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Is anyone here into stargazing?
If so, what are the best sights you can get in your local area and what type of scope do you use?
If so, what are the best sights you can get in your local area and what type of scope do you use?
I have always been interested, but I don't know if I can actually afford to do it. I will admit that I have done minimal research, so if you know of a cheap way to get started, please tell me.
You can just start with any decent binoculars. It is actually the recommended way to begin. The hardest thing that you'll learn with a manual mount telescope is how to find the stars that you are looking for. The zoom of a telescope makes it much harder to know where you are looking.
The binoc's will teach you the general neighborhood. The first time you look at the Pleiades it will will blow your mind with amount of stars, and the blue color.
Really any binoculars will be a good start, but below are some lists. One thing that would help is some wort of inexpensive tripod support to keep things steady.
Great all around info: https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-equipment/binoculars-for-astronomy/
Basic list of binoc's: https://www.space.com/26021-best-binoculars.html
Cool video and talk: http://binocularsky.com/
Thanks for the guide. I didn't think about binoculars at all!
This may be a weird question, but do stargazers have IRL meetups? I am trying to become more social, and stargazing seems both interesting and a great way to meet people.
Yes, they definitely do. A good resource for that might be this list of astronomy clubs:
http://www.go-astronomy.com/astro-club-search.htm
edit: And I would highly recommend going to one. Someone else is bound to bring a good expensive telescope and mount, and you will get a chance to look through it.
Thanks for this. I really want to get into stargazing now. I hope there's a nice club near me.
What would you do again or differently, if you were to start stargazing from scratch?
Good question. I would have probably used binoculars much earlier on. I spent years going camping in really dark areas and I could have experienced the sky so much better with a star chart and some binoculars.
I started with this inexpensive telescope and I learned from that experience that the mount is one of the most important things. Aiming with manual controls is hard, and also the earth's rotation is really fast at a decent zoom level. So you will aim at Saturn, and by the time that you show it to a friend, it has already moved out of frame.
So that made me realize that a telescope with a motorized mount would be very useful. And you can forget about astrophotograhy without a motorized mount. However, I learned how to manually find things with the manual mount, and that was a really good education.
So if money is not a big issue, and I might start with a computerized, motorized mount from go. If you have any self discipline, you can always use a star chart and the manual controls to learn the night sky, and use the computer controls to just look at stuff and keep it in frame.
edit: This is the "if money is not a big issue" scope I would get.
$1199 is quite a hefty price tag. I think I might start with the cheaper one. How heavy are the mounts? Are they relatively easy to lug around?
Do you have any goals you want to achieve in stargazing? Do you just map the skies, or just look at the stars?
The middle link in my previous comment is around $749, but yeah. It is a lot of money either way. The resale value of the Mead ETX's is really good though. The $749 is >600 on ebay in good shape.
The mounts are pretty big and heavy.
My goals are pretty spiritual for a scientific endeavor. I have never had anything like a "religious" experience except for understanding my place in the physical universe. It deeply impacted me each time I saw the rings of Saturn, or the moons of Jupiter. I always knew those things were there, but to see them with my own eyes was transformative for me.
Since I enjoy photography already, it also became natural for me to start taking some shots too.
It's just a great hobby.
I have always felt a tingling every time I saw something larger than life. I hope I get the same feeling from stargazing. From your comment, it seems like I will. I never really thought about having spiritual goals though.
I may be using the term "spiritual" really loosely here.
Your comment just made me see the meditative benefits of stargazing. The calmness and awe you would feel from watching something so otherworldly.
Yes, that’s exactly it.
Including what people have said about gear to get its fun to just kind of fun to just look out for planets and constellations. Not really necessary to get any gear for that. I found it really rewarding when I get a sense of where the planets are at a glance and how the situation changes throughout the year and from year to year it also going to changes - as the planets wander from through the consolations.
Though I don't wear glasses so not sure if binoculars are necessary to see the fainter stars. The Pleiades cluster is particularly fun for that. Way back it was used as a crude eyesight test, depending on how many of the seven sisters (there are way more) you could count.
It's also quite fun to readup on the myths behind the constellations, helps put them into context and highlights some of their importance throughout history.
Where can I find the myths around the constellations? I hadn't considered that aspect of it. Sounds romantic.
Wikipedia is pretty good. I also use heavens-above to locate them; there is a myths link under each constellation.
Thanks! This will add an even more cosmic flair to stargazing.
It's a hobby that I have been getting more and more interested in. My son is currently 4 and we live in a rural town with very little light pollution, he loves going out at night and looking at the stars. At the high elevation we live at (9,000ft) you can easily make out the entire arm of the milky way with the naked eye. I am planning on getting him a telescope and some star charts for christmas this year.