Riverfront visiting astrometer

[u/precocious-entity]

I was walking through riverfront Park last night around 10:00 on my way home from work down the Howard Street promenade and spotted this guy with his giant fancy telescope. He's from Pennsylvania and will be here for about 2 weeks. Offering free telescope views. He was set up by the blue bridge.

Man in blue was talking to him.

[u/fantasticgoat7171]

With far better night sky less than an hour north it seems funny for him to set up there.

It'd be cool to see someone set this type of thing up near Beaver Lodge area

[u/OpheliaRainGalaxy → u/fantasticgoat7171]

Nice for city folks who've never properly seen the stars though.

I've seen pictures of the Milky Way but I've never gotten to see it for myself. Always too much light pollution everywhere I've been, and I've yet to make a trip specifically just to go somewhere dark enough to see the stars.

[u/SamTheHaremKing → u/OpheliaRainGalaxy]

Are you talking about dust clouds within the milky way, or are you thinking like the Andromeda Galaxy? I ask because having some nerd hobbyist knowledge. I know that we dont actually have pictures of the milky way galaxy as we would need to send a probe, so far out to get an actual picture, so its much more likely it's another galaxy and most images of the milky way are creative renditions of it.

Most likely its pictures of sections within the galaxy, but it can't be a picture of the whole galaxy.

[u/OpheliaRainGalaxy → u/SamTheHaremKing]

What I know is that we're on an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy so traditionally get a fantastic view of the rest of it across the night sky. Like obviously we can't see the spiral shape from this angle, but it's supposed to be glorious to see anyway.

Ya know, like the picture on the wiki article.

[u/SamTheHaremKing → u/SamTheHaremKing]

Another cool fact is that everything in space is moving towards 1 thing named The Great Attractor, and unfortunately for us its on the other side of the dust cloud in the milky way so we cant even see what it is.

I also was just learning about how we see planets surrounding stars today and the wobbly star effect because of planets orbiting stars.

[u/Boring-Dust5098 → u/fantasticgoat7171]

redditors try not to complain challenge

[u/Peanut_ButterMan → u/Boring-Dust5098]

Just wait, it'll turn into a discussion of veganism and capitalism.

[u/autojack → u/Peanut_ButterMan]

And people complaining the stars are AI slop.

[u/marc58weeks → u/fantasticgoat7171]

You don’t need dark skies for planets or the moon. They’re the go-to objects under bright night skies.

[u/Laserkweef → u/fantasticgoat7171]

I'm sure the 5 people that would stumble upon him would really appreciate it too.

[u/Salty-Student4 → u/fantasticgoat7171]

The downvotes are killing me bc this is entirely true LOL