Chaotic Astronomy

Telescopes that follow the design made by Sir Isaac Newton were coined Newtonian and have finding telescopes attached. Study Newtonian Telescopes with an observatory director in this free astronomy video.

Expert: Rocky Alvey & Billy Teets
Bio: Rocky Alvey is the assistant director of the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory and has been involved in Astronomy since 1969.
Filmmaker: Dimitri LaBarge

Duration : 0:4:4

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ESOcast 4: 24 hours in the life of an ESO astronomer.

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be an astronomer? In this fourth episode of the ESOcast, Dr. J takes us behind the scenes at ESOs Very Large Telescope in Chile to show us what a day in the life of an ESO staff astronomer is like.

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The countdown for an exciting night with an observation run at the world’s most advanced optical telescope, the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), has begun …

In this ESOcast episode, were going to follow a day in the life of Dieter Nürnberger. Dieter is a staff astronomer at ESO. His job is to support those scientists that have managed to get observing time on ESOs Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile. Dieter spends most of his working days helping the successful few to make ground-breaking discoveries.

Dieter Nürnberger is on his way to meet the visiting scientists to team up for the night to come. The three have been observing together for several nights, today is their final evening and they are keen to get started. Over dinner they discuss plans for the night ahead.

Well before sunset they leave the Residencia and drive up the desert road to the building housing the VLT control room. At the control building they prepare the observations and check the set up of the telescope. Observing time on these great telescopes is precious and delays must be avoided at all costs.

Like a pilot checking his plane before departure, Dieter goes through a detailed check of his instrument, while the telescope operator does the same for the giant telescope. The astronomers have travelled far for a glorious view of the Universe, and here a glorious view of the sunset is included for free! As usual at Paranal, the conditions are perfect and Dieter and the visiting astronomers return with high expectations.

Read more: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/ESOCAST4/ESOCAST4.pdf

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ESOcast is produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory. ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in Astronomy designing, constructing and operating the worlds most advanced ground-based Telescopes.

• http://www.eso.org/
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Duration : 0:6:0

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I’m planning on getting the nikon action 16×50 porror prism binoculars. Would that be good enough for Astronomy ? Or something else.

And is Bunshell a quality optic supplier? How good are the optics?

Personally, having used a few different binoculars i find 10×50′s are quite good for astronomy the 16x magnification may sound appealing however shaking will become more of an issue, you may think it will be a subtle difference, but you can tell. For ease of use and portability, I find 10x 50′s are good and anything like 20×70′s aren’t very effective – unless you have a tripod, that’s when those size binoculars outshine 10×50′s in my opinion.