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Hello from West Kent


JohnnyB

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Hi there,

I've recently move to a semi-rural part of West Kent after having lived in London for most of my life, and was quite amazed at how much I can see up in the sky living out here. Having always been interested in many aspects of Space I've decided to take my interest a little deeper. I've been doing a bit of star gazing in the garden with some old binoculars I found when we were moving, but they're only 8x21 and a bit tricky to use with the narrow field of view so I've ordered some 10x50s that had some good Amazon reviews that will hopefully arrive next week.

Last year I went to the Kennedy Space Centre and was lucky enough to see Atlantis on the launch pad for the final shuttle mission (it launched a couple of weeks after we were there) and it was one of the most memorable occasions of my life. This along with the all the hype around the Mars Science Laboratory project inspired me to rekindle my interest in space and I've read quite a lot of science books in the last 12 months and am hoping to start an Open University degree in Natural Sciences (Planet science and astronomy pathway) next year.

Right now just looking forward to getting to grips with the basics once my new binoculars arrive and finding some decent local spots for observing. Will no doubt have a look into some local clubs soon so I can learn more and get advice for a first telescope purchase at some point in the future.

Johnny

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HI Johnny and welcome to the forum. Learning the night sky will I am sure be part of your learning experience in astronomy and a good tool to use is a free piece of planetarium software called "Stellarium" which is used by many here and will certainly keep you occupied when the clouds come in. It can be calibrated to your precise viewing location and has plenty of features to help improve your view including a date/time advance feature which allows you to see what's coming up and when. You can read more about it here. Regarding the use of binoculars to stargaze, you might want to take a look at this site as well as the list of targets and other information here. That should keep you going for a bit! :grin:

Clear skies and enjoy the forum.

James

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Hi Jonny and welcome to SGL, apart from Stellarium there is also a dedicated bins program of star maps which you can download called TUBA, this information is provided at the beginning of the forums Binocular Section, you might find this helpful as you can print off maps that you can configure to your own requirements :)

John.

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Thanks everyone :)

I've downloaded Stellarium and am just getting to grips with using it though I keep getting distracted looking at the latest Curiosity Rover pics. Will also check out the TUBA prog for using bins.

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