Want to get into stargazing? A professional astronomer explains where to start
Want to get into stargazing? A professional astronomer explains where to start
There are few things more peaceful and relaxing than a night under the stars. Through the holidays, many people head away from the bright city lights to go camping. They revel in the dark skies, spangled with myriad stars.
I've recently heard that if you want to get into astronomy... forget getting a scope, just go to NASA's website, download some of the raw data from the "big guns", even starting from a decade ago, and figure out a way to analyze it to find inside something that nobody has found yet.
But stargazing is fun as a hobby.
Getting out to the dark and just looking up is a really good suggestion of a place to start. Turn Left at Orion is a really good absolute beginner book too, so I second that recommendation as well. One resource I'd recommend that was missing from the article is the Cloudy Nights Forums. It's one of the niche old-style forums that a lot of amateur astronomers frequent.