Happy Canada Day & Independence Day! Many of us will be looking up at fireworks over the next few days. Don't forget to notice the stars too. This is also vacation season. Camping or hiking trips, & sitting around a campfire is ideal for stargazing. Once you get out of town, far from city lights, the background sky is blacker, & your eyes adjust to the dimmer light after a while. So you'll see many times more stars & they'll appear more colorful.
Bring some simple 7x50 binoculars. Not only will it enhance your views of distant scenery & nature on your trips, but will also brighten up the stars so you can see more of them with better color. 7x50 is ideal for handheld binoculars because you can comfortably hold them steady. You loose a lot on higher magnifications without a tripod for them because it gets too jittery. "7" is the magnification. Great for scenery, but really won't make sky objects stunningly bigger. "50" is the diameter in millimeters of the front lenses. The bigger they are, the brighter they make faint objects & bring out more color.
I have some big, heavy 20x80 binoculars I rebuilt after the fire. But they're impossible to use without a tripod. Because they're heavy, you need a solid tripod too, not a lightweight camera tripod. If you got an old camcorder tripod in the attic, you can mount most big binoculars on it nicely. Even at 20x you won't get stunning big views of the moon or planets. But stellar views will be amazing. Far away from city lights you will see some galaxies & star clusters with them. On a good night I've seen a galaxy & a few star clusters right downtown in the middle of the city where the sky background would normally be too bright to see them.
My first experience with binocular astronomy was with 10x50 binoculars about 45 years ago, that I got for around $45. But even at 10x, it was hard to hold them steady without propping up myself or arms against something to steady my hand & body motion to see things clear enough.
For stunning views of the moon & even a fair look at the planets you'll need a telescope on a tripod that will give you at least 60x magnification. For viewing stars, galaxies, clusters, & nebula you don't need high magnification, you need a bigger front lens to gather more light & brighten the images. On reflector telescopes, you need one with a bigger primary mirror, not high magnification.
Your best telescope or binoculars will be the one you use the most. That big heavy scope is useless if it's too inconvenient to get out, set up, or carry around a lot, so hardly gets out of the closet. 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars you can easily take anywhere. You can easily scan the skies with them for the fun & beauty of it with no astronomy knowledge.
This is the view of the night sky for the first weekend of July from approximately 10pm to 4AM, but will look similar for about a week. It's split into 4 parts. First, the northern sky view, then the southern sky view, which offers the best summer viewing. Part 3 is the eastern sky view, & then finally the western sky view. Each part shows the entire night of the sky in a little over 2 minutes. These are EXPANDED views. That means stuff near the top of the screen will be almost overhead in real life. These views are for people living anywhere in the northern part of the northern hemisphere of the planet. The stars will be in the same spots at the same time next year too, but the planets & moon won't be.
Enjoy!
Topic: Pluto, space, & beyond. (Read 48259 times)
