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
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.
12 courses
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
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
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
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