Observing accessories

An observ­ing expe­di­tion out into the win­ter wilds of rural Ohio can be made or bro­ken by the few things that you carry along with you. Here­with are my sug­ges­tions for the few nec­es­sary tools that will make your observ­ing expe­di­tion a success.

If you don’t have a tele­scope, then a pair of binoc­u­lars, even small ones like opera glasses, can be use­ful for reveal­ing the faint stars of the win­ter Milky Way or see­ing a few of the brighter “deep sky” objects like clus­ters of stars, gaseous neb­u­lae, and even close galax­ies, like the Great Galaxy in Androm­eda. If you can afford them, 7x50 mm binoc­u­lars, avail­able at any depart­ment store for about $50, are ideal for sweep­ing the sky.

A red flash­light is crit­i­cal. I made my first one by rubber-banding a red ban­danna around the front of a reg­u­lar white flash­light, but you can buy a lit­tle key-ring ver­sion for a few dol­lars at the local Zmart.

Red light doesn’t ruin your night vision, which is so impor­tant for see­ing fainter objects in the sky. If you turn on a white flash­light, you’ll soon go night-blind and won’t be able to see a dan­ged thing, includ­ing the bush right in front of you that you’re about to trip over. If you use only a red light, and that spar­ingly, you’ll find that you can see remark­ably well by the light of the stars alone.

For the sake of com­fort, dress for about 10 degrees cooler than the fore­cast. Observ­ing doesn’t involve a lot of mov­ing around, and peo­ple often get chilled on even a fairly warm night. Dress in sev­eral thin lay­ers and take along an extra sweater or jacket just in case.

Take along plenty of cof­fee or some other caf­feinated bev­er­age. I know, I know, it’s bad for you, but it’s hard to worry about your long-term health if your car is a flam­ing wreck on the free­way at 4 a.m.

Don’t drive home if you’re too tired to han­dle it. Long-time ama­teur astronomers have learned to rec­og­nize their per­sonal dan­ger signs of sleepi­ness. Mine is when I fall face for­ward into a bush. Heed those signs, and get some sleep before you drive. It’s bet­ter to get home late than not to get home at all.

And take along plenty of food. Calo­ries, after all, are a mea­sure of heat. Besides, you have to keep up your strength. Per­son­ally, I think that cheese doo­dles, or what­ever you call them, are the per­fect snack for astron­omy. I don’t know what it is about them, but there’s some­thing about star­ing at the starry sky with a cheese doo­dle in my hand that makes me feel at one with the cos­mos. Try not to get yel­low fin­ger­prints on your eyepieces.

I always carry with me two kinds of star charts. The first is a month-by-month set of maps of the con­stel­la­tions like the ones that are pub­lished in Astron­omy and Sky and Tele­scope mag­a­zines. They are invalu­able for locat­ing the plan­ets and learn­ing the con­stel­la­tions. You can’t find any­thing in the sky with­out know­ing at least a few constellations.

I often con­sult my trusty $3 Edmund Sci­en­tific plani­sphere or my old copy of Star Maps for Begin­ners by I. M Levitt and Roy Mar­shall, for exam­ple, because I can’t for the life of me remem­ber where Camelopardalis is. If you’re a begin­ner, don’t feel embar­rassed about using such sim­ple con­stel­la­tion maps. Every­body was a begin­ner once.

A set of more-detailed maps is nec­es­sary if you want to find any­thing but the bright­est plan­ets and deep-sky objects in your binoc­u­lars or telescope.

For my money, the best set of finder charts for deep-sky objects are called Astro­Cards. They are 3 x 5-inch cards with a sim­ple con­stel­la­tion map on the left side to give you a rough idea of where the object is and a more detailed map on the right to help you find it in your ’scope or binos. They are avail­able online in three sets of dif­fer­ent astro­nom­i­cal objects. The intro­duc­tory set maps the Messier objects, the 110 bright­est galax­ies, neb­u­lae and star clus­ters in the sky.

The most impor­tant “bringa­long” is some­one to share the expe­ri­ence with. As you learn the sky, show oth­ers what their uni­verse looks like. It can be awe-inspiring (and a bit scary) to go out observ­ing alone. To share with some­one the expe­ri­ence of reach­ing out and touch­ing the face of the cos­mos will often cre­ate a friend­ship that will last the rest of your days.

Tom Burns is direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tor in Delaware. tlburns@owu.edu

Posted by Tom Burns on Dec 19 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.