A shot of the night sky taken by astronomy expert Terence Dickinson, co-author of The Backyard Astronomer's Guide.

If I ever managed to convince any of the girls I dated in college that I was the hipster I was desperately trying to be, my façade was almost certainly shattered once I brought them back to my apartment and they saw the map of the solar system I had pinned to my bedroom wall.

I've always been enamoured of space. I'm a sucker for the Discovery Channel's documentaries on NASA missions, I typically flip straight to the stories about new research into dark matter and the origin of the universe in Wired magazine, and I like to pretend I understand at least some of the brilliant theoretical astrophysics concepts espoused by Stephen Hawking.

And yet I've never taken the time to actually peer through a spyglass at the sky that contains the very wonders that are the focus of my fascination.

Until now.

Determined to take a self-instructed crash course in amateur astronomy, I resolved that I would go from researching the hobby of stargazing, to using a telescope to view the heavens with an educated eye — in less than a month.

Hitting the books

My first resource: The Illustrated Atlas of the Universe from Fog City Press. I found this broad, thick book in a bargain bin at a wholesale store a couple of years ago and figured it was high time I took a good look at it. It contains star maps, oriented by season and hemisphere, as well as Coles Notes-style descriptions of specific celestial objects. In other words, it gave me a good idea of what I might see once I turned my peepers skywards, but it didn't really tell me very much about the actual hobby or how best to delve into it.

A photo of the full moon, taken by Terence Dickinson, co-author of The Backyard Astronomer's Guide.

So, on the recommendation of an article I'd recently read about astronomy, I picked up a copy of The Backyard Astronomer's Guide by Canadians Alan Dyer and Terence Dickinson. This book became my astronomy bible.

Within pages plastered with pictures, diagrams, and impassioned text, stargazers are guided through every imaginable facet of the pastime, from advice on choosing proper astronomy equipment through to advanced night sky observation tips. The revised edition currently on store shelves is five years old and occasionally shows its age (particularly in the chapter on astrophotography, which treats digital cameras as something of an exotic new technology), but I still found it contained a wealth of helpful, and otherwise timeless, information.

According to the book, the best place to start stargazing, aside from just looking up at the sky with an unaided eye, is to pick up a pair of binoculars. Fortunately, I had an old pair of pristine Marksman field glasses passed on to me by my wife's father, a consummate outdoorsman with a taste for quality gear.

Binoculars in hand, I was ready to start gazing. But there was a problem: it was the middle of Canadian winter, and my hometown, Toronto, was in the midst of a cold snap. Colder air is generally favoured by astronomers because it tends to be cleaner and clearer than warm air, but stargazing is a hobby that involves remaining stationary for long periods of time, which means especially chilly temperatures can put a damper on the experience.

I elected to wait for a warmer evening, but after several nights of temperatures dropping below -20° Celsius with the wind chill and no sign of relief in the forecast, it became clear that the cold snap may well turn out to be more of a cold month — or season (go figure). I eventually decided to just get bundled up for the crisp February weather.

Turn down the lights

That's when I was confronted with my second obstacle: light pollution.

I'd read that light pollution — the blanket of artificial light that fills the night sky for miles in all directions around cities — is an astronomer's worst enemy, but I thought I remembered in my pre-astronomy days looking up from the lakefront park just outside my apartment building and seeing plenty of stars. Turns out plenty was more like 12 or 13.

Still, these few stars were all I had to work with for the moment, so I gave it a go. And, as it turned out, my field glasses gave me a pretty good gander at the dozen-or-so pinpricks of light I was able to make out, including Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon.

Celestron's Sky Scout, billed as a handheld planetarium, has built-in GPS technology to determine the user's location on the planet. Flashing red directional dots in its viewfinder help guide the user to specific celestial objects.

By the way, I'm able to name the stars I saw not by virtue of any real knowledge of the night sky, but rather thanks to a handy gadget called a Sky Scout, which I borrowed from respected astronomy gadget manufacturer Celestron. Billed as a handheld planetarium, its built-in GPS determined my location on the planet before guiding me with flashing red directional dots to point the Sky Scout's viewfinder toward select celestial objects. In short, it's a great tool for people new to the hobby.

What did the stars I spied look like through binocular lenses? They were extremely bright circles of light zipping back and forth across my field of vision. The zipping effect was the result of my inability to hold the binoculars steady enough to make the stars, magnified to 10 times their normal size, appear stationary (the shivers I suffered from the cold were only partially to blame; apparently even on warm nights binocular users struggle against typically unnoticeable natural movements such as breathing and the beating of one's heart). I found the size of these far-off globes of fire as viewed through binoculars to be impressive, but their zig-zagging appearance was a nuisance.

Holding things steady

The following week I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to test a couple of pairs of modern field glasses, including a model highly recommended by Guide authors Dickinson and Dyer: Canon's 10 x 42L IS WP binoculars. They feature a technology called optical image stabilization that reduces the likelihood of jittery images. These glasses improved my binocular-based stargazing experience immensely. Viewed through stabilized lenses, those zipping circles became nearly motionless white and blue spheres that had a mystique capable of holding my gaze for minutes on end.

But while the stars held interest, there were so few visible from within the city that my focus swiftly switched to the moon, which, viewed through binoculars, is a truly fascinating object. I was able to make out specific lunar craters and view the details of maria — ancient lava floods.

Now my appetite for astronomy had been whetted. I wanted to see more. I craved higher magnification and more celestial objects to choose from, and that would require two things: a quality telescope and trips made to an area well outside the city, where light pollution would be a minimal factor.

If you'll excuse my nerdy astronomy humour, it was time to get serious about seeing Sirius. In part two of this column, I'll give you the beginner's experience with a telescope, highlighting some of the advantages and the pitfalls to avoid.

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