Learn to use binoculars and what they can see.

Binoculars for observing stars

You must have been watching the starry sky for a long time! But if you want to be prepared for observation, you can't just use your eyes all the time. Before buying a telescope, try buying a binocular. Perhaps there is a binocular lying somewhere in your home. Of course, if not, binoculars are much cheaper than regular telescopes, and they are also easy to carry to darker places, even in the backyard of your home. Moreover, binoculars can give you unparalleled views of the starry sky. Here are some tips for using binoculars.

1. Binoculars are easier to use than telescopes

It is recommended that most readers who want to purchase telescopes - using binoculars for one year or more is a better choice. Because most first-time users of telescopes find themselves confused and want to give up - for two reasons: learning how to use complex equipment and locate celestial bodies in the sky.

Junior stargazers often find that a pair of ordinary binoculars sold in most discount store gives them the desired effect. After all, in astronomical observations, the telescope's magnification and focusing ability enable the observer to see more clearly. Even if it is a moderate spotlight (such as 7 × The 50 focused telescope also magnifies and provides 7-fold detail information that is invisible to the naked eye.

Readers also need to know what they want to watch. Many people use a zodiac chart when starting to observe stars.

2. Start with a small and easy to use telescope

Don't buy a large binocular from the beginning, unless you fix it on a tripod, it will make your observed sky shake non-stop. For beginner enthusiasts, a pair of 7 × A double tube of 50 would be the best choice. Its field of view is wide and stable, with minimal shaking. And it is also very easy to use during the day, such as bird watching. If 7 × The 50 size twin tube is still very large for you, or if you want to buy one for children, you can try the 7x35 size.

3. First, look at the moon with binoculars

When you start gazing at the starry sky, you will want to carefully observe the state of the moon. If you want to see deep space objects in our Milky Way galaxy - or outside our Milky Way galaxy - you will want to avoid the moon. But the moon itself is a perfect target for astronomers using binoculars. Tip: The best time to observe the moon is at dusk. When the light on the moon is not so bright, you will see more details.

When the moon has just risen, gaze at it, and when it is a new moon in the western sky after sunset, you will appreciate the beautiful scenery of the ground. The strange light in the dimming part of the moon is reflected from the Earth to the surface of the moon.

Moon and Earth Illumination. Source: Photography by Greg Diesel Walker.

Every month, as the moon experiences its regular phase, you can see the sunrise and sunset lines on the moon passing through its face. This is just the boundary between light and darkness on the moon. This line between the day and night sides of the moon is the ending line. This is the best location to see the lunar features casting long shadows in sharp reliefs.

Look at the gray spots on the moon - named the dark part of the lunar surface - which early astronomers believed was the ocean. Of course, they are not the ocean. They formed 3.5 billion years ago when asteroid sized rocks hit the moon so severely that magma seeped out of the cracks and submerged the impact basin. After these magma plains cooled, they eventually formed the gray "ocean" we see today.

The white highland is an older terrain with thousands of craters formed in eternity. You can see some larger craters with binoculars. One of them, the Tycho Sky Survey Satellite, emits hundreds of miles of long white light over nearby highlands. This is the material kicked out during the Tycho impact 2.5 million years ago.

4. Using binoculars to view planets

Planets are wanderers, moving away from fixed stars and wandering around. You can locate recently visible planets through the EarthSky Tonight webpage. For example, binoculars can expand the field of view of a planet near the moon, or of two planets approaching each other in the twilight sky.

Mercury and Venus. These inner planets orbit the sun within the Earth's orbit. Therefore, from Earth's perspective, both Mercury and Venus have phases. Through binoculars, you should be able to see the crescent phase before and after their rendezvous with the sun. Tip: Venus is very bright, and its dazzling light will overwhelm the entire field of view. Try to watch it in the evening instead of a completely dark night.

Mars This red planet does indeed look red, and binoculars will make its color even brighter. Mars also moves rapidly in front of a star, and it is interesting to align the binoculars in its direction as it passes through another bright star or planet.

Jupiter. Let's start taking real action now! Jupiter is a great binocular observation target even for beginners. Hold the binoculars steady and you will see four light points nearby. These are Galileo satellites: the four satellites discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo through the first telescope in history. If you can't see all four satellites, it's because they pass in front of or behind gas giants. Observe how their relative positions change day and night.

View the large image. EarthSky Facebook friend Carl Galloway took a picture of Jupiter's satellite. Thank you, Carl! The four main moons of Jupiter are called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This is a telescopic view, but you can also see one, two, or more satellites through binoculars.

Saturn. Although you need a small telescope to see Saturn's rings, your binoculars will display Saturn's beautiful golden color. You can even glimpse Saturn's largest moon, Titan. In addition, a high-quality high-power binocular mounted on a tripod will tell you that Saturn is not round. These rings make it elliptical in shape.

Uranus and Neptune. Through location maps and binoculars, you can discover the two farthest planets. Thanks to the methane in Uranus's atmosphere, Uranus may appear green. Once a year, Uranus is hardly bright enough to be caught with the naked eye... first, use binoculars to locate it. The distant Neptune always looks like a star, although its atmosphere is almost the same as that of Uranus.

You may use binoculars to see other celestial bodies in the solar system: occasional comets (which look like blurry spots of light) and 12 asteroids at their brightest. Draw a star field map on the following night to track the movement of asteroids resembling stars.

Explore the interior of our Milky Way galaxy

Binoculars can introduce you to many members of the Milky Way's hometown. Starting from the star cluster near Earth. They cover a much larger area of the sky than others, but farther away star clusters require an astronomical telescope.

From autumn to spring, we can find a star cluster similar to the Big Dipper, which we call the Pleiades or the Pleiades Seven Fairies. This star cluster, although small, is as unique as the Big Dipper. The vast majority of people can only detect six stars with the naked eye, and binoculars will display more, along with a delicate star chain extending to the other side. The Pleiades cluster appears large and unique because it is very close to us, approximately 400 light-years away from Earth. These stars were born around the same time and are still constrained by gravity. They are very young and have been around for about 20 million years, compared to our sun, which is 5 billion years old.

The stars in the cluster are all formed from the same gas cloud. You can observe the original state of the Pleiades cluster by shifting your gaze to the famous constellation Orion. Find the star where the sword of Orion is located, just below the star on the famous Orion belt. (Betelgeuse 1, Betelgeuse 2, and Betelgeuse 3 form the hunter's belt from east to west. The sword under the hunter's belt is composed of the four stars (Orion) θ 1 and Orion θ 2) Composed of the Orion Nebula (M42), also known as the Falun Star in China. If the night is clear and bright, and far away from the light pollution of the city street lights, the naked eye can see that the sword is not completely composed of stars. Binoculars can display a stable glowing gas, and at that moment, a star cluster was born. This is the Orion Nebula, which corresponds to the Lagoon Nebula (M8) during summer, located in the constellation Sagittarius.

In star factories like the Orion Nebula, we cannot truly see these young stars themselves. They are buried deep in the nebula and emit light by shining ultraviolet light on the gas cloud. In tens of thousands of years, the winds of these young, energetic stars will blow away their gaseous cocoons and form a new star cluster.

Scanning along the Milky Way reveals more scenes that suggest the complexity of our hometown galaxy. Firstly, the Milky Way itself emits light; Just a casual glance through binoculars can reveal many stars that we cannot distinguish with the naked eye There are thousands of these stars. Usually, when we observe, we find black holes that appear to be speckled in stellar light. These clusters of dark, non luminous gases and dust can be seen in silhouette against the background of the star. This is a characteristic of future stars and solar systems, just waiting for the synthesis of a new sun.

The Milky Way arches over a Joshua tree, and the image is taken by EarthSky Facebook partner Manish Mamtani (browsing Manish on Facebook)

6. Scenery beyond the Milky Way

Let's jump out of the Milky Way and reach the final stop of our binocular journey. Throughout autumn and winter, the "goddess tied to rocks" - Andromeda Galaxy 1- remained suspended in the sky of the Northern Hemisphere. The center of the star pattern is an elliptical light spot that can be clearly distinguished with the naked eye in areas far from city lights. Binoculars can better observe her.

Just like our galaxy, it is a completely different galaxy shining in the vast interstellar space. The light emitted from the Andromeda galaxy takes over 2 million years to reach us. Two smaller companion stars, the Magellanic Cloud of the Andromeda galaxy, can be observed using binoculars on a dark and less cloudy night. These small, orbiting, and irregularly shaped galaxies will eventually be torn apart by the gravity of their parent galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy comes from photography by Chris Levitan

From the barren surface of the moon to the glow of neighboring galaxies, these scenes can be observed with a small handheld optical device: your binoculars.