New Binocular Space Walk - Cygnus Milky Way

I've added another Binocular Space Walk, this one looking at a variety of objects and the beautiful Milky Way star fields of the constellation Cygnus. I found some of the objects pretty challenging from a Bortle 4.5 or so location, but I could find most of them even from my Bortle 8-ish home with my 15x70s.

I used 15x70s to create the Space Walk, so I recommend something close to that, or at least 10x50s. 7x50s may be a good challenge, too. A darker sky always helps.

Because each Space Walk includes helper charts and you may need to refer to them in the field, I have converted all the Space Walk charts to white stars on black background to help keep your vision reasonably dark adapted. However, I'm hoping you can review the charts in advance and then just lie back and listen while you follow along in your binoculars. I also darkened the Space Walk Among the Stars logo background (see above) to go easier on your night vision.

In addition, I added a transcript of the entire Space Walk at the end, in case you find that useful.

Click here to go to the Binocular Space Walk - Cygnus Milky Way page.

Equipment Tip: Add a cell phone holder to your observing chair

More and more I find I like to observe with my binoculars, using my Bino Body Mount. The problem with binocular observing is it takes two hands. I like to use Sky Safari on my phone as my charting app, and I got tired of my phone sliding off of my ever-expanding belly onto the dewy grass in the dark. It's uncomfortable to constantly be reaching over for the phone on a fold up table, so I needed something else.

A cheap gooseneck cell phone holder came free with something else I bought, so I use that, but there are plenty of similar ones such as this one you can buy. I recommend a clip rather than a clamp just for ease of use in the dark, although a clamp might work better for certain chairs. I clip it onto the arm of my zero gravity chair and I have my chart right there at hand, easily using the app with one hand while the Bino Body Mount is perched on my shoulders.

I did find that, at least on my chair, I had to clip the holder behind the locking knob (some chairs have a lever) or the arm would slide past the knob when I leaned the chair back and knock the holder off the chair. Behind the knob there is no obstruction, so I can adjust the chair in any position and the holder will stay on.

Yeah, they wobble like crazy, but when you're using your phone you're holding it steady in your hand. The holder is just to keep it handy within easy reach so you know where it is.

Observing with bad vision

I've worn glasses for about forty years, and my vision has been getting progressively worse, as it usually will. It has stabilized in recent years, but now without my glasses, everything is a blur. I started out with hyperopia (farsightedness) which was joined later in life by astigmatism (irregular curvature of the cornea or lens) so, close or far, it's now all blurry. About 15 or 20 years ago I decided to try contact lenses, and now my typical observing session requires I put them in before going out. I don't wear them regularly, only while observing.

(Image by JSB Co. via Unsplash.)

Vision correction

There are nearly as many degrees and kinds of bad vision as there are observers. Most bad vision can be corrected at least to the point where observing is possible, and the telescope focuser takes care of any basic refractive errors in your vision. That's my case. While I have +6.5 and +7.0 corrective lenses that also help correct for astigmatism, the correction is not perfect. Nevertheless, for me progressive lenses correct enough for me to get through life. I don't recommend trying to use progressive lenses at the eyepiece.

Contacts don't do quite as well for me but they work better at the eyepiece. Although I have toric lenses, the astigmatism is still pretty strong, and I've gotten used to the idea that my views of astronomical objects are not going to be ideal—one of the reasons I don't spend a fortune on eyepieces! I have what's called monovision contacts. My left side focuses at about three feet to infinity and my right side focuses around reading distance. It takes some getting used to after wearing glasses, but within half an hour or even less I'm fully functional. 

(Star images rendered from AladinLite.)

Glasses on

Some people just observe with their glasses on. This requires you to have eyepieces with long eye relief, such that you can have your glasses in between your face and the eyepiece lens and still see the whole field of view, or at least most of it. 

Eye relief is the distance in millimeters from the closest your eye can get to the lens to the furthest point you can pull it back and still see the entire apparent field of view (you can see out to the circular edge of the eyepiece field). For eyepieces with very short eye relief, usually in the smaller focal lengths, this may be the same distance, and your eye has to be almost touching the lens. This can force you to strain and your eyelashes will deposit oil on the lens. 

When using glasses, this point may be closer to the eyepiece than you can actually place your eye, and in that case you will never be able to see the full field of view. Eye relief that is too long may require you to move your head around to catch the sweet spot and can be equally frustrating as the view blacks out when you move your head slightly out of position. Eye relief is also dependent upon the shape of your eye socket and your glasses.

I have yet to find an eyepiece with enough eye relief that works with my prescription, and I have progressive lenses anyway, so I don't wear my glasses when looking through the telescope. I can, however, use various binoculars with long eye relief.

Observing without glasses. Notice how close the eye can get to the lens, making longer eye relief unnecessary to be able to see the full apparent field of view of the eyepiece, which in this case is 82 degrees, nice and wide. Contact lenses require no additional eye relief.

Observing with glasses on. Compare to previous image, noting the much greater distance from the top surface of the eyepiece to the observer's eye. Long eye relief when wearing glasses is critical to being able to see most or all of the eyepiece field of view. This Astro-Tech UWA 10mm eyepiece has only 10mm of eye relief. Not long enough for eyeglass wearers, who need a minimum of about 17-20 mm.

(Images by Astronomerica.)

According to Don Pensack's 2025 Eyepiece Buyer's Guide, eyepieces currently available range in eye relief from a mere 1 to 3 mm for the Harry Siebert Optics Planesphere series to a whopping 46 mm for the Masuyama 60mm 2-inch eyepiece. The caveat on any eye relief figure is that the numbers often only count the measurement from the glass surface not including additional inset or eyecup. So if anything, the effective eye relief may be shorter than the advertised eye relief. This thread from Cloudy Nights discusses some of the better eyepieces for eyeglass wearers. Scroll to post 14 to bypass some rather less useful posts.

Glasses on and off

Another way to cope is to use your glasses when reading a chart or looking up at the sky and then taking them off each time you put your eye up to the eyepiece. This may work especially if you have a relatively mild prescription and maybe only use glasses for reading. For us hardcore Magoos (link provided for younger folks who have no idea), this is fraught with danger. 

(Superman image by DC Comics)

Let me relate my experience in that regard. Before I switched to contacts, I thought I would just swap my glasses on and off when observing. While annoying, this did work to some extent. Until one night, when I placed my glasses atop the roof of my car. They slid off with the heavy dew, and here I was with no way to search for them. Oh, I had a red light, but everything was blurry. I was afraid to move, but I took one step in the direction I thought would be away from the glasses and, you guessed it, heard and felt a sickening crunch underfoot. I managed to drive home that night using an older pair of glasses I had kept as a backup, but that was it for me, and I got contacts shortly thereafter. 

If it works for you, go for it, but be careful. Sometimes I still do use this technique (with my backup glasses!) when I'm just out for a quick look in the backyard or I'm taking a quick look in my solar scope. I recommend velcroing a soft case to your scope or table so you can slip the glasses in there, rather than trusting to a pocket that could contain who knows what that could scratch your lenses or just laying them on a table. I've tried keeping them on eyeglass retainers around my neck but the constant bumping and scraping as I leaned over the telescope was annoying and made me worry about scratches.

No glasses

You might be lucky enough to still be able to read or look at the sky without your glasses and still see reasonably well. In that case, just put your glasses away and use your uncorrected eyes. I did this until the stars just started looking like fuzzy blobs and I was straining to read charts with a magnifier in the dim red light of my flashlight. A man's got to know his limitations, and I had reached mine.

Contact lenses

For me, contacts are really the best solution. With my monovision lenses I can read reasonably well up close, I can drive, I can see the stars reasonably well when I look up, I can see pretty well with any eyepiece, and I've gotten used to using one eye for each. Another benefit is at public star parties, where I can focus an object in the telescope and know that people with reasonably good vision will get a decent look. But a tweak of the focuser will work for most people with uncorrected vision issues, other than astigmatism. I usually encourage people to take off their glasses to observe and just refocus, as long as they don't have bad astigmatism.

There are a few downsides, though. Especially if you don't wear them often, contacts can be itchy, scratchy, and blur out sometimes, especially as your eyes get tired. I sometimes struggle to get them to stay in at first, although other times they just slide right onto my eyeballs and stick. I've had them get stuck under my eyelid when I rubbed my tired eye, and I've even put two in at once, thinking the first one didn't stick and had dropped on the floor. 

Or maybe you just don't like touching your eyeball? Ewwww! (Image by Moist.acuvuehk via Wikimedia, public domain)

I always take a second pair of contacts with me in case I get a tear in one, it just feels crappy, or I somehow lose one out of my eye. Also bring eyedrops to rewet them if they get too annoying. The lens solution bottle won't help unless you want half the bottle all over your neck and down your shirt. Trust me on that one.

Televue DIOPTRX

Televue makes a device they call DIOPTRX that can help with mild astigatism. It looks like a filter with a fold-down eyecup attached that you can thread onto a variety of Televue eyepieces. I've read some accounts that all say it works well. If your astigmatism is relatively mild, but bad enough that correction would make it worth the cost, and you have Televue eyepieces, you might want to check it out.

Eyepiece cheat codes: Angular distances in the sky

In a previous post, we looked at cosmic distances and how they are measured. In this post, we'll look at angular distances as objects appear in the sky, and how to apply this to your observing. For this we use a system of degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc.

There are many resources on the internet that describe this system, so I'll only cover the basics. What we're interested in as visual observers is being able to translate numbers given to us in an app, article, or data source to what we see in the sky, especially in the telescope.

Because there are 360 degrees in a circle, the sky as we see it is always half of that, or 180 degrees. We are standing on the other half, as if we are standing in the middle of a globe. The zenith is 90 degrees overhead, so if the altitude of Jupiter is 45 degrees for our location at a given time, it will be halfway up the sky and good for observing if it's clear with steady air (seeing). At 20 degrees, things are a bit low and murky, subject to poor seeing and probably horizon light glow. 

Left: If we are using an altitude-azimuth mount like a Dobsonian, a degree in altitude is the same no matter how high we point our scope because all the circles of altitude are the same size. Think of these as lines of longitude.

But only if the scope is horizontal and pointed at the horizon is a degree of azimuth the same distance as a degree of altitude, because it's the only full diameter horizontal circle. As we point the scope higher up in the sky, the circles of azimuth, similar to lines of latitude, get smaller as we approach the zenith, so the apparent distance in the sky for the same number of degrees of azimuth is shorter. The higher we point the tube of the telescope, the smaller the arc it describes as it swings in the same number of degrees of azimuth.

As a result, we use a standard angular measurement of apparent distance essentially equal to degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc equivalent to any altitude circle (like a meridian of longitude, or our azimuth circle at the horizon only—essentially both great circles), regardless of what direction we are moving in, and we call them degrees, arcminutes ('), and arcseconds ("). 

Practical application

Left: At the scale of the unaided eye and binoculars, we usually use degrees. 

An easy rough estimate can be done with your outstretched hand.  

1 degree is about the width of your pinky 

5 degrees is about the width of your three middle fingers 

10 degrees is about the width of your fist 

20 degrees is about the width of your outstretched hand. 

This can vary considerably depending on the size of your hands and length of your fingers, but it's close enough for rough estimates. You can check how your own hand measures up by looking up the distances between bright stars that fit these measurements using an app such as Sky Safari Pro, Stellarium, or Cartes du Ciel.

When looking in binoculars or a telescope, your best bet is to know the field of view (FOV), or diameter of the portion of sky that you can see in your particular instrument, measured in degrees for binoculars and widefield eyepieces, and in arcminutes in higher power eyepieces. This will be fixed in non-zoom binoculars and will change depending on what eyepiece you use in the telescope. This is called the "true field of view" (TFOV) (or "actual field of view" in Stellarium), as opposed to the "apparent field of view" (AFOV), which is the angle of  "wideness" of your view based on the optics you are using. 

Left: The circle represents the true field of view (TFOV) in typical wide angle 10x50 binoculars. This diameter represents about 6.5 degrees of angular distance in the sky. (Chart adapted from Cartes du Ciel).

Left: The circle represents a true field of view (TFOV) of 35 arc minutes, or a little over half a degree in the sky, that is viewable in the combination of my 10-inch GSO Dobsonian with a particular 13mm focal length eyepiece. The apparent field of view (AFOV) for this particular eyepiece is 57 degrees. (View of globular cluster M13 adapted from Stellarium)

Left: A simplified diagram showing the apparent field of view (AFOV), which is determined by the lens configuration of the eyepiece and the eyepiece field stop or opening usually at or near the bottom. This does not change if you put the eyepiece in a different telescope. Manufacturers and vendors will state the AFOV in the specifications for the eyepiece.

Some eyepieces have a narrow AFOV because of their design, and it's like looking down a tube, whereas others have a wide, sometimes very wide, field of view, described as like looking through a "porthole" or on a "spacewalk," where you can't see the interior edge of the eyepiece, the field stop, at all without peering into the eyepiece almost sideways.

To recap, the AFOV is the apparent angle of wideness that you experience, but the TFOV is the actual angular measurement of distance in the sky that you are able to see, and that is what we're more concerned with here. Knowing this makes it easier to compare what you are seeing in your binoculars or telescope to your chart or unaided eye view.

Calculating TFOV in the telescope

TFOV must be calculated for each combination of telescope and eyepiece. You can use a variety of methods to calculate TFOV, with varying degrees of accuracy:

The easy calculated method

This method gives you a rough estimate because it is dependent upon the manufacturer specs being exactly correct, which is not always the case.

AFOV (provided by manufacturer or vendor) / MAGNIFICATION = TFOV (in degrees; multiply this by 60 for arc minutes)

Example: 60 / 30 (*see below for this calculation) = 2 degrees or 120 arc minutes

The published AFOV is often not completely accurate but usually fairly close.

*Magnification is calculated as follows:

FOCAL LENGTH OF TELESCOPE (in mm) / FOCAL LENGTH OF EYEPIECE (in mm)

Example: 750 / 25 = 30x

Both of the focal lengths above are provided by the manufacturers or vendors and are usually marked in millimeters somewhere on the telescope near the focuser and on the barrel of the eyepiece. 

The more precise calculated method

This method relies upon the manufacturer or vendor to provide the field stop diameter. Unfortunately, aside from Televue eyepieces, these are not easy to find (check out Don Pensack's 2025 Eyepiece Buyer's Guide, which lists many, or it can be calculated or measured with calipers). If you have it, here is the formula:

EYEPIECE FIELD STOP DIAMETER / TELESCOPE FOCAL LENGTH x 57.3 = TFOV (in degrees;  multiply this by 60 for arc minutes)

Example (for the Celestron Xcel-LX 24mm eyepiece pictured above and a 750mm focal length telescope):

25 (provided by manufacturer) / 750 = .033 x 57.3 = 1.89 degrees or 113 arc minutes

The drift method

This one must be done in the field with the telescope - eyepiece combination for which you wish to find the TFOV. Rather than go into the details, David Knisely provided an excellent description in this post from the Cloudy Nights forum. He also provides descriptions of some of the other methods.

The app or chart method

This one is also accomplished in the field and is another rough estimate. Again, With the telescope - eyepiece combination for which you wish to find the TFOV, locate any two easily identifiable stars that just fit on the edges of a full diameter of the eyepiece field of view, and measure the distance between those stars in the app. This is inherently inaccurate because you have to eyeball it, but it will give you a number close enough for casual observing.

Using TFOV in starhopping

Fortunately, apps like Sky Safari Pro, Stellarium, and Cartes du Ciel let you specify the custom TFOVs for various combinations of telescopes and eyepieces. Once you've set those up, it's easy to starhop around by moving the background behind the TFOV indicator in the app and seeing how far you need to move from one object to another in the telescope. 

For example, "I need to move two-and-a-half fields of view in my 750mm 6-inch telescope using the Celestron Xcel-LX 24mm eyepiece (1.89 degree TFOV as calculated above) to get to M13 from Zeta Herculis." (Chart adapted from Cartes du Ciel)

Once you're comfortable with this, your navigation skills will improve immensely.

Can I take pictures through my telescope with my phone?

The short answer: Yes, but prepare to be underwhelmed. My question to you then would be: Why? If the answer to that is you just want something to text or post to show what you were looking at, go for it, but you're really not going to impress anyone. I have people at public events always wanting to take a picture of the Moon through the scope, and I usually oblige them by taking the picture for them, but it slows the line down and won't impress anyone but total non-astronomy folks (maybe). Still, I get it. People want something besides a memory to take home. Frankly, I'm happy with the memories.

Confession: Against all logic, I sometimes try to take pictures through my telescopes with a cell phone at the eyepiece, knowing it is probably a waste of time. The only decent pictures I've ever gotten were of the Moon, which are still far below almost any image I can find on the internet and the detail I can see visually, and some pretty cool images of Spica and Arcturus with an apodizing mask on my 10-inch. Otherwise, the images suck. Granted, I am using a Pixel 6a, which isn't exactly cutting edge now, so if you have a newer phone, or the latest and greatest (for now) iPhone, then you might have better luck. 

Anyway, here is a gallery of images I took through my 10-inch and 6-inch Dobsonians with the Pixel 6a, as a baseline for what you might expect to get, depending on your phone's camera. I will say it is difficult to get the phone's camera lens lined up with the eyepiece while still being able to snap an image before the object drifts out of view. Although I have no experience with eyepiece phone adapters, the general consensus appears to be that they are fiddly and mostly a waste of time and money. If you do get one, the Celestron NexYZ is often recommended. The images I've seen from them, however, are no better than my handheld images. Phones seem to be much better at getting non-optically magnified images like the Milky Way, or a lunar eclipse over some scenery using their night vision mode, or whatever they call it. Bright comets can be kind of nice.

Left: The Moon rising over the hills. This was so cool that I wanted to take a picture to put in my log for that unique sight, just to remember it better. To me, this is the best kind of use case for taking an image through the eyepiece. 10-inch dob.

Left: The gibbous Moon, zoomed in and cropped to show the level of detail, which is nowhere near what I could see visually. 6-inch tabletop dob.

Left: Spica with the apodizing mask. Pretty psychedelic, but rather pointless. Well, there actually are a lot of points. 10-inch dob. Apodizing masks are used on larger telescopes to negate some of the effects of poor seeing for splitting double stars and seeing more planetary detail. I didn't notice any improvement on my scope, as expected, although the kaleidoscope effect is interesting.

Left: Arcturus with the apodizing mask. Far out, man! 10-inch dob.

Left: Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) through a 6x30 finder. The shot through the eyepiece was too awful even to post here as a bad example.

Left: The same comet using the phone's "night vision" capability, without magnification. Especially with distinctive scenery, this can bring back the memory of the night much better than an eyepiece shot can.

So there you have it. Casual photos? Maybe. Anything more, get a SeeStar or go down the imaging rabbit hole and be prepared to spend some money and a lot of time learning processing. If you want to do planets and the Moon, a basic planetary camera might work for you, but you have to seriously ask yourself why you are wanting to do imaging. It's not for everyone but some people just love it, and it's more forgiving of light pollution.

Astro imaging is indeed a different hobby entirely from visual observing. I remember photographing Comet Hyakutake on a homemade barn door mount with a poorly functioning stepper motor and a film SLR camera. I don't even know where the picture is now, but it was so much less inspiring than the actual view of seeing the comet from that dark sky, stretching overhead like a flashlight beam. 

After that, I decided not to waste good observing opportunities trying to capture something mediocre to take home with me, unless I spend less than a couple minutes doing so out of the apparently primal urge for a tangible keepsake of everything to post on social media.

For me, give me visual every time. I'll find the pretty pictures on the internet—and I do, for placing in my log or notes to go along with my visual descriptions, or just to see what an object can look like to an imaging chip with a lot of computer manipulation.

How to find a darker sky

One of the most dramatic improvements you can make in the quality of your visual observing is by getting to a darker sky. Most of us live in or near big cities, or at least larger towns. Getting away from all those lights will allow our eyes, binoculars, and telescopes to see more in the night sky. Today, being mobile is more important than ever. Even imaging and electronic assisted astronomy benefit from darker skies, despite the ability to counter light pollution to an extent through technology. Some amateur astronomers say that the best filter for your telescope is the "car filter." Get in a car and drive somewhere darker.

(Above: The sky at Arizona Sky Village. Photo by Astronomerica)

If you are new to astronomy and you are lucky enough to live in a reasonably dark sky without neighbors who try to banish the evil darkness with all-night lights, you may be able to do most if not all of your observing at home. But most of us aren't so lucky, and home observing must contend not only with pervasive sky glow but neighbors' lights, streetlights, parking lot lights, headlights, building lights, etc. I only observe the Moon, bright planets, and occasional double stars from home. Everything else means driving somewhere else to get better views.

Contact a local astronomy club

The best way to find observing sites that are reasonably dark, have little or no glare from local lights, are safe, and have decent horizons is to locate and contact your local astronomy club. Chances are that someone has already done the hard work of finding suitable locations and negotiating with the powers that be for the use of that land at night for observing. I am lucky to belong to the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club, one of the largest amateur astronomy clubs in the United States. We have numerous sites from suburban to dark sky, depending on how far you are willing to drive.

Being a member of a club usually gets you access to sites that the general public may not be allowed in at night. It will also give you information about members' favorite sites that may not be official club sites, but are still viable places to observe.

Do your own research

If you don't have a nearby club, you can do your own research, or ask on the various fora such as Cloudy Nights, Stargazer's Lounge (for the U.K.), The Sky Searchers, or various Discord servers what others might recommend. This also works if you are traveling and want to know where a good place to observe might be. For your own safety, never tell anyone except relatives and trusted friends where you are going to observe, but make sure someone knows where you are.

The most accurate light pollution map is the one developed and maintained by David Lorenz, called Light Pollution Atlas. The most recent data is from 2023 and the satellite data and methods he uses to determine sky brightness seem to be more accurate than other light pollution maps. If you click on a point, it will tell you the year of the data, the latitude and longitude, and the sky brightness measured in magnitudes per square arcsecond, close to what you would get if you used a sky quality meter (SQM) to measure the sky (shown above), as well as a ratio of artificial/natural brightness. These are all approximations in the map, and tend to still be overly optimistic especially while we are near solar maximum, but give you plenty of information to see how skies compare relative to each other.

Left: It's a long drive to a dark sky from the Northeastern U.S. megalopolis. The dark blue near the top is the area around Cherry Springs State Park in north-central Pennsylvania, a favorite observing spot for those in the region. The other blue area in the lower left is in the mountains of West Virginia, home of the Almost Heaven Star Party.

(David Lorenz, Light Pollution Atlas)

You may hear people say that they live in an orange zone, or in Bortle 5, for example. The color refers to the color scale of more basic maps, which ranges from white (brightest) to black (darkest). The Bortle Scale was invented by amateur astronomer, comet observer, and contributor to Sky & Telescope magazine John Bortle, and is a scale to measure the brightness of the sky in a particular place and time based on what can be seen in the sky. More people will refer to their site using the Bortle Scale than with an SQM reading, so it's good to know what both mean. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see a rough comparison chart. (Your browser may warn you the site is not secure. Proceed only if you trust those nefarious amateur astronomers!) 

Lorenz's atlas appropriately does not use the Bortle Scale because it is dependent upon observations on a specific night by a specific individual, assuming they didn't just read it off a map. However, if someone who has a reasonable amount of observing experience tells you he or she estimated that a site was Bortle 2, you can be pretty certain it's nice and dark and you will not be disappointed observing there on a good night. But most people don't actually bother trying to make Bortle Scale observations. I prefer looking at the Atlas or just staying away from population centers.

Here is the color scale from David Lorenz's atlas, calibrated to the brightness readings:

Although the SQM readings are more precise, I personally find it much more difficult to remember how good a sky is based on the SQM number. For example, my usual semi-dark site is listed at 21.01 (greenish-brown). The site I camp at is 21.28 (green). My home is a sickening 18.42 (red bordering on light gray). 

I figure anything around 21.0 and higher is usable for deep sky observing and I can get some decent views that are worth driving an hour or so. Anything about 21.7 and higher is going to be very good to excellent, and there are only two big areas in the eastern United States like this—in the mountains of West Virginia and in north-central Pennsylvania—that have suitable observing places, unless you own private property in the Adirondack Mountains and have cleared some trees. But these are difficult number ranges to remember, so I get why people use the color scale or Bortle rating. Looking at the map, it's much easier to see where you need to head for dark skies because of the color scale. (David Lorenz, Light Pollution Atlas)

Other considerations

A dark sky is not the only criterion. There is the weather, dust, and wildfire smoke. Also avoid hours where the Moon is up. You need a good horizon. As noted, the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York get as dark as 21.91 (see above), if you believe the map readings, but good luck finding some open sky. 

You want to avoid parks that close at dusk (almost all local and state ones) unless you like talking to the police, stay off private property without the owner's permission, and avoid dangerous places. An airport runway might seem like a great place until a Cessna flies out of the darkness and tries to land on your head. (Cessna 152 by Ramon FVelasquez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, with edits)

You also need to be away from nearby lights, which is a much more difficult endeavor than it might seem at first, as many people absolutely LOVE all-night "security" lights. I've always thought this was odd, because no one is out there in the middle of the night to see prowlers moving around. Well, except for astronomers, who unfortunately won't be there to scare off the prowlers because YOUR LIGHTS ARE TOO ANNOYING! I will leave you with one of my "poems" from the Redneck Patio (see link at right):

Criminal

Porch lights

Garage lights

Whitewash the suburban wasteland

And kill the night sky

As I draw chalk emojis

On the driveways,

Unseen.

🙉🙈🙊 

An inexpensive hand controller for your SynScan mount

I have a Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTi 150P 6-inch collapsible tabletop telescope, which has become my go-to scope (pun most certainly intended) since I am no longer able to heft my 10-inch Dobsonian around on a regular basis. 

This scope uses the SynScan app to control the mount, which appears to me to be a cheaper version of the AZ-GTi mount. My particular scope's go-to works poorly, so I use the mount strictly for tracking when viewing the Moon and brighter planets from my Bortle 8-ish home. I built a more reliable alt-az tabletop mount that I use for everything else.

The SynScan app (shown at left), in my opinion, is rather poorly rendered and clunky. Beyond that, though, my main dislike is the fact that with any app controlling your mount, you have to look down at your cell phone and use the touchscreen to move the scope around. This makes it difficult to see the effects in the eyepiece and I have found it very frustrating.

To solve that problem, I did some google-fu and found that several people have used game controllers to replace at least some of the commands on the app. All I was looking for was one that would let me control the altitude and azimuth movements with actual buttons that I can feel at night without taking my eye from the eyepiece. 

I didn't want a full size game controller, and found a little mini one that someone mentioned on this Cloudy Nights thread that will indeed work for movement control with my scope. For $5 shipped from Aliexpress (you won't get that low price now), I picked up an 8BitDo Zero 2 keychain-sized mini controller. Its Bluetooth paired easily with both of my cell phones (Google Pixels). 

Now I can control the scope without taking my eye from the eyepiece. What a difference this makes for frustration-free viewing! Because the tracking on my scope is rather poor, I frequently need to recenter the object in the field of view, and this makes it much easier than using the touchscreen on the phone. Panning around on the Moon is much more pleasant. Also, my mount has a tendency every once in a while to go slewing off into the ether somewhere on its own, and this way I can quickly stop it and bring it back under control without fumbling with my cell phone. 

I use it one handed, and it works even if I have thin gloves on or hold it inside my pocket. It does have a steady blue light when connected to the phone's bluetooth, so you might need to keep it in your pocket or tape over the light if you use it around other folks in a darker environment. In my light polluted yard, it makes no difference.

While I can't comment on how well this works with other mounts and apps, for $20 (now the lowest price on Amazon), it might be worth a try. Or if you already have a game controller, try that one. It has made a big difference in the usability of my tracking mount.

How to get the most out of an astronomy outreach event

One of the coolest things about amateur astronomy is that we have "star parties." These can be local or informal outreach events open to the public or big events held annually at dark sky sites requiring registration and fees, and attended by people from around the world.

Outreach events

(Above: The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club teams up with Sky Meadows State Park to hold a monthly "Astronomy for Everyone" event for the public where club members provide views of the night sky through their telescopes. That's my white 10-inch in the foreground!)

Many astronony clubs, mine included, have monthly outreach events where volunteers from the club bring our telescopes and show members of the public some of the best celestial objects in the sky. These can have a variety of names, and while not quite the same as the classic star party, they have many elements of one, and the line can be blurred. Generally these are free and open to the public without any prior registration, and having your own telescope or even a knowledge of the night sky is not required—just an interest in seeing interesting objects in the sky and hobnobbing with astro nerds. 

Outreach events are a great chance to dip your toes into astronomy without having to invest in anything other than the gas to drive there and an evening of your time.

Great for beginners

These events are also great for beginners to check out various types of telescopes before buying, and to see what kind of a views can be had with each type and size of telescope. Owners are usually glad to let you look through their telescopes (ask, if there isn't a waiting line) and answer questions about their telescope, being an amateur astronomer, and the objects you are viewing.

If you are the proud owner of a new telescope and need some help, you'll find lots of it at an outreach event. In most cases, members of the public are encouraged to bring their own telescopes. It's always a good idea to get there while there is still plenty of daylight to set up your telescope and see what others have set up. You can get to know some of the other participants and ask them if they can help with your telescope. Just don't expect to show up never having set up your telescope before, aligned it, looked through it, etc. and think someone has the time or inclination to spend their evening getting you started. You need to do as much as you can prior to the event, and if you're still having some issues, explain what they are and ask if someone can give you some pointers. 

Telescopes of many shapes and sizes

There are four basic types of telescope that you may see at an outreach event: 

Refractors: the "typical" telescope that sits on a tripod with the large lens pointed at the sky and a little 90 degree diagonal attachment at the other end containing the eyepiece through which you look. (Pictured: Explore Scientific FirstLight 102mm refractor)

Reflectors: usually consist of a solid metal tube on a tripod or boxlike "Dobsonian" mount with the eyepiece sticking perpendicularly out of the open skyward pointing end of the tube (hidden by the finderscope in this image), or in larger telescopes, a mirror box connected to an upper cage with truss tubes, often requiring a ladder to reach the eyepiece. (Pictured: Apertura AD8 8" Dobsonian)

Catadioptrics ("Cats"): These feature a light path that folds back on itself to create a longer focal length in a short tube. These look like shorter versions of reflectors, with a short, squat tube mounted on a big tripod, and are usually motorized to "go to" objects in a database and track them as the Earth turns. (Pictured: Celestron NexStar 6SE computerized Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope)

You will also increasingly see "smart" telescopes that you don't look through, but are imaging telescopes that build up the image of an object as you watch, usually either on a cell phone or a tablet. (Pictured: ZWO Seestar S30 smart telescope)

The "Big Dobs," (example at right) the second type of reflector described above, will often require a ladder to reach the eyepiece,  and will often have long lines for viewing. Why? Because the larger mirrors used (sometimes 20" or more in diameter and housed in the box at the base of the scope) gather more light and can resolve smaller details. They make it easier to see deep sky objects—star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies—and to discern details that small scopes can't resolve.

But don't neglect the smaller telescopes. Often a high end refractor will show beautiful views of the Moon, brighter planets like Jupiter and Saturn, and double stars and star clusters. "Cats" have narrower fields of view but can also do very well on these objects as well as other deep sky wonders. Smaller reflectors are good general purpose scopes that can give great views of a wide variety of objects. 

Often the owner of the scope will be the biggest factor in determining how much you see and how enjoyable the experience is. Some people just really like to share this stuff, and I count myself among them. We try to give you interesting information about what you are looking at and tips on viewing it to enhance your experience and stimulate your curiosity.

Don't be afraid to bring your own telescope, even if it's very modest compared to others. Many people say that the best scope is the one you use most often. The beauty of small scopes is their portability.

Manage your visual expectations

Each night there are certain objects that will draw many of the telescopes. If Jupiter or Saturn are up, some scopes will certainly be trained on them. Showpiece objects for each season are also popular targets, as we like to show off the "flashy" stuff. The Moon is a great target, unfortunately it washes out the sky for all but the brightest objects, so events are usually planned when the Moon will be out of the way.

However, for deep sky objects, what you see visually in a telescope is nothing at all like the colorful Webb and Hubble space telescope images, or the many other professional or amateur images on the internet. Most people are just floored by seeing Saturn for the first time, but even a bright galaxy might seem like just a colorless faint fuzzy blob to someone seeing it for the first time. It can take years of experience to learn how to see fine detail in these objects.

Left: Messier 17, the Swan Nebula, imaged by the European Southern Observatory (ESO, CC by 2.0, via Flickr)

Left: Messier 17, the Swan Nebula, in the same orientation as it would appear in a typical backyard visual telescope. (Zager Family, CC by 2.0, via Flickr, modified to simulate visual view)

Getting the most from the visual experience

Ask the owner what it is you are looking at, how far away it is, how many stars it contains, does it have a black hole in the center, and appreciate it for what it is. That's the wonder of visual astronomy. Don't expect the view to knock your socks off every time, but appreciate that you're able to see something so huge and far away. Ask what you should be looking for and how to see it. Averted vision, looking away from a faint object slightly to see it better, is one of the big tricks of the trade in visual observing.

Don't touch any equipment unless the owner has told you it's all right. In most cases, the telescope will be aimed properly and you only need to put your eye up to the eyepiece (lens). Ask if you don't know where to put your eye.

For your own part, if you see what looks like bunch of round blobs, it's probably pretty far out of focus and you can ask the owner to help and show you how to focus. Pretty much any view should include many background stars. You want these to look like pinpoints, not blurry dots. When the blobs get smaller, you know you're headed in the right direction. Ask if you're not sure it's in focus.

Sometimes the "seeing," or the steadiness of the atmosphere is not very good, and nothing is completely sharp, but focusing will still get you the best view possible. 

Also, an object may drift out of view in an unmotorized telescope as the Earth turns, or someone may inadvertently bump the scope in the dark, so it may not even be in the field of view anymore. If in doubt, ask if you're looking at the right thing.

If you wear mascara, please don't on this particular night. The grease from mascara can rub off on the eyepiece lens and is very difficult to remove. Some eyepieces in use at outreach events cost many hundreds, and possibly over a thousand dollars. 

For those who wear glasses, some eyepieces have what is called long eye relief, which means you don't have to hold your eye as close to the lens as with some eyepieces to be able to see the entire field of view. In that case, you can leave your glasses on. But if you find much of the view is cut off, taking off your glasses and asking if you can refocus is a better plan, unless you have really bad astigmatism.

Red lights are standard when moving around at an astronomy event. The eye is not very sensitive to red wavelengths, so a red light will preserve night vision. That's why the bridge on a ship at night will use red lights, so the navigators can see out across the waves better. You can buy red flashlights, or put red film or tape across the front of a white light. We hand out rectangles of red film and rubber bands for people to put on their phones, because even a dim screen can still put out a lot of light. 

But a light is a light, so don't shine it in anyone's face or at a telescope when someone is observing or imaging. (Above: Sky Meadows outreach event at night. Image by Drew Prout)

Even in warmer months and climates, it can get much colder at night. Dress warmer than you think you'll need to, and you'll be comfortable. You can always take coats or jackets off. Bring bug spray if needed, but DO NOT spray it anywhere remotely near anyone's optics. Best to get a pump spray, spray on your hand when you're at your car, and then smear it on you.

Because we are at the mercy of nature, it's always possible that an event will be clouded or rained out. Keep an eye on the weather forecast, paying special attention to whether it is predicted to be clear or cloudy. Even in a partly cloudy sky, you may still be able to observe many objects. And we all know forecasts are not always right. Some events will happen rain or shine, with presentations and activities in the event of bad weather. Check the announcements to know what to expect so you don't make a trip out and find you're disappointed.

Astronomy events are great for kids

Kids love events where they can be out at night and see cool stuff. But they are notorious for wanting to just give a telescope a great big bear hug when they step up to look in one, so if you're bringing the little ones, explain in advance that they shouldn't touch the equipment. In most cases, it won't hurt the telescope, but it may knock it off the target, requiring the operator to recenter it. Putting fingers on the lens is a big no-no. (Credit: Aurore Simonnet, CC by 4.0, via WikiMedia)

Kids love to run around in the dark, but running around telescopes can be dangerous and can damage expensive equipment. Usually there is room for kids to run on the periphery of the star party, as long as they are away from the parking and driving lanes.

Many owners will have small step stools for younger kids to be able to reach the eyepiece comfortably. Ask if you don't see one. Don't try to hold your child up to the eyepiece. It's unlikely you will be able to hold them steady enough to get a decent view. Give them time to adjust to looking in the eyepiece. They might say they see the object, but kids often don't want to admit when they don't, so the owner might ask a few questions to make sure they are seeing it and it's in focus. 

What not to ask

Some questions or comments can be a bit troublesome for some astronomers, so here are a few to avoid:

• How much does this cost? Telescopes and equipment can cost for several hundred to many thousands of dollars. How expensive one is really doesn't matter and might be embarrassing to some owners unless you are into a conversation about buying a similar scope. They also don't want to advertise that they have expensive equipment that someone might be tempted to walk away with once they turn their backs. You can look up prices on the internet.
• Can you see the [flag, landers, footprints] on the Moon? These are way too small for any Earth-based or even Earth-orbiting telescope to see. It's not really a stupid question, but a little thought can probably get you the answer on your own. Check out the related links in my Becoming a Lunatic post if you're interested. Better question: Can you show me where Apollo 11 (or other lunar craft) landed?
• How did you get into Astrology? Astronomy is science. Astrology is mysticism. Two different disciplines entirely. (And it's "Scorpius," not "Scorpio"!) Substitute "Astronomy" for "Astrology," and you've got a great question there.
• Can I take a picture through the telescope with my cell phone? Holding up a cell phone to the eyepiece is not an easy thing to do, and often yields a pretty mediocre image. It will also take time away from others who want to view. There might be astronomers in attendance who have "smart" scopes where they can share digital images that you see on the screen- just ask.

The Classic Star Party

The strict definition usually used for a star party is a regularly occurring gathering of amateur astronomers who travel to a dark sky location to observe together over the course of several nights. These usually require registration, often well in advance, and include a fee for camping and participating. They will usually have guest speakers, workshops, vendors, and other organized activities during the day, with observing at night.

A few examples of the biggest star parties in the United States include Cherry Springs/Black Forest Star Party (Pennsylvania), Oregon Star Party, Texas Star Party, Okie-Tex Star Party, and in Canada (Ontario), Starfest. Go Astronomy has a good list of major star parties in the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia. 

Above: Starfest, held in Ayton, Ontario, is the largest star party in Canada.

Astronomy Magazine's article on star parties is a good start to get an idea of the attraction of these star parties.