h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having reached the end of the alphabet, I'm starting again from the beginning. So today is A for astronomy.

One of the things my husband wanted to do in his retirement was to take up amateur astronomy. He'd studied the subject as part of a physics degree, and he wanted his own telescope. Having bought a decent size Newtonian telescope, he tried it out in our garden and on the Downs. I was impressed when I looked at Saturn for the first time through the telescope, and saw it change from a blob into a planet with rings. But even on the Downs, the sky turned orange over Brighton, making deep sky astronomy impracticable.

So the telescope went to France in a box in the back of a van. The customs were suspicious of our rented white van and I was worried that they might want us to take the telescope out of its box, because it could easily be damaged. Fortunately, they didn't.

My husband put the telescope up in the garden of our house in France, where the sky is darker. I found it atmospheric, standing in that neglected garden as the sun went down and the stars came out. Sometimes an owl floated past, or a bat flew overhead, and I could hear frogs croaking. As the sky darkened, I could see the Milky Way and make out the constellations. I already knew the Plough, Orion and Cassopeia, but I learned that Sagittarius looks like a teapot, and Leo like a backward question mark.

My husband attached a camera, specially adapted to make best use of the light, to his telescope and took pictures of clusters and . I used to go to bed after a while. That's the problem with astronomy: it involves staying up much of the night in the cold. I never quite put my head round the technology involved in taking these pictures and processing them with software packages to enhance the images.

After a while, the village installed better street lights and floodlights to give a good view of the church. These threatened to destroy the chance of astronomy. We wrote to the Mayor, begging for a chance to switch off the floodlights on a good star-watching night. We were glad when he agreed. But in the end, the villagers discovered the flood lights were expensive, and stopped turning them on!

That's a problem in a lot of areas these days, I think - street lighting.

Deb

The best places in the UK for stargazing are in the remote areas of Scotland and Wales and quite a few are listed on the Dark Skies UK website. These areas may not suffer from light pollution but stargazing is hindered by another problem cloudy/partly cloudy skies. I remember living in Barrhill in SE Ayrshire in Scotland where there were only a few cloud free nights (mostly in winter). I am not very good at recognising star constellations and I have only once possessed a basic telescope. According to the late Sir Patrick Moore, he suggested a pair of binoculars is good for beginner astronomer. I have had binoculars in the past, but don't have them anymore and preferred using them as they are more user friendly.

I know Kielder Forest is a dark sky area - perhaps my husband should try it.

[Amy P]