"Trials of the Novice Astronomer"

by Henry and Kelsey


This section contains documents describing some of the "lessons learned" as we travel down the path of becoming accomplished amateur astronomers. At this point, we are still very much novices, but we are learning fast.

Each lesson is a document describing a lesson that we learned the hard way! These aren't really meant to be teaching type lessons, more like a log of the journey recalling the experiences and our learnings from them. However, you may find them useful to assist in your learning curve.

Just click on the lesson to load it.


Lesson 1: The difference between Magnitude and Surface Brightness of objects in space.

This was a hard lesson we learned after spending several nights not being able to find an object with a defined magnitude of 5.7 which should have been easy in a regular pair of 10x50 Binoculars. Think again!

Lesson 2: Setting circles versus Star Hopping in a small telescope.

It became clear that we were going to need to be able to find objects in our small scope, Celestron 114mm (4.5") F/9 Newtonian Short Tube. We had pretty well mastered using the star finder to locate and center objects that were naked eye visible, but we needed to find non-naked eye objects reliably. It doesn't turn out to be all that easy!

Lesson 3: Image orientation in the Celestron 114mm ( 4.5 inch) Newtonian Short GE.

Now that I could find "spots" in the sky with some degree of accuracy, it became necessary to try and correlate a specific pattern in the eyepiece with some type of reference from my star charting program or atlas. The first thing I noticed was that the image orientation in the eyepiece certainly wasn't always 180º like I thought it should be. Time to do some more experimentation. And, as usual, it turned out to be much more complex than I originally imagined!

Lesson 4: Lessons in backyard observing

As part of my quest to be an amateur astronomer I wanted to be able to quickly jump out in backyard and look at something. There are many times when I can't go to the dark site, especially during the week. When the weather is good, I don't like to miss an opportunity. However, it turned out that some planning was necessary to make this happen.

Lesson 5: Star Hopping in earnest (using the FOV method).

Star Hopping in any telescope turned out to be much harder than it looked, at least for me. In my small telescope, it had to be learned so that I could complete my Universe Sampler. ( It is also just something that every novice should master early on!). Here is my experience and the lessons I learned.

Lesson 6: Tips on the Universe Sampler Certificate.

The Universe Sampler is an excellent program for Novices and I highly recommend it. But it isn't as easy as it might seem on the surface. Here is our experience and the lessons we learned. Some helpful tips are included.