All club members are issued with a starter kit which includes a planisphere, star chart and a booklet by Sir Patrick Moore.  They are also given a hard copy of the guide reproduced on this page.    If you find anything you disagree with please let me know.

Your most important astronomical observation instruments are your eyes.   Take care of them.   Never look at the Sun through normal telescopes or binoculars.    The club has special, expensive Sun filters.   They are available for use in school.   Every year people permanently blind themselves looking at the Sun.   Even one of the greatest ever astronomers, Galileo, wrecked his vision looking at the Sun.   It takes less that a second to permanently damage your eyes.  Don't take any chances.

  If you are observing from a public place make sure you have your parents' permission.   Don't go alone.

  Be careful in the dark, it's easy to trip over so don't mess around.

2.General Observing

  Eyes are amazing things.   They can operate in bright sunlight and in near darkness.   That's a change in brightness of more than a million times!   When you go out into the night to do some observing, it takes some time for your eyes and brain to rack up their sensitivity and let you see faint things.   After about half an hour your eyes will be fully 'dark adapted'.  Make sure your torch has a red filter over it.  One blast of an unfiltered torch and you'll have to wait another half an hour for full sensitivity.

  It's also a good idea to go to the loo before you start observing.   A quick dash inside for a comfort stop will wreck your dark adaptation.

Where am I?

The human brain likes patterns.   Look at an oddly shaped potato.   Your brain will soon fit it to a pattern and it will suddenly look like a face or another part of anatomy.   There used to be a very popular type of bathroom tile that had a marble-like surface.   Somebody thought it looked like a chick (baby chicken).  As soon as a person was told this, they couldn't look at the tile without seeing the chick.  People found themselves taking a bath surrounded by hundreds of chicks.   Lots of people changed their bathroom décor.

  Every culture in history has found its own patterns in the night sky.   We call these patterns constellations.   If you don't know what the patterns used in modern astronomy are yet, you have a once in a life-time opportunity to make up your own.   Just lie on your back, look up at the night sky and let your brain find patterns in the pinpoints of starlight.

A map of the constellations next to a more literal ancient interpretation

It takes a while to learn the constellations but once you get them you will see them every time you look up into the night sky.  They will be with you for the rest of your life.   For astronomers they form the map of the sky.

  The turning sky

The Earth spins in space.   It revolves on its axis every 24hrs with relation to the Sun.   As we look out into space we see the panorama of stars sweeping by us like the view out of a train window.    The Earth revolves around its axis and the top of the axis is the North Pole.   If we look to the part of the sky over the North Pole we will see that the sky appears to revolving around that point.   Luckily there is a relatively bright star at that point.   So we call it the pole star or Polaris. You can find it in the constellation Ursa Minor (The Little Bear).

  Star streaks in a 5 minute exposure of the northern sky reveal that they appear to  revolve around Polaris

If you look at the constellations each night at the same time, you'll notice something different.   They are not quite in the same position.   Everything will have shifted slightly anti-clockwise around Polaris. Every time the Earth spins around it also goes 1/365th of its yearly orbit around the Sun.   That means the Earth has to turn for an extra 4 minutes to get the Sun back in the same position at mid- day.   So it really takes 4 minutes less than 24 hours for the Earth to make one revolution in space so that all the stars appear to be in the same place.   We call this 23hr 56-minute space day the sidereal day.

Seasonal sights

You will need to plan what you want to observe on a seasonal basis.   Some things are best observed at certain times of the year.  Some things cannot be observed at all at others.

Firstly, as the Earth orbits the Sun, our nighttime view pans around the universe.    For instance in winter we can look out into the constellation of Orion, in the summer Orion is on the other side of the Sun and so is invisible to us in the blue of the day time sky.

Although the relative positions of the stars will always be the same you will soon notice that some bright 'stars' do change their positions.   The ancient Greeks called these points of light  'wanderers' or in Greek, 'planets'.    All of the planets, except Pluto, orbit around the Sun in the same plane. We can see the effect of this because when you look for them in the night sky they can always be found on the same imaginary line called the ecliptic.  However, as an added complication the Earth's axis is tilted. In our summer, the Northern Hemisphere gets tilted towards the ecliptic in the daytime, so the Sun is more overhead and it's therefore hotter.   Any planets on the other side of the Sun are invisible to us.   In winter, the Sun only travels through the small section of the ecliptic that is over the horizon; giving us short days. In summer nights there is an equally small section of the ecliptic low in the South.  The chances of a planet being on a visible section of the ecliptic are much less than in winter.   So, planet watching is usually best in the winter months.   The good news is that in the summer we can see towards the centre of the Galaxy in Sagittarius.   This gives us great views of the dense star clouds and globular clusters.    You can use your planisphere or a computer planetarium program to work out what can be seen each night.

  3. Naked-eye Observations

  Until 17^th century, when Galileo developed the telescope from a toy to a scientific instrument, several thousand years of astronomy had all been done with nothing more than people's eyes.   There's an awful lot to see.

Take out with you:

Warm clothes

Torch with a red filter

Ground sheet or recliner chair

Planisphere

Log book (plain paper, hard backed)

A drink and a snack

The constellations.   Naked eye observations started the constellations and it’s the only way of observing to really learn them.   Once you know one or two you can hop around the sky from one to another.   Soon the sky will open up before you like a familiar map.

  Naked eye and binocular observation for anything more than a few minutes is best done flat on your back.   That's what the groundsheet is for.

  If you like drawing, have a go at sketching the constellations in your log book, noting the time and adding other details like the position of planets, the moon and, if your lucky, any meteors you spot.   Alternatively, print out a star chart from a planetarium program and mark your finds on that.

  As you become more used to seeing in the night sky (and when the conditions are at their best) you will spot more and more objects.

4. Binoculars

Take out with you:

Warm clothes

Torch with a red filter

Ground sheet or recliner chair

Planisphere

Logbook

A clean, dark sock (not on your foot)

Sunglasses (if there is a full Moon)

A drink and a snack

  Most people think that binoculars and telescopes are only about magnification.   Magnification is only half the story.   Most things in the night sky are a long way away.   Some things are millions of light years away.   This makes them very dim.    Most things are so dim that your eyes cannot see them.  Even when dark adapted, the maximum light your eyes can collect is the size of your pupil which is less than 10mm across at its maximum.   The objective lens of the school 7x50 binoculars is 50mm across. A bit of maths with Pr² shows you that these binoculars can get more than 25x more light than your eyes can.   That would mean that if they did no magnification you would be able to seen things 25x dimmer than with your naked eye.    Magnification has the opposite effect, making things less bright.   Magnification also creates another problem for you, as the magnification increases every slight movement makes the stars jump about.   A magnification of 7x is a nice compromise between seeing more detail, seeing more brightly and not feeling sick from jiggling stars.   The image intensifying effect of the 50mm objective lens will mean that some dim things, like the Andromeda galaxy, will look brighter in binoculars than our club telescopes.

  If you look at the full Moon with binoculars you will find it painfully bright, your eyes will lose all their dark adaptation and you will probably start walking into things like trees, houses and buses.   Although is sounds ludicrous, if you want to observe the full moon, wear sunglasses!

  You'll notice that the right eyepiece is adjustable. To adjust the binoculars for you eyes put a dark sock over the right objective lens. When you look at a star focus it with the centre knob. When it’s the sharpest point you can get, swap the sock to the left lens and use the right eyepiece adjuster to get the star in focus.  Take off the sock and, voila, you should be set for a night of pin-sharp observations.

  If you have any problems with the binoculars don't try to fix them. 

Don't try cleaning anything - you'll do more damage.  We have special binocular cleaning stuff at school - leave it to us. 

5.Telescopes

Take out with you:

Warm clothes

Torch with a red filter

Planisphere

Logbook

Sunglasses (if there is a full Moon)

A drink and a snack

Detailed operating instructions are packed with the telescope kits.

Most of the club telescopes are small 'goto' refractors.    They are a bit like one side of a pair of binoculars attached to a motor drive and a tripod.   With them, you have the added advantage of being able to change the eyepieces and up the magnification.   Unlike hand-held binoculars, the steadying effect of the tripod makes larger magnification possible.   However as the magnification goes up, the image gets dimmer and the imperfections of the objective lens start to make it fuzzy.   These telescopes are generally described as 'wide-field' because they are really best at low magnifications up to 50x.  At the top magnification you can see craters on the moon, detect cloud bands on Jupiter and see that Saturn has a ring.  The hand computer will take you to dim objects that you would have great problems hunting for manually, maximising your viewing and minimising your frustration.

Bright objects like the moon and the planets also open up the possibility of astrophotography.   If you have a digital camera set it on infinity focus and point the lens at the eyepiece.   It's usually easiest to adjust the focus on maximum zoom and then zoom out to take your shot.   You can also tweak the telescope focus if that helps.  The Moon is the easiest object to photograph.   You may even find that automatic exposure works.   For shots where most of the field is dark sky, a purely automatic camera will normally burn out the feature you are trying to record. 

Two shots of the Moon taken using a Meade 105 ETX telescope and a Casio QV 35000 digital camera hand-held to the eyepiece.

  The great thing about digital cameras is that their equivalent of film and developing is free.   So, you can take lots of shots, experiment with the settings and find out what works.   Many cameras even record the settings making it easier to work out what you did to get a successful shot.   You can get lots of advice on using digital cameras for astrophotography from the relevant links at the back of the guide.

  Telescopes have the added danger of tripod legs.   These are stupendously easy to trip over in the dark.   The result of a lack of care can be a smashed telescope and, even worse, serious injury to you.   Make sure you stick to the club safety instructions that come with the scope.

  Although you will have passed the club telescope test, make sure you read the manual again on your first few borrowings of the scope.

  It's worth saying again, don't point it at the Sun, it will fry the plastic insides and burn out your eyes in less than a second!

  If you have any problems with the scope don't try to fix it - leave it to us 

Don't try cleaning anything - you'll do more damage.  We have special telescope cleaning stuff at school - leave it to us. 

  Have a great time observing.

  Clear skies!

        6. Astronomy on your computer-

Free programs on the Web

  Planetarium programs

Carte du Ciel a brilliant free program  http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html

Distant Suns 4 (DS4) includes a very detailed astronomy manual.  There are also tutorials in the main program. Two versions of DS4 can be downloaded.

Only use the DS4 seti version if you want to install seti@home software from the internet to help search for extraterrestrial intelligence. http://www.distantsuns.com/

Sky map Pro is what it says on the tin - a professional program that can even control a telescope! It should work with the school goto scopes.  As about borrowing a computer extension lead if you want to have a go. http://www.skymap.com/ 

Home planet is an unusual planetarium program taking the earth as a base.

There are also some cool screen savers on the site.  Get to it via the Astronomy and Space link on http://www.fourmilab.ch/

Image processing

Registax  can be used to combine and process images taken by a digital camera or webcam.   http://registax.astronomy.net/

Advice and Information on the Web

Weasner's Mighty ETX Site  - the biggest site on the Web dedicated to these little telescopes http://www.weasner.com/etx/menu.html  

The Getting Started Guide to Digital Camera Astrophotography by Gregory Pruden  http://velatron.com/dca/Articles/GettingStarted.pdf

Kennedy Space Station Home Page http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/ 

The SOHO Sun satellite telescope http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

The Space Telescope Science Institute - home of the Hubble Space telescope http://www.stsci.edu/resources/

NASA gateway to the ISS and Shuttles http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/

Disney's excellent astronomy site. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/

University of California Gateway to the search for extra-terrestrial life via the

http://seti.ssl.berkeley.edu/