What do you do when the weather turns?

[Paul M]

... and if I'm really absolutely desperate then I might watch television, but things have to be really quite dire before that becomes an attractive option.

James

And when it's really, really, REALLY bad you might turn it on?

[JamesF]

And when it's really, really, REALLY bad you might turn it on?

Steady on.  Let's not go completely mad.

James

[shelby90]

Yeah, the VMA is a classic, especially if you observe the Moon a lot. It's fairly easy to install on Windows, there is a huge choice of plug-ins.

These are the installers for the VMA and the plug-ins I use. I keep them in case I have to re-install it (on Windows). 

http://ap-i.net/avl/en/start

I suppose online shopping has the downside in that you are buying things on faith in many ways. Amazon once lost a Moon filter I ordered but they did reimburse me. I hope your chair doesn't turn out to be a lemon! 

Oh fantastic, I noticed that there were a lot of options, so your picture helps. I'm not the most computer savvy person. That's so nice how you can choose what features you want to see. Apollo mapping sounds interesting. I'll install it when I have some free time.

The chair should be here today so I'll be finding out soon. It'll just be nice to not have to crane my neck for so long, since I use binoculars.

You may perhaps find it easier to get up early though and both are useful for observing.  I'm very much a night owl, but absolutely terrible at early mornings

I have far too much to keep me occupied on cloudy nights.  I have astronomy-related software that I'm working on, there are my bees and chickens to organise things for, I'm still working on building my home brewery and planning an observatory, reading up about sundial design so I can make one myself, I live in a money-pit of a house that always needs stuff doing, I try to spend two or three hours a week swimming, I work for myself so there's always stuff relating to work that needs tidying up, for the next seven or eight years at least I'm a childrens' unpaid chauffeur and if I'm really absolutely desperate then I might watch television, but things have to be really quite dire before that becomes an attractive option.

James

Excellent suggestion! I woke up early this morning and it was a whole new world up there  Got to see the Orion Nebula, and Jupiter along with the Galilean moons. Such a nice way to start the day. I'm definitely more of a morning person, myself. 

[Mak the Night]

When you install VMA first download the main installer 'virtualmoon-6.0-windows' and the updater file 'virtualmoon-update6.1-576-windows' Installer. They should download to either desktop or 'Downloads'. Right-click on the installer and run as Administrator. It should then just install itself. Next repeat the process with the updater file, which I believe is just a bugfix, and basically you are good to go. As you can see, I added some textures, both historical and modern, and some photo selections. 

When you launch VMA it first gives you a menu about the size of a splash-screen. AtLun launches the atlas.

It will also ask you for your location when you first run VMA. IIRC you can put your exact longitude and latitude into it, you may need Google Earth and find your house for this lol. This is how it looks on my Win 7 desktop.

As you can see, most of my maps show the Moon phase with dynamic relief, although there are other options and overlays.

It looks more complicated than it really is to configure. This is probably because it's French and they're into astronomical software in a big way.

I even have some historical overlays installed.

Have fun.

[Mak the Night]

Oh fantastic, I noticed that there were a lot of options, so your picture helps. I'm not the most computer savvy person. That's so nice how you can choose what features you want to see. Apollo mapping sounds interesting. I'll install it when I have some free time.

The chair should be here today so I'll be finding out soon. It'll just be nice to not have to crane my neck for so long, since I use binoculars.

Excellent suggestion! I woke up early this morning and it was a whole new world up there  Got to see the Orion Nebula, and Jupiter along with the Galilean moons. Such a nice way to start the day. I'm definitely more of a morning person, myself. 

I hope the chair isn't a lemon. Apparently a milk crate is the most popular improvised seat for astronomers lol. I caught a very bright Venus, a nicely red Mars and a bright white Jupiter with my bins a few days ago early in the morning. It was quite magical. I could see Venus's phase.

These Carl Zeiss 8x30 wide angle were my dad's, they are older than me, and he bought them secondhand. I think they were made before he was born!

[shelby90]

Mak the Night, thanks so much for those screen shots! Very helpful. Definitely going to install the atlas. The Moon has been really fun to observe and I've had a hard time finding a nice map online that shows all the craters I seen on one image, so this should be perfect. With more observing and identifying features, I think the Moon shall become an old friend real fast   Does the atlas have the far side of the Moon at all? Not that it would be useful for observing, but just out of curiosity.

I hope the chair isn't a lemon. Apparently a milk crate is the most popular improvised seat for astronomers lol. I caught a very bright Venus, a nicely red Mars and a bright white Jupiter with my bins a few days ago early in the morning. It was quite magical. I could see Venus's phase.

These Carl Zeiss 8x30 wide angle were my dad's, they are older than me, and he bought them secondhand. I think they were made before he was born!

A milk crate does sound like a great economical option, but my issue was my neck was starting to hurt from looking up so much with my binoculars. The chair is great! It reclines back to almost fully horizontal. I haven't had a clear night yet to give it a proper go under the stars, but seems like it'll do the job just fine. But when I get a telescope, milk crate it'll be!

[JamesF]

If you want to amuse yourself some time, have a hunt on the net for images of chairs people have made for binoviewing.  There are all sorts of fantastic motorised contraptions.  I'm sure I once saw one that was made from a converted dentist's chair

James

[Mak the Night]

Mak the Night, thanks so much for those screen shots! Very helpful. Definitely going to install the atlas. The Moon has been really fun to observe and I've had a hard time finding a nice map online that shows all the craters I seen on one image, so this should be perfect. With more observing and identifying features, I think the Moon shall become an old friend real fast   Does the atlas have the far side of the Moon at all? Not that it would be useful for observing, but just out of curiosity.

A milk crate does sound like a great economical option, but my issue was my neck was starting to hurt from looking up so much with my binoculars. The chair is great! It reclines back to almost fully horizontal. I haven't had a clear night yet to give it a proper go under the stars, but seems like it'll do the job just fine. But when I get a telescope, milk crate it'll be!

You're welcome. I observe the Moon a lot and I find the VMA invaluable. The entire globe can be animated and moved with the cursor in the manner of Google/Marble Earth. The whole of the Moon can be observed.

This is the normal 'Ephemeris' view full screen including libation on 10/10/2015:

Now rotated showing the Sea of Tranquillity in the lunar west in full screen mode: 

The illuminated 'darkside' of the Moon:

I'm glad your chair was fine. Although a milk crate seems a tad uncomfortable to me, useful for carrying stuff though lol. I use a garden chair, I haven't fell off it yet but I can see that happening. 

[Mak the Night]

ROTFLMAO! I meant 'libration' earlier, stupid Maxthon spellchecker ...

[Roy Challen]

I'm studying for an engineering degree at the mo, so observing is a break from that, so when the weather isn't compliant, I study. I also get up early for work so perhaps early morning sessions would be a better option for me.

[shelby90]

Mak the Night, oh fantastic, I'd love to get an idea of the far side, as well. Looks to be a great piece of free software. Hope you don't fall off the chair  That would not be a fun way to observe! Hah, those pesky spell checks. Make for some funny autocorrects, though 

I'm studying for an engineering degree at the mo, so observing is a break from that, so when the weather isn't compliant, I study. I also get up early for work so perhaps early morning sessions would be a better option for me.

I can relate. I'm a student as well, and I find being under the stars to be a very relaxing way to spend time when not studying. I have really enjoyed the few morning sessions I've done. It's so peaceful and a little less light pollution (as least in my area) than the times I observe at night.

[Mak the Night]

Knowing my luck I'll probably fall off my observing garden chair whilst using my tablet spellchecker ... lol!

Speaking of great astronomical freeware, you should check out Marble Earth, it has a very good virtual lunar globe.

https://marble.kde.org/index.php

It can be rotated 360° to display the dark side of the Moon like with the VMA. 

It also has a good zoom capability, here is detail from the Bay of Rainbows, in fact you can zoom in closer to the surface than this.

[shelby90]

Mak, very nice! So many great options   Seems that the nice thing about marble earth is you have a nice map of the earth as well, all in one program. That's handy. Well, good luck to you NOT falling!

[Bazz]

I started a thread here with some ideas for fantastic Blu Ray & DVD viewing:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/253587-recomended-astronomyspace-related-blu-ray-dvds/

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I tend to swear quite a bit

[gooseholla]

I get my grass skirt on and dance around outside doing the ancient dance to scare clouds away before sacrificing Huygens lensed eyepieces. So far it hasn't worked.

[Mak the Night]

I get my grass skirt on and dance around outside doing the ancient dance to scare clouds away before sacrificing Huygens lensed eyepieces. So far it hasn't worked.

Are you doing it on the correct Moonphase? I think the timing is important otherwise it won't work. 

[mapstar]

I get my grass skirt on and dance around outside doing the ancient dance to scare clouds away before sacrificing Huygens lensed eyepieces. So far it hasn't worked.

Strange John as I just thought you built telescopes now ha ha

[Mak the Night]

Mak, very nice! So many great options   Seems that the nice thing about marble earth is you have a nice map of the earth as well, all in one program. That's handy. Well, good luck to you NOT falling!

The falling is inevitable, hopefully the rather mossy back lawn will break my fall lol.

Celestia's homepage is back up, after being hosted on SourceForge for a while. http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

You really can travel to the stars with Celestia. Below are a few screenshots from various computers I've owned running it. I run it on Win 7 and Ubuntu now.

I can spend hours playing with this ... I really should get out more lol.

[sheeprug]

Oh... so many things.  Tonight I spent some time playing my hurdy-gurdy, trying to remember some 3-time bourrees since I'm playing some music for a local dance club next week, I watched some football (Italy vs. Norway) with my son and also helped him with his maths homework. I did some d-i-y physio on my injured arm (cycling accident) and also decided not to try to fix the central heating boiler myself. Insomnia has now kicked-in and it's about 2.00 am  and I'm surfing a little.  The sky is now clear with Orion looking magnificent, but I do need to be able to function tomorrow, so after this small glass of wine to keep the sandman away, I'm off to bed.

Zzzzzzzzzz......

SR

[kev]

I get my grass skirt on and dance around outside doing the ancient dance to scare clouds away before sacrificing Huygens lensed eyepieces. So far it hasn't worked.

Is thus the alternative entertainment for the neighbours when a planned friendly starparty gets called off? 8-)

Sent from my iPhone so excuse the typos!

[digger1978gee]

I check the met office on my in phone every chance I get. Its become an addiction . My mrs thinks I'm joking when I suggest lets start a clean slate in the dessert.

[nightfisher]

I have a fairly new hobby of flying quadcopters, still not brilliant at it but i can keep the bird in the air till the battery runs down, its great fun  

[cathalferris]

Biking or boating, when the weather turns!

[cathalferris]

And by boating I mean grade 4 white water kayaking, as per my avatar.. That's me on the Isere river, French Alps, a few years back. More rain the better, once it's actually raining, at least then there's a chance that the steeper rivers have enough water to risk being wet in them. Not enough to actually flood the main rivers, that causes too much human suffering..

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk