Simple Stargazing. Anton Vamplew

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       Introduction

      Prepare yourself for an adventure… that will take you deep into space and far back in time. This great journey begins the moment you cast your eyes up into the night sky. After a while you’ll be looking beyond the stars, wondering about distant life or maybe thinking just how fantastically big this whole Universe thing is.

      I vividly remember when I was six, gazing out of my bedroom window with a desire to learn the names of the bright stars and the patterns I knew existed in the form of constellations. Little did I know what I had started – a lifelong trip which never ceases to amaze me. We are now in the age of Hubble, Cassini, Galileo, Hipparchos and Messenger (etc., etc.) – spacecraft that open up the vistas of the Universe to realms that excite while causing us to constantly rearrange our jigsaw of… well, everything. And this is not going to slow down. Look out for specially trained astronauts on the Moon and Mars, and ‘ordinary’ astronauts (that’s you and me) taking short trips into space.

      Hopefully I can share some of my wonderment through these pages. None of this is rocket science (apart from the rocket science stuff). The name of the stargazing game is easy, short observing whenever you have a few spare moments while the stars are twinkling overhead.

      ‘Oh, but I can’t see the stars from where I live,’ is always a good one. Read carefully, as this will be written only once: living in a town, city or anywhere with light-polluted skies need not deter anyone from stargazing. Although the sky glow washes out the fainter stars, the major constellations will still be visible. So you won’t be hindered from learning the main star patterns. No excuse there, then!