief description for each instrument.
Radio astronomy is a young science, born at the beginning of 20th century. There are two figures that have historically contributed to birth of this science: Karl Jansky and Grote Reber.
Is the world exactly as we see it? It is not so simple. For example, some animals, such as bees, can see parts of electromagnetic spectrum that we can not see (such as ultraviolet light or infrared): the world does not appear to them as to us. Our eyes are in fact sensitive to wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers (1 nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter). Instead electromagnetic spectrum is made up of many types of waves of which the visible is only a small area
