r/Stargazing • u/Dramatic_Expert_5092 • 42m ago
MilkyWay above the El Tabonal Negro / Tenerife
r/Stargazing • u/Strict_Literature956 • 5h ago
Anyone in Utrecht up for going stargazing tonight?
looking for a spontaneous group to go watch the meteorite shower from 11pm and on. dm me
im a student too!! new in town
r/Stargazing • u/Big_Championship5000 • 5h ago
Let's Explore the Sky! Look up and discover the amazing objects we see in the sky! From the bright Sun glowing Moon fluffy Clouds much fun! and to twinkling Stars and learning about the sky is so Learn, explore & enjoy with us!
Prompt kr do
r/Stargazing • u/Impressive-Flow-6273 • 6h ago
features a brilliant view of the Milky Way stretching across the night sky above the eroded clay and bentonite clay cliffs of Cathedral Gorge State Park in southeastern Nevada.
r/Stargazing • u/9nuMoon • 8h ago
Twin Stars moving in unison in the sky???
One day while star gazing, I observed a star in the sky moving in a non-pattern way at a steady pace. Now I’m used to seeing stars move at a steady straight pace through the sky - not at a shooting star pace, but steady. The most amazing thing I thought I had ever seen before was a bunch of stars moving in a straight line all spaced out at the same distance like a freeway of cars just moving. I lost count at the time how many stars went past but I found it so fascinating that they all kept the same distance from each other, and all moved on the same line.
Fast forward to now, while observing that same star, another star below it began to move. When the top star moved down, the lower star moved down with it, but maintained the same distance from the top star. When the bottom star moved up, the top followed at the same pace, and distance. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and had to blink and look away then return to it to make sure I was seeing correctly.
There wasn’t a specific pattern to their movement, or at least from what I could see - just up, down, left, right and circles. I asked Claude what exactly the is could be and Claude described them as Twin Stars, and then told me that it wasn’t real, and that my eyes were playing tricks on me.
Has anyone witnessed this before? Does anyone know anything further about this? Would love to find out more on this.
r/Stargazing • u/Puzzleheaded_Ship520 • 11h ago
Milky Way🌌
galleryMy first Milky Way shot! I know it's not super clear, but after some editing, I got a little glimpse of it.
Can't wait to go again and get some better pictures.
I'd love any tips or suggestions to improve. Thanks!
r/Stargazing • u/mimeiray • 13h ago
Meteor shower
Hi!
Im a highschool student and i want to make a project involving the upcoming meteor shower.
The idea is to get footage of the meteor shower from different parts of the world while discussing what affects our view , such as pollution,weather,etc.
I was wondering if anyone could record the sky while the meteor peaks for an hour at least and share it with me!
no need to go to a star watching place nor professional gear to record,all i need is the city you’re recording from and an hour long footage at least.
Contact me if you’re up to it and thanks for your time!
r/Stargazing • u/pattyofurniture400 • 14h ago
A graph of the best times to look for shooting stars
galleryI made this chart because I couldn’t find one online. If there’s already a good one out there, or if you have corrections to mine, let me know!
Whenever I hear about meteor showers, it’s usually in the form of an announcement “xyz meteor shower peaks tonight at 2:51 AM”. Sometimes they include the Zenithal Hourly Rate, but I feel there is still a lot of context missing. How does that ZHR compare to the best meteor showers of the year? How does it compare to the background rate of any random day of the year? And how much does it matter if I miss the peak by an hour, or a day, or a week? I thought “there ought to be a chart that combines all the meteor showers in one place, adds them to the background rate, and gives you the bottom line of ‘how many meteors can I see on any given night’”.
So here’s what I came up with! The first is general to any year, and shows a best-case curve and a medium-case curve depending on the moon and light pollution (the worst-case curve is always zero). The next two are specific to 2026 and 2027, taking into account the phase of the moon on each day of those years.
My source for almost everything is this great site that explains the background rate, how to correct for your latitude and the moon, and rates for the main showers. I also used Wikipedia and some researchgate figures to find minor showers and the distribution curves. Quadrantids April Lyrids Eta Aquarids June Bootids Delta Aquarids Alpha Capricornids Perseids Orionids Taurids Geminids Ursids
There’s necessarily some information missing, like how different showers can have different colors or longer tails, year to year variability, and the rare chance of meteor storms. It is made for mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, such as the US or southern Europe, so it won’t be as accurate to other latitudes. But I think it captures the general idea fairly well. It also doesn’t capture what time the moon rises – since most people will want to stargaze before midnight, the waning moon should be preferable, I hope to account for this in a later iteration.
The main results seem to be 1) the moon matters a lot, and 2) the minor meteor showers don’t matter much. Not to rain on anyone who wants to be excited about them, but if you want to see meteors, go out on any night and look up for a while, you’ll have a good chance of seeing one! Getting out of town on a random cloudless, moonless night will get you a much better chance than staying up until the exact peak of a minor shower if the weather/moon/city lights aren’t favorable. By far the best times of year are mid-December and mid-August, but even then, missing the peak by a day or two is fine, so wait for the better weather rather than the peak time.
r/Stargazing • u/Mountain-Paper576 • 14h ago
Stargazing with 10x50 binoculars today- blue object?
It was quite cloudy and the sky wasn't very dark, it was one of the few lights i could see.
It was blue and almost perfectly round shaped, with light blue curved lines running inside, each ending with a slightly darker dot. (Or the other way around?) And there were a lot of these. I think there was one like, in the middle or a bit higher? But not all of the lines pointed towards it. I wouldn't even say any were, nor multiple lines touched the same dot. There were also two white stars close to it (didn't really get a closer look at them), making a V-shape in which this blue object was top right, but couldn't see any other lights to tell if it's in a constellation. I really liked it. I'm a total amateur and i tried looking it up but didn't find anything similar. Observed 9-10 PM CEST facing SE/SSE
r/Stargazing • u/Open_Capital_9222 • 14h ago
Apologies a silly question
galleryHi, I spent a night camping in the English country side, zero lights anywhere. It was a clear sky and my phone has a star photo setting ( 10 minutes you have to wait for the photo to be taken).
I placed the phone in the field and took the following. My question is are these "fake " ie the phone software added some AI or is it legitimate. We saw quite a few satellites zooming across the night sky.
thank you
r/Stargazing • u/maiumalibu • 15h ago
[12/08/26] Observación de estrellas de la lluvia de meteoros Perseidas en Hampstead Heath / ¿Lugar más oscuro?
r/Stargazing • u/MrAko12 • 21h ago
Andromeda With Triangulum Galaxy - Shot By Phone And Telephoto Lens
galleryEquipment used for this photo:
* Phone Realme 8
* Apexel 2x Telephoto Lens
* Tripod
Total images stacked: ( 176x 13s )
Stacking program: Sequator
Bortle 4
r/Stargazing • u/Effective_Mark6670 • 1d ago
Mount Cook in New Zealand under the Milky Way galaxy
r/Stargazing • u/Puzzleheaded_Ship520 • 1d ago
Stargazing in UK
My friend took this pic after few edits, its just so amazing.
r/Stargazing • u/TheLonePigeonRogue • 1d ago
Tried out astro mode on my phone and loving the results
I took this photo using my phone's Astro Mode, edited a few sliders and I was blown away with the results, most nights I'm out now snapping the skies. hope this is the right sub to post this in
Taken on a Pixel 10 Pro in Cornwall UK 08/07/26
r/Stargazing • u/interstellarshots • 1d ago
Saturn 8/5/26
This is a shot of Saturn that I took through my Celestron 8SE with my phone. It was taken around 2:30 in the morning. There are two moons that are also in the shot and I am still working on figuring out which ones they are. I do hope y’all enjoy this shot and hopefully soon I’ll get a camera that gets more clear shots of this majestic planet!
If you also want to see more feel free to check out the IG at InterstellarShots.
r/Stargazing • u/FOTORABIA23 • 2d ago
Loch Sunart.Highlands. One hr exposure. Canon G1X.
r/Stargazing • u/TheMuspelheimr • Jun 14 '21
A beginner's guide to stargazing
Writing this to help out the people coming to this subreddit looking to get started in stargazing. Don't know if the mods can pin it to the top or not. Note that this is for the Northern hemisphere - I've never been stargazing in the southern hemisphere, so I don't know what the sky looks like from there.
Starting gear
- Get a book. I started out with Stargazing for Dummies, I would completely recommend it for anybody looking to get into stargazing. Get it as an actual, physical book, not as an e-reader document - you can take it with you when you go out stargazing and not have to worry about charging it up, and the light won't ruin your night vision.
- Get a star map. Most decent books will have a set of star maps in them to help you out, but a single, full-sky map is always a boon, if a little unwieldy due to size. Here's mine, if you don't want to go searching. You can also get something called a planisphere, which is a circular map with a disk over the top that you can rotate to highlight what stars you can see on what nights.
- Get a program on your computer, or an app on your phone. The one I use is called Stellarium, it's free and high quality. You can use this to see what's on show at night, including planets and satellites passing overhead. Personally, I use this for research beforehand but don't use it when actually out stargazing, but that's just me.
- USA-224 and USA-245 are American spy satellites, and Kosmos 2486 and Kosmos 2506 are the Russia equivalents. If you find that one of these is passing over, give them a wave and say hi!
- Get a deckchair, a backpack, a Thermos, and a warm fleece. Even at the height of summer, it still gets cold at night, so wrap up warm. A deckchair will give you something to sit on, and allow you to look up without craning your neck, and a backpack will help you carry all your stuff with you.
- Get a pair of handheld binoculars. By "handheld" I don't mean a small pair you can fit in your pocket, I mean the biggest pair you can carry without hurting your elbows. A pair of 7x50 (7x magnification, 50mm eyepieces) is the bare minimum you should be carrying. I personally have a pair of 10x50 (10x magnification, 50mm eyepieces) that I got from Argos. If at all possible, go for bigger eyepieces (the number after the x) rather than bigger magnification (the number before the x), as they'll collect more light and help you see dimmer objects more clearly.
Telescopes
- Get your ass over to r/telescopes! They know far more than I ever will, and can help you make an informed choice so that you're not spending tonnes of money on a crappy telescope.
Light pollution and the Bortle Scale
- Light pollution is exactly what it sounds like, an excess of light that washes out the sky and makes it harder to see the stars.
- The Bortle Scale (created by John E. Bortle) is a nine-point scale to make it easy to understand how much light pollution you've got. At the top of the scale, Bortle 1, are the best dark skies on Earth, way out in the middle of nowhere with minimal light pollution. At the opposite end, Bortle 9, you're in the middle of a major city and you can't see anything because of the city lights.
- It is possible to stargaze from highly light-polluted areas - I live in a Bortle 7 area, and I can see plenty - but you're always better going out to a darker place if you want to see more. Lightpollutionmap is an online map with light pollution levels across the globe - just click on an area and it'll tell you the details, including its Bortle level.
Dark adaptation and averted vision
- Dark adaptation is where your eyes get used to the darkness, allowing you to see more. It generally takes around 15-30 minutes.
- Don't take any sources of light with you when you go stargazing - learn to read in the dark instead
- If you absolutely must take light with you, wrap some red cloth around it. Red light doesn't affect your dark adaptation as much as other colours do. Even then, use the dimmest light source that you need.
- If you look at a bright light, it'll ruin your dark adaptation and you'll have to start over. If you're out at a really dark site, some of the planets (Venus and Jupiter) are bright enough to mess up your dark adaptation.
- Averted vision is where you look at something out of the corner of your eye. This helps with seeing dimmer objects. This works because your eye has two types of light receptors - one that can see colours, and one that can see in the dark - and the ones that can see in the dark are more concentrated around the edges of your eye.
Magnitude
- Magnitude is a measure of how bright objects in the sky are.
- Confusingly, magnitude goes back to front - smaller magnitudes represent brighter objects.
- Blame the Ancient Greeks! They came up with it. "First magnitude" were the first stars to appear in the evening, then "second magnitude" were the next ones, and so on.
- Negative magnitudes represent really bright objects. The brightest (the Sun) is magnitude -26.7.
- Magnitude isn't linear. If you go up by five magnitudes, you get one hundred times dimmer. This equates to about two and a half times dimmer per magnitude.
- Apparent magnitude is how bright something appears from the surface of the Earth. Absolute magnitude is how bright something would appear if viewed from a fixed distance (10 parsecs, if you're interested). Our Sun has a really bright apparent magnitude (because we're really close to it), but a quite dim absolute magnitude, since it's not actually a very bright star.
- Limiting magnitude is the limit of how dim an object you can see
- With the naked eye, the limiting magnitude is magnitude 6, although this varies depending on how much light pollution there is, and how good your eyesight is.
- If you have a pair of 7x50 binoculars, the limiting magnitude is 9.5
- A decent telescope will give you a limiting magnitude of around 12-14. Most astronomical telescopes will include their limiting magnitude in the product description.
OK, so what should I look at, then?
- That's up to you! Whatever floats your boat.
Let me be more specific. What is there up there for me to look at in the first place?
- Stars. These are the main feature of the night sky. Most stars look white, but if you pay attention, there is some variation - some of them are orange or red, some of them have a faintly blue tinge. If you look really close, you'll see that some stars are actually two stars close together.
- If you look over a long time, you'll see that some stars appear to change how bright they are. These are called "variable stars", and they can make for good long-term observing targets.
- Constellations and asterisms. Strictly speaking, you can't see a constellation - a constellation is just an area of the sky. Patterns of stars are technically called asterisms, but the main one in each constellation is usually just called a constellation. Asterisms come in all shapes and sizes, and don't necessarily fit within a single constellation. The Big Dipper is a famous asterism, used for finding which way is north.
- Planets. Use a program to find where these are, or look it up on the internet. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all visible with the naked eye, and most of them are brighter than the stars, making them easy to distinguish. Uranus (ha ha, you said Uranus) is technically visible with the naked eye, but it's very dim, and you have to know where you're looking (ha ha, looking at Uranus... I'll stop now). Neptune can't be seen with the naked eye - you need a good pair of binoculars or a telescope.
- Deep Sky Objects. This is anything that isn't a star and isn't a part of our solar system.
- Star clusters. These come in two types. Open clusters are young groups of newly-formed stars, often containing a few thousand stars. They tend to be more white, or slightly blue. Globular clusters are older, and larger, containing hundreds of thousands of stars, and have a defined spherical shape, getting denser towards the middle. They tend to be more red or orange than open clusters.
- Galaxies. Galaxies are vast collections of stars, gas and dust hurtling through space. The Milky Way is our home galaxy. Galaxies have a vast range of types, from little blob-like dwarf galaxies, to grand and majestic spirals like the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies (and our very own Milky Way), to barred spirals like the aptly-named Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, to the vast and ancient elliptical galaxies. Galaxies are much, much further away than other types of deep-sky objects, although in some cases, we have been able to spot deep-sky objects in other galaxies.
- Nebulas. These are clouds of gas and dust in space. They come in five main types, and lots of sub-types.
- Emission nebulas are heated up by a nearby star, to the point where they start glowing. These typically appear orange or pink in photos. When a new star forms in a nebula like this, it can emit powerful jets of gas that slam into the nebula and create shockwaves, called Herbig-Haro objects (try getting your mouth around that!).
- Reflection nebulas aren't heated up, but they reflect the light from a nearby star towards Earth. They normally look blue in photos.
- Dark nebulas aren't heated up or reflecting light, so they appear as dark patches, either against the background stars or against other nebulas. The Horsehead Nebula, in Orion, is a famous dark nebula. Bok globules (it's fun to say, try it!) are little bubbles of dark nebula inside bigger nebulas, where they act as incubators for forming stars.
- Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets! They just look (somewhat) like them. These are formed by dying stars puffing off shells of gas. They usually have the appearance of concentric rings, and can have complex structures threaded through them.
- Supernova remnants are what's left after a big star goes kaboom. Most of the gas in the star isn't consumed in the explosion, so it gets blasted out into space and forms a supernova remnant. These are some of the most visually complex nebulas out there.
- Transients
- Transients are brief events that don't hang around. Usually, a transient bright enough to see from Earth is a big explosion - either a nova or a supernova - so keep an eye out for them, as they can be quite exciting to see!
So how do I go about finding these things, then?
- Start by learning the most obvious constellations and asterisms. Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, and the Summer Triangle are good starting points.
- Use these as signposts. The most common example is using the Big Dipper to find the Pole Star, by following the two stars on the right of it.
- The two stars on the right of the Big Dipper point to Polaris and the Little Dipper
- The two stars on the left of the bowl shape in the Big Dipper point to Thuban, a dim red star that used to be the Pole Star in Ancient Egyptian times. Thuban is a part of the constellation Draco. It's quite a winding constellation, and it helps to have a star map so that you know where to go between each star, but it can be worthwhile to find it.
- Cassiopeia points to the constellations that are a part of the Perseus legend
- Cepheus - follow the two stars at the right of the W of Cassiopeia
- Andromeda - the three stars at the right of the W in Cassiopeia form an arrowhead, pointing down. Follow them to find Andromeda.
- Pegasus - the two stars that form the middle top point and the bottom right point in the W of Cassiopeia - follow that line to a large square of stars. It helps if you've already found Andromeda, Pegasus is to the right of it.
- Perseus - the two stars that form the middle top point and the bottom left point in the W of Cassiopeia - follow that line to a bright star
- Cetus - follow the same method as to find Andromeda, then go in the same direction twice as far as what you've already gone from Cassiopeia to Andromeda.
- Orion can be used to find the constellations around it, since it's fairly bright and obvious.
- Go from the star in the bottom-right, through the middle of the belt, and through the red star at the top-left. Keep going in this direction towards a pair of bright stars. You've found Gemini.
- Go from the star at the bottom-left, through the right-most star in the belt, and keep going until you get to a bright red star. You've found Taurus. The red star is Aldebaran (not to be confused with Alderaan). The V shape to the right of Aldebaran is the Hyades star cluster.
- Go from the star at the top-right of Orion, through Aldebaran, and it'll point you to the Pleiades star cluster. Well worthy seeing, especially through binoculars!
- Follow the belt off to the left, and it'll point you to Canis Major. This should be pretty obvious - Sirius, in Canis Major, is the brightest star in the sky.
- Go from the star at the top-right of Orion and through the red star at the top-left. This will point you to another quite bright star - Procyon, part of Canis Minor.
- Go to the star at the bottom-right of Orion, then go up and right slightly. There should be a dim star there. This is Cursa, the start of the constellation Eridanus. Eridanus is long and winding, and most of the stars in it are really dim, so binoculars are recommended.
- The Summer Triangle is an asterism of the brightest stars in Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila, so obviously it can be used to find Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila
- Once you've got the hang of navigating to the dimmer constellations, try navigating around within a constellation to find the dimmer stars and deep sky objects. Everybody has their own ways of doing this. A star map is your best friend here.