Stargazing Each Month

Stellar Sources of Guidance

Back in the old days, BWWW (before the World Wide Web), if you wanted to know what stars and constellations are visible on a given night, you used an astronomy book or looked through an astronomy magazine. Or you went to the nearby planetarium and saw a “What’s Up Tonight” show.

Nowadays, we all have Web access (well, most of us), and gizmos, and books and magazines, so there’s no excuse for not knowing what’s up when you go out.  I’ve often written about my favorite stargazing books (Petersen’s Field Guide to the Stars, H.A. Rey’s The Stars, and his Find the Constellations. to name a few), software (the iOS-based Starmap (www.star-map.fr) that I’ve been privileged to work on with the developer), Stellarium (a free planetarium program for PC), and so on.

On the Web, there are places to find out about “What’s Up” than you can shake a mouse at. I do a monthly sky video that runs about 3-4 minutes called Our Night Sky, for the online space and astronomy site Astrocast.TV.  In fact, you watch this month’s right here:

I just found out today about monthly “what’s up” style podcast called Heavens Above Astronomy podcast, featuring a guy I’ve corresponded with online from time to time, Stuart Atkinson.  Check it out at Heavens Above Astronomy Podcast. It’s chock full of all kinds of information about what you can see in the night sky. 

Search around on the Web for other podcasts, using search times like “astronomy podcasts” and you’ll find a wealth of information and ways to learn about the night sky. And, if that’s not enough…there’s always the  library and some great books on astronomy!

Keep looking up!