Since I picked up a Meade 2045 at a garage sale a few weeks ago I've been looking at star charts, reading books, articles, etc. Yesterday I ran across an article named "A Primer for the Beginning Astronomer" by John Barra which looked interesting.
The first paragraph reads:
Quote:
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It does you no good to have a new telescope and a bunch of star atlases if you cannot find your way around the sky. My suggestion is this: put your telescope away at first and just learn the sky. If the temptation to use your equipment is too great, take your telescope out when the moon is bright. Gaze at the moon or at the easy-to-find planets of Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. Then put your telescope away for the rest of the month...
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Obviously I've been doing it all wrong!
I wonder how many people actually do what he suggests. To me it sounds like a good way to quell your initial enthusiasm for astronomy.
My approach has been a bit different and to me much more rewarding. I picked an obvious constellation (e.g. Crux), printed a simple star map of it and identified some objects I wanted to find (e.g. 4755). Then I went and found them. Using Crux as a visual anchor I went on to Carina and the Southern Pleides. I may not know all the stars in a constellation like Carina, but I can recognize enough to eventually find my way around.
As I expand my vista from Crux I've become familiar with Musca, Triangulum Australe, and parts of Centaurus and Carina and enjoyed some beautiful sights.
If I'm having a bit of trouble recognizing a constellation SkEye is handy for pointing me in the right direction and identifying it.
So I don't see the benefit of putting your telescope away for a month, or the advantage of just studying constellations for an extended period of time.
If I can locate the constellation and recognize enough of the structure to find objects of interest why not do it that way?
Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
Don