telescope.jpgI live close to Helsinki in Finland, in a small city called Kerava. This is a typical suburban city from where people drive to work at Helsinki city center. Our house is located near fields and a small forest and the amount of artificial light here is smaller than in the center of our city. Even though we have less artificial lights, I consider myself living in a city. Based on this I am observing the sky from a city.

I was born in Lapland in northern Finland. I grew up there and lived around 20 years there before I moved to Helsinki to study my degree in software engineering. Living in Lapland is completely different from living in Helsinki, and when it comes to astronomy, it is a whole different playground up there. By having much less artificial lights, Lapland offers a great place to observe the sky. If you drive few dozens of kilometers from the town to the forests, it is totally black out there. It is a great place to observe the sky. Based on this, I consider people living in there and other small towns observing the sky from countryside.

Skywatching in cities

The more people there are in your city, the more difficult it is to find a good place for observing the sky, because the number of dark places decreases as the amount of people increases. In cities astronomers need to use filters to avoid the difficulties with the artificial lights. Sometimes it is impossible to observe deep sky objects in a city, but the Moon and some of the planets are usually possible to see.

In order to use a telescope, you need to find a good “hole” first, so that you can see the night sky without having buildings and trees in front of your telescope. Good places to observe are usually parks and squares.

If you have a balcony in your house, located towards south, you are a lucky man/woman. In your balcony you can observe the Moon and planets when they climb up to the southern sky. If your balcony is towards north, you haven’t been that lucky. In north there are only Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Polaris. If you cannot see Polaris from your balcony, you can draw a line on ground pointing towards north. Then you can direct you’re telescope. Remember to take you’re telescope out of the bag half an hour before usage. If you do not do this, your telescope may become foggy inside. In cities the best objects usually are see the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mars. Some other objects can also be seen, but not so well because of the artificial light. You can also see Orion Nebula (M42) and Andromeda (M31) galaxy, but not their dimmer edges.

Skywatching in countryside

Countryside is naturally better place to observe the sky, even though there might be artificial lights as well. In countryside, and also in cities, one should not set up a telescope new walls or rock street because the rocks might have accumulated heath that can cause problems with seeing. You should always take your telescope out of its box and bag 3o minutes before starting observing.

In countryside it makes sense to avoid valleys because the layers of the atmosphere might cause problems with seeing. If you are located above 1800 meters, you should naturally have more peaceful air. This is the reason why many observatories have been built on top of mountains.

During a good night, you can see a number of nebulae and galaxies in countryside. Objects such as Andromeda and Orion nebula can be seen with a 100 mm telescope. When watching by the naked eye, one can every now and then see satellites circulating the Earth. A satellite moves fast and its light does not blink. A satellite can cross the sky in three minutes.

This article was written by Marko Pyhajarvi and its original location is in HomeboyAstronomy.Com astronomy blog. For more great astronomy articles, please visit HomeboyAstronomy.Com!

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