After the holiday gift-giving season, I usually receive several emails from people who received Christmas telescopes.
Their first experiences are inevitably disheartening. They either can’t figure out how to use their new computer-controlled telescopes or suffer painful disappointment in the views they are getting.
Winter is a tough time to observe the sky. The occasional clear night is often frigid. Even the hardiest telescope owner doesn’t want to travel farther than their backyard to lug equipment into the cold and dark.
For most of us, light pollution from city lights makes finding worthy astronomical objects difficult. Except for a few winter constellations, like Orion or Taurus, even the basic star patterns are challenging to identify.
Most stargazers soon realize that a trip or 12 into rural Ohio is their only recourse. But then a new question arises. Where can you go that won’t trigger frostbite or a visit from local law enforcement? (That’s no joke, gentle readers. I speak as someone who has had the latter, rather unsettling experience more than once.)
I’d recommend joining the Columbus Astronomical Society (CAS). Club members are particularly adept at teaching newbies the ins and outs of their telescopes. They’ve been lost in that labyrinth themselves.
Besides, they have cultivated relationships with local observing locations like Perkins Observatory and the John Glenn Astronomy Park to our south.
CAS meets every second Saturday of the month at Perkins. For more information, check out https://columbusastronomy.org.
As newbies gain a little experience, a new problem arises. As with any creditable undertaking, it takes time to become a proficient stargazer. The most basic telescopes and binoculars are spacecraft to other worlds, but you must learn how to navigate celestially.
Most importantly, you must teach your eyes and mind to see. Star clusters and galaxies often look like balls of lint on first viewing.
Where are all the complex and visually appealing details visible in those long-exposure photographs that dominate the pages of the coffee-table book you got on Christmas day or appear daily on Astronomy Picture of the Day?
The details are there, frustrated stargazers. The longer you observe, the more you will be able to ferret out.
Visual observing will never match JWST or Hubble images. However, a lifetime of direct experiences of the sky and all the wonders therein are far more emotionally and intellectually stimulating than simply flipping through a book or surfing the Web.
The star cluster designated M35 in the Messier Catalog, the most accessible catalog of deep-sky objects, is a case in point.
A deep-sky object is any astronomical target outside our solar system. Those catalogs of astronomical splendors include everything that isn’t a star or planet and appears at first as a fuzzy patch in smaller astronomical instruments.
M35 is easy to find and is a practical introduction to that more challenging category of telescopic objects. Of course, you can always attend a Friday night program at Perkins Observatory. (Go soon. M35 is very distinctly a winter object.)
You can also use the fancy “go-to” computers attached to many telescopes, which, in my opinion, removes half the fun of observing.
Or you can do what stargazers have done throughout most of human history. You can learn the sky’s intricacies and gain the profound pleasure of familiarity with your universe.
The nighttime sky is also sublimely beautiful, especially if you observe it under a dark, rural sky far from city lights and know it well enough to identify a constellation or three.
Of course, you’ll need a star map to help you find astronomical targets. Many are available as apps for your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. You can also break down and go to a bookstore (remember them?) and purchase one on paper (remember paper?). Grab your inexpensive red LED flashlight to protect your precious night vision.
Off you go. Just after dark, look for the constellation Gemini high in the southwest. Do you see two bright stars, called Castor and Pollux, of equal brightness, huddled relatively close together? Two parallel lines of bright stars extend to the south from Castor and Pollux. Follow the upper string to the end and hang a left.
Look for a small, roundish blob of light in binoculars or your telescope’s finder. That’s M35.
Next week: Expanding the view.
Tom Burns is the former director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware.
