Most of the people think that the sky can only be observed through telescopes and the like, but it is a wrong notion. Although most of the deep sky objects and planetary surfaces are seen best through telescopes, a great deal of objects can be viewed with naked eye. So stargazing can be broadly divided into 3 categories;
A. Naked eye observation.
B. Observation through binoculars.
C. Observation through proper telescopes.
We will get to the assisted stargazing in due time but in the beginning more emphasis will be placed on Naked eye Observation as it is free, easy and exciting. Here are some simple pointers that will get you started.
A good place to start is by knowing the different celestial objects that are visible to the naked eye. You would be amazed at how much and how far you can see into the space with your eyes without using any equipment. Some of the objects that are thus visible are mentioned below:
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| Jupiter Surface |
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| A Starry Night |
2. A total of about 6000 stars. (Although at one time about half of them are visible)
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| A Constellation-Bootes |
But, what are these constellations anyway? Constellations are basically groups of stars that appear as different shapes and have been recognized as such by people throughout centuries. For example if someone saw 4 stars in shape of a square everyday, he named them "square". This then became a constellation. So basically there can be hundreds and thousands of different constellations!! But 88 have been recognized as standard constellations by IAU. (Actually 14 of them are south polar constellations, so being in the northern
hemisphere we can see the rest 74 in different times of the year.) We will discuss these constellations further in future posts.
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| A Meteor |
4. Meteor Showers. These are the beautiful
shooting stars and are BEST viewed through
naked eye!
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| Orion Nebula |
5. Some Nebulas eg Lagoon Nebula and Orion Nebula.
Nebulas are basically dust clouds (well not our average Pakistani dust clouds), these are stellar dust clouds formed when some stars die. They are extraordinarily beautiful when you see them through the Hubble Telescope. But to the naked eye they appear no different than any other star.
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| International Space Station |
6. Some objects that you would not have excepted to see because they are man made!! Like the International Space Station!! Yes you can see it. On second thought it should not be really that difficult because it is pretty close to us, only 350 miles above our heads compared for example to Arcturus (one of the most easily seen stars, as we will see in later posts) which is 37 lightyears (ly) away,
(1 Lightyear = 5878630000000 miles!!!)
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| The Andromeda Galaxy |
7. Some really really far objects (called Deep Sky Objects, DSOs) like the Milky Way, Andromeda Galaxy, Triangulum Galaxy, Pleiades (Seven Sisters) etc. These are somewhat difficult to view and require good viewing conditions.
In the next posts we will discuss the basic principles for stargazing........
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