Simple stargazing
Last night I sat in my dad’s garden with him and looked up at the sky.
We had a couple of deckchairs and some blankets, and though I had the telescope set up, we mostly used our unaided eyes and binoculars to look up and enjoy the starscape.
It’s a really enjoyable way to spend an evening, chatting and taking in the amazing night skies (bortle 4). I talked through want I’d been learning about the night skies, and how they will move about the garden as the seasons change. Talking with my dad helped me realise I’d learnt quite a lot from what the stars actually are (how far away, what they are made of etc), and useful things like how to use the big dipper / orion to find other stars.
I didn’t keep a log, but from memory we looked at:
- Orion (and it’s stars)
- Orion nebula (through the telescope)
- Big dipper / Ursa Major
- Polaris
- Little Dipper /Ursa Minor(harder to find)
- Jupiter
- Mars
- Pleiades
- Caster
- Pollux …and looked up and looked at some of the constellations
It really is amazing how much more you can see with binoculars. I was skeptical of all the comments on “how to get into astronomy” posts that you should start with a good pair of binoculars, but you absolutely should!
Nice to just sit, chat, and look at the stars..