Astronomy for Beginners - Getting Started Stargazing!

hello i'm brian with the ryan telescopes and binoculars and this evening we're excited to be set up in the Central Coast of California with a great telescope ready to begin stargazing in this video we would like to help share some tips and insight with you and what your first night of stargazing might be like some of the topics we're going to cover include the stargazing experience establishing and observing location and pre-planning some useful accessories for a beginner what you can really expect to see with a telescope observing tips using binoculars for astronomy and some other resources to help you explore the Hobby more stargazing is a rich and rewarding experience whether you're witnessing the bright Crescent Moon rise over the cityscape from your balcony or watching the Milky Way glitter in the sky from the dark countryside stargazing is something you're always going to be able to enjoy it's also the perfect pastime to share with your friends and family you can start with something as simple as a star chart or a pair of binoculars or a telescope but we'll talk more about that in a moment now we're going to talk about establishing a suitable location to stargaze from because many of us are located in an area with a significant urban population our skies can be affected by city lights which is also known as light pollution fortunately there are still many things you can see from the city some of the most suitable objects to view from the city include the moon and planets which are some of the most fascinating and ever-changing objects in the night sky for those of us in a darker suburban or Country sky we can start to venture into observing fainter objects beyond our own solar system no matter where we start a support and remember that it takes time for our eyes to dark adapt if you can give yourself 30 to 40 minutes to dark adapt but if you're short on time even 5 to 10 minutes will help significantly keep the lights off in your yard avoid using things like cellphones or any device that's going to introduce external light especially white flashlights allowing your eyes dark adapt is a very critical step and allowing you to enjoy the night sky when starting out familiarizing yourself the night sky may seem intimidating at first but fortunately there are subtler accessories which are going to help you learn night sky you can start with something as simple as a star chart planisphere such as the Orion star target it's very simple and it just allows you to dial in the date and time for the night that you intend to observe and we'll show you the major objects that you can see for that given time if you want to dive into a little bit more detail you can consider something like the deep map 600 which is a larger and more detailed star chart that shows you a larger variety of celestial objects another great tool for starting out is actually going to be a pair of astronomy binoculars typically 10 by 50 or larger binoculars offer a wide field of view and are therefore very useful for learning the night sky in fact binoculars are great tools for viewing some objects like open star clusters and brighter nebulae now for those of us who are observing through a telescope there is some must-have accessories a Barlow lens which can also sometimes be referred to as a doubler will double the magnifying power through any eyepiece when you use your telescope also when you're starting out you're definitely going to want to look at the moon because it's a spectacular object to look at the moon filter simply shades down the amount of light going into the eyepiece it's not at all like a solar filter which should cover the telescope but a moon filter is going to allow you to comfortably view the moon and again it's a terrific object to start out with now I previously mentioned that when getting your eyes dark-adapted you don't want to use a white flashlight that's where the red LED flashlight comes in you can use this type of flashlight to help you read your star charts find your accessories or just generally find your way around in the dark the orion red beam 2 actually makes a very good read LED flashlight now that we've covered establishing a suitable viewing location and some of the basic accessories which can really help you begin stargazing i'd like to cover one more thing before we get to the telescope and that is what the major differences are from looking through the eyepiece of your telescope and looking at an astro photo keep in mind that the stunning photographs you see online and in magazines for time-lapse images captured by high-end telescopes sometimes even the hubble space telescope the live view you see through a telescope or binoculars will be different and unique experience for your eyes that no photo can reproduce with the exception of some stars and planets do not typically see color when looking through a telescope or binoculars this is because objects are so faint our eyes are simply aren't adept to color especially when they are dark adapted it's amazing enough just to be able to see light coming from a galaxy 20 million light-years away now that we've used some of our star chart accessories to help us find the object we want to look at for tonight I'm going to begin observing with the Orion Sky Quest xt8 Dobsonian reflector this happens to be one of our more popular telescopes but the fundamentals I'm going to show you really apply to most any other type of telescope in this case tonight I want to view Saturn now with any telescope you would want to start by viewing through the aligned finder scope and really what the finder scope is doing is just providing a very large field of view in this case the Orion easy finder doesn't magnify the image at all but it's showing you the image and it's true right-side-up orientation I'm going to be able to see Saturn naked eye what appears to be a star center it in my align finder scope and then view the eyepiece some focusing is always going to be required simply by turning the focus knobs if we're looking at a star you just want to turn the focus knobs until the star becomes a point no matter how magnified you are a star should always look like a point in this case because I'm viewing Saturn I actually do have a little bit of the diameter to the object now let's say we want to make the object a little a little bit larger especially for a planetary object we can change the eyepiece to change the magnifying power or we can use the accessory that I previously mentioned the Barlow lens which is going to double the magnification with any given eyepiece that you're using so I'm going to go ahead and add the Barlow to double the size of Saturn and whenever you do this whenever you change the magnifying power you're going to need to refocus again and I can tell you you know from looking at Saturn quite often that you know even as you become more experienced at stargazing an object like Saturn is very impressive you can see the rings of Saturn you can see a very nice kind of pale color to the object and you a couple of its major moons that are orbiting around the object so it really never ceases to amaze me how detailed you can get a view of this object and even from the city we had mentioned that binoculars are also a great instrument for learning the night sky because binoculars not only provide a larger field of view but they're more portable and they're always going to be useful for stargazing and again they really do help you learn the night sky because of the larger field of view they provide our binoculars can be used without a tripod but like a telescope the larger the binocular is the more light it will gather but the heavier it will be so in some cases it is beneficial to have a tripod when using binoculars for astronomy so in this case if I want to see m-44 or the Beehive open cluster I can use a pair of binoculars and it's great because it provides a large field of view and I'm easily able to locate it for many people one fun night of stargazing is all it takes to catch your interest whether you're looking through a friend scope or purchase one of your own the joy of stargazing can quickly grow on you there are many useful resources available to help you learn about amateur astronomy first check out your library's astronomy section you should be able to find plenty of books to help you get started learning about the constellations planets deep sky objects and more another great resource is the internet a quick search will return plenty of useful information and articles from around the world we also recommend using the Internet to look for an astronomy club or star party in your area astronomy clubs are a great place for beginners to learn and observe in the company of more experienced astronomers if you live next to a planetarium or observatory this is a great place to get more information and talk to others about the starry sky lastly we encourage you to browse the Orion resource center the resource center was designed to provide amateur astronomers with articles images and videos about astronomy astrophotography telescopes accessories and more thank you for watching our video and we hope your first stargazing experience is as memorable as ours was you

Channel: Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

Views: 607,777

Rating: 4.895978 out of 5

Keywords: stargazing, stars, sky, introduction, how, to, night, space, astronomy, telescope, telescopes, orion, binoculars, nebula, milky, way, cluster, galaxy, moon, planets, dobsonian, refractor, reflector

Id: XLgPe_f-QCc

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2011