Shelf I · Route
The First Nights Route
“I want to learn the sky properly, in order, before I spend money on a telescope.”
4 courses for £1,847 instead of £2,291
- Your eyes
- Binoculars
STAR ATLAS · 12 courses · 3 routes
Find your course on the atlas
Four shelves, from your first night with no equipment to processing a night of deep-sky frames. Search, or narrow it down by what you already own.
SHELF I · NAKED EYE
First nights out
You can find the Moon and perhaps the Plough. Everything else up there is still a scatter of dots.
Shelf I · Naked eye
Reading the Night Sky: Constellations by Season
“I look up, see hundreds of stars and cannot tell one pattern from another.”
- Your eyes
Shelf I · Naked eye
Binocular Astronomy from a British Back Garden
“Everyone says buy binoculars before a telescope, but I do not know what to point them at.”
- Your eyes
- Binoculars
Shelf I · Naked eye
The Moon, Crater by Crater
“The Moon is the one thing I can always find, and I still do not know what I am looking at.”
- Your eyes
- Binoculars
- A telescope
Shelf I · Naked eye
Keeping an Observing Log: Notes, Sketches and Meteor Counts
“I have seen lovely things through the year and remember almost none of them.”
- Your eyes
SHELF II · TELESCOPE
At the eyepiece
You own a telescope, or are about to, and want it to show you more than a wobbling blur.
Shelf II · Route
The Eyepiece Route
“I bought the telescope and I would like to know it properly, from the box to the faint fuzzies.”
3 courses for £1,953 instead of £2,304
- A telescope
Shelf II · Telescope
Choosing and Setting Up Your First Telescope
“The telescope came out twice, showed me a blur, and now it lives in the hall cupboard.”
- A telescope
Shelf II · Telescope
Planets at the Eyepiece
“I found Jupiter, saw a bright dot with four specks, and wondered why it looks nothing like the photos.”
- A telescope
Shelf II · Telescope
Star-Hopping to the Deep Sky
“My charts say the galaxy is right there and my eyepiece shows nothing at all.”
- A telescope
- Binoculars
SHELF III · CAMERA
The sky with a camera
You have a phone or a camera and a tripod, and you want the stars to come out in the picture.
Shelf III · Camera
Night-Sky Photography with a Phone or Camera on a Tripod
“The sky looked astonishing and every photo I took came out black or orange.”
- Phone or camera + tripod
Shelf III · Camera
Milky Way Landscapes: Planning, Shooting and Stacking
“I drove to a dark site, set everything up, and the Milky Way was not where I expected it.”
- Phone or camera + tripod
Shelf III · Camera
Tracking Mounts and Polar Alignment
“Past twenty seconds my stars turn into little dashes and I do not know how to stop it.”
- Phone or camera + tripod
- Tracking mount
SHELF IV · DEEP SKY
Into the deep sky
You are ready to image galaxies and nebulae and turn hours of raw frames into one clean picture.
Shelf IV · Route
The Imaging Route: Tripod to Deep Sky
“I want to go from phone snapshots of the stars to my own picture of a nebula, without missing a step.”
5 courses for £3,236 instead of £5,478
- Phone or camera + tripod
- Tracking mount
- A telescope
- A computer
Shelf IV · Deep sky
Deep-Sky Imaging with a Small Refractor
“I have the mount and a small telescope, and I want to photograph a nebula, not just look at one.”
- Phone or camera + tripod
- Tracking mount
- A telescope
Shelf IV · Deep sky
Processing Astro Images: Calibrate, Stack and Stretch
“I have hours of frames from a clear night and they all look grey and empty on the screen.”
- A computer