The Basics of Stargazing

The cottage is the perfect place to indulge your interest in stargazing. Escaping from the light noise of cities means that even the naked eye is a useful tool for spotting constellations, galaxies, watching the movement of planets, and a wide range of phenomena like comets and meteor showers.

This hobby lends itself to other activities like journal-keeping, sketching, painting, space photography, and you will probably find that the more you learn, the more you want to learn. You may be embarking on a journey that will last a lifetime.

We have collected some basic information for you to get started, and at the end of the page (and throughout) there are links to some sites and books that are ideal for learning more about stargazing.

The Naked Eye

You can get started without any equipment at all! All it takes is a clear night and some basic tips.

The first thing you will notice is that you can see many million more stars in the country than in the city. In fact, you may be slightly confused at first when looking for familiar constellations as the additional stars can be disorienting.

With your naked eye, you can watch such phenomena as meteors, eclipses, and comets as well as seeking out galaxies, planets, and constellations. You can see much more of the sky without than with the aid of binoculars or a telescope, so it is good to start by getting familiar with the sky at large and identifying your landmarks. You may use the other aids to zoom in on specific areas later, but for the first while, getting the overall picture is useful.

Binoculars

Binoculars are perfect for observing celestial bodies within our solar system. They have a distinct portability advantage, plus are useful for a wide variety of other activities like bird watching and observing other wildlife.

Binoculars have an advantage over telescopes when it comes to looking at larger areas of the sky, or larger bodies. They are ideal for exploring the craters of the moon, for instance. You can find many moon maps online by doing a quick and simple search.

When using binoculars to look at objects at a great distance, it sometimes helps to lean your elbows on a stable object, like a windowsill or deck railing. Binoculars are also a perfect accompaniment to the telescope when it comes to identifying what area of the sky you are going to hone in on. They will help you locate the major landmarks and angles of ascention and declination so that you can point your telescope to the right patch of sky.

Telescope

Telescopes are designed to hone into a small area of the sky and to magnify it to see the detail. When you look at telescopes you will find some that point out how great their power of magnification is - but don't be fooled. It may sound impressive, but it is simply a way to distract you from the core need, which is collecting light. Pay attention instead to the aperture of the "objective" (it may be a mirror or a lens but it will be the primary light-gathering part of the telescope). But we'll get back to that in a minute.

If you decide to make the investment in a telescope, there are a few factors to consider, before we get to the specs of the equipment itself.

1. Where are you planning to use it? Does it have to be reasonably portable? Will you be taking it up that great hill around the bend to get an even more spectacular view?
2. Will it stay at the cottage or have to travel back and forth to and from home?
3. How much do you want to spend on this hobby? Remember you can always upgrade later, and if you buy quality eyepieces you can use them on later telescopes.

If you are planning to lug the telescope up and down barely accessible terrain, you aren't going to want a heavy, awkward piece of equipment. Likewise, if you are going to be taking it back and forth from the cottage frequently, you are going to want something that can be assembled/disassembled relatively easily, plus make the investment in some good cases both for the individual components and the base.

Parts of the Telescope:

• Objectives - as mentioned before, this is the key to the real power of a telescope, not the factor of magnification. The diameter of the objective (the light-gathering part of the telescope) is the "aperture," and the area of the objective (not the diameter) will tell you how powerful one telescope is to another. In other words, twice the diameter means four times the light-gathering power, not twice as might be expected.
• Mounts - as you can probably guess by its name, the mount is the stand or tripod on which the telescope is mounted. It keeps you from having to stand holding the telescope trying to keep it steady while you look at a tiny portion of the sky, so you want a good sturdy one. A altazimuth mount moves up and down and pivots around the stand (in a circle). An equatorial mount has two pivots to allow you to track angles of ascension and declination better. If you are a beginner, you may find the altazimuth mount more intuitive and easier to use. At some point you may be tempted to get a mount that can be hooked to your laptop and/or remotely controlled.
• Eyepieces - your telescope will likely come with one or two of these parts, but you may be interested in upgrading or providing variety. A lower focal length means higher magnification. If that seems odd, think of it this way: a shorter focal length is bringing in light from less of the sky. You are seeing a smaller area in more detail. The other measurement to take note of is the barrel size. A ~5cm barrel is the preferred size for more advanced amateur astronomers, but the ~3cm is the de facto minimum. Don't go any smaller than that.
• Filters - there area variety of filters you can get for your telescope, the most common of which are for: light pollution (for those who are using their telescopes in areas with a lot of background light), lunar (for exploring the surface of the moon), and solar (for looking right at the sun without frying your corneas).
• Clock Drives - you may be interested in purchasing a telescope with a drive so that it can automatically make adjustments to track a star as we (the earth) rotates as the night rolls on.

Other key terms

• Focal length - the distance between the objective and the focusing point. A higher focal length means the image of the star (or whatever object you are looking at) will be larger, but dimmer with the same eyepiece. To counter that effect, use a shorter eyepiece.
• Focal Ratio - the ratio of focal length to aperture, usually expressed as f/[value]. If you have a 114 mm objective and a 900 mm focal length, then your focal ratio is 900/114 or about f/8.
  
  Choose your telescope depending on your goals: a short focal length and large aperture (i.e. smaller focal ratio or a "fast" focal ratio) means a you will see a wider patch of the sky, while a longer focal length makes for a better image of a smaller area of sky (good for looking at specific stars, planets. or smaller phenomena). Remember also that the overall effect will be affected by the eyepiece you choose.
• Refractor - a telescope that employs only a lens at the light collecting end and the eyepiece at the other end is a "refractor telescope." The advantages of this kind is that it has more control over tuning the resolution (sharpness of the image), better contrast, and larger images. These telescopes are usually longer than the reflector types.
• Reflector - if you buy a telescope with a mirror as the primary light-collecting instrument, you have a reflector telescope. These are the telescopes with the eyepiece at the front of the telescope. The prime advantage is cost: expect to pay just over half the price of the equivalent refractor telescope (focal length). It also render truer colour, but you will have to have the mirrors realigned periodically.
• Catadioptric - some telescopes employ both a lens and a mirror. the eyepiece is at the back of the telescope, but you will find the entire setup to be much shorter than a straight refractor telescope. By combining the mirror and lens, the length of the telescope itself is cut roughly in half, while maintaining a higher focal length. The advantage of the catadioptric telescope is its portability, while having better colour than the refractor alone and sharper images than the reflectors, but they are more expensive than either other options.

Night Sky Phenomena

Northern Lights

In Canada, the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis are a year-round phenomenon - if the conditions are right. They can be spotted from pretty much anywhere in the country at least on occasion, but are much more spectacular in areas of less light pollution, and more frequently spotted north of 60. They are the product of colliding atoms in the upper atmosphere; particles from the sun strike gases in the stratosphere.

These are the same solar flares that also wreak havoc with satellites and our communication systems. They go in 11 year cycles, with the next peak year being 2013.

In times of peak solar flares the auroras extend farther, and can be seen from the Southern parts of Canada and the Northern US. You can keep a journal of the types of Northern Lights you see as well as the colours; they can take the form of rays, veils, arcs, patches, swirls, bands, and coronas (like a sunburst). They are commonly green or yellow, yet blue, pink, and even red lights are also seen.

Meteor Showers

Every year there are regular meteor showers as we pass through the regions of space where many asteroids are found. Sure, you can see falling stars on other nights, but on these nights so many pieces of space debris enter our atmosphere that the term "shower" has been given to describe the quantity of shooting stars.

We have compiled a short list of the best meteor showers of the year (by that we eman the ones with the most meteors per hour at the peak), and you can find a full list here: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/meteors/shower_list.html.

Moon Surface

People have been looking at the moon and drawing its features for at least 5000 years. The oldest known moon map was found in a tomb in Knowth, County Meath, Ireland. If you want to examine the surface of the moon, you can get a map of the terrain here: http://www.oarval.org/MoonMapen.htm. I'll warn you first, it's not a pretty website, but if you print it with background colours off and in black and white you will find it a handy thing to take with you.

Books:

Magazines:

Links & Software:

• Basics of Stargazing: http://www.planetarium.net/
• Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/alpo/
• Virtual Atlas of the Moon: http://www.astrosurf.com/avl/UK_index.html
• SkyTools: http://www.skyhound.com/skytools.html