Astronomy Information

Since last week the weather has been too cloudy to see anything and now it's raining so I will just have to wait until the next good stargazing evening. in the meantime I thought I would mention a really friendly and useful forum I have joined. Stargazers Lounge have numerous forums (fora?) on all aspects of astronomy. Some of the members there have given me a very warm welcome and I recommend anyone new to astronomy to take a look. Here is a link to the site: http://stargazerslounge.com/.

When I first started thinking about getting into astronomy I bought a couple of books which have been really useful and reading these before I got my telescope has helped me get going quicker than I might have done.

Turn Left at Orion - This has been the most useful of the books I have bought. It is written specially with the owner of a small telescope in mind. Its main purpose is to provide a guide to sights you can see during the year just by star-hopping from easily found stars. It has a huge number of things to see. I have been picking sights from this book to help me have a target or two to focus on for each of my stargazing sessions. I find that if I go back the next day to something I have discovered the previous day using this book, I can pretty much find it straight away with no help. I think Turn Left at Orion will really help me fully exploit my telescope and show me all the wonders there are to see with the equipment I have.

Simple Stargazing - This gives a bit more science and lore about what stars are and how the constellations came to be known. Whereas Turn Left at Orion is like a guide book to the stars, Simple Stargazing is like a phrase/language book.

Stargazing for Telescopes - This was a book I got free with my telescope along with a planetarium and star atlas. It has actually been really useful to explain how my telescope and mount work.

I have come to recognise the importance of the weather in my new hobby. I have found a very detailed forecast using Astroweather Panel which can be found here. It looks scary but the website explains what ecah row shows. This is basically telling me to forget any ideas of using my telescope for the next few days!