What do you need to pay attention to when using binoculars for stargazing? Here's the answer!
Binoculars for stargazing: our 6 secrets
Learn to use binoculars, with binoculars to see things. Image source: Silva.
Binoculars for stargazing
You must have been watching the stars for a long time! But if you want to be prepared for observation you can't just use your eyes all the time. Before buying a telescope, try buying binoculars. Maybe somewhere in your home lies a binoculars. Of course, if not, binoculars are also much cheaper than normal telescopes, and they are also easy to carry to darker places, even the backyard of your home, and binoculars will let you see the unparalleled starry sky. Next are some small suggestions for using binoculars.
1. Binoculars are easier to get started with than telescopes
It is recommended that most readers who want to buy a telescope - using binoculars for one year or more is a better option. Because most people who use telescopes for the first time find them confused and want to give up — for two reasons: learning how to use complex devices and locate objects in the sky.
Junior stargazers often find that a pair of regular binoculars, which are sold in most discount stores, give them the effect they want. After all, in astronomical observations, the telescope magnification and light gathering ability make the stargazer see more clearly. Even medium-sized spotlights (such as a 7×50 focused telescope) zoom in and provide 7 times more detail than the naked eye can see.
Readers also need to know what they want to watch. Many people use a constellation chart when they start stargazing.
2. Start with a telescope that is small in size and easy to get started with
Don't start with a large binoculars unless you fix it to a tripod and it will make your observed starry sky shake. For beginner enthusiasts, a pair of 7×50 binoculars is the best choice. Its field of view is wide and stable, with minimal jitter. And it is also very easy to use during the day, such as bird watching. If the 7×50 binoculars are still very big for you, or you want to buy a child's one, you can try the 7x35 specification.
3. First, look at the moon with binoculars
When you start gazing at the starry sky, you'll want to take a closer look at the state of the moon. If you want to see deep space objects in our galaxy —or outside the Milky Way—you want to avoid the moon. But the moon itself is a perfect target for astronomers using binoculars. Tip: The best time to observe the Moon is at dusk. When the moon's light isn't that bright, you'll see more detail.
Gaze at the moon when it has just risen, and when it is a new moon in the western sky after sunset, you will enjoy a beautiful view of the ground. The strange glow of this part of the moon's darkening is light reflected from the Earth to the lunar surface.
Moon and ground illumination. Photo by Greg Diesel Walck.
Every month, as the moon passes through its regular phase, you can see the sunrise and sunset lines on the moon passing through the moon's face. It's just the boundary between light and darkness on the moon. This line between the two sides of the moon day and night is the end line. This is the best place to see lunar features casting long shadows in sharp reliefs.
Looking at the gray spots on the moon—named the darker parts of the lunar surface—early astronomers thought were oceans. Of course, they are not oceans. They formed 3.5 billion years ago when asteroid-sized rock hit the moon so badly that magma seeped out of the cracks and flooded the impact basin. These magma plains cooled and eventually formed the gray "oceans" we see today.
The White Highlands are older terrains with thousands of craters formed in eternity. You'll be able to see some of the larger craters with binoculars. One of them, the Tycho Sky Survey satellite, emits hundreds of miles of white light over the adjacent highlands. This is material that was kicked out during the Tycho impact 2.5 million years ago.
4. View the planets with binoculars
Planets are wanderers, moving away from fixed stars. You can locate recently visible planets via the EarthSky Tonight page. For example, binoculars can expand the field of view of a planet near the moon, or two planets in the twilight sky that are close to each other.
Mercury and Venus. These inner planets orbit the Sun in Earth's orbit. Thus, from Earth, mercury and Venus both have phases. With binoculars, you should be able to see their crescent-shaped phases before and after rendezvous with the Sun. Tip: Venus is so bright that its dazzling light will flood the entire field of vision, try to watch it at dusk instead of completely dark nights.
Mars. The red planet does look red, and binoculars will make its color more vivid. Mars also moves fast in front of its stars, and it's interesting to point binoculars in its direction as it passes by another bright star or planet.
Jupiter. Now for real action! Jupiter is a good binary observation target even for beginners. Hold the binoculars firmly and you'll see four dots of light nearby. These are the Galileo satellites: four satellites discovered by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei through the first telescope ever made. If you can't see all four moons, it's because they pass in front of or behind gas giants. Observe how their relative positions change day and night.
See the larger image. EarthSky Facebook friend Carl Galloway took a picture of Jupiter's satellites. Thank you, Karl! Jupiter's four main moons are called Ganymede, Europa, Ganymede, and Ganymede. It's a telescope view, but you can also see one, two, or more satellites through binoculars.
Saturn. While you'll need a small telescope to see Saturn's rings, your binoculars will show Saturn's beautiful gold. You can even catch a glimpse of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. In addition, a high-quality, high-power binocular mounted on a tripod will tell you that Saturn is not round. These rings give it an oval shape.
Uranus and Neptune. With positioning maps and binoculars, you can spot the two most distant planets. Thanks to the methane in Uranus' atmosphere, Uranus may look green. Once a year, Uranus is barely bright enough to catch a glimpse with the naked eye... Find it first with binoculars. Distant Neptune always looks like a star, although its atmosphere is almost identical to that of Uranus.
You might see other solar system objects with binoculars: the occasional comet (which looks like a blur of light) and 12 asteroids at their brightest point. Map the star field on the following nights to track the movement of star-like asteroids.
Explore the interior of our galaxy
Binoculars can introduce you to many members of the Milky Way Home. Start with a cluster of stars close to Earth. They cover a much larger area of the sky than the others, but clusters farther away would require an astronomical telescope.
From every autumn to spring, a star cluster like the Big Dipper can be found, which we call the Pleiades Cluster or the Pleiades Seven Fairies. This cluster is small but as distinctive as the Big Dipper. Most people can only find six stars with the naked eye, and binoculars will show more, plus a delicate chain of stars that extends to the other side. The Pleiadian Cluster looks large and unique because it is close to us, about 400 light-years from Earth. These stars were born at about the same time and are still constrained by gravity. They are very young, about 20 million years old, and our sun is five billion years old compared to our sun.
The stars in the cluster are all formed by the same cloud of gas. You can observe what the Pleiades cluster looked like in its primordial state by shifting your gaze to the famous constellation Orion. Find the star where orion's sword is located, just below the star on the famous Orion belt. (Betelgeuse 1, 2, and 3 form the hunter's belt from east to west.) The sword under the orion belt is composed of a quadrangle (θ1 Orion and θ2) and the Orion Nebula (M42), known in China as the Star of Orion). If the night is clear and bright, and is far from the light pollution of the city's streetlights, the naked eye can see that the sword is not entirely composed of stars. Binoculars can show a steady glowing gas, and it is at this time that a star cluster is born. This is the Orion Nebula, which corresponds to the Lagoon Nebula (M8) in the summer, located in the constellation Sagittarius.
In a factory of stars like the Orion Nebula, we can't really see these young stars themselves. They are buried deep in the nebula, illuminating the gas cloud by ultraviolet light to make it glow. Tens of thousands of years later, the stellar winds of these young, energetic stars will blow away their gaseous cocoons and form a new cluster.
A scan of the Milky Way can see more sights that hint at the complexity of our home galaxy. First of all, the Milky Way itself glows; just a casual glance through binoculars reveals that there are still many stars that we can't tell with the naked eye... There are thousands of these stars. Usually, when we observe, we find speckled black holes in the light of stars. These dark, nonluminous clumps of gas and dust can be seen in the background of the stars, their outlines. This is characteristic of future stars and solar systems, just waiting to synthesize a new sun.
The Milky Way arches across a Joshua tree, image by EarthSky Facebook partner Manish Mamtani (Browse Manish on Facebook)
6. The view beyond the Milky Way
Let's jump out of the Milky Way and arrive at the final stop of the binoculars tour. Throughout autumn and winter, the "goddess tethered to the rocks", the Andromeda Galaxy 1, has been suspended high in the sky of the Northern Hemisphere. At the center of the star pattern is an oval spot of light, clearly recognizable to the naked eye away from the city lights. Binoculars can better observe her.
Like our galaxy, she is a completely different galaxy shining in the vast interstellar space. The light emanating from the Andromeda galaxy will take more than 2 million years to reach us. Two smaller companion stars can be observed with binoculars on a dark and cloudless night, the Magellan cloud of the Andromeda galaxy. These small, orbiting, and irregularly shaped galaxies will eventually be torn apart by the gravitational pull of their parent galaxies.
Andromeda Galaxy from photography Chris Levitan
From the barren surface of the moon to the glow of neighboring galaxies, these scenes can be observed with small handheld optical devices: your binoculars.
BY：EarthSky
FY：Astronomical volunteer team
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