Many would wonder why anyone, especially supposedly mature adults, would ever want to take up a hobby where most of your time is spent alone in the dark, fighting mosquitoes for half the year and frostbite the other. In my defence, here’s my Top Twelve List of sky stuff, easily visible to amateur astronomers, each far more interesting than pretty much every prime time show on TV these days.
At Number 12 is the easily observable man made stuff: the International Space Station and hundreds of artificial satellites orbiting just above our atmosphere. Below the satellites, and placing 11th, are upper atmospheric events like meteor showers and the northern lights; no equipment is required to enjoy these.
At Number 10, the Moon is just too big to be ignored, and I don’t; the fascinating landscape of craters and mountains is easily visible with binoculars and modest telescopes.
At Number 9, Nebulae: with colourful names like the Ring, Dumbbell, Trifid, Veil, Eagle and Crab, these dozens of massive gas clouds house both ancient stars and new ones waiting to be born. Number 8, the Galaxies: the Andromeda, Pinwheel and millions of others, so numerous in places that dozens can be seen at once in a single telescopic field. Number 7 are the Stars - the giants, the dwarfs, binary groups, and variables that brighten and dim as you watch.
At Number 6 are the Pleiades, Coat Hanger and other families of stars called open star clusters, observable with your eyes or binoculars. Number 5 are comets and asteroids, the mostly predictable visitors to the inner solar system that sometimes bring a surprise.
Number 4 – one’s first view of Saturn and its rings is a ‘Wow!’ moment for almost everyone, as is Jupiter and its moons at Number 3.
At Number 2 are Globular Clusters - mysterious balls of hundreds of thousands of stars orbiting the centre our galaxy. There are no plausible theories about why they exist, but there they are, big and bright and easy to see. X-files stuff.
And finally, at Number 1, my favourite object of all is the Night Sky itself, what you see when you look up from a dark location at The Milky Way galaxy, and think about what you’re actually seeing. This glimpse of the universe, available to you from your own back yard, is to me the grandest sight of all.
