Mailing Lists and News Groups

The utility of these will depend on your own interests. In my case, I've started trying to use a webcam for some pictures, and I own Starry Night Pro for both the MacOS and the Windoze, so I either subscribe or monitor these mailing lists. At this point, it is nearly impossible to keep up with the number of lists. Your best bet is to go to Yahoo groups and search for astronomy groups. The QCUAIG group below migrated to Yahoo some time ago (years ago now) and there are groups there for astronomy in general, groups related to specific equipment, groups on imaging with commodity equipment (got a digital camera?) and more.

• Starry Night — Discussion of the Starry Night family of planetarium programs. Sales information is available through space.com
• QuickCam and Unconventional Imaging Astronomical Group — Discussion of using webcams and videocameras for astronomical imaging. See also the QCUIAG web site for information including the QCUIAG FAQ.
• Astro-Photography Mailing List is a list used by astrophotographers who swap information on tricks of the trade. If you are interested in this hobby, have a look through their archives at the above link.

I used to read sci.astro.amateur regularly, but at some point, the volume just got too high for me to follow. I occasionally still drop in and browse, but the advent of spam harvesters that pull email addresses from new posts has made the cost of posting just too high for me.

• sci.astro.amateur
• alt.binaries.pictures.astro
• sci.astro.ccd-imaging