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You have plenty of readily available information, organizations, people, and facilities to help you get started and remain active in astronomy. You can join associations and activities to help researchers keep track of stars and planets. You can attend astronomy club meetings, lectures, and instructional sessions, which allow you to share telescopes and viewing sites to enjoy the sky with others. You also can find magazines, websites, books, computer programs, and smartphone apps with basic information on astronomy and current events in the sky.

Joining an astronomy club for star-studded company

The best way to break into astronomy without undue effort is to join an astronomy club. Clubs hold meetings where old hands pass along tips on techniques and equipment to beginners and scientists present talks. Members likely know where to get a good deal on a used telescope or binoculars and which products on the market are worth buying. (See Chapter 3 for more.)

Even better, astronomy clubs sponsor observing meetings, usually on weekend nights and occasionally on special dates during a meteor shower or another special event. An observing meeting is the best place to find out about the practice of astronomy and the equipment you need. You don’t have to bring a telescope; most folks are happy to give you a look through theirs. Just wear sensible shoes, bring mittens and a hat for the cool night air, and put on a smile!

If you live in an urban area, chances are good that your night sky is bright. You can find better observational conditions if you travel to a dark spot in the country. Your local club probably has a good observing site, and when the members converge on that lonely place, you can enjoy safety in numbers.

If you live in a good-size city or a college town, you can probably find an astronomy club nearby. If you live in the United States, find the club(s) near you with the locator form of the NASA Night Sky Network, at nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov. Enter a city name, and a calendar pops up with the current month’s astronomy activities in that area.

You can also check out the website of America’s “club of clubs,” the Astronomical League, at www.astroleague.org. Browse the list of more than 240 member societies, arranged by state.

For a more global approach, visit the Sky & Telescope website, at www.skyandtelescope.com (just click the “Clubs and Organizations” tab in the Community menu to find clubs and organizations worldwide). The site lists over 20 astronomy clubs in the state of Missouri, for example, and 9 organizations, including planetariums and an observatory, in the nation of New Zealand.

GAZING AROUND THE WORLD: A SAMPLING OF ASTRONOMY CLUBS

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (www.astrosociety.org), with headquarters in San Francisco, publishes the quarterly digital magazine Mercury for amateurs. It holds an annual meeting that moves around the western United States and sometimes goes as far east as Boston or Toronto. The society also offers numerous educational materials in astronomy to teachers.

Do you live in Canada? The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has 29 Centres, which is a fancy name for astronomy clubs. Professionals from the nearest university often get involved with the Centre’s activities. To find a Centre near you, consult the RASC website, www.rasc.ca.

In the United Kingdom, the venerable British Astronomical Association, founded in 1890, is still going strong. Its website is britastro.org. And the Society for Popular Astronomy, billing itself as “Britain’s brightest astronomical Society,” features sky event news and tweets about planets, bright meteors, and more on its colorful website, www.popastro.com.

Most other countries have astronomy clubs, too. Astronomy is truly a universal passion.

Checking websites, magazines, software, and apps

Finding out about astronomy is easy. You can choose from a wide range of resources, including websites, apps for smartphones and tablet computers, magazines, and desktop computer software. The following sections offer some tips for finding the best information.

Traveling through cyberspace

The Net offers sites on every topic in astronomy, and the resources are increasing at, well, an astronomical rate! You can find many websites listed throughout this book; if you want more information on planets, comets, meteors, or eclipses, the web offers good sites on every topic.

The editors of Sky & Telescope magazine maintain one of the best websites, at www.skyandtelescope.com. Get your observational career started by checking out “This Week’s Sky at a Glance” on that site. It gives a well-illustrated, day-by-day (or night-by-night) account of planets, comets, and other current space phenomena.

In the United Kingdom, Astronomy Now magazine offers a website with an “Observing” section that posts regular announcements of easily seen sky phenomena. Visit astronomynow.com.

Perusing publications

You can purchase excellent magazines to expand your knowledge of astronomy and your skill at practicing it. Most amateur astronomers subscribe to at least one publication. In many cases, if you join a local astronomy club, you may have access to a subscription to a national magazine at a member discount. (See “Joining an astronomy club for star-studded company” earlier in this chapter for the scoop on clubs.)

I recommend that you pick up a copy of each of the “big two” (literally, the biggest two) astronomical magazines: Sky & Telescope and Astronomy. Test-drive the publications for a month, and if you get more out of one than the other, go ahead and subscribe. You can do so from their websites at www.skyandtelescope.com and www.astronomy.com. Both of these magazines are available in both printed and digital editions.

Canadian readers can get the bimonthly SkyNews: The Canadian Magazine of Astronomy & Stargazing, a slick, full-color publication. Visit www.skynews.ca to subscribe.

Astronomy buffs in the United Kingdom should look for Astronomy Now and Popular Astronomy to see which magazine they prefer. Check their websites at astronomynow.com and www.popastro.com/popularastronomy.

In France, an excellent and well-illustrated magazine is Ciel & Espace (www.cieletespace.fr); in Australia, look for Australian Sky & Telescope and its astronomy yearbook for that country (www.austskyandtel.com.au). In Germany, Sterne und Weltraum (www.sterne-und-weltraum.de) excels.

Wherever you live, you’ll find that the annual Observer’s Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (www.rasc.ca) is very useful. Dozens of experts compile the handbook to help you enjoy the skies.

Surveying software and apps

A planetarium program, or “desktop planetarium,” for your personal computer is a real plus. So is a planetarium app for your smartphone or tablet computer. Such programs or apps show you what the sky looks like from your home every night. You can also use them to find out what stars and planets will be up in the sky at a future date or at a different location so you can check in advance what you may observe on an upcoming vacation or visit to a dark sky observation site. This software is terrific to look at before you step outside to view the night sky. Some astronomers use these programs to plan their observing sessions. They prepare schedules of objects to scan with telescopes and binoculars at different times of the night to use their “dark time” effectively. Amateurs with certain telescope models that feature computer control can use some planetarium programs to guide their telescopes to stars, planets, or other sky objects of interest.

Desktop planetarium programs are available over a wide price range (including free programs) with many different features. You can find some programs advertised in astronomy and science magazines and on websites (see the previous two sections); they’re updated occasionally for increased usefulness. You need only one program to get started, and that one may be the only program you ever need. The best way to select the planetarium program that suits you is to talk to experienced amateur astronomers at your local astronomy club. What works for them likely will work for you.

I recommend that you start out with Stellarium as the personal planetarium program on your desktop or laptop computer. It’s a free, open-source program available for computers running most operating systems. It shows you the night or day sky at your place and time, or you can adjust it to check the sky at a later date. Visit the Stellarium website at www.stellarium.org to learn about its many features, view sample screen shots, or download the program to your computer.

A great many astronomy-related apps for smartphones and tablet computers are available for your consideration. Here are some that might work well for you:

❯❯ CraterSizeXL: Use this iPad and iPhone app to calculate the possible danger if a potentially hazardous asteroid is headed for Earth (I discuss PHAs in Chapter 7). Fill in the available information on the object, and CraterSizeXL predicts the impact energy in units of Hiroshima-equivalent atom bomb blasts, crater size, and more. Damage from an asteroid hit can be in the trillions of dollars, but the good news is that you can download the app for about a buck.

❯❯ Sky Guide: This award-winning app by Fifth Star Labs creates beautiful maps of the sky, complete with musical accompaniment (which you can mute). Walk outdoors and spot some stars that you don’t recognize? Just turn on the app, press Sky Guide’s compass icon, and point the phone at the stars. Sky Guide (available for iPhone, iPad, and even for Apple Watch) displays a map of the region, names the constellation, draws lines between stars to indicate its shape, and prints the names of the brighter stars alongside them. It also shows you where the planets are and does much more. Check out the developer’s website at www.fifthstarlabs.com.

❯❯ Galaxy Zoo: This app is free for Android and Apple phones and tablets. It’s for citizen scientists who help advance the science of astronomy by classifying the shapes of an astronomical number of galaxies that the Hubble Space Telescope (and others) have photographed. Join more than a quarter million volunteers worldwide in this worthy effort. (I describe galaxies and how to join Galaxy Zoo with your home computer, smartphone, or tablet in Chapter 12.)

❯❯ Google Sky Map: If you have an Android phone or tablet, you can use this free app to identify visible stars and planets or to enjoy images of numerous celestial objects from NASA and other sources.

❯❯ GoSatWatch: iPhone and iPad owners can use this app to learn where artificial satellites are orbiting and to predict when satellites will pass over your location (or any other) on Earth. (I describe artificial satellite observing in Chapter 4.) Satellite Safari is a similar app for both Android and Apple devices.

❯❯ SkySafari 5: This highly rated planetarium program (for Android devices, iPhone, and iPad) is available in different versions at prices ranging from about $1 for the simplest version to about $20 for the most advanced. The more you pay, the more features you get. With the basic version, you can point the phone toward the sky, night or day, and it identifies the celestial objects visible (night) or invisible (day) that are up in that direction. Start with the cheap version and see whether it does everything you need.

❯❯ Star Chart: This free iPhone and Android app is a simple way to identify stars and constellations.