BEST TELESCOPE FOR AMATUER ASTRONOMER DOWNLOAD

Fine maps bring the fascination of hunting out faint secrets in hidden sky realms. If you know what to look for.Ī sailor of the seas needs top-notch charts, and so does a sailor of the skies. You can split scores of interesting double stars and follow the fadings and brightenings of numerous variable stars. You can identify dozens of craters, plains, and mountains on the Moon. They'll show the ever-changing positions of Jupiter's moons and the crescent phases of Venus. They'll reveal dozens of star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae. See our star-hopping article to learn more on navigating the sky this way. Here we're narrowing in on NGC 2392, the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini (dark green symbol), using Sky Atlas 2000.0. Slide it from point to point on the chart, and you'll see the star patterns that will appear in your view as you navigate the sky. A neat star-chart trick is to make a wire ring the size of your binocular's or finderscope's field of view. However, if you've learned the constellations and obtained detailed sky maps, binoculars can keep you happily busy for years. Once you have the binoculars, what do you do with them? You can have fun looking at the Moon and sweeping the star fields of the Milky Way, but that will wear thin pretty fast. Modern image-stabilized binoculars are a tremendous boon for astronomy (though expensive), but any binoculars that are already knocking around the back of your closet are enough to launch an amateur-astronomy career. High optical quality is also important, more so than for binoculars that are used on daytime scenes. Even lightweight binoculars will reveal hundreds of cosmic wonders, from lunar craters and double stars to galaxies millions of light-years away.įor astronomy, the larger the front lenses the better. Ordinary 7- to 10-power binoculars improve on the naked-eye view about as much as a good amateur telescope improves on the binoculars - for much less than half the price. The performance of binoculars is surprisingly respectable.

Binoculars are also relatively cheap, widely available, and a breeze to carry and store.

An astronomical telescope's view, by contrast, is often upside down, is sometimes mirror-imaged as well, and is usually presented at right angles to the direction you're aiming.

They also show a view that's right-side up and straight in front of you, making it easy to see where you're pointing.

A higher-power telescope magnifies only a tiny, hard-to-locate bit of sky.

Binoculars show you a wide field of view, making it easy to find your way around.

Thinking Telescope? Start Stargazing with Binoculars Insteadīinoculars make an ideal 'first telescope' for several reasons: The ability to look up and say, 'There's Polaris' or 'That's Saturn' will provide pleasure, and perhaps a sense of place in the cosmos, for the rest of your life. but pretty quickly you'll be able to trace out star patterns in the sky with the help of star charts.Įven if you live in a densely populated, light-polluted area, there's more to see up there than you might imagine.

Buy yourself an inexpensive planisphere, which shows the constellations visible at any time throughout the year.

BEST TELESCOPE FOR AMATUER ASTRONOMER DOWNLOAD

Download our free Getting Started in Astronomy flyer (with bimonthly maps).Use the monthly naked-eye star charts in Sky & Telescope magazine.

Pooling thoughts from more than 100 years of collective experience answering the phones and mail, we came up with the following pointers to help newcomers past the most common pitfalls and onto the likeliest route to success.Īstronomy is an outdoor nature hobby, so the best way to begin is to go out into the night and learn the starry names and patterns overhead. What advice would help beginners the most? A while ago, the Sky & Telescope editors got together to brainstorm this question about astronomy for beginners. Astronomy for beginners shouldn't be that way.

The first step in astronomy for beginners is simply to look up and ask, 'What's that?' Begin gazing at the stars from your backyard, and you'll be taking the first step toward a lifetime of cosmic exploration and enjoyment.īut what, exactly, comes next? Too many newcomers to astronomy get lost in dead ends and quit in frustration. How good an astronomer you become depends less on your gear than on building your knowledge and skills.ĭid you know you can see a galaxy 2½ million light-years away with your unaided eyes? Craters on the Moon with binoculars? Countless wonders await you any clear night.

Best telescope for amatuer astronomer