Discover the fascination of the night sky in a whole new way! This practical introduction to astronomy combines the scientific fundamentals of stargazing with the fun of doing it yourself, discovering and experiencing.
Frank Sackenheim guides you step by step from your first night of observation with the naked eye, through exploring our solar system with a telescope, to exciting hands-on projects – allowing you to discover astronomy in a whole new light: You’ll build your own Sky Quality Meter to measure light pollution, mount an AllSky camera for continuous sky monitoring, or construct your own star tracker for impressive astrophotography.
Whether you’re a tech-savvy beginner, a passionate astrophotographer or an experienced amateur astronomer – with this book, you’ll become not just a stargazer, but an active explorer of our cosmos!
From the contents
- Getting your bearings in the night sky
- Choosing the right equipment
- Sky observation at any time of day with Stellarium
- Exploring the Moon and the Solar System
- Understanding spectroscopy, reading star charts, recognising celestial phenomena
- Exciting practical projects
- SQM meter for measuring brightness
- Monitor the sky at any time with the AllSky camera
- Your own spectrometer
- Locating deep-sky objects
- Star tracker for astrophotography
- Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA)
The author, Frank Sackenheim, is an astrophotographer from Cologne and has been running the successful YouTube channel ‘astrophotocologne’ since 2019, where he shares his knowledge of astrophotography.
