Steve Owens

Stargazing is a fascinating hobby, but there’s an awful lot to gaze at up there. Eighty-eight constellations and hundreds of other objects both bright and faint mean that wherever you look when you’re stargazing, there’s something to see. If you want to make sense of it all, and make sure that your kit is properly set up, this Cheat Sheet is here to help.

As an excited newcomer to stargazing, you’ll want to get outside and start straight away. Here’s a quick list of targets that you can tick off on your way to mastering the night sky. If you’re hunting dark-sky targets, you’ll need to wait for a night when the Moon isn’t in the sky.Stargazing target: The MoonEarth’s closest celestial neighbour is a splendid sight in the night sky, even if it does spoil the view of fainter objects.

Following are ten things to look for the next time you’re lucky enough to be out stargazing under a dark sky. You will have to travel to see everything discussed here: some are only visible from certain parts of the Earth and at certain times of year.Dark-sky stargazing: So many stars!The first thing you’ll notice as you move from city to countryside is the sheer number of stars overhead on a clear night.

Stargazing through binoculars or a telescope is hugely rewarding, but imagine if you could capture stunning images of what you see to share with the world. Astrophotography awaits, and with recent developments in equipment, amateur stargazers are beginning to obtain images that rival those that were possible with professional telescopes only decades ago.

The Sun is Earth’s local star. It looks much bigger, brighter and hotter than the stars you see at night, but that’s only because you’re much closer to the Sun than you are to the other stars. For example, say that you got into a spaceship – the fastest ever built – and flew towards the next-closest star, α Centauri.

If you use binoculars for your stargazing, you need to get them into focus before you begin. Once your binoculars are focused, the stars you see should look incredibly sharp. You can focus most binoculars in the same way. Just follow this simple step-by-step guide:Adjust the separation between the two eyepiece lenses so that they’re at the same spacing as the distance between your pupils, called the interpupillary distance.

Orion is great signpost constellation to use for your stargazing. In fact, it may be the very best, because you can use the stars of Orion to find seven other constellations immediately around it.The objects you can find using Orion as a signpost are:Orion’s Belt to Canis Major: Picture Orion as a hunter standing upright, with the stars Betelgeuse and Bellatrix marking out his shoulders, and Saiph and Rigel marking out his feet.

One of the great signposts in the northern hemisphere sky is the Big Dipper, also known as the Plough, an asterism in the constellation of Ursa Major. If you can find the Big Dipper, then you’re well on your way to finding lots of other constellations. ‘Dipper’ is an American word for a large ladle for scooping liquid.

When you use a telescope for your stargazing, it usually comes with a finderscope, a small attachment which allows you to focus on the correct part of the sky. To align your finderscope and telescope:Get your alignment target in the centre of the field of view of your main scope.Your scope may have come with a cross-hair attachment that you can fit to your eyepiece to help you get the target exactly in the centre.