If you are in any way interested in astronomy, an absolute must is the holding of star parties. These events require no outlay. You are the host and your guests are the stars in the sky! The following guidelines will ensure that your party is a resounding success:
Venue: A dark part of the garden where there is no light interference from your windows, the neighbours and street lamps. If this is impossible to find, a roofless tent is the answer - put up a simple screen to block out direct light.
Date: A week before and after new moon. These dates will be convenient for all your guests, weather permitting. If you wish to commune with the moon, these are still the best dates, as a full moon has no features and prevents interaction with most of your guests.
Dress code: A warm jacket and a beanie - balaclavas are not recommended as the neighbourhood watch has a particular interest in interviewing people wearing balaclavas.
Equipment: 1) A deck chair or pool lounger. Your face needs to point up at the stars and you don't want to have to go to the chiropractor after your star party. 2) A pair of light binoculars - if they are too heavy, your arms will get tired and you won't enjoy your party. 3) A small torch - NB it must have red cellophane covering its lens, as white light destroys your night vision. It takes the human eye the time from sunset to darkness (twilight) to adjust to our limited night vision, which was no doubt very useful to our early ancestors, and red light doesn't seem to affect this. You don't want to have to wait another half hour to see your fainter guests. It goes without saying that a torch with an unprotected lens is as welcome at a star party as bacon at a barmitzvah.
Preparation: Study your star chart and reference books inside, before going out to greet your guests. It is a confirmation of the guest list and you don't want to appear as though you don't know who you have invited.
Refreshments: A light snack is always welcome and a flask of coffee can cheer you up in the cold. If you add something stronger to the coffee, you will probably have double the amount of guests, but the more the merrier!
The entertainment: Lie back on your lounger and just gaze out into the universe. Pick out the brighter stars and see if you can assemble the constellations. Stars give off energy in the form of heat and light and tend to twinkle. If they don't twinkle, they will be planets, reflecting light from the sun to a lesser or greater degree depending on the composition of their atmosphere. If they don't twinkle and are moving across the sky, they will doubtless be satellites, the best known being the International Space Station - always worth a look as it hurtles across the sky in 6 minutes. If they don't twinkle and zig-zag randomly across the sky, they will be intergalactic visitors - nothing to worry about. Look for fuzzy blobs - these are clusters of stars, from 20 to millions, or nebulae (clouds of gas and dust lit up by nearby stars).
Once you have got over your excitement at having identified a few things, take the binoculars and have a closer look at those fuzzy blobs. You will immediately notice that the sky in between the brighter stars has a lot more stars than you could see with the naked eye, and you will see lovely little asterisms such as a coathanger, a string of pearls and other such imaginative clusters. Your only disappointment will be that everything is in black and white, with only the occasional red or blue star being apparent. Our eyes cannot take in enough light to reproduce the colours that are evident from the photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The best part of being the host of a star party is that when you've had enough, you can just go to bed and the guests will carry on without you.
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