How To Read A Star Gazing Chart

I'm Robert Massey and I'm here from the Royal Astronomical Society which is one of the biggest astronomical organizations in the world and we look after the interests of astronomers not just in the UK but across the world. What I'm going to do today is give you a few pointers to get you started in astronomy which I think is one of the most incredibly interesting subjects there is. If you're starting out in hobby astronomy or amateur astronomy, it's very useful to buy something like a star chart particularly if you have even a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, and the good thing about a star chart is it's basically a map of the night sky and it lets you find things or know where things are that you can't see perhaps with your eye but you can pick out with your telescope.

For example, this star chart here, I've opened it on a page of the constellation of Orion which is very easy to spot in the winter sky and in the northern hemisphere or the summer sky in the southern hemisphere, and it's a good example because it's very rich in things. There's an object called the Orion Nebula down here which is just about visible with the eye but even with a pair of binoculars, you'll see a lot more if you go out to the dark sky and look at it that way. So, a star chart is a really nice tool to have if you're just starting out in the hobby and you want to find your way around.

It's the perfect thing to use and I think the amateur astronomers, I know very many of them, would use things like this to find their way around the night sky. They are also fairly easy to get hold of if you go to a good bookshop or certainly a specialist astronomy supplier, they'll have no difficulty in providing you with one of these. They're not terribly expensive either and I think they're actually quite nice to look at.

They're perhaps not as lavish as illustrated in the ones we had 3 or 400 years ago but for all that, it's quite intriguing just as it is with maps of the Earth to look at them and think about the things you might want to look the next time you go out at night. .