Quote:
Originally Posted by omegacrux
Hi Mike
Have you tried some smartphone apps ?
They can be a big help . Stellarium , skyeye and Google sky maps
Skyeye once trained can be used as a push-to , meaning it helps you find the object with arrows
David
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For a complete beginner, if you have a smartphone or tablet, Google Sky Map is a great starting point.
It only shows the brightest objects (basically, naked eye objects only, plus the most obvious targets for small telescopes and binoculars), and it will align its view with where you point your phone, so it will very quickly help you identify what you are looking at, and will also point you towards a target that you are seeking out. A few nights with Google Sky Map will help you learn the names of the brighter objects and constellations in the night sky.
One of the more powerful planetarium apps (e.g. SkySafari 4, Stellarium, SkEye, etc) will have a MUCH bigger database than Google Sky Map, a LOT more information on the objects in the database, and will allow you to zoom in to MUCH higher magnification. However, the sheer number of objects they can display can make it hard for a beginner to correlate the view in the app with what they see in the sky. If you live in a light-polluted city, you may only see a few dozen stars with the naked eye when the Moon is out, whereas the app will show hundreds or thousands, and understanding which are the ones you can actually see can be tricky.
For example, we all "know" the Southern Cross has 5 main stars (although there are actually many more than just 5), but the fifth star may be hard to spot on a bright night, if you're not sure which way up the Cross is pointing.
With a planetarium app such as SkySafari, you can adjust the magnitude of stars which are displayed. It is tempting to set this to a large number (remember, higher magnitude number = fainter stars; that in itself is confusing for beginners!), so that you see LOTS of stars in the app, but this can be confusing, as it displays lots of stars that you can't actually see with the naked eye or binoculars, so it can be hard to correlate the app view with the naked eye view.
Try setting the magnitude limit to about 3.5 to 4 (6 is roughly the naked eye limit for a dark sky), and the view that you see in the app should be a reasonable approximation for what you can actually see from a typical urban site.
Once you can identify some bright naked eye objects in the night sky, try pointing your telescope to them. Use this to make sure your finder is properly aligned, and get some understanding of how wide / narrow the field of view is with your various eye-pieces.
The Moon is probably the best place to start - it is pretty easy to find(!), and remembering that the Full Moon is about 1/2 degree across, when you find an eyepiece for which the Moon fills the view, you know that eyepiece gives you a field of view of 1/2 degree. With that eyepiece, you will need to point the telescope to better than +/- 1/4 degree accuracy in order to get your target into the field of view. There aren't many bright stars that are close enough together to be both visible in 1 degree or 1/2 degree field of view, so when you are pointing your telescope, you are typically going to be pointing it at a single bright naked-eye star - but through the eyepiece, you will often see dozens of stars that are not visible to the naked eye - but the single bright star will be obvious when it is in view.
Once you are more familiar with the night sky, you can crank up the magnitude limit in your planetarium app, and start to use the app for finding fainter targets with your telescope.
Hope this helps!
The southern cross (Crux) is the smallest constilation in the sky at 104 sq degrees and its way to big even for binoculars so don't expect to be able to navigate easily, there are just to many stars .
