Beginner's Observing Suggestions - for familes, children, and adults

For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

Friends,

I just took our old articles and the original booklet written back in
1992 when we started marketing our (now obsolete) software program
"Eyepiece", and rendered them into a web page with a little assistance
from old 'AstroApp' (my husband) to cover some of the topics he's more
interested in than I am -- like software -- and to take a couple of
snapshots of me with beginner equipment.

The web page covers information that can help individuals to start out
in astronomical observing, and has links to external articles as well
as our own, and lists of resources that we use and recommend. We are
trying to reach both youngsters and adults, a difficult task in one
article. Some sections are more complicated than others.

There will, of course, be an infinity of opinions about which book or
chart or device is one's favorite, and that we think therefore that
EVERYBODY should love as much. That is impossible, of course, but
we've tried, anyway! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The page is just past the first couple of days of proof-reading, and
if there are any "howlers" in it that we've overlooked, I can assure
you they'll be fixed.

http://home.earthlink.net/~8-h-haggi.../beginners.htm

This page links back to our various other URLs, including the
"Eyepiece" download page, our "Full Moon Essays", and the "Horsehead
Nebula Project" website (not to mention my piano education home
page...err, I guess I mentioned it!)

Regina R.

Regina Roper wrote:
For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

Friends,
snip
Regina R.

Beautiful site, Regina!
I'll be pointing our new beanie-wearing club members to your page. ;^)

Clear Dark Steady Skies,
Dave Jessie

On Feb 13, 1:39 pm, Regina Roper wrote:
For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

Friends,

I just took our old articles and the original booklet written back in
1992 when we started marketing our (now obsolete) software program
"Eyepiece", and rendered them into a web page with a little assistance
from old 'AstroApp' (my husband) to cover some of the topics he's more
interested in than I am -- like software -- and to take a couple of
snapshots of me with beginner equipment.

The web page covers information that can help individuals to start out
in astronomical observing, and has links to external articles as well
as our own, and lists of resources that we use and recommend. We are
trying to reach both youngsters and adults, a difficult task in one
article. Some sections are more complicated than others.

There will, of course, be an infinity of opinions about which book or
chart or device is one's favorite, and that we think therefore that
EVERYBODY should love as much. That is impossible, of course, but
we've tried, anyway! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The page is just past the first couple of days of proof-reading, and
if there are any "howlers" in it that we've overlooked, I can assure
you they'll be fixed.

http://home.earthlink.net/~8-h-haggi.../beginners.htm

This page links back to our various other URLs, including the
"Eyepiece" download page, our "Full Moon Essays", and the "Horsehead
Nebula Project" website (not to mention my piano education home
page...err, I guess I mentioned it!)

Regina R.

HI:

Very nice website indeed. I would take issue to the write-up on Cartes
du Ciel, however...

"Star Chart Softwa I am not very enthusiastic about this next
program, but it is true that it does have many adherents and users:
Cartes du Ciel, a free but very elaborate planetarium program,
developed in France but offered in an English language version. There
are many catalogues available though the documentation is spotty,
inexplicit and even sometimes confusing, and demands user expertise.
Some versions I've tried have bugs and odd behavior but one does not
like to be too critical, considering the enormous work of producing
this creation. Still, the full-priced commercial star chart programs
offer more real usability and reliability."

First, spare the feelings of the author, Patrick Chevalley, he and his
program are from _Switzerland_, not France. ;-)

Second, it sounds as if the version of CdC that was evaluated was an
early one. The program can be operated, even by begginers, almost
immediately--my undergraduate astronomy students who wouldn't know a
planetarium program if it bit 'em certainly can--though CdC is most
assuredly "deep enough" that it is able to do _anything_ that
commercial software can do, and do it much better than many in terms
of "real useablility and reliability."

Fianlly, it's been a long time since bugs have been and issue, and the
author runs a Yahoogroup for the support of the program, and is there
almost constantly to answer any questions about its operation that
arise.

I certainly recommend and prefer Cartes du Ciel more than just about
anything outside The Sky's "upper levels."

Uncle Rod

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:02:40 -0500, "Dave Jessie"
wrote:

Regina Roper wrote:
For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

Friends,
snip
Regina R.

Beautiful site, Regina!
I'll be pointing our new beanie-wearing club members to your page. ;^)

Clear Dark Steady Skies,
Dave Jessie

Thanks. And, presumably you noticed who wears the wizard hat in THIS
house!

RR

"Regina Roper" wrote in message
...
For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

Friends,



The page is just past the first couple of days of proof-reading, and
if there are any "howlers" in it that we've overlooked, I can assure
you they'll be fixed.

http://home.earthlink.net/~8-h-haggi.../beginners.htm

This page links back to our various other URLs, including the
"Eyepiece" download page, our "Full Moon Essays", and the "Horsehead
Nebula Project" website (not to mention my piano education home
page...err, I guess I mentioned it!)

Regina R.

Very nice info.
Love the "Astrogoggles"

Terry B
Armidale
Australia

Very nice website indeed. I would take issue to the write-up on Cartes
du Ciel, however...

"Star Chart Softwa I am not very enthusiastic about this next
program, but it is true that it does have many adherents and users:
Cartes du Ciel, a free but very elaborate planetarium program,
developed in France but offered in an English language version. There
are many catalogues available though the documentation is spotty,
inexplicit and even sometimes confusing, and demands user expertise.
Some versions I've tried have bugs and odd behavior but one does not
like to be too critical, considering the enormous work of producing
this creation. Still, the full-priced commercial star chart programs
offer more real usability and reliability."

First, spare the feelings of the author, Patrick Chevalley, he and his
program are from _Switzerland_, not France. ;-)

Second, it sounds as if the version of CdC that was evaluated was an
early one. The program can be operated, even by begginers, almost
immediately--my undergraduate astronomy students who wouldn't know a
planetarium program if it bit 'em certainly can--though CdC is most
assuredly "deep enough" that it is able to do _anything_ that
commercial software can do, and do it much better than many in terms
of "real useablility and reliability."

Fianlly, it's been a long time since bugs have been and issue, and the
author runs a Yahoogroup for the support of the program, and is there
almost constantly to answer any questions about its operation that
arise.

I certainly recommend and prefer Cartes du Ciel more than just about
anything outside The Sky's "upper levels."

Uncle Rod


In my view, the interface design of CdC is not at all intuitive. If it was,
I think that it would have dominated the market by now, given that it is
extremely powerful and free. I have a friend who says that if he cannot sit
down and quickly figure out how to navigate around a software product
without looking at the doc then he judges the interface deficient. I am less
extreme in my views, but I have to say that my use of CdC is constrained by
my constant struggle to figure out how to get the program to do what I want,
and relearn navigation or some feature that I once figured out but have
forgotten because it is unintuitive. I want to love this program, but I just
can't.

Dennis

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:39:45 GMT, Regina Roper
wrote:

For People Who Like to Read Beginner-Level Astronomy Articles:

http://home.earthlink.net/~8-h-haggi.../beginners.htm

Hi Regina, I spent some time last night and this morning looking over
your new website and visiting some of the links. I've still not read
it all!

IMO the site goes well beyond the beginner level. It likely contains
information and/or links that will prove useful to amateurs regardless
of how long they've been in this hobby.

One thing I was in disagreement with (or interpreted incorrectly) was
the write-up in the "Beginner's Observing Session" on the exit pupil.
The exit pupil is the image of the telescope's entrance pupil (the
objective). The image of a distant light bulb, the Sun, etc. that the
scope is pointed at *can* be seen by projecting that image onto a
piece of paper behind the eyepiece; but the location of that image
does not coincide with the location of the telescope's exit pupil.

I was surprised to learn that my copy of "Visual Astronomy of the Deep
Sky" may be worth $150 to $600!!

Keep up the good work! Your site's URL is likely to show up often on
forums such as saa when people ask for advice of one kind or another.
--
Bill
Celestial Journeys
http://cejour.blogspot.com

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:55:33 -0700, W. H. Greer
wrote:

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:39:45 GMT, Regina Roper
wrote:

Hi Regina, I spent some time last night and this morning looking over
your new website and visiting some of the links. I've still not read
it all!

IMO the site goes well beyond the beginner level. It likely contains
information and/or links that will prove useful to amateurs regardless
of how long they've been in this hobby.

Thanks, Bill!

One thing I was in disagreement with (or interpreted incorrectly) was
the write-up in the "Beginner's Observing Session" on the exit pupil.
The exit pupil is the image of the telescope's entrance pupil (the
objective). The image of a distant light bulb, the Sun, etc. that the
scope is pointed at *can* be seen by projecting that image onto a
piece of paper behind the eyepiece; but the location of that image
does not coincide with the location of the telescope's exit pupil.

Funny, that was in the original 1992 booklet as well as the
instructions in the program, and the reviewers at ASTRONOMY and SKY &
TELESCOPE never criticized it; none of the other reviewers have, nor
any user. But, I have revised this per your suggestion though I did
not try to write it up authoritatively using the precise terms
"virtual aperture" and such that are found in strict definitions; and
also tried to keep this to one sentence.

The idea here is just to inform the very first time telescope user
what to do and where to put the eye (though I don't want to be WRONG
in any way.) It is very hard to get something this abstruse and
complex down to one sentence, and still have it mean something to
somebody who has never used a telescope, never read about optics, and
never thought about how an image is formed by binoculars or telescope.

So no matter how I revise this -- and other people are probably going
to have various suggestions too -- somebody will probably find fault
with what I have said! So, remember: the idea is to put it into one
sentence; use language that is understandable by ANYBODY; and not get
this so complicated that they miss the point.

Since we talk about exit pupil later in the article, with respect to
choosing filters for nebula enhancement -- and in the context of the
way our software program calculates this -- we thought it was a good
idea to introduce the term exit pupil. I could link to another
article: but which one?! There are many and vary in complexity,
quality and accuracy. Again, my thinking was to introduce the term
in its most basic construct, but not to over-define it and over
complicate it for the VERY first time observer.

But, I am open to suggestions and will keep tweaking this thing until
it has the *least* mistakes or misleading information (perhaps it is
impossible to insure that it is all precisely and indisputably CORRECT
so that no one, anywhere, would have any objection...)

RR

First, spare the feelings of the author, Patrick Chevalley, he and his
program are from _Switzerland_, not France. ;-)

Second, it sounds as if the version of CdC that was evaluated was an
early one. The program can be operated, even by begginers, almost
immediately--my undergraduate astronomy students who wouldn't know a
planetarium program if it bit 'em certainly can--though CdC is most
assuredly "deep enough" that it is able to do _anything_ that
commercial software can do, and do it much better than many in terms
of "real useablility and reliability."

Fianlly, it's been a long time since bugs have been and issue, and the
author runs a Yahoogroup for the support of the program, and is there
almost constantly to answer any questions about its operation that
arise.

I certainly recommend and prefer Cartes du Ciel more than just about
anything outside The Sky's "upper levels."

Uncle Rod


I'm with Rod on this one. It may not have precisely the same bells and
whistles that commercial programs offer, but it's still *astounding* for
freeware. I've had no problems getting it to do what I want, and though
I don't interface the program with my scope I'd be surprised if there
were any real problems with it. I dislike foreigners as much as the next
red blooded american patriot (snort of derisive laughter), but Regina's
criticism smacks of jingoism and snobbery (I'm kidding, of course).

If she wants to see a useful freeware program that is difficult to
master, she oughta take a look at Iris. That *******'s amazing, but it
takes me hours to make it do anything at all.

Chris

I did not see, Dennis, the post you are quoting here but I'll take
this opportunity to reply to your comment, and the earlier one you
quoted.

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 07:21:00 -0500, "Dennis Woos"
wrote:
Uncle Rod wrote:
Very nice website indeed. I would take issue to the write-up on Cartes
du Ciel, however...
Second, it sounds as if the version of CdC that was evaluated was an
early one.

No, sorry: we've tried every version of this that has ever been
released, according to my husband. He has the latest one.

The program can be operated, even by begginers, almost
immediately--my undergraduate astronomy students who wouldn't know a
planetarium program if it bit 'em certainly can--though CdC is most
assuredly "deep enough" that it is able to do _anything_ that
commercial software can do, and do it much better than many in terms
of "real useablility and reliability."

Here is what my husband says (I don't use star chart software myself;
I prefer printed charts):

"Don't agree. It is hard to install, since you have to grab bits and
pieces and get them in the right heirarchy; the menus for config are
confusing; the catalogues and IDs overlap on screen; so many errors
are evident that even the latest version is not in the same league as
the commercial programs. It does not have anywhere near the amount of
in-depth catalogue data of "Guide" or "Megastar". Sorry; this is our
opinion and our experience."

Fianlly, it's been a long time since bugs have been and issue

Stephen says, "Whenever I try it, it does something wrong, the worst
case being a total crash (fairly often, especially when linking to our
telescope), and the least being various anomalies such as overlapped
numbers rendering the identification of things onscreen to be
unintelligible. Often the programs that link to it can't seem to open
it: the process just dies. (One of the program authors who writes
freeware that passes parameters to it suggested that the trouble is in
the interface.)"

In my view, the interface design of CdC is not at all intuitive.

Stephen agrees, Dennis. So we weren't all that sure that it would be
a good recommendation for a beginner UNLESS they were very canny about
setting up the proper directory heirarchies for the catalogues, coping
with the complexities of the download page, etc.

If it was,
I think that it would have dominated the market by now, given that it is
extremely powerful and free. I have a friend who says that if he cannot sit
down and quickly figure out how to navigate around a software product
without looking at the doc then he judges the interface deficient. I am less
extreme in my views, but I have to say that my use of CdC is constrained by
my constant struggle to figure out how to get the program to do what I want,
and relearn navigation or some feature that I once figured out but have
forgotten because it is unintuitive. I want to love this program, but I just
can't.

Stephen says he feels even less optimistic about it than that. "Free"
is nice. You don't expect too much from free stuff. You appreciate
the time and effort that the people have put into it. Furthermore,
having been a software developer himself, Stephen says that he does
not like to "constantly harp about problems" if they are not very
easily correctable. "Often they might require a huge effort to
redesign the architecture, beyond the ability or motivation of the
author. So you just have to accept what you get, for free, and make
the best of it. And, software developers TEND to be somewhat
defensive, for they get a lot of complaints, many of them unfounded or
based on user mistakes or misperception."

Free Windows software is often marginal, because the developers can't
handle the complexities. Stephen went about half-way to the creation
of a Windows version of "Eyepiece" and quit. He says, "I have done
Windows code that we use for in-house stuff here at our business; but
don't think I could distribute, *market*, and then support Windows
software since it requires so much knowlege of the customer base,
their equipment, the various problems people will have, and how to
write Windows code that is just absolutely foolproof and reliable.
(Not to mention the difficulty of keeping up with new versions of the
OS, drivers, etc. etc. etc.)"

Stephen wrote a long review about his problems with some astronomy
software, and he says: "Much of it has not been written with C, and is
buggy. It is pretty, and looks like it will do a lot of stuff; but
the development platforms used are just not reliable enough for really
complicated software." This is his opinion; I am merely relaying it.
I don't know myself; I'm not a programmer.

The thing is, you can make lots of similar criticisms of OUR free
software. On top of everything else, it is now OBSOLETE, being for
DOS. It runs more or less OK in a Windows machine but some things,
like printing, don't always work correctly as they did in DOS. So,
with free stuff: you get what you pay for.

Stephen has stopped developing it and won't do any further debugging
and recompiling. So, he decided merely to give it away -- flaws,
obsolescence, and all -- since it still has some limited use (for
certain people who might appreciate the way it deals with numerical
calculations for using telescopes.) At the time we were marketing it,
Orion's owner was very complimentary but said it lacked "entertainment
value" -- and he was right! It was not "entertaining" but was purely
informative and educational. So, on top of being obsolete, imperfect
when run in Windows, and having very dated graphics, it is NOT
ENTERTAINING! There are many other criticisms we can level at our OWN
software, all of them quite fair and correct.

Since we admit these shortcomings on our *own* "promotional" page for
*our* software, we don't think it is unfair to be able to say what we
think about other programs, as long as the criticism is not harsh,
vindictive, or unconstructive.

Stephen says he can criticise virtually every piece of astro software
he has tried or purchased, and that he thinks that this stuff is not
yet at the level of quality you find in business applications that are
written for a gigantic customer base by large organizations, where
huge amounts of development effort can refine them. So, you have to
try and try again until you find the software that is the *least*
flawed in your opinion.

For instance: I use computers all day and all night. I run desktop
publishing, word processing, and music writing software, and do a lot
of web browsing. I will go for two or three weeks at a time without a
single crash or lockup or problem. Yet, when Stephen goes to his
laptop to try an astronomy program, I'll often hear -- err -- certain
muffled explosions of frustration from him. He says that he has at
least a half dozen astronomy programs that are well received by
reviewers, promoted all over the net, and appear to have been
appreciated by many people who have commented about them in
newsgroups, such as this one: but he has trouble with them, often
problems nobody else has ever mentioned. Lockups of Windows XP are
the worst (NONE of my own business or browsing software does that!)
But he says that only two or three programs he's used seem to have
almost no flaws whatsoever; and when he investigated he found that
they were written in C by a very skilled professional writer who had
developed lots of other software, and knew what he was doing.

Whereas, free Windows astronomy software is often like our OWN old
program "Eyepiece": written by an amateur who knows enough about code
to create a program, but not with the genius of C or assembler mavens
who can create absolutely foolproof stuff.

He says, "Many amateur (or one-man) programs have a user interface
that is idiosyncratic. The interface development did not go thru a
long process of refinement based on getting a lot of feedback from
users."

Criticizing software is like criticizing art: no two people will think
exactly the same way about the entirety of a complicated program, nor
desire the same results.

But Stephen did not want to be too harsh in his criticism and so wrote
it up the way we printed it in our article. I think what we said can
stand pretty much as written because it says that other people like it
-- which this discussion illustrates. No two people are going to
agree on what program best fits their needs.

RR (with some help from AstroApp)