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Sciastro

Astronomy Chat on IRC

Messier 42

The Great Nebula in the constellation Orion

Robert Kuberek

Sciastro Home

 

Special Announcement Dec. 12, 2008

#Sciastro will be sponsoring an astronomy forum on Starlink’s #townhall channel Sunday December 14, 2008. There will be two sessions. The times will be 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. E.S.T. Adam Block of the University of Arizona will be the presenter. There will be time for Q & A. Don’t miss this chance to learn about the universe and see some of the best photographs made, from a premier mountaintop observatory.

 

Presentation material will be distributed prior to the December 14. It will be a .pdf you just need to download. You will just need Adobe Reader or equivalent.

 

To participate in the forum, tune in #townhall at 6:30 or 9:30 E.S.T., on December 14.

 

Connectioin details:

 

Server:      irc.starlink-irc.org

Ports:        6667

Channel    #townhall

 

When the connection is complete you should see at the end of the login message:

 

Connections your firewall may see from this IP address are from Tristar and NOT an attack by a trojan or virus program.

Welcome to the StarLink-IRC Network

 

Once the login is complete, type the command /join #townhall (ignore "blocked content" messages from your browser).

 

If you are on satellite and have trouble connecting with your IRC client, see the special instructions on Starlink’s home page under “Security.” (Alternatively, you can use the “Click Now” button on this page, but see the instructions at the bottom of this page. The Chat Now CGI client may take a few minutes to establish the connection.)

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Welcome to Sciastro, the World Wide Web’s home to #sciastro, IRC’s premier internet chat room for amateur astronomy. Join the fun and learn about astronomy, astronomical equipment and observing techniques. Anyone who has, or who thinks they might have, an interest in this great hobby is welcome. (Please note: if your interest is in astrology, there are other sites that would probably serve you better.)

 

Getting Connected

#sciastro is hosted by our friends at Starlink-IRC. To join the chat, go to the Starlink Web Portal Page or use your own stand-alone chat client (e.g., mIRC or PIRCH) and input server irc.starlink-irc.org, port 6667. The channel name is #sciastro and no password is required.

 

Here are links to a couple of stand alone chat programs that are popular with some of our regulars:

· mIRC (Windows chat client)

· XChat (Linux chat client)

When you get connected to Starlink, join #sciastro. We hope to see you there!

 

Satellite Users

HughesNet satellite users may have difficulty connecting to Starlink using a stand-alone chat client. In this case, use the following directions for mIRC:

1. Open a trouble ticket with HughesNet.

2. Tell them you need to use their proxy to connect to IRC. They should give you an IP address.

3. In mIRC configuration, set firewall support to “both”, protocol to “proxy” and the hostname to the IP address that HughesNet gave you as the proxy.

4. Set the port to 3128.

If you are using the Starlink CGI web client and you are a HughesNet customer, you may have the same problem. In this case, configure your browser to use the proxy and port above. In Internet Explorer go to Tools/Options/Internet Connections/Lan Settings.

 

IRC Server: irc.starlink-irc.org

Port: 6667

Channel: #sciastro

 

 

Chat Now!

(You must type in the channel name, #sciastro, then click “Login”)