Top 6 tips for using ordinary binoculars for stargazing

Excerpt from earthsky.org




Admit it.  You’ve probably got a pair of binoculars lying around your

house somewhere. They may be perfect – that’s right, perfect – for

beginning stargazing. Follow the links below to learn more about the

best deal around for people who want to get acquainted with the night

sky: a pair of ordinary binoculars.

1. Binoculars are a better place to start than telescopes

2. Start with a small, easy-to-use size

3. First, view the moon with binoculars.

4. Move on to viewing planets with binoculars.

5. Use your binoculars to explore inside our Milky Way.

6. Use your binoculars to peer beyond the Milky Way.

1. Binoculars are a better place to start than telescopes.

The fact is that most people who think they want to buy a telescope

would be better off using binoculars for a year or so instead.  That’s

because first-time telescope users often find themselves completely

confused – and ultimately put off – by the dual tasks of learning the

use a complicated piece of equipment (the ‘scope) while at the same time

learning to navigate an unknown realm (the night sky).

Beginning stargazers often find that an ordinary pair of binoculars –

available from any discount store – can give them the experience

they’re looking for.  After all, in astronomy, magnification and

light-gathering power let you see more of what’s up there.  Even a

moderate form of power, like those provided by a pair of 7×50

binoculars, reveals 7 times as much information as the unaided eye can

see.

You also need to know where to look. Many people start with

a planisphere as they begin their journey making friends with the

stars. You can purchase a planisphere at the EarthSky store. Also consider our Astronomy Kit, which has a booklet on what you can see with your binoculars.

2. Start with a small, easy-to-use size. 

Don’t buy a huge pair of binoculars to start with! Unless you mount

them on a tripod, they’ll shake and make your view of the heavens

shakey, too. The video above – from ExpertVillage – does a good job

summing up what you want. And in case you don’t want to watch the

video, the answer is that 7X50 binoculars are optimum for budding

astronomers.  You can see a lot, and you can hold them steadily enough

that jitters don’t spoil your view of the sky.  Plus they’re very useful

for daylight pursuits, like birdwatching. If 7X50s are too big for you

– or if you want binoculars for a child – try 7X35s.

3. First, view the moon with binoculars.

When you start to stargaze, you’ll want to watch the phase of the moon

carefully. If you want to see deep-sky objects inside our Milky Way

galaxy – or outside the galaxy – you’ll want to avoid the moon. But the

moon itself is a perfect target for beginning astronomers, armed with

binoculars. Hint: the best time to observe the moon is in twilight.

Then the glare of the moon is not so great, and you’ll see more detail.

You’ll want to start your moon-gazing when the moon is just past new – and visible as a waxing crescent

in the western sky after sunset. At such times, you’ll have a

beautiful view of earthshine on the moon.  This eerie glow on the moon’s

darkened portion is really light reflected from Earth onto the moon’s

surface.  Be sure to turn your binoculars on the moon at these times to

enhance the view. 

Each month, as the moon goes through its regular phases, you can see the line of sunrise and sunset

on the moon progress across the moon’s face. That’s just the line

between light and dark on the moon. This line between the day and night

sides of the moon is called the terminator line.  The best

place to look at the moon from Earth – using your binoculars – is along

the terminator line. The sun angle is very low in this twilight zone,

just as the sun is low in our sky around earthly twilight.  So, along

the terminator on the moon, lunar features cast long shadows in sharp

relief.

You can also look in on the gray blotches on the moon called maria,

named when early astronomers thought these lunar features were seas. 

The maria are not seas, of course, and instead they’re now thought to

have formed 3.5 billion years ago when asteroid-sized rocks hit the moon

so hard that lava percolated up through cracks in the lunar crust and

flooded the impact basins. These lava plains cooled and eventually

formed the gray seas we see today.

The white highlands, nestled between the maria, are older terrain

pockmarked by thousands of craters that formed over the eons. Some of

the larger craters are visible in binoculars. One of them, Tycho, at the

six o’clock position on the moon, emanates long swatches of white rays

for hundreds of miles over the adjacent highlands. This is material

kicked out during the Tycho impact 2.5 million years ago.

4. Move on to viewing planets with binoculars. Here’s the deal about planets.  They move around, apart from the fixed stars.  They are wanderers, right?

You can use our EarthSky Tonight page to locate planets visible around now.  Notice if any planets are mentioned in the calendar on the Tonight page,

and if so click on that day’s link.  On our Tonight page, we feature

planets on days when they’re easily identifiable for some reason – for

example, when a planet is near the moon.  So our Tonight page calendar

can help you come to know the planets, and, as you’re learning to

identify them, keep your binoculars very handy. Binoculars will enhance

your view of a planet near the moon, for example, or two planets near

each other in the twilight sky. They add a lot to the fun!

Below, you’ll find some more simple ideas on how to view planets with your binoculars.

Mercury and Venus. These are both inner planets.  They orbit the sun closer than Earth’s orbit.  And for that reason, both Mercury and Venus show phases

as seen from Earth at certain times in their orbit – a few days before

or after the planet passes between the sun and Earth.  At such times, 

turn your binoculars on Mercury or Venus. Good optical quality helps

here, but you should be able to see them in a crescent phase. Tip:

Venus is so bright that its glare will overwhelm the view. Try looking

in twilight instead of true darkness.

Mars. Mars – the Red Planet – really does look red, and

using binoculars will intensify the color of this object (or of any

colored star). Mars also moves rapidly in front of the stars, and it’s

fun to aim your binoculars in its direction when it’s passing near

another bright star or planet.

Jupiter. Now on to the real action!  Jupiter is a great

binocular target, even for beginners.   If you are sure to hold your

binoculars steadily as you peer at this bright planet,  you should see

four bright points of light near it.  These are the Galilean Satellites

– four moons gleaned through one of the first telescopes ever made, by

the Italian astronomer Galileo. Note how their relative positions

change from night to night as each moon moves around Jupiter in its own

orbit.

Saturn.Although a small telescope is

needed to see Saturn’s rings, you can use your binoculars to see

Saturn’s beautiful golden color.  Experienced observers sometimes

glimpse Saturn’s largest moon Titan with binoculars.  Also, good-quality

high-powered binoculars – mounted on a tripod – will show you that

Saturn is not round.  The rings give it an elliptical shape.

Uranus and Neptune. Some planets are squarely binocular and

telescope targets. If you’re armed with a finder chart, two of them,

Uranus and Neptune, are easy to spot in binoculars. Uranus might even

look greenish, thanks to methane in the planet’s atmosphere. Once a

year, Uranus is barely bright enough to glimpse with the unaided eye . .

. use binoculars to find it first. Distant Neptune will always look

like a star, even though it has an atmosphere practically identical to

Uranus.

There are still other denizens of the solar system you can capture

through binocs. Look for the occasional comet, which appears as a fuzzy

blob of light. Then there are the asteroids – fully 12 of them can be

followed with binoculars when they are at their brightest. Because an

asteroid looks star-like, the secret to confirming its presence is to

sketch a star field through which it’s passing. Do this over subsequent

nights; the star that changes position relative to the others is our

solar system interloper.

5. Use your binoculars to explore inside our Milky Way. 

Binoculars can introduce you to many members of our home galaxy. A good

place to start is with star clusters that are close to Earth. They

cover a larger area of the sky than other, more distant clusters usually

glimpsed through a telescope.

Beginning each autumn and into the spring, look for a tiny dipper-like cluster of stars called the Pleiades. 

The cluster – sometimes also called the Seven Sisters – is noticeable

for being small yet distinctively dipper-like. While most people say

they see only six stars here with the unaided eye, binoculars

reveal many more stars, plus a dainty chain of stars extending off to

one side. The Pleiades star cluster is looks big and distinctive

because it’s relatively close – about 400 light years from Earth. This

dipper-shaped cluster is a true cluster of stars in space.  Its members

were born around the same time and are still bound by gravity.  These

stars are very young, on the order of 20 million years old, in contrast

to the roughly five billion years for our sun.

Stars in a cluster all formed from the same gas cloud. You can also

see what the Pleiades might have like in a primordial state, by shifting

your gaze to the prominent constellation Orion the Hunter. Look for

Orion’s sword stars, just below his prominent belt stars. If the night

is crisp and clear, and you’re away from urban streetlight glare,

unaided eyes will show that the sword isn’t entirely composed of stars.

Binoculars show a steady patch of glowing gas where, right at this

moment, a star cluster is being born. It’s called the Orion Nebula. A summertime counterpart is the Lagoon Nebula, in Sagittarius the Archer.

With star factories like the Orion Nebula, we aren’t really seeing

the young stars themselves. They are buried deep within the nebula,

bathing the gas cloud with ultraviolet radiation and making it glow. In a

few tens of thousands of years, stellar winds from these young,

energetic stars will blow away their gaseous cocoons to reveal a newly

minted star cluster.

Scan along the Milky Way to see still more sights that hint at our

home galaxy’s complexity. First, there’s the Milky Way glow itself; just

a casual glance through binoculars will reveal that it is still more

stars we can’t resolve with our eyes . . . hundreds of thousands of

them. Periodically, while scanning, you might sweep past what appears to

be blob-like, black voids in the stellar sheen. These are dark,

non-glowing pockets of gas and dust that we see silhouetted against the

stellar backdrop. This is the stuff of future star and solar systems,

just waiting around to coalesce into new suns.

6. Use your binoculars to view beyond the Milky Way. 

Let’s leap out of our galaxy for the final stop in our binocular tour.

Throughout fall and winter, she reigns high in the sky during northern

hemisphere autumns and winters: Andromeda the Maiden. Centered in the

star pattern is an oval patch of light, readily visible to the unaided

eye away from urban lights. Binoculars will show it even better.

It’s a whole other galaxy like our own, shining across the vastness of intergalactic space. Light from the Andromeda Galaxy

has traveled so far that it’s taken more than 2 million years to reach

us.
Two smaller companions visible through binoculars on a dark,

transparent night are the Andromeda Galaxy’s version of our Milky Way’s

Magellanic Clouds. These small, orbiting, irregularly-shaped galaxies

that will eventually be torn apart by their parent galaxy’s gravity.

Such sights, from lunar wastelands to the glow of a nearby island

universe, are all within reach of a pair of handheld optics, really

small telescopes in their own right: your binoculars.

John Shibley wrote the original draft of this article, years ago,

and we’ve been expanding it and updating it ever since. Thanks, John!

Bottom line: For beginning stargazers, there’s no better tool than

an ordinary pair of binoculars. This post tells you why, explains what

size to get, and gives you a rundown on some of the coolest binoculars

sights out there: the moon, the planets, inside the Milky Way, and

beyond. Have fun!

Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/j_UBFGFt458/top-6-tips-for-using-ordinary.html

[ Add Comment ]

Top 6 tips for using ordinary binoculars for stargazing