James Webb: 'Fully focused' telescope beats expectations

[N-OS X-tasy!]

gadje wrote:
if you focused a little better you could see a thread about half dozen lines below.

If you focused a LOT better, you could see your house from there! miley-laughing001:

[Lux Interior]

You can see more stars from Trantor than you can from Terminus.

At least that's what Hari Seldon told me.

[Speedy]

Lew, thanks!

Lew Zealand wrote:
[quote=Speedy]
It would be nice to know how far away that star is.

OK and to directly answer your question, it's about 610 parsecs away (Han will be there in less than 51 undefined units of time), or about 2,000 light years.

For reference:

The closest star is about 4.3 light years away
The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across
Most of the stars you can see in a dark sky are within 4,000 light years (yeah, not that much)

So it's not so close and not so far as things go...

[Dennis S]

It’s mind-blowing that a telescope, even before Webb, can get a picture of an entire galaxy.

[Lew Zealand]

Dennis S wrote:
It’s mind-blowing that a telescope, even before Webb, can get a picture of an entire galaxy.

Well, the combined light of 100 billion stars does a decent job of penetrating 100 million light years of space and making it just about everywhere (given enough time) as long as there's not too much leftover dust in our galaxy getting in the way (it's pretty clear in most directions).

So with your 4" backyard telescope in a dark sky location, not only can you see galaxies with your own eyes, but with the right setup you can see 20 galaxies in the same field of view (Markarian's Chain).

It's really quite an experience.

[Dennis S]

Lew Zealand wrote:
[quote=Dennis S]
It’s mind-blowing that a telescope, even before Webb, can get a picture of an entire galaxy.

Well, the combined light of 100 billion stars does a decent job of penetrating 100 million light years of space and making it just about everywhere (given enough time) as long as there's not too much leftover dust in our galaxy getting in the way (it's pretty clear in most directions).

So with your 4" backyard telescope in a dark sky location, not only can you see galaxies with your own eyes, but with the right setup you can see 20 galaxies in the same field of view (Markarian's Chain).

It's really quite an experience.
I had no idea. My niece has a $500 telescope (that’s all I know about it.) How does she proceed? Find a place in the country where it’s dark and point it toward a starless area of the sky?

[freeradical]

Dennis S wrote:
[quote=Lew Zealand]
[quote=Dennis S]
It’s mind-blowing that a telescope, even before Webb, can get a picture of an entire galaxy.

Well, the combined light of 100 billion stars does a decent job of penetrating 100 million light years of space and making it just about everywhere (given enough time) as long as there's not too much leftover dust in our galaxy getting in the way (it's pretty clear in most directions).

So with your 4" backyard telescope in a dark sky location, not only can you see galaxies with your own eyes, but with the right setup you can see 20 galaxies in the same field of view (Markarian's Chain).

It's really quite an experience.
I had no idea. My niece has a $500 telescope (that’s all I know about it.) How does she proceed? Find a place in the country where it’s dark and point it toward a starless area of the sky?
Star Hopping

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=stra+hopping+technique


What you basically due is find something in your finder telescope that can't be mistaken for anything else - a star that's very bright, or has an unusual color like a red giant - and go from there.

You know the true angular view of your finder scope, and you match up what you see on star charts, and find another object on the extreme edge of your field of view. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

Forget about setting circles. They're useless.