David Dickinson - The Backyard Astronomers Field Guide : How to Find the Best Objects the Night Sky has to Offer

HOW TO FIND THE BEST OBJECTS THE NIGHT SKY HAS TO OFFER

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DEDICATED TO MY WIFE, MYSCHA. THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS SMALL, BRIEF PATCH OF TIME AND SPACE WITH ME.

We live in a vast Universe. Our Milky Way alone has around 100 billion stars, and there could be as many as 2 trillion galaxies in the observable Universe. Every night this cosmos wheels overhead begging you to focus its light into your telescope eyepiece.

This is the promise for anyone who buys a new telescope, but the reality, of course, is much more limiting. We turn our new scope on the Moon and see beautiful craters scattered across its surface. We see Jupiter when its up, noting the bands across the surface and its tiny moons hanging in a line on either side.

And of course, were entranced by Saturn, with its otherworldly rings that are clearly visible in even the smallest telescope. Its that view of Saturn that holds a permanent place in our imagination, our fascination with the night sky.

But anyone who buys a small telescope with dreams of studying the cosmos quickly realizes the list of things that are easy to find is actually pretty short: Moon, Jupiter, Saturn. Maybe Mars every few years when its close and bright? Look at Venus a couple of times to see how it does indeed make a tiny crescent in the eyepiece?

Okay, Universe, what else have you got?

Astronomy has wonders to show you, but youve got to take the time and patience under the stars to learn your way across the night sky.

There are globular clusters, ancient collections of stars collected into tight balls that are stunning to look at through a small telescope eyepiece.

There are open clusters, looser groups of stars arranged like sparkling jewels of different colors.

There are the galaxies and nebulae, which look like fuzzy blobs in a small telescope eyepiece but are revealed in all their glory when you shift your hobby from astronomy to astrophotography.

Thanks to the Earths rotation, the sky is constantly shifting all night long, bringing new objects up in the east while others set in the west. Because of the Earths orbit around the Sun, regions of the entire Universe are revealed from month to month. Sky-watchers in the Northern Hemisphere can see objects that are blocked by the Earth, and vice versa for those in the Southern Hemisphere.

Each night, there are literally thousands of galaxies, nebulae, and clusters from which to choose. Some are big and bright, easy to see in the eyepiece. Others are going to take some work to track down, taking a long-exposure photograph to reveal the subtle details.

Every night that you carry your telescope outside, underneath these incredible skies, youre going to ask yourself the same question, over and over again. Whats up?, What should I look at?, Whats going to look good with the telescope that Ive got? Two trillion targets, and you dont even know where to start.

You need a guide.

Someone whos already charted the territory, looked at whats up, and can give you advice on where to direct your gaze. Specific advice for tonight, for where you live on Planet Earth, with the telescope youve gotespecially if you want to do some astrophotography.

David Dickinson is that guide. Hes been the one I trust to tell me where to look for more than a decade now, writing articles for Universe Today, expanding this knowledge with our Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos.

And now, hell help you get the most out of your small telescope, night after night, helping you quickly answer the question: okay Universe, whats good tonight?

-FRASER CAIN,

Publisher of Universe Today

Whats in the sky tonight?

Its a simple, straightforward question, with a not-so-simple answer. Every backyard astronomer finds themselves asking this basic question as they set up for a night of observing. The sky is clear, the obligations of the day are met, and the stars seem to have figuratively aligned themselves to make for a great night of sky-watching.

Perhaps you have a new telescope and have no clue what to look at. Maybe youre a seasoned astroimager looking to go deep on that exposure of a wispy nebula or galaxy. Or maybe youre simply a visual observer, looking to challenge yourself and check that rare galaxy or planetary nebula off your life list. Whatever the case, you can use this guide in the field to see whats up tonight.

Knowing what to look for in the sky by season and locale is a handy skill, whether youre showing off the sky to the public or just planning to observe it by yourself. Often, theres no time to troubleshoot a balky GoTo System or fiddle with fine polar alignment when youve got a line of impatient kids at your scope, eager to view the cosmos. In this guide, well tour the star-party faves as well as show you some little-known crowd-pleasers, objects that will wow em when every other scope down the row is pointed at Saturn or the Moon.

The purpose of this guide is to cover the entire deep sky, month by month, for each hemisphere. Well cover top objects and constellations as well as add a dash of myth and lore along the way. Part of the wow factor in astronomy is knowing something about what youre seeing. Sure, the Crab Nebula (Messier 1) is a colorless, fuzzy patch at the eyepiece, but did you know that the Chinese saw a brilliant supernova there in AD 1066? Or that a bizarre object known as a pulsar lurks at its center, and astronomersfor a brief time in the late 1960sthought radio bursts from this enigmatic object might be artificial signals from little green men? Or that you can actually see the expansion of the Crab in photos taken 50 years apart?

Tales like these litter the night sky, making it come alive with the hard-won knowledge that is modern astronomy. Exploring the night sky brings with it a certain intimacy of time and space as we discover these stories, tucked away in secret corners of the sky, along with the drama thats unfolding above us every night. The sky may look basically the same on the night of your first birthday as it does on the night of your last, but it looked noticeably different to the ancient Greeks and very different to the dinosaursif they ever bothered to look up. Likewise, the sky will look very different to Earth-based observers in the distant future. In this book, well look at how all those little changes add up and how we see evidence of these changes.

Perhaps you read my first book written with Fraser Cain, The Universe Today Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos. Although this book expands on some of the basic astronomical concepts advanced there, you can also read and use this guide on its own in the field. What you hold in your hands was tested in the field under varying light-pollution conditions and built on suggestions and feedback from seasoned deep-sky observers.