Stargazing Help

If you buy a star for someone that isn’t quite an astronomy expert, consider Name A Star Live’s Ultimate Stargazer Gift Set that includes star charts, stargazing software, a constellation finder, and all the other essential resources a beginner needs to get started observing the sky

It’s important for a budding astronomer to have guidance: The Ultimate Stargazer Gift Set provides the help new astronomers need. Included in the gift set is the “First Light Astronomy Kit,” which brings together “The Night Sky,” a uniquely designed low-distortion planisphere constellation finder, “Exploring the Night Sky with Binoculars,” an award winning introduction to observational astronomy, and “Sky Atlas for Small Telescopes and Binoculars,” a sky atlas designed specifically for beginners with small optics. The kit comes beautifully packaged in a heavy-duty two-pocket folder to be saved and used for organizing and protecting one’s astronomy materials.

Finding a particular star or constellation is tough without a star chart or Name a Star Live’s Virtual Planetarium™ software. First of all, the night sky is vast, and to the untrained eye, most celestial bodies all look essentially the same … white dots of varying brightness against a black backdrop. These guides help distinguish one “white dot” from another and pinpoint the location of specific stars in the sky depending on the season of year and the time of night. In the same way the moon isn’t viewable at a fixed point in the sky, just about any star’s position relative to your location on Earth also varies.

Taking it a step further, because the Earth orbits the sun, stargazing changes by season. What you can see clearly in the fall is not the same as what you can see clearly in the spring. And, frankly, the changing skies are one of the things that make stargazing so fun and interesting.