A Guide to Stargazing

Stargazing is a simple pleasure, but also a rewarding one. It is nature’s light show and in its simplicity, it hides realms of complexity. It is simply looking up into the sky that led to many scientific understandings throughout history. But how exactly does one go about stargazing? There’s no right or wrong way. Just look at the stars. But, if you want to enhance your experience, there are factors to consider.

The Right Location

In the modern age of dense cities and streetlights, many parts of the world have their view of the sky unfortunately hindered by light pollution, which drowns out the light from the stars. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to properly stargaze. For many today, the first step of stargazing is to find a place with suitable dark skies. Just getting away from the cities makes a big difference. Mountains and deserts tend to be the areas, as both, by their nature, are often away from the illumination of dense population centers.

Mountains and deserts also have other environmental advantages. There’s a lot of air in the atmosphere, and while that air may seem invisible to us, put 62 miles of it above you, it adds up. This thick layer of air distorts and dims the stars. But, atop a mountain, the air is thinner, and there’s less of it above you, leading to cleaner, crisper views of the stars. Deserts, on the other hand, offer drier air. Moisture in the air compounds the issues of atmospheric distortion. The less moisture, the clearer the view.

The Right Time

Once you’ve figured out where, the next step is when. Different times of the year will provide different stargazing opportunities. Most people tend to prefer the summer, thanks to its warmer temperatures, but the air is actually less moist in the winter, leading yet again to crisper views. There’s also the matter of what you’ll see. Summer is Milky Way season and the best time to see the glow of our galaxy. Winter, by contrast, arguably has more interesting objects to look at with clearly recognizable constellations such as Orion and his famous belt, the Pleiades star cluster, and some great telescope objects like the Great Orion Nebula or the Andromeda Galaxy.

Beyond season, if you want to see the stars, the best nights to look are during a new moon. If the Moon is full, or close to it, the light from it will drown out the stars. The Moon itself is definitely worth looking at, but if you want to see stars, best look on a night when the Moon isn’t out or won’t rise until later.

Now We Stargaze

Now that you’ve picked your location and time, all that’s left to do is stargaze. You don’t even need a telescope. Just look up and take in the sight above you. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Within about 10 minutes of being in the dark, your eyes will be mostly adapted and ready to see the faint lights of stars. If you need light of your own, but don’t want to ruin your night vision, try using a red light. Red light doesn’t trigger the light-sensing receptors in the human eye the same way that other colors of light do, meaning your eyes will stay in night vision mode.

Now that your eyes have adapted, look around. On a particularly dark night, you should be able to see a wide swath of hazy light and stars across the top of the sky. That’s the Milky Way. It’s the combined starlight of all the billions of stars in our home galaxy. Under properly dark skies it’s one the most magnificent things you can see. Elsewhere, take note of the patterns you can see in the stars. If you see a brighter star that doesn’t seem to twinkle like the rest, you’re likely looking at a planet. Saturn and Jupiter are both easy-to-spot planets, but what planets you see depends on the time of night and year. Alternatively, you could try searching for the North Star. Just hunt for the Big Dipper, then trace the line made by the two stars opposite the “handle.” Follow that line to the next star, and you’ve found the North Star.

If you find something particularly dim, try looking at it through the corner of your eyes by focusing on a spot nearby it in the sky. The dim object will suddenly appear brighter. This is a trick known as averted vision, and it works because the center of our eyes isn’t designed to pick up low levels of light. Our peripheral vision, however, is great at it. Some objects, like the Andromeda Galaxy, can only be seen with the naked eye if using this trick.

If you want some help locating objects in the sky, you could always download a stargazing guide app on your phone. Using your phone’s GPS, gyroscope, and compass, these apps allow you to hold your phone up to the sky to see a matching star chart which changes as you move the phone. You can either use it to look for specific objects or to identify and object you’ve spotted. Just make sure to keep your phone in night mode while doing this, especially if the app uses red light for this, as you wouldn’t want to ruin your night vision with its light.

Keep your eyes out for hints of motion. If you’re lucky, you might catch a shooting star streaking by. Alternatively, if you see what looks like a star slowly moving across the sky, that means you’ve found a satellite, a manmade object orbiting the Earth. Both are treats that are more likely to be spotted than one might think. You only have to wait for it.

If you have a telescope, then aim at the planets. You’re in for a special sight. You could also use your stargazing app to find other interesting targets, such as nebulae, which are typically only visible via telescope. My personal favorite object to look at is the Andromeda Galaxy. Through a telescope, it looks like a simple smudge, but it’s actually the galaxy closest to our own Milky Way. That galaxy has ten times the amount of stars of our own galaxy, but is over 2.5 million lightyears away, meaning the light you see from it left the Andromeda galaxy about 2.5 million years ago. Seeing it through a telescope really helps to put in perspective how far away it is, and how massive the universe really is.