Keeping Track of the Sky

The Stargazer’s Notebook

People have been writing down what they see in the sky for almost as long as people have been LOOKING at the sky. There are credible archaeological finds showing drawings of constellations and other sky sights going back thousands of years. For example, the the  marvelous cave paintings at Lascaux, France, have a number of objects that appear connected to sky sights, including a painting of what looks like the Pleiades hovering over the back of Taurus the Bull.

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Akkadians, and many other cultures also n0ted sky events and objects by making carvings, writing on papyrus, and including them in paintings. The advent of formalized writing allowed people to make more detailed descriptions of what they saw in the sky. Succeeding generations of skygazers, philosphers, and scientists also wrote down what they saw in the sky, often sketching their visions to preserve them.

With the advent of photography, modern astronomy took the science of observation one step further, and the digital revolution enabled astronomers to save data from both ground-based and space-based observations. And, amateur astronomers have access to many of the same (or similar) software and hardware tools to record their skygazing.

There are many stargazers who still like to record their views with sketches and notes. For them, Paul G. Abel has created a beautiful little book called The Stargazer’s Notebook. Abel is a Mathematics Teaching Fellow at University of Leicester in England, an astronomer, and a co-presenter on the BBC’s The Sky at Night show (which has a new broadcast slot after more than 40,000 people signed a petition to keep it on the air). His book has a gorgeous image of the constellation Orion on the cover, and is designed for observers at any level to record what they see in the sky. It provides several chapters of information about observing equipment, astronomy clubs, wish lists, observing planning pages, and much, much more. I could see this being a gift for a stargazer undertaking his or her first explorations of the sky. It’s always useful to get good observing and recording habits started at the same time you learn the sky, and an observing notebook like this one serves as a handy guide to the skies and beyond.