First Star to the Right and Straight on ’til Morning
Anyone who thinks that is going to accurately lead you anywhere better give up on stargazing and look up Google Maps.
Or get a Celestron Skyscout. The Skyscout actually isn’t much good for figuring out where you are, but it is fantastic for figuring out where the stars are (no, the answer is not in rehab).
I’ve always had a neophyte’s interest in backyard astronomy. I like being able to pick out constellations and stars and planets, though I am far from any kind of expert. If I can check a cheat sheet ahead of time, I can find Venus, Jupiter, Orion and Sirius, the Big Dipper. If I am traveling far away from my normal city lights, I can find the Milky Way. And I know that Polaris, the North Star, is somewhere in a northerly part of the night sky.
People reading the above paragraph fall into to two groups: Those who say, “Well, that’s the basics that any gradeschooler would know. I mean, c’mon, the constellations of the Zodiac are simple enough, just follow the ecliptic, and they’re right there. And Mars is unmistakable, especially when it’s retrograde, and ….†etc.
The other group of people are impressed by what little astronomy I know as they’re lucky just to be able to correctly identify the moon.
The problem for me, apart from a life spent largely living in big cities with too much light at night to really see the sky, is that there are no damn labels on the stars. I have books and star charts a-go-go, but I’ve never mastered the ability to look at the picture in the book, with lines and names, and match it to blinking lights in the sky. Oh, wait, that one’s an airplane. Nevermind.
The Celestron Skyscout changes that. It’s basically small monocular, but it has GPS and a compass and an inclinometer built in to it that lets the device know exactly where in the sky you are looking. You can either point at a star and it will tell you what it is via an earphone, or it will guide you to a requested star with arrows in the viewfinder.
The device runs about $400. It was introduced last year and it won various awards. If I had $400 I wasn’t using right now, I’d buy it. My guess is that like most technology, it’s bound to get cheaper and better with the next couple revisions, so I am keeping an eye open. That would be the eye that’s not looking for Betelgeuse.
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