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.

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.

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.

Every culture in the world has its own myths and legends and had different ways of joining up the stars into patterns. The ancient Greek constellation names were passed on only by historical accident, and it’s these names that are the formally recognised astronomical constellations. Chinese astronomy has 31 constellations (called enclosures), while the Native Americans also drew patterns in the stars, as did Australian Aborigines, the ancient Egyptians and cultures the world over.

Even if you’re not into stargazing, you’ve heard of the Twilight Zone. Is it real? Yes, but not in a spooky way. Just after the Sun sets in the evening or just before it rises in the morning, the sky is still lit up – a time known as twilight. This illumination is because the Sun can still shine its light on the atmosphere above you, even if it can’t shine its light directly on you.

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.

The Moon is the Earth’s nearest neighbour in space, and when you’re stargazing, it can be the brightest thing in the night sky. It’s also one of the most amazing sights seen through even a small telescope. If you look at only one thing through a telescope, it should be the Moon. You need to observe the Moon in just the right conditions.

Constellations have a lot more stars than the Greek alphabet has letters, so once all the brighter ones have been given a Bayer letter, astronomers have to use a different system for naming stars. As a result, all stars within a constellation are given a number too. Stars within a constellation are numbered from west to east (right to left in the northern hemisphere, and left to right in the southern).

Astronomers measure a star’s brightness using something called the magnitude scale, where each star – or planet or faint fuzzy – has a magnitude brightness value. When looking up at stars from the Earth – which you’ll do – astronomers measure how bright the star appears to them. This is the star’s apparent magnitude.