First snows...

[Tiger]

 :( First snows blew in here yesterday, just a light "Remember me" type of snow that came in with some high winds ::)
Today we are looking at a high of 5c and a low of -5c (39f & 25f)...Supposed to be back in double digits by the week-end :-\

                     8).......TIGER........ 8)

[joevacc]

we are holding out here. no snow yet.  rode to work the day before yesterday at 33ºF- 0º C  not too bad yet but today it is up to 45ºF and that is totally cool  8)

I love the snow I just want it to go away when I feel like riding!

[h2olawyer]

We had snow down to the 7000 ft. elevation a week ago.  Last night, it snowed, sleeted, thundered, rained & drizzled here in Ft. Collins (5000 ft.).  Today it won't get out of the 40s (F) and its windy.  However, we're going to be into the 70s (F) by the weekend!  Fall in Colorado.  Two ski areas are already open - Loveland Basin & Arapaho Basin have been making snow for a few weeks already!

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

I'd send you some our weather, but it's considered a hazardous substance and can't be shipped through the mail... 

Brian (73 or so in San Francisco...)

[h2olawyer]

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." -- Anonymous - attributed to Mark Twain (erroneously).   ;D

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

Yes, but that's the summer.  It's quite nice in the fall.  I have to wear fewer clothes motorcycling now than I did in July...

Hmm.

[h2olawyer]

Fall here can be absolutely beautiful.  Temps in the 70s, lots of sun, light breezes, etc.  Then the next day can be in the 30s with snow, wind and general nastiness.  Three or four days later, it can be back in the 70s again.  That's what we've had for the last week or so.

October in much of California can be fire season as I recall.  Maybe that's why its warmer in San Francisco this time of year - the northern reaches of the Santa Anas?

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

Not the Santa Ana so to speak, because that's a particular location. But, the same idea, an offshore wind that heats things up.  We call it summer for the locals.  We do get some impressive shifts in temps too, last week it was 50 in the morning when I went to work one day, and high 60s the next.  The temp differences probably aren't as drastic as the middle part of the country, we have the Pacific ocean to moderate temperatures.  Denver can get some nasty fronts from the arctic.

Brian

[Rick G]

We had three days last week in the 50's  but its back to wonderfull weather right now . 84 here in kingman. Its 68 during the daytime at the Grand canyon  , but that won't last.

[YellowJacket!]

40's right now as I write this.  Going up to the 70's today.  I love fall in Tennessee.  I just hope we have a "real" winter. I miss the snow.  Used to get it a lot in the 80's when I moved here but not much since 1993/94 winter.  That winter Knoxville had the distinction of being the coldest place inthe US.  It made it down to -24!! (for a day)

David

[inanecathode]

This fricken sucks, it was 15 degrees last night, and now its around 20 degrees. Every morning this week it's been absolutely frozen roads, locks, door seams, and enough snow to be a problem.
I dont know about rob, but winters already here up where i live. Just cause its warm once a week doesnt discount the rest of the week :)

[h2olawyer]

It was nearly 70 out on my deck this afternoon.   ;D  That illustrates the difference between 5,000 & 9,000 ft.  There are still some 50 - 60 degree days ahead for you - but not many!

Stay warm.

H₂O

[Rick G]

76 in Kingman today, 84 in Bullhead. big change from last August's 118 ,  down there.

[Kenny]

  Tiger- No Snow out on Wooler Road & we haven't had any as of yet, some years we inch past Christmas and have nothing that stays,maybe something to say for the Dead Zone we're in??
                                             Cheers Ken S. ;D

[supervision]

Turlock, was nice about 80, clear, no breeze to speak of.  Road last Sunday, with Dwight and Company, got to stay home, this weekend, and run daughter, Katie, down the isle tomorrow!  Hope to do some riding to relieve the stress of it all,, haha

[Tiger]

 :( Weather report for this whole weekend is cold and lots of rain... ::)

                              8).......TIGER....... 8)

[h2olawyer]

It was a nice evening in Northern Colorado.  I took my new telescope out East to the Pawnee National Grasslands so I could enjoy some truly dark skies.  The Milky Way was in decent view - the sky was a bit turbulent and clouds to the West reflected lots of light from Ft. Collins & Greeley.  The clouds ended my night early, but I got to go for a "ride" many light years away.  Andromeda Galaxy wan nothing short of incredible through the scope.  Been looking at it with my 10x50 binocular for the last month.  Was sure nice to get a fuller view.

I'll set up in my driveway tomorrow and get some photos of my new toy.  The entire setup weighs about 70 pounds & after I get the correct interface cable tomorrow, I'll be able to control it with my laptop.  This is going to be a very fun hobby!  A little cold as it isn't exactly an aerobic pursuit, but the sightseeing will be awesome.   ;D  Where else can you travel back in time hundreds and thousands of years without leaving the yard?

H₂O

[Rick G]

I have a cheap old telescope , I bought in a thrift store in MPLS. I enjoy looking at the moon ( its not all that powerful for stars)  I can set it up in my front yard as there are no street lights in this part of Kingman and have the step grand sons  ove rto look at the moon.

[h2olawyer]

Actually, aperture (light gathering ability = diameter of the objective end of the optical tube) is more important than power or magnification.  In Telescopes, size DOES matter!  A small department store scope has some abilities, but the mount really needs beefing up to become really functional.  I know a few tricks to improve that area of a scope and would be glad to help if you are interested.  All it takes is some better hardware and adding some better bearings to the ole mount.  Think teflon and formica.   ;)  Even those small scopes will split many binary stars.  Look for Alberio - the southern star in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan).  It is a beautiful double with a red / yellow star and a bright blue star.  My binocular will almost split this pair and even in a small scope, the view is stunning.

Rick - you can also use that scope to see Andromeda - with ease.  I looked at it Friday night through my scope with a borrowed 40mm eyepiece (25x magnification).  That's almost like taking a spacewalk in my scope.   ;D  Makes me wish I had a 12 inch or larger scope so I could make out more of the dust trails in the arms.  (known as "aperture fever" - a common malady among astronomers)

That said, the department store telescopes have driven many away from the hobby.  Jiggling, shaking and difficulty in locating anything cool to observe are the hallmarks of those scopes.  If the manufacturer has any claims of high power or magnification, stay away.  The highest usable power of my 8 inch scope is about 480x and that takes perfect conditions.  Tops is closer to 280x under normal conditions.  That's enough to see details in Saturn's rings, the cloud bands on Jupiter - including the Great Red Spot, some surface detail on Mars - like the polar caps and will split close binary stars.

I just got a Celestron 8 inch diameter newtonian on a german equatorial mount - complete with computerized Go To drives.  (C8-NGT for those who might want to do a search)  Just got back inside from a long evening of nebula and galaxy hunting, finding & viewing - even from my heavily light polluted neighborhood.  The Great Nebula of Orion was amazing.  My only eyepiece is a 20mm - which in my scope gives a magnification of 50x.  spent about 40 minutes looking at the Orion Nebula.  There's a group of 4 stars in there that make up a formation called the trapezium.  I saw them all easily.   8)

Also looked at Andromeda again.  I have been looking at it often in my 10x50 binocular and it is just a glowing smallish oval through them.  However, @ 50x in my scope, I can see the outer disc, extending out of view in the edges of my eyepiece!  A yelloy core area with dimmer grey - blue fuzziness extending outward from there.  The Pleiades don't fit in one view and I need to move the scope around to see all the stars in that cluster.

Tried for the little bubble nebula, but that will take darker skies than I have available.  Found M33 - another spiral galaxy and M52, a cluster of about 150 stars.  They're fairly faint, but definitely visible.

Last night, I got to observe M13, which is a globular cluster of stars.  It looks like a snowball in the sky!  But the longer you look, the more individual stars you can see.

Yhe mount and a steady tripod are as important as aperture.  The tripod that came with my scope has 2 inch diameter stainless steel legs and when I give the scope a decent thump, the vibrations dampen in under one second.  Not good enough for long exposure astrophotography, but it will work well for taking a bunch of one or two minute exposures and stacking them, then filtering them.  using that method, I will be able to image really faint fuzzies.

I have a cousin who has been at the astronomy thing for about 15 years, now.  He's retiring from NASA in a couple weeks.  He and a friend of his put together a book on how to locate all 339 of Arp's Peculiar Galaxies.  He's always been incredibly smart and finds the coolest 'niche' interests.  Arp's peculiar galaxies are just what they sound like - they don't really fit onto any typical classification.  Many of them are actually two galaxies colliding.  Many are visible from suburban sites with a 6 inch or larger scope.  once I become more proficient at finding my way around the sky, I'll be hunting some of them down.

Speaking of my cousin, he's giving an awesome retirement party.  I'm headed down to Houston in mid November and he is getting all his family and friends VIP tickets for the November 14th shuttle launch.  It means a whirlwind trip to Cape Canaveral - should be tons of fun!  I'll also get a behind the scenes tour of the Johnson Space Center in Houston - going places the general public doesn't normally access.

Anyway, Sunday night / Monday morning is supposed to have even better sky conditions than I had tonight.  Now, if I can keep the scope's computer from getting lost after finding a few objects, I should be able to view until dawn begins to break!  I had troubles getting the computer to align initially tonight and took a couple hours to get it right.   ::)  There's a pretty steep learning curve to figuring out how to use this stuff.  I now realize why a larger diameter newtonian type scope on what is called a dobsonian mount is the best scope for a beginner to learn with.  They're the equivalent of a point & shoot camera.  The mount I have requires polar alignment and moves only in two axes.  The benefit of my setup is that it automatically tracks objects across the sky, compensating for the rotation of the Earth.

Not a cheap hobby to get into initially, but there are some great scopes available to learn with for well under $500 new.  Would make a great family Xmas gift.  My initial budget was $750, but that's kind of a 'dead zone' for scopes.  I shopped for over a month before making a final decision.  I wnted a mix of the largest aperture I could afford, portability and the ease of future upgrades.  Didn't really want the computerized go To functions, but I did want the ability to track objects across the sky over time.  I put together several systems that were bare bones and had the ability to upgrade in the future.  That setup came out to less than $100 cheaper than what I ended up buying.  To add the Go To functionality would have cost an additional $500 in the future.  Decided getting that stuff with the initial purchase was more cost effective.  I could have bought another V in great shape for what I just dropped on the scope, but the investment over time will be OK. 

Enough of the 'boring' non Vision stuff.  If anyone wants to talk astronomy, contact me by PM or email.  I could go on for many more hours & I'm just getting started!

H₂O

[Rick G]

Hay , this IS off topic , so continue on!!  I had a dear friend many years ago , who has since passed on, who had a 6 or 8 inch ,(I forget which) telescope in his back  yard, it had some kind of motorized tracking system to follow the desired view.
Mine, on the other hand cost 12.50 and is mounted on an old camera tripod, Its really only good for lunar viewing , although I watched mars with it in '04 , when it was close. I never tire of watching the craters on the moon.
Its a Jason star search 100. The  regular eyepiece is 50 power. There was a 2x barlow lens to up it to 74 power , which it missing. It appears to have a50 mm lens.