Many people view stargazing as something simple and easy – just go outside and stare up at the night sky, right? It’s more complicated than that, especially if you want to get amazing views, and doubly so if you’re whipping out a telescope. These are common mistakes you should avoid.
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Picking A Poor Location With Lots of Light Pollution
While stars can look very bright under some circumstances, they’re actually quite dim. Even the light of a full Moon can overpower the brightness of nearby stars, making them impossible to see with the naked eye or even with specialized equipment. So, if the light of the Moon is enough to do that, just imagine how many stars will be blotted out by the light of a nearby city or even a small town.
Even the light of a small town of just 3,000 people can obscure your vision of the sky from up to six miles away. Bigger cities will make it even harder for you to see anything in the night sky. So, if you want to go stargazing, the very first thing to do is pick a location that is far removed from any artificial light, or at least as far as you can get. It would also be ideal to pick a night when the Moon isn’t taking the limelight for itself. That will give you the best view of the stars.
Make sure you also give yourself enough time to properly adjust to the darkness of a pitch-black area. If you don’t give your night vision enough time to acclimatize to your surroundings, you won’t see anything. Be aware of how things like your phone screen or flashlights might kill your night vision. Even a small light can mess up your vision and ruin your view!
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Picking a Poor Night With Too Much Cloud Cover
Speaking of picking a good night to go stargazing, the weather is naturally quite important. Whether the Moon is full or a thin sliver, it won’t matter either way if the sky is overcast. Thankfully, this is easy to avoid. It’s easy to have the idea of stargazing pop into your head, and want to go out and do it that night spontaneously. But if you want the best results, you need to use a weather app to keep track of the times when the sky will be clear.
This can be a little tough depending on where you live, but even those perpetually overcast parts of the world have clear days sometimes. Plan your stargazing sessions accordingly.
Clouds aside, fog and humidity hurt your viewing too. If you have the opportunity to choose, aim for a night that has low humidity too—everything will be a bit clearer!
3
Stargazing Through an Open Window
You don’t have to go out into the middle of nowhere to stargaze, depending on where you live. You may be able to try stargazing from the comfort of your own home, or from your car if you have to travel somewhere. In such situations, you may be inclined to open or roll down the window so you can look through your binoculars (or telescope) without a pane of glass getting in the way. But opening the window can actually be a bad idea.
With binoculars or telescope, trying to stargaze through an open window can cause issues, particularly if there is a big difference in the temperature within your car or home and the outside. If it’s warm inside and cold outside, there can be visible fluctuations where the cold and warm air meet, akin to the distortion you see hovering over pavement on really hot days.
Naturally, these fluctuations will make it impossible to clearly see any celestial objects if they pass in front of your telescope or camera lens. So, if you do want to stargaze while staying inside your home or car, you’re actually better off looking through the window. Don’t worry, unless that glass is really dirty, it won’t impact your view much.
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Always Going for High-Power Magnification
When you’re new to stargazing, it might sound logical that high-power magnification will allow you to see things more clearly. At the surface level, this is true, but that is only in ideal conditions. High-power magnification multiplies everything, including any atmospheric interference and the instability of your mount. If you’ve ever tried to keep a camera on target while at a very high magnification, you know how difficult it can be.
High magnification also significantly limits your field of view. That makes it harder to isolate and track any celestial body, and some objects might even look worse, if the high magnification prevents you from capturing the entire thing in your sight. For instance, some objects, like the Andromeda Galaxy, tend to look better at lower magnification.
This doesn’t mean you can’t use high-power magnification while stargazing. You just shouldn’t treat it like the only option. In most cases, the best thing you can do is spot an interesting object at low-power first, then increase magnification as much as the conditions that night allow. There are plenty of quality telescopes out there that can do low or high-power magnification respectably.
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Expecting Too Much For Your First Time
Finally, this is the mistake most first-time stargazers make – they expect to see far more incredible views than they are going to. We’ve all seen those really awesome photos of a night sky, with entire galaxies visible and hundreds of stars to explore. That’s not the type of thing you are going to see when you go stargazing. A lot of us have seen some awesome photos of the distant planets up close too.
You are not going to see anything like that, as such photos are misleading as far as the average experience is concerned. While you can enjoy a beautiful night stargazing, you need to set realistic expectations, otherwise you are guaranteed to be disappointed with your experience.
The first telescope you buy is not going to compare to NASA’s tools. Even the best telescope you could purchase won’t compare to the Hubble, which views objects under perfect conditions from space to get its amazing pictures. Your consumer telescope is not going to compare to that, and the human eye isn’t even capable of detecting color in faint objects at extreme distances. So your views might not be as grand as you envision.
Even so, there are plenty of things you can see even with an entry-level telescope. Saturn’s rings and the Orion Nebula can be seen with a simple 50mm refractor telescope, for instance.
National Geographic 50mm Astronomical Refractor Telescope with Fully Coated Optics
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$24
This easy-to-use refractor is an ideal choice for those wanting to begin their journey into the world of amateur astronomy. It is outfitted with a special mount that allows users to attach their smart phone to the telescope and use the ARTelescope App to locate and learn about constellations and planets.
Ultimately, stargazing is a wonderful experience so long as you avoid some common mistakes as a first-timer. You might not be able to count every little speck floating around in Saturn’s rings, even with experience and an expensive telescope, but you can still personally observe some of the most beautiful and mysterious objects in the universe if you know what you’re doing.
