Want to start exploring the universe with your own eyes, but don't know where to start? Here are some pointers.
Your First Nights
Binoculars
Telescopes
Three Secrets
Your First Nights
Finding your way around the sky is a visual skill. If you're by yourself and you're like most people, you'll need to spend an hour under the stars with a chart before it starts to make any sense. You'll learn much faster observing with more experienced astronomers. If there's an astronomy club nearby, join it!
Your skills will grow steadily with use. You'll start to recognize the constellations from memory, and you'll see with your own eyes that the stars appear to move throughout the night and the year.
Start your space program without a telescope. Simply go outside on a clear night and look for bright objects in the sky, such as the Moon, Jupiter, or the brighter stars. If you're using 2sky, make sure you've chosen a nearby location and turned the clock on. 2sky will handle the rest of the calculations and draw you a map of the sky where you are right now.
Once you've identified the brighter stars (2sky draws the brighter ones bigger), look for the neighboring stars that define the constellation they're in. The constellations will look bigger in the sky than they do on your tiny PDA. It's normal to misidentify some of them at first. This will happen less with 2sky than many printed charts because it draws them with less distortion. If you zoom all the way out, however, the constellations near the edges of the screen will look squashed, even in 2sky. Such distortion is inevitable: looking out into the sky is like looking into the inside of a sphere. This shape does not project evenly on to a flat screen. To observe the correct shape of a constellation, just drag the sky around with your stylus to place it near the center of the screen.
Binoculars
If you have a pair of binoculars, take them somewhere safe but very dark, and start exploring. The regions around Sagittarius and Scorpius are especially rewarding in July. Orion is great in January. 2sky will help you identify the hundreds of star clusters and nebulae you can find with binoculars. It will also help you "star-hop" from the brighter stars back to your celestial treasures later on, a task made easy by the typically wide field of binocular instruments. Their quick set-up, portability and ease of use make them one of the most enjoyable ways to explore the sky.
Telescopes
When it comes time to buy a telescope, you will save a lot of money if you first spend some time observing with more experienced astronomers. They love to talk about their telescopes, so don't be shy about asking lots of questions.
Are you considering buying a "Go To" telescope that finds stars automatically? In my opinion, these make terrible beginner's scopes, because you end up spending your time learning a proprietary hand controller rather than the sky. People who buy a robotic scope as their first scope don't seem to last long in the hobby (unless they soon sell it and buy a more straightforward scope).
Spend your money not on motors and proprietary hardware, but on bigger optics. The bigger the mirror or lens, the more stars you'll see. (Important note: we're talking about the girth, not the length, of the optical tube! Long, skinny scopes won't show you much).
Most visual observers prefer a simple but well-made reflecting telescope on a Dobsonian mount that can whip across the sky in a couple of seconds, point near the zenith, and look for things in twilight — all nearly impossible with a "Go To" scope. Another advantage of a simple mount is that it doesn't require batteries.
Three Secrets
Having trouble finding anything through a telescope eyepiece? Here are three secrets that may unlock the universe for you:
- Mount a reflex finder such as a TelRadŽ on the side of your telescope.
- Use or borrow a wide field, low power eyepiece. A 27mm Plossl is good enough, though a top-of-the-line wide-angle 40mm will show you 4 times as much sky.
- If you wear glasses, get an eyepiece with long eye relief.
There's plenty more to learn, but with these hints, you'll be well on your way. It's a big universe. Explore it!