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The Beginner’s Guide to Stargazing
Part of the fun of camping, especially for the city slickers among us, is getting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Living near the bright lights of a major urban area also have one drawback – the light from the city drowns out your ability to see stars at night. This is an unacceptable situation for the stargazing nut, but if you’ve never been much of an amateur astronomer, you can get started on your next camping trip. Here’s a quick guide for getting your feet wet.
Use Binoculars, Not a Telescope
There’s no sense in buying a $600 telescope if you can’t even identify the North Star. Bring along binoculars for your stargazing. You won’t exactly be able to see the footprints on the moon, but you will get a better view of the night sky, including stars behind brighter stars that the naked eye can’t quite make out. Buying a telescope before you can identify various points in the sky will probably be a frustrating experience.
On a clear night out in the campground, you should be able to make out plenty of constellations with your naked eye alone. Spotting even one or two constellations you weren’t aware of before can be an amazing experience, like the night sky is revealing something that was there all along.Identify the Easy Constellations First
It will help to bring a skymap that shows where the constellations are at a given time in the Earth’s orbit (for example, summer). Once you do this, however, try to start with the constellations that are the easiest to find. In the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, you won’t have much trouble identifying Ursa Major (including the Big Dipper), the North Star, and the Summer Triangle. For example, if you lay flat at night with your feet facing south, you shouldn’t have much trouble seeing the Summer Triangle in the left side of your view. Directly above you will be the constellation Hercules.
Finding constellations isn’t as hard as you think, it just takes a little persistence and a little knowledge of the sky. Try to study up a little bit before heading out camping this summer.
Once you know where a few constellations are, you’ll have reference points to discover all sorts of other constellations while camping in the summer. If nothing else, knowing some of the constellations and being able to star gaze will give you something to tell your kids about later in life.
Photo Credits: xamad
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How to Find North on the Hiking Trip
If you’re out hiking at night, or in an unknown area, while on a hiking or camping trip, it will be important to keep your bearings. This is especially true if you’re camping in a place you’ve never been before, where almost every location will look new and consequently, a little confusing. But if you always know how to find north and have the resources to do it effectively, you’ll be in better shape. Here are some ways to find north while you’re hiking.
Bring the right equipment:
Most of your problems will be eliminated if you bring a GPS device or a compass with you – or both. Of course, not every one of us has access to these once we’re out in the woods, so you don’t want to rely on technology alone. That’s why having other ways of determining direction will be extremely valuable. If you are informed and bring the right technology with you, you’ll have no trouble determining your direction.
On a clear night, use the stars.
Navigating by the stars has been important for seafaring civilizations for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years. On a clear night out in the woods, you should have an excellent view of the right stars to help point out where north is. In the northern hemisphere, locate the Big Dipper. At the “spoon” end of the dipper (not the handle end), the two end stars point toward the North Star.
Click here for an illustration. Note: in the southern hemisphere, you can use a similar technique with the Summer Cross. Research this more to learn how it’s done.
During daylight, use the presence of the sun.
If you know what time it is, you should have a good idea of where the sun is. In the northern hemisphere, the sun will be due south at noon – this won’t help as much the closer to the equator you are. It will rise in the east and set in the west, although you don’t want to use the sun’s rising or setting to indicate exact directions east and west.
Most importantly, in a situation where you need to use navigation like this, try to keep calm. Staying relaxed will help you to remember tips and tricks like this, so keeping your wits might be the most important tip of all.
Photo Credits: cwalker71
