Questions needing answers

[twik]

I think the fact that we get few real challengers these days shows that sites such as this have been very successful. The Moon Hoax concept has been exposed so often and so persuasively that no knowledgeable person seriously entertains it.

Which, I suppose, leaves us to be entertained by supposed engineering graduates who don't know how gravity affects buoyancy in water, and seem to believe there is an "up" and a "down" in space.

[bknight]

I think the fact that we get few real challengers these days shows that sites such as this have been very successful. The Moon Hoax concept has been exposed so often and so persuasively that no knowledgeable person seriously entertains it.

Which, I suppose, leaves us to be entertained by supposed engineering graduates who don't know how gravity affects buoyancy in water, and seem to believe there is an "up" and a "down" in space.

For forums such as this, you are correct.  YT on the other hand is chock full of all sorts of conspiratorial BS.  I believe many of those folks gravitated to them, because no accountability of accuracy of information is required, it is surely the lazy way out.

[Chew]

Declination I get - so many degrees above or below the ecliptic.

Declination is above or below the equator, not the ecliptic.

  What I have never, ever figured out is Right Ascension.   Even when I was young and my parents indulged me with a refractor telescope with an Equatorial mount, I could not, for the life of me, reverse engineer, after pointing at known star (say, Pullox) and figure out how I could just take the coordinates off the chart and point at another star.

You mean point at, say, a star that is 3 hours RA east of Pollux, why can't you rotate your equatorial mount 3 hours RA to the east and center on that star?

[Sus_pilot]

Declination I get - so many degrees above or below the ecliptic.

Declination is above or below the equator, not the ecliptic.

  What I have never, ever figured out is Right Ascension.   Even when I was young and my parents indulged me with a refractor telescope with an Equatorial mount, I could not, for the life of me, reverse engineer, after pointing at known star (say, Pullox) and figure out how I could just take the coordinates off the chart and point at another star.

You mean point at, say, a star that is 3 hours RA east of Pollux, why can't you rotate your equatorial mount 3 hours RA to the east and center on that star?

Couldn't remember if it was the [celestial] equator or ecliptic (I typed equator and then over-thought it).

What I'm getting at is taking the coordinates, say, of M31, and then knowing how to set up the mount, based on GMT, etc., to point right at it (well, in the neighborhood, anyway), without having to go to a pointer star. 

My point (no pun) about Pollux was that even though I could point at it, I haven't been able to do get the answer in a formulaic way.  I don't know where I'm making the mistake, but it's got to be something simple that once I see it, I'll make the flat spot on my forehead that much larger when I slap my hand there.

[twik]

I think the fact that we get few real challengers these days shows that sites such as this have been very successful. The Moon Hoax concept has been exposed so often and so persuasively that no knowledgeable person seriously entertains it.

Which, I suppose, leaves us to be entertained by supposed engineering graduates who don't know how gravity affects buoyancy in water, and seem to believe there is an "up" and a "down" in space.

For forums such as this, you are correct.  YT on the other hand is chock full of all sorts of conspiratorial BS.  I believe many of those folks gravitated to them, because no accountability of accuracy of information is required, it is surely the lazy way out.

There will always be crackpots. However, I think the likelihood of some sensible but uniformed person going, "Hey, I heard that the Apollo landings were hoaxed, and it sounded vaguely plausible" are lower now than they were even a few years ago. It's dropped out of the mainstream.

Unfortunately it's been replaced with some other topics of conspiranoia that I think are more harmful, but even some of those are receding once knowledgeable people started speaking out - anti-vaccination articles are now much rarer, and the mainstream is no longer treating the two sides as if they had equal evidence.

[Zakalwe]

Help a 16 year old trapped in a 60 year old body find peace in this lifetime...

This should help:
http://astro-tom.com/telescopes/setting_circles.htm

If your mount has setting circles, then these can be used.  This guide shows how to use them, though the setting circles on most smallish mounts are pretty useless:
http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/feature/how-guide/how-master-setting-circles

GOTO computerised mounts have made a lot of this redundant. Align your mount (some don't even require aligning) and the select the target and GOTO it.

In the last few years the software available to the amateur astronomer has come on in leaps and bounds. Plate-solving is now available free of charge. This software slews the scope to any part of the sky, uses the imaging camera to take an image of a section of the sky and then identifies the stars in the image. The star centroids are calculated and then matched to the software's database. From that, the software then calculates exactly where in the sky the scope is pointing, and it updates the users planetarium program. Some applications go a bit further- for example I use Sequence Generator Pro. It can take an image off the 'Net, or from a previous night's session which it then plate-solves to identify where in the sky the image is. It then slews the scope to the approximate region of the sky, takes an image, plate solves that and then finesses the scope's position to exactly centre it to the original image. All completely automatically.  Applications such as this make finding targets very easy- switch the mount on, take a quick picture of the sky and then slew straight to the target.

My mount goes one further- it will slew all over the sky and take a large number of images (30+). These will all be automatically plate-solved and the mount will then build a sky model which will take into account flexure within the mount itself, flexure and movement within the 'scope & focuser and the refractive index of the air. It's possible to also hook up a barometer, temperature probe and humidity sensor to allow it to accurately calculate the changing refractive index of the atmosphere based on those variables.

It's a measure of how fast this stuff is progressing. Tools like plate-solving and automated sky-models were the domain of professional observatories only a few years ago.

Of course, all of the people designing and buying this kit are secret members of the shadowy New World Order that keeps the idea of a flat Earth hidden from the sheeple......it's only plucky heroes like tradosaurus that are willing to risk life and limb by lifting the curtain on such nefarious schemes....

[Zakalwe]

YT on the other hand is chock full of all sorts of conspiratorial BS.  I believe many of those folks gravitated to them, because no accountability of accuracy of information is required, it is surely the lazy way out.

Its also much easier for the loons to control the conversation as they can delete comments. They can control the stage unlike pesky places like here. Plus the audience is a lot more transient and less likely to be critical.

[Sus_pilot]

Help a 16 year old trapped in a 60 year old body find peace in this lifetime...

This should help:
http://astro-tom.com/telescopes/setting_circles.htm

[snip]

I really appreciate your and Chew's effort, and I get how setting circles would be a practical way to do this.  What I'm getting at, though, is I know that if it's "X" time GMT, on "Y" date, I should be able to spin the setting circle to "Z" and the swing the scope to the coordinates.  Or am I missing something?

None of this is of practical value, btw.  I haven't owned anything more than a telephoto lens or a pair of 7x50's for years.  I just remember being extremely frustrated as a freshman in high school on cold winter nights trying to figure this stuff out...

[Count Zero]

Two quick questions, Sus_pilot:

1.)  Does your telescope have an equatorial mount?

B.)  Does your telescope have a clock drive, or is it unpowered?

[Sus_pilot]

Two quick questions, Sus_pilot:

1.)  Does your telescope have an equatorial mount?

B.)  Does your telescope have a clock drive, or is it unpowered?

Niether, sadly.  As noted, I don't own a telescope these days.  These are intellectual questions now.

 When I did own one, a kajillion years ago, it was a manual Equatorial mount...

[Chew]

What I'm getting at, though, is I know that if it's "X" time GMT, on "Y" date, I should be able to spin the setting circle to "Z" and the swing the scope to the coordinates.  Or am I missing something?

I think you're missing the fact that the Sun and the stars revolve at different rates. A solar day is 24 hours; a sidereal day is 23h 56m 04s.

[Sus_pilot]

No, I knew and know that (anything else would mean that the Earth wasn't orbiting the Sun and the sky wouldn't change with the seasons, something else for Trad to ponder).  That's why I'm trying to see if there's a straightforward formula that I never found or figured out.

[Zakalwe]

No, I knew and know that (anything else would mean that the Earth wasn't orbiting the Sun and the sky wouldn't change with the seasons, something else for Trad to ponder).  That's why I'm trying to see if there's a straightforward formula that I never found or figured out.

RA hour zero is where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator (just south of Pisces). As you rotate eastward (in the northern hemisphere), the RA hour increases. Once you know this, and the declination angle, you should be able to locate anything in the sky.

[ineluki]

That said, there arrives a point of diminishing returns when a claimant's approach is manifestly irrational.  Tradosaurus hit that point a few days ago.

IMHO that point was clear once our "degreed Mechanical Engineer" spouted this nonsense...

5) How did all consumables including fuel (and a lunar rover) needed for a 7 day trip for 3 men fit in the lunar module?

[Zakalwe]

That said, there arrives a point of diminishing returns when a claimant's approach is manifestly irrational.  Tradosaurus hit that point a few days ago.

IMHO that point was clear once our "degreed Mechanical Engineer" spouted this nonsense...

5) How did all consumables including fuel (and a lunar rover) needed for a 7 day trip for 3 men fit in the lunar module?

I thought "we've got a real numpty here" when he spouted this pearl of wisdom...

As a proud Apollo moon lander denier and a degreed Mechanical Engineer

And my thoughts were confirmed with this spectacular piece of critical thinking...

Why does the earth look so small in the background of photographs on the moon.  The earth should be much larger.

If a 6 year old asked a question like that, then fine. For a 50 year old to ask it I'm like: