Scioly.org

crazy77 wrote:Does anyone know of a good source to find information for the DSO's? Stuff like what is listed here on the second page: http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/20 ... andout.pdf
I'm having a tough time finding reliable information like this

You need to find an assortment of websites. Or there these old school things called books. -__-;

Book may not be that great for finding information on DSO. These DSO's are especially current; some of them were discovered just a couple years ago. Plus, measurements are refined and new data is calculated all the time.
Books may be too outdated for this purpose. The databases are your best bet for the DSOs.

The NED is a good resource for info on DSO's, but sometimes it can be hard to sort out what exactly you're looking at, since it presents information in a slightly confusing way. (NED is Nasa's Extragalactic Database, btw)
i thought the astro test at states (ny) was ridiculously broad last year. there were entire sections of the test that bore no relation whatsoever to the specs sheet.

So guys, I was wondering, what do you put inside your binder? Because my partner and I have no idea at all I know for other events (such as ecology) you generally want diagrams? Correct if I'm wrong. But what would you want for astronomy? especially since we're allowed a WHOLE binder.

is the virgo cluster an irregular one or a regular one?

sorry for the double post but also, does anyone know what the topics were the past couple of years for this event (2010, 2009, and 2008)?

I know it was variable stars last year (and quite probably the year before), and it used to be about galaxies a while ago.

last year it was galaxies and the two+ years before that it was variable stars.

I was re-reading the rules and then I came upon this: "Each team member is permitted to bring either a laptop computer or one 3-ring binder (any size) containing information in any form from any source." And I'm honestly not sure if it's too good to be true, because, I initially thought that we were allow one or the other for each TEAM, but apparently it's for each "team member?" Does this mean we're allowed to bring both a laptop and a 3-ring binder? Sorry if this is an extremely stupid question, it just sounds too good to be true, so some clarification would be nice. Thanks guys!

Yep, you are allowed to bring that much stuff. IMHO, Astronomy is one of the hardest events (lots of specific info to know, lots of formulas, etc), and that's most likely why they let you bring a ton of resources.