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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
