ASTRONOMY WITHOUT A TELESCOPE
When people hear the term ‘astronomer’, most automatically picture someone peering into a telescope. But you don’t need a telescope to see many amazing and beautiful things in the night sky. You can see many of the wonders of the universe using just your own eyes, or a pair of binoculars.
The telescope has allowed astronomers to see the planets of our Solar System in stunning detail and observe stars, nebulae and galaxies so far away that their dim light has taken millions or even billions of years to reach us. Telescopes make such faint objects look bigger and brighter, but they are totally useless for observing the big things beginners start out looking for – the shapes, or constellations, the brightest stars make in the night sky.
Once a beginner has learned the names and positions of the brightest stars and the constellations they form like giant join-the-dot puzzles, then they can move on to a telescope, zooming in on thrilling sights such as the rings of Saturn, Jupiter’s moons and the ice caps of Mars, as well as countless glittering star clusters, misty nebulae and frost-swirl galaxies, but before that there is a wealth of wonderful things to see with just your naked eye, from your own garden.
There are many advantages to naked-eye astronomy over using a telescope. Telescopes are expensive, take time to set up and align
