Calling all astronomers

[tinkerer]

I have seen talk of mods to telescopes and my daughter asked me if it is feasable to connect a webcam to a telescope to see on a laptop, what the telescope is looking at. She has a 6" reflector and is a night sky nut. I admit, it would be pretty cool if it can be done.

[tumutbound]

It certainly can be done. Check out this site http://iceinspace.com.au for some ideas

[Mike K]

There's also a Yahoo group for using a webcam with a 'scope:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/QCUIAG/

Mike

[tinkerer]

Tumutbound,
Holy mackeral man I went to that site and from there to other links and am amazed at the info available. My daughter was looking over my shoulder and we learned more in that time than all the years previously spent. We made downloads of instructions that will make the observing much more easy and pleasurable than ever before. Thank you for that. and any other acclamations up there.

[tinkerer]

Mike,
So much information and so little time. I will check out the link tomorrow. Thank you very much.

[tumutbound]

Tinkerer,
It's the best astronomy site I've ever looked at.
If you (or your daughter) haven't already joined then do so. The members of the forum are a very helpful lot (like this forum) with an enormous range of skills.
For both astronomy and machining content, have a look at DaveGee's http://users.tpg.com.au/users/daveg/'s homepage. It's what got me interested in this metal munching stuff.
FWIW, I'm snowyskiesau on that forum.

[tinkerer]

I agree. We spent about two hours exploring the site and links it provides. Now she wants do everything at once, bigger scope, cameras, computer drive goto software and an observatory. I told her to let me know when she has the money for all of that. With a kid in college, I doubt it will be while I am alive.
We will join when we can get together again. I'll let you know when.

[mklotz]

Do her a favor and have her download the free computer planetarium, Stellarium from:

http://www.stellarium.org/

She'll love it.

[raynerd]

Stellarium is fantastic, we use it now for teaching space and it is installed on all the computers. Along with facebook, myspace and msn, I occasionally find the odd one browsing stellarium in their own time.

Celestia is equally as good and again free : http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

[tinkerer]

Dl'd Celestia, Dl'ing Stellarium as I speak. Hope I have enough memory for all of this. I'll never get anything done now. Thanks for those links. Ooops, got a corrupted file message. I'll try again.

[tinkerer]

I had to find another site to DL Stellarium from, but got it done. Fantastic! This will help the daughter immensely identifying objects and constellations. You know, she has never seen the milky way! If it will ever quit raining in Ga., we plan to go to my son's hunt club and set up the scope. She will be astounded by the clear night view.

Many thanks for the links fellas.