I’ve felt for a long time that I should be able to identify more of the constellations. I mean, I can instantly locate the Big Dipper (or Plough) that is part of Ursa Major (as can probably every kid over 5 years in Finland), and I even knew that I could locate Polaris based on the big dipper, just didn’t know the exact details. Hitting the books to learn constellations is just so boring compared to watching the real formations on the sky, but you’re not bloody likely to have an astronomy book when you’re outside watching, are you?

So I set out to figure a way to learn the constellations by using visual cues and quiz type tutorials, as I’ve found I learn best by repeated quizzing of whatever I’m trying to memorize. Turns out, there are some damn good (albeit a little limited in their scope of the 88 constellations) tutorials.

The best I could find is this interactive tutorail of the night sky teaching you to locate Orion, Big Dipper, Polaris, Cassiopeia and identify the region the planets travel on the sky.

This star hopping guide shows how to find Plough, Ursa Minor, Polaris, Boötes and Arcturus, Leo and Regulus as well as Orion and Sirius, Taurus and Aldebaran and Pleiades.

I found the associated picture showing the little & big dipper while browsing through my archives. I shot it with dumb luck, by just placing the camera on the ground and firing away. I can’t even even remember if I set the exposure manually, or if it was automatic. The exposure is 13s at f/5.6, ISO100.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 7.58 am and is filed under Astronomy, Astrophotography, Photoblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.