Being an amateur astronomer - How to be one?

Star Gazing is one of the most amazing experience a human may ever have. Have you ever noticed that the dots in the night skies shine? Yes they are called as Stars, there are plenty of them up there in the sky.

Video Credits: Great Big Story

Great Big Story

Have you ever thought of tracing them or even tried to count them? If tried so you might have ended up confusing your little thinker part. But the truth is that you were following a wrong procedure to count them! Then how to be one?

If you were lost finding a route what will be your next step, to get the help of map. If you are not able to find a route without a map which is within few kilometres then how could you find a route between the stars which lie at distances of light years? 

To your knowledge all the stars visible from our planet earth are catalogued and put into some constellation structure not now but from the age of Galileo, even our Vedas speak about them.

So next question in your mind may be that how could you get access to all those catalogues? It’s not that tough as you think the things you should do is follow the below procedure.

Star Map

A sky chart or star map is a map of the night sky. Astronomers divide these into grids to use them more easily. They are used to identify and locate astronomical objects such as stars, constellations and galaxies, they have been used for human navigation since time immemorial. 

So this can find you a route out there in the night sky. There are several online websites which provide accurate sky chart according to your location on the globe and there are computer software which provide you a complete three dimensional view of the night sky without the benefits of a telescope. 

So here’s what you have to do

Procedure:-

1. Get a sky chart downloaded on your device or get it printed.

2. Heavens-above.com has a feature for printing the interactive sky chart, just create an account and set your location (the latitude and longitude) and feed the time you will get a sky chart of that location.

3. You could view a 3D sky with the help of the software Stellarium.

4. Get out of your building and get lost in the night sky, go mingle with the dots.

5. Nothing remains up to date unless you get to hear NEWS about it. 

Do you know there is an astronomical news service run by some American Observatories!They provide all the information you have to know from the latest activities to the unknown facts. A new episode is released every 5 days.

Link:-http://stargazersonline.org/

Sky Chart:-

Image Source: https://heavens-above.com/

You can get a similar kind of sky chart from https://heavens-above.com/ and get started in connecting dots around the night sky.

For more professional support and details about being an amateur astronomy do read "The Amateur Astronomer"article. Link: https://www.unawe.org/awesome/.

Once you confirm the passion towards "Astronomy" you can get upgrades such as telescope etc.