Telescopes: Start Without One

Abstract

Some basic pre-telescope advice is offered for newcomers to the hobby of observational astronomy.

Keywords: telescope, magnification, buy, purchase, resources, astronomy magazines, astronomy books

Introduction

Anybody with an interest in astronomy wants to immediately rush out and buy a telescope; it's only natural. But one can – indeed should – travel a long way down the road before having to plunge in and spend up large on a telescope of your own.

Maybe money's no object: ok, in that case buy whatever you like. Otherwise, though, put in as much legwork as you can stand, before you make that big purchase.

At the very least, the experience will help you refine the kind of telescope you want to own. At best, it will be a rewarding experience in its own right, and an opportunity to fully explore your own commitment to the hobby before finally settling on a budget for various flash accessories. Suppose you spend $500 (or whatever it might be) on a telescope today. If you lose interest in 3 months time, you'll regret having spent anything. Yet if your interest in astronomy becomes a consuming passion, you'll regret not spending more. So take the time to find out.

Read, Learn, Point

The first step is to learn your way around the night sky without any optical aid at all. After all, if you can't even point your finger at M13, how do you ever expect to find it with a telescope? (Even expensive computer-guided Schmidt-Cassegrains require orientation by pointing them at a number of known objects.)

My advice is to begin with an inexpensive planisphere and a suitable book, and learn to recognise the constellations, first and second magnitude stars, and naked-eye planets by sight.

Magazines and Books

Happily, the hobby of amateur observational astronomy is well served by a number of excellent magazines, two of which are pre-eminent: Astronomy and Sky & Telescope. Those two aside, the following list is completely idiosyncratic and should not be misconstrued as any kind of a comprehensive or representative survey.

• Astronomy (American) – A lavish, full-colour monthly; pitched from novice through to experienced observer, but assumes little scientific knowledge; a reasonable Southern Hemisphere section; includes monthly sky charts although the southern chart does not show planets so, if you've got any kind of a book already, what use are they? There is a section called Ask Astro where a handful of readers' questions get answered by well-qualified people; seems like quite a good idea but you might be waiting a long time to see your particular question in print! (It was Astronomy which fuelled my early enthusiasm, though lately I have come to prefer Sky & Telescope.)

• Astronomy (British) – I've never had more than a brief flick through this one; to me it appears light-weight and offers less for your money than the others listed here.

• Sky & Space (Australian) – Full-colour bi-monthly; pitched from novice through to experienced observer, with more emphasis on observing activities (equipment reviews, club news, and so on) than on articles describing astronomical phenomena; focused on the Southern Hemisphere; includes a whole-sky star chart plus north and south hemispheres in less detail.

• Sky & Telescope (American) – Another lavish, full-colour monthly; pitched from novice through to experienced observer, and assuming little scientific knowledge; perhaps a little more advanced than Astronomy, generally. The Southern Hemisphere section includes monthly sky charts, including the planets. However, Fred Schaaf's otherwise excellent commentary is limited to a couple of hundred words or less, which is, frankly, feeble.

• Southern Sky (Australian) – A mixed monochrome and full-colour bi-monthly; pitched from novice through to experienced observer with the inclusion of some slightly more 'weighty' articles (and even some light math); focused on the Southern Hemisphere; includes a periodic star chart, with planets, and a constellation-of-the-month section (very detailed; down to m_v = 9 or so). This one may be defunct; I haven't seen it around for quite some time.

“Creatures borrowed and again conveyed,
From book to book – the shadows of a shade.”
— J. Schopf, Cradle of Life

We come now to the crux (no pun intended) of the amateur astronomer’s problem. We crave information which is accurate and up to date, but the obvious source – the professional literature – is largely inaccessible to us. Some of it is certainly beyond the usual layman’s comprehension, although with patience and perseverance it is surprising how many professional articles we can understand, so that isn’t the main problem. The main barriers to a home subscription to, say, the Astrophysical Journal are cost and, surprisingly, storage space. (The ApJ grows along one’s shelves at two or more metres per annum and, unfortunately, the publisher has no current plan to produce the journal on CD ROM, although Internet access is available for subscribers.) And, of course, the ApJ is only one of many publications to which we’d like access.

1. A whole-subject introductory work for lay people, primarily focussed on observational astronomy – but perhaps touching lightly upon some astrophysical concepts such as the HR Diagram – and including a constellation-by-constellation review of popular observational targets. Your chosen guide will be most valuable if it also includes advice for observing with binoculars.

   My own favourite, the book which first aroused my interest in observational astronomy, is Ridpath & Tirion's Collins Guide to Stars and Planets. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, Ellyard & Tirion's new book may be worth a look (I haven't seen it myself).

   At this level, it is far more important to buy something which inspires your interest, rather than becoming too concerned about the very latest information and 6-digit accuracy, so browse the book shops for something which pushes your buttons.

2. An all-sky atlas of some kind. Personally I'm a fan of Wil Tirion's cartography, so my preferred "rough guide" to the sky is the Cambridge Star Atlas 2000.0. Other atlases are available to show much fainter objects (examples are the Herald & Bobroff and Hipparcos atlases) though I have never really seen the point in these. If you're looking for a specific faint object, you probably know where to start looking and already have a plan to track it down; to my mind, an atlas is a guide for naked-eye or binocular viewing.
3. An observer's companion of some kind. The main thematic variations are [i] catalogue, usually either unnamed 'comprehensive' or Messier, [ii] instrument, usually either 'small telescope' or binoculars, and [iii] by hemisphere.

   Actually, you'll probably acquire several companions, perhaps starting with one of the many Messier catalogues and progressing to something more like Malin & Frew 1995 (or a Northern Hemisphere equivalent). In fact, if you do live in the Northern Hemisphere, buying an astronomical magazine each month or so will probably provide sufficient observational suggestions to keep you amused in perpetuity.

4. As you learn your way around the sky, it is to be hoped you'll also become hungry to better understand the objects you are observing. Now is the time to graduate beyond your Collins Guide, or equivalent, and try your hand at something more substantial. You could acquire legions of the coffee table variety of book, sumptuously illustrated with the latest Hubble images, but still not learn very much. Instead, I'd urge you to consider a first-year university text book such as Zeilik's Astronomy: The Evolving Universe.
   
5. The next step is the hardest: It is easy to find first-year texts, and also easy to find really advanced text books, usually packed full of calculus. But there's not much in between. In fact, I'm only familiar with two books which fit nicely into this space. They are Kahler's Stars and Their Spectra and Smith's Observational Astrophysics.

(More titles.)

Binoculars

Your next step is to beg, borrow or buy a pair of 7 x 50 binoculars. They need not be of any great quality or expense; just try to make sure they are the 7 x 50 variety. Those with greater magnification than 7x are very hard to hold steady to see your target well, and those with smaller apertures than 50mm do not collect enough light to show dim objects well.

Binoculars are most readily deployed with the aid of a deck lounger, especially for objects which happen to be near the zenith, but a supple neck is an adequate substitute. You will also require a suitable companion (again, the Collins Guide will get you started, but there are also specialist binocular companions such as Crossan & Tirion's Binocular Astronomy.

A pair of inexpensive binoculars and a decent guide, with or without the lounger, will set you up for at least a year's worth of interesting investigation. In the course of observing, you'll learn your way around the sky with confidence, pick up the necessary observational vocabulary and expertise to locate more difficult targets, and hopefully begin to learn some of the science behind the pretty lights as well. To me, at least, that is the whole point.

Observatories

Supplement your binocular sight-seeing with frequent visits to your local observatory, and others if you can get to them. Most will offer at least one open-to-the-public night a week, fees should be modest or non-existent, exhibits interesting and updated frequently, and those institutions that are worth their salt will allow visitors to look at a few selected objects through one of their telescopes.

Don't forget to attend at different times of the year, so as to see a variety of objects. If possible, strike up an acquaintance with the staff. Evening tours including telescope viewing are often staffed by volunteers from local astronomical associations; these people are worth getting to know, as are any of the professional astronomers who are keen enough to turn out on open night.

Robots

The idea of a robot observatory is for remote users to be able to log observing requests, usually over the Internet, and then simply wait for the robot telescope to automatically photograph the desired object and e-mail back the resulting CCD image. Depending upon the sophistication of the facility, one should be able to specify coordinates, magnification, wavelength filter, exposure, and so on.

• Iowa Robotic Telescope Facilities
  The University of Iowa Physics and Astronomy Department maintains these pages as a guide to our suite of robotic, autonomous tasking telescopes. In addition to using these instruments for teaching and faculty and student research, limited observing time is made available to anyone with an interest in Astronomy and a valid observing request. Feel free to explore the site and learn about our facility.
  Follow the links >> IRO >> Remote Observing.

• UC Santa Barbara Astrophysics Project
  The Remote Access Astronomy Project, RAAP, was developed to allow undergraduates in beginning and advanced Astrophysics courses to combine theory with observations by working with satellite imaging data and a Remotely Operated Telescope, ROT. The program has been extended to allow high schools and junior colleges to participate by accessing our Web server and downloading images and educational programs. RAAP also hosts advanced high school students enrolled in the UCSB Summer Sessions Research Mentorship Program, where they participate in a research project using the ROT.
  Follow the link >> RAAP Telescope.
  
  [Note: This link is broken as at 15 May 2005, though it may still be worth trying. I'll fix it as soon as I can relocate the page. At the moment, even internal UCSB links to this page are broken.]

• Mount Wilson Telescopes in Education Programme
  Telescopes In Education is a program sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and developed through the efforts of numerous volunteers, businesses, and supporting organizations including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The TIE programme currently utilizes a science-grade 24-inch reflecting telescope located at the Mount Wilson Observatory, high above the Los Angeles basin in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. The telescope has been used by students in grades K-12 to observe galaxies, nebulae, variable stars, eclipsing binaries, and other ambitious projects and experiments. Hundreds of schools in the US and around the world (including Australia, Canada, England, and Japan) have successfully used the prototype telescope on Mount Wilson.
  Follow the Contact Information link on the main page.

Done All That?

Then I guess you are ready to buy a telescope, after all.

You may find it useful to read Magnification Doesn't Matter.

Do NOT seek advice from the department- or camera-store which is selling the telescopes. Mostly they have no idea what they're doing, and only care about making a buck. Don't get sucked in! With rare exceptions (I met my first just this month!) these bastards do not deserve your money.

References

Crossan, Craig; Tirion, Wil (1992): Binocular Astronomy. Willmann-Bell, Inc. 182 pp. (Available direct from Sky and Telescope.)

David Ellyard Collins Eyewitness Handbook to the Southern Sky

Kaler, James B. (1997): Stars and Their Spectra. Cambridge. (Corrected paperback ed.) 300 pp.

Malin, David; Frew, David J. (1995): Hartung's Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes. A Handbook for Amateur Observers. Melbourne University Press. 428 pp.

Ridpath, Ian; Tirion, Wil (1984): Collins Guide to Stars and Planets. Collins. 384 pp.

Smith, Robert C. (1995): Observational Astrophysics. Cambridge. 443 pp.

Tirion, Wil (1991): Cambridge Star Atlas 2000.0. Cambridge University Press.

White & Bally (1993): Astrophysical Journal, 409: 234, 20 May 1993.

Zeilik, Michael (1991): Astronomy: The Evolving Universe (6th ed). Wiley.