Equipment For The Astronomer

Astronomers And Equipment

To Start Stargazing

All you need to enjoy observing the night sky are your eyes.

Start by looking though books, this will help build up your knowledge of the sky above you.

You can find some useful information on the links below this page.

Search the internet on your home computer. On the internet you can find some great computer software, some of it free to use, some of it you need to pay and use, and it's a great way to start, to help you understand your way around the stars above.

Start by learning about the Moon and planets. Take time to learn the different star patterns above and the constellations. Start your stargazing with easy ones such as the Great Bear, or Orion. Once you start you can use these as signposts in the night sky to help locate the other constellations nearby.

From earths very beginning, and of mankind, the stars have been our oldest friends, they have given us so much thought-out our time on earth. They have given us the understanding of Time it's self, and the showing of the Seasons.

As humans, we are good at making out patterns, out of confusion. It wont take you long before the stars above you, make patterns in the sky. This will be the first time, you see the stars appear to you as recognizable shapes, and not just as a scattered light of dots in the night night sky.

The constellations are imaginary groupings of the stars. These were invented many years ago by our ancestors, to help map out the night sky. They are still the easiest way to learn the stars above us. With a total of 88 constellations, all of which we will look at within this website.

The stars above us shine all around us, which ones we see in our own night sky depends on just where we live. Our night sky is broken down into the following. The northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere. How much of the other hemisphere stars we may see, depends on the latitude at which you live.

Thank to you to Clker.com - Blue World Map clip art - public domain royalty free clip art

Telescopes come in three designs.

The REFRACTOR is the traditional design that most people will be familiar with.

The telescope uses a LENS at the front of the telescope tube to gather light, and the image is viewed through an eyepiece at the other end.

Refractors come in apertures ranging from 60mm to 150mm. due to it bring more expensive to produce a good quality lens, compared with an equivalent sized mirror, refractors tend to be more expensive per inch of aperture.

Reflecting telescope uses a MIRROR to capture the light. The mirror is situated at the bottom of the telescope tube and the image is viewed using an eyepiece near the top of the telescope.

A small mirror (the secondary) diverts light out through the side of the telescope. Reflectors have apertures ranging from 114mm to 250mm.

Larger apertures are available but at the expense of portability.

The third telescope design is the CATADIOPTRIC.

These telescopes use a mixture of lenses and mirrors and are of two types, the Maksutov-Cassegrain and the Schmidt-Cassegrain.

The main feature of these telescopes is their compact tubes, typically half the length of a comparable refractor or reflector. All telescopes produce an inverted image, but refractors and catadioptrics use a star diagonal to give a comfortable viewing position, and this has the effect of giving an erect image that is flipped left-to-right.

Use of an erecting prism will give correct image if the telescope is required for terrestrial viewing, i.e. bird watching etc. Generally speaking reflecting telescopes cannot be used for terrestrial viewing. Telescopes require a mount and tripod in order to function.

Mounts come in two types, ALT AZIMUTH and EQUATORIAL.

Alt azimuth mounts allow the telescope to move up and down and left to right.

They are suitable for terrestrial viewing and low power, wide field viewing.

A variation of this mount is the DOB-SONIAN, a design primarily for large aperture reflectors.

The main limitation of the alt azimuth mount is that it does not track objects as they move across the sky and is therefore unsuitable for astrophotography.

The second design of mount is the equatorial. This type of mount will allow the telescope to track objects by making small adjustments to the telescopes two axis.

The mount can be fitted with a motorised clock drive, making long expo-sure photography an option.

These mounts overcome the greatest difficulty encountered by beginners, finding objects in the sky.

There is nothing more frustrating than waving a telescope around the sky for an hour in the freezing cold and not finding the planet, nebula or galaxy that you are looking for!

GOTO telescopes are available in a wide range of models, from 70mm refractors to 300mm. GOTO telescopes are easy to setup and use and are ideal for the novice astronomer. All can be used for photography.

In the astronomical world aperture is everything.

The larger the aperture, the brighter the image you will see through the eyepiece.