It is possible to see Venus with the unaided eye, not just before dawn or sunset but even at midday! The problem is in knowing when and where to look. In attempting to look for it myself I developed the following gadget, which is easily carried in the pocket and can be brought out and [read more]

I am not a comet hunter! But from reading popular astronomy books it seemed to me that the Victorians, in particular, had had more than their fair share of ‘comets of the century’ – great arcing comets that had stretched across large sections of the sky and had amazed the non-astronomers viewing them in their [read more]

This article is intended to describe how the amateur astronomer can start on spectroscopy, a topic often thought of as the province of the professional. I’m concentrating on low resolution spectroscopy here. The beauty of this subject is that plain ordinary stars – that the regular amateur astronomer isn’t usually interested in – become the [read more]

This article is a brief primer on how you might make your first attempts at astro-photography.
There are three options:

Use a simple ‘point and shoot’ camera
Use a webcam
Use a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera

Option 1

Your typical astronomical target will be the moon or the planets. If you have a special filter for the sun, or [read more]