stargazing | Night Lights Above

I am not a professional astronomer, but I sure love stargazing – and I learn something new every time! Beside my naked eye I don’t have a lot of tools, but those I do have I’m pretty proud of. Which tools do you have?

When my Dobsonian telescope arrived

Me with my Dob

I have the Orion XT10 Classic Dobsonian telescope. The 10″ aperture lets in a nice amount of light. I have never owned a computerized alignment system, but I love the way my manual Dob teaches me to navigate the sky and find things myself (with the help of a red laser finder and a good old-fashioned sky map.)

I love using a variable filter to admire the moon’s craters on a full moon-ish night. When the skies are darker, I like to hunt for deep space objects. Since I live in a big city, my boyfriend gave me a Narrowband filter last Christmas to cut out light pollution.

And when the scope is too big to pack around, I pull these out of my car trunk – a pair of binoculars from my Dad!