Astronomy
I have always been interested in astronomy, but never really pursued it until January, 2004. I decided to join NOVAC (Northern Virginia Astronomy Club) and fell in love with the hobby. My first and only telescope is a Hardin Deep Space Hunter Dobsonian telescope. Basically, what I have is a Newtonian telescope on a Dobsonian base!
Can you imagine looking through a telescope and seeing objects like Saturn, (which is about 794 million miles away, and Jupiter, which is about 390 million miles away. The majority of the night sky objects, other than the planets in our solar system, are thousands and thousands of light years away!
Through my telescope I can see many different night sky objects. For instance, galaxies like M51 or M94 (both shown below), globular clusters, and open clusters, Nebulae, comets, satellites and asteroids can be viewed. I find this absolutely amazing! I would highly recommend finding a local astronomy club and joining in on a star party or going to an observatory. Most star parties and observatories are open to the public.
What is a light year?
A light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance
that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To
obtain an
idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the
earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length
of the line by 7.5
(the corresponding distance is one light-second), then
place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. The resulting distance is
almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!
What is astronomy?
Astronomy is the scientific study of the planets, stars, galaxies and the universe. Generally speaking, astronomy and physics are essentially the same science, with different areas of research and application. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, although in ancient times the two were tightly intertwined. Due to its ancient roots, some historians of science consider astronomy the original science.
Looking for a star atlas? You could start with the basic Sky Atlas 2000
second edition. Something a little more in-depth and a bit more-well rounded
is
the Herald-Bobroff AstroAtlas.
This atlas is basically three atlases in one. It starts out as an all sky
6th magnitude atlas,
useful for finding your way around the sky and locating the brighter stars
of the constellations. It then goes deeper to an all sky 9th magnitude
atlas. Finally, crowded and popular parts of the sky are mapped down to
anywhere from 11th mag to 14th mag, depending on the part of the sky depicted
(all mags are for stellar objects). Some of the non-stellar objects are
plotted down to 15th magnitude.
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