Summer Stargazing Without a Telescope
If you find yourself under a perfect night sky without a telescope this summer, don’t despair. There’s still lots to see. Here are 10 ideal targets for summer stargazing, sans optiques.
*** From One-Minute Astronomer ***
A concise guide to observing the universe beyond our solar system. Includes tips on equipment selection and observing techniques, along with a tour of dozens of lovely sights in the north and south hemispheres. Click here to learn more…
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• The Milky Way. In good dark sky, you can see 1,500 to 2,000 individual stars. But look also for the star-clogged arms of the Milky Way high overhead. These knotted white clouds are millions of unresolved stars, and they are a jaw-dropping sight, to be enjoyed whenever you can.
The Milky Way towards the constellation Sagittarius and Scorpius. The open star cluster Messier 7 is the hazy patch at bottom, center (click to enlarge)
• Multiple Star Systems. Test your eyes by resolving the famed “double double” star, epsilon (ε) Lyrae. Located just northeast of blue-white Vega, this double star is barely resolved into two components by a keen pair of eyes. Each component itself is a closely-spaced double star resolvable in a telescope… so it’s a quadruple star. Vega, and its constellation Lyra, are directly overhead in northern latitudes, and further down towards the northern horizon for southern-hemisphere observers this time of year.
• Globular Clusters. Find the Great Globular Cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, right next to Lyra. While just at the limit of human eyesight, M13 holds a million stars some 13 billion years old. While M13 lies a distant 25,000 light years from Earth, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.” In the southern hemisphere, try to spot the even more spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri.
The constellations Lyra and Hercules, showing the position of the “double double” star epsilon Lyrae and the Great Globular Cluster M13 (click to enlarge).
• Bright Planets. In the western sky this month, you can see bright Venus, Mars, and Saturn following the sun below the horizon just after sunset. And on the opposite side of the sky, rising a little before midnight, look for the steady glow of Jupiter rising in the southeast. While you can’t see any surface detail on these planets without a telescope, you can pass many pleasant moments tracking them across the sky from night to night against the background stars.
• Satellite Galaxies. Those of you in the southern hemisphere can inspect the Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies associated with our Milky Way. Their irregular shape is a consequence of their low mass and strong tidal interactions with our galaxy.
• Artificial Satellites. You can easily see dozens of artificial satellites whizzing across the sky each night. They look like bright stars that decided to make a break for it. Follow the path of each, and note any change in brightness as it tumbles or moves into the Earth’s shadow. Also note your time of observation. You might be able to determine which satellite you saw using the tools on free websites like Heavens Above.
• Open Star Clusters. Look towards the southern horizon for the unmistakable shape of the constellation Scorpius, the Scorpion. Nestled in the tail just above the “stinger’, you’ll see a hazy patch of blue-white starlight (see the image of the Milky Way, above). This is Messier 7, a loose cluster of some 80 stars born 200 million years ago, just as the dinosaurs began to dominate the Earth. Linger awhile in this part of the sky. It offers splendid viewing for every stargazer.
• The Zodiacal Light. If you’re lucky enough to have very dark sky, see if you can spot the whitish zodiacal light extending along the ecliptic in the west after sunset, or the east before sunrise. This eerie glow is caused by sunlight scattering off dust particles in the plane of the solar system.
• Meteors. Lie on a blanket or lawn chair on a warm night, stare up at the clear sky, and just wait for an occasional meteor to shoot by. And don’t forget the biggest meteor shower of the summer, the Perseids, on or about August 12. Try to look after midnight to see the most meteors during the Perseids… as many as one or two every minute.
• The Sun. No, don’t look at the sun directly!! But try this… poke a pinhole in a business card and try to project the image of the sun onto a piece of paper or a wall. You may see a few larger sunspots if you project the unmagnified image onto 2-3 feet away.
There’s much to see in the sky, even without a telescope. And remember, in the 16th century, a few decades before the telescope was invented, one of the most important (and flamboyant) astronomers of all time, Tycho Brahe, made thousands of precise naked-eye observations of the stars and planets. His measurements enabled his assistant Johannes Kepler to discover his Laws of Planetary Motion, which led to Issac Newton’s discovery of the Laws of Universal Gravitation.
