Stargazing Tips

Since we can't host any stargazing programs this Spring, here's some tips on how to do it on your own. Remember to follow social distancing guidelines while stargazing.

• No telescope? No problem! From major constellations to shooting stars and the International Space Station, there are plenty of fascinating objects in the night sky visible without any special equipment at all. Binoculars can open up the universe. You can explore the surface of the moon and even see the rings around Saturn.
• The colder the better. Whether you use a telescope, binoculars, or the naked eye, cold, windless nights offer the best viewing conditions. More heat means more motion in the atmosphere, which distorts the dim light from stars and causes waviness.
• Look for the signs. Learn your way around the sky using maps found in books and magazines or online. "Star hop” by starting with a few easily identified celestial signposts. Smartphone apps like Stellarium and Google Sky can also help: point your phone skyward to see the names of major stars, planets, and constellations appear on the screen.
• Let your eyes adjust to the dark. it takes your eyes about an hour to adjust to the dark sky—so the longer you can go without looking at indoor lighting, street lamps, or headlights, the better. Using one of those apps? Set your phone’s display as dim as possible to preserve your night vision. 
• Find the north star. If you want to be able to identify a star without help from your phone, the North Star—or Polaris—is a good place to start. Polaris’s position holds steady throughout the night, and you can find it using the Big Dipper: just look along the imaginary line between the constellation’s outermost stars—the two farthest from the “handle".
• Look at the moon. Use your binoculars to get a close-up of the moon and its craters. The best time to look at the moon isn’t when it’s full. It's when the moon is waxing or waning—especially between quarter and crescent phases. To tell whether the moon is waxing or waning, look at the shape. A waxing (growing) moon looks like the letter “D”; a waning (shrinking) moon like a “C". 
• Admire the milk way. The galaxy is high in the sky in the summer, low in the winter, and stunning all year round. It looks like a cloud that runs across the sky. We’re looking through the plane of it where it’s thick, and thousands and thousands of light-years of distant stars. The best way to view the Milky Way is from a dark spot with no streetlights for at least 20 miles. Look straight up on summer nights when it's late.
• Look for the International Space Station. NASA has a website dedicated to tracking the ISS. It tells you when the next sighting is in your area, where in the sky it will be and for how long. If you want something a bit more immediate, you can watch it move around the world in real-time here.
• Learn to tell planets from stars. A bright light in the sky that sparkles is a star. If it doesn't and appears stationary, it’s a planet. If an object is much brighter than those around it, there's a good chance it's a planet. If you can spot two planets (or the moon and a planet) and trace a line in the sky between the two, you’ve identified part of the ecliptic plane. This is the path the sun appears to take when rising and setting. If you continue to trace this line across the sky, you’ll probably run into several of the planets, as they follow this same path.
• Use your eyes and imagination. There are so many high-tech tools to help us navigate the skies, but astronomers still recommend foregoing them every once in a while and just gazing up with the naked, unaided eye. This is how our ancestors saw the sky, and over thousands of years, it’s barely changed. Try to spot the characters in the sky, such as Orion the hunter or Scorpius. With enough practice, eventually you’ll know the characters in the sky by heart!
• Check out this article: The secrets to stargazing from your backyard