Anakin Skywalker

Thank you for the info! really apppreciate it!

May the Force be with you.

Hello everyone,

I am now in the process of completing the write up for a science project on parallax and I came across a question which I need an answer in order to explain my project. (google was no help cuz already tried that and couldnt find a correct answer🤣) 

How do astronomers actually measure the parallax angle of a star? do they use any special equipment or do they calculate it mathematically? and can someone explain the equation d = 1/p which is used to calculate stellar distances in parsecs and how  it relates to the earth-sun distance(if it does) and parallax angle? 

Thank you in advance!

May the Force be with you.

Hello again everyone,

I am now in the process of completing the write up for my parallax project and I came across a question which I need an answer in order to explain my project. (google was no help cuz already tried that and couldnt find a correct answer😝) 

How do astronomers actually measure the parallax angle of a star? do they use any special equipment or do they calculate it mathematically? and can someone explain the equation d = 1/p which is used to calculate stellar distances in parsecs and how  it relates to the earth-sun distance and parallax angle? 

Indeed! A very good atrempt with awesome results! well done!! a few days ago i had a go at photographing the milky way with my Nikon D3500 DSLR while i was taking pictures of Jupiter and Saturn with my Celestron Nexstar 6 SE SCT, i had to lie down on the wet ground and position my camera tripod with one hand while handling the camera with the other. The thing was the ground was slanted at an angle and if i let go of the tripod it would just fall over. And i was doin all this while it was freezing cold (about 2-3 degrees celcius) and my fingers were numb! but it was worth it! got some really great results and really pleased with how the images turned out!

shot with 13 sec. f/3.5 18 mm and ISO 25600

Another version taken from different view with 10 sec. f/3.5 18 mm and ISO 25600

You can see Jupiter and Saturn on the right side of the image as two bright stars in both images. Jupiter is the one thats higher up.

Editingwise, didnt do much. just played around with basic contrast and colour filters in images.

Here's to clear skies🔭👊

May the Force be with you.

I got a good view of Jupiter and Saturn a few nights ago in the evening at about 7.30 p.m. These are a few pics taken using my Samsung galaxy A20 smartphone and Celestron Nexstar 6SE SCT. Pretty satisfied with the results and with a little bit of playin around with contrasts and stuff, produced some pretty good results.

Jupiter with great red spot visible (barely!)

Jupiter with the 4 Galilean moons

Saturn

Saturn zoomed

Here's To clear skies☄🔭

May the Force be with you.

Thank you! Yes it makes a big difference. And your welcome!😃🔭

May the Force be with you.

Even though i'm not new to Astrophotography, I haven't tried getting some good Milky Way shots in becuase where i used to live you could barley see it, but now i live at a new location with much less pollution and you can see the Milky very well with your naked eyes.

These arer some of my recent shots of the Milky way using a Nikon D3500 DSLR mounted on a simple tripod, with ISO:12800-25600 , exposure time: 10 sec. f/3.5 18 mm. You can also see Jupiter and Saturn int the background (bright two stars close to each other). Editing-wise, i didnt do much of anything except tweaking and enhancing in the basic adjustment settings in photos. No fancy programs or anything. Just basic stuff. Mine were pretty similar to yours too! Overall, pretty happy with the results🔭😄

Here's to clear skies

May the force be with you.

Wowzers! I have yet to see it too! I actually have never seen a comet in real life, only in pictures. And i do not want to miss this great opportunity. Does anyone know  the best time to observe the comet and when is it visible in the Southern hemisphere? (namely, in Tasmania!), according to Stellarium, the comet will only be visible only after sunset and wont be visible in the mornings ( i might be wrong tho😆). AWESOME picture btw, good on you!

19 hours ago, Waddensky said:

The 100 pc limit applies only to observations from within the atmosphere (parallax of 0.01 arcsec). The Hipparcos satellite (geostationary orbit) was able to measure distances accurately up to 500 pc, Gaia (in orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point) even more.

Yes, observing from an orbit with a larger semi-major axis will increase the distance limit with the same error. Here's an interesting comparison of the parallax differences of Proxima Centauri as seen from the New Horizons space probe and from Earth.

thank you for the great info! they were a great help. 😀🔭

May the force be with you.

12 hours ago, George Jones said:

If you have time on your hands, you could wait for 120 million years. Then, the baseline, the diameter of the Sun's obit about the centre of our galaxy (about 60000 light-years), could be used for parallax measurements of distances to far away galaxies. 😁

I have been lazy, and I have not calculated if effects of the expansion of the universe would be noticeable with this method.

That would be awesome if you could actually do that! maybe if you build a time machine and take measurements now and go forward a 120 million yrs to take the next one!🤣🤣

May the force be with you.

19 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Not only that - there would be an added bonus of smaller atmosphere impact!

There are a few problems that prevents us from very precise parallax measurements on earth - atmosphere, precision of tracking and so on ... All of those "smear" star image and add uncertainty in true star position (although we use centroid type algorithms).

Maybe best solution would be a space telescope / or pair of space telescopes in orbit around the Sun at some distance, maybe exploiting L points of some of outer planets?

That's some interesting info! quick question. What exactly did you mean by "L points "? 

thank you again🙂🔭

May the force be with you.

Hi all,

Just a thought. I've been examining the parallax method of calculating distances to stars in Parsecs for a science project, and I was wondering, any earth based observations made over the course of 6 months on either side of the earth's orbit around the sun would only be able to find distances to stars up to  about 100 Parsecs (326 ly). If that is so, what if you made the observation from a planet that is farther away from the sun thus having a bigger orbit (eg: Mars) ? would that increase the limit of distance measurable for a star? which way is better from Earth or from a location farther away? any advice or comments would be great!🙂

May the force be with you.

That was literally how i started astrophotography. later upgraded from my hands and a smartphone to a DSLR and telescope adaptor🤣. awesome pic of the moon you got there too! well done

May the Force be with you.

Awesome! welcome to the weird, wacky and amazing world of Astronomy! happy stargazing!!!👊🔭

May the Force be with you.

Awesome capture! very well done! I also managed to snag a pic of the Milky Way and the Southern Cross in full view using a Nikon D3500, with ISO-12800 with a 10 sec shot using f/3.5 18 mm aperture. I did the shoot in freezing temperatures (about 4 Celsius) and my fingers were about to fall off! but it was worth it😁

May the Force be With you.

welcome to SGL! you wont regret it🔭👊

got bored with quarantine so had a go at drawing the Orion Nebula on canvas with acrylic paint. Its not really accurate but its great anyways!😆🔭 stay safe everyone!

May the Force be with you.

thats an awesome pic! you were REALLY lucky! well done

May the Force Be with you.

great shots! you've managed to get the exposure and focus just right which is sometimes quite tricky to do with a smartphone camera. I took a 30 second video of Saturn with my Samsung Galaxy A20 attched to my Celestron Nexstar 6SE SCT with an universal smartphone adaptor, and stacked the best frames through Registax 6 and enhanced it a bit. Honestly it came out great and i wasnt expecting it to loke that good either!🤣. Hers's to clear skies! (although its raining like nothing outside right now!)

May the Force be with you.

I took this image in a different camera (Nikon D3500) setting with exposure time 13 seconds with ISO 25600. I attached the camera to my Celestron Nexstar 6SE SCT and i used tracking. It came out really great and i was really happy that i managed to capture some greeat detail since i'm just startin to figure out the camera setting through a LOT of trial and error!😆. I processed the image through Registax 6 to further enhance detail. I think it came out good. It really helped that the air polution is really low and we have really clear skies here in Tasmania.

Telescope - Celestron Nexstar 6SE SCT           

 Camera - Nikon D3500 

Exposure time - 13 secs

ISO - 25600

Date - 22/03/20

Time - 20:32

May the force be with you.

awesome detail and very well done! i took an image of m42 through NASA's Micro observatory with exposure time 60 seconds with 3 filters (RED green and blue) which I combined into one full color  RGB img through the JS9-4L  astro image processing software https://waps.cfa.harvard.edu/eduportal/js9/software.php which is available on the website. The website allows you to request images acccording to your chosen settings and they e-mail you the images in a day or two in .FITS format. You then process them thru the software and create your final image. 

Micro observatory website - https://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/astrophoto/microobservatorychallenge.html#standoutentries

May the force be with you😀🔭

Good capture! I requested a similar image from NASA Micro Observatory taken through red, green and blue filters each taken with an exposure time of 60 seconds. I combined the 3 images to make one full color image of the irregular galaxy. 

Here's a few other pics of M82 that i processed through the JS9-4L astronomical image processor that is used t process images form the Micro Observatory

They aren't in really good quality tho but its still good😄

Happy stargazing!

May the Force be with you

awesome! well done!😃

wow that's a great pic of m42 you got there. Very impressive!😀 

Thank you!!!😃