my passion for space and exploration

silasraven said:

if it happend that long ago how can we see a picture of it?are we looking into the past in some sense?

Click to expand...

Those galaxies (NGC 4038/39, the" Ringtail Galaxy") are tens of millions of light-years distant ... my Deep Sky Observer's handbook doesn't give a distance, but it's an outlier of teh Virgo Association whose center is ~50 million light-years distant. So figure on what we see to be 50 million years old, give or take a dinosaur.
Last year, on a clear night, I succeeded in just seeing them in my big binoculars. cn

<edit> I love space and its exploration. I am a bit bummed by the sheer expense of reaching orbit however. I don't see manned space exploration really happening without a return of the conditions that took us to the moon: a rivalry between superpowers. China is going for orbit and perhaps beyond. If the Chinese make a credible bid for translunar missions, maybe the USA or a Western consortium of mations will step up to the plate. But i do so hope that money would be made available for the research needed to develop an improved space drive, better than the chemical rocket.

I get a nice sky view out here,it gets dark with no street lights and no nearby town and the stars go on forever....I need to get a telescope though.

...I can see all kinds of shit up there...I guess I need a star map too.

Start with good binoculars, like Fujinon 10x70s. For a star map I recommend Tirion's "Sky Atlas 2000.0".
Best way i ever found to become familiar with the sky is to track satellites. Heavens-above.com is an awesome site. Spotting the Space Station rising above the horizon, looking in the right place at the right time (star map and well-adjusted watch) is a thrill. cn

Maybe I can pawn one off as a christmas gift, and then take it over when they get bored a week later

id love to get a scope and head out into a near by field and see what i get for view, i saw shooting stars on the bridge. materials needed for a space pod
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/25aug_plasticspaceships/


http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacesuits.php