bit of guidence needed!

hey,

Apart from being totally clueless in astronomy i'm also a little computer illiterate, so apollogies for posting wrong or dodgy spelling! I was wondering if anyone can recommend a website for absolute beginners. I was over awed when i saw saturn and jupitor .......amazing. i have a celestron telescope. but i should probably explain how clueless i am........when i saw planets........i was looking for the "nice bright stars"!!! I go out regularly with my scope and just poke around the sky for anything that looks nice. I would appreciate help from anyone......what exactly should i be looking for seeing? what direction???

So any help would be great,
Cheers
Caroline

Your in the right places ask away

Welcome to the boards Caroline! There is no definitive website for astronomy newbies. So at least I guess you have come to the right place to start looking! Don't think that any questions you ask are dumb ones - EVERYONE starts out the same at some point (even thinking that the planets they see at night are just really bright stars).

There are lots of poeple here, at all levels of astronomical guidance and preference. But, to start the ball rolling, I guess one question to ask is where are you based? There might be a group or club of astronomers nearby. There might even be members here near to where you live. There's nothing stopping you meeting up with some, as that's how a lot of us here have met, and even become friends.

You'll get loads of tips if you do a search (click 'Search' in the menu at the very top of this page, and enter your chosen key words). People will give you book titles worth reading, like Astronomy for Dummies, which is not heavy at all, and makes light reading of getting to know more about astronomy.

Keep your questions coming Caroline, and we'll all help you along the way!

Seanie.

hey there butterfly as carl said your in the right place.So where do you start?There are a million ways to get acquainted with the night sky ie, books, popular astronomny mags etc.One program which is available to down load free off the net is stellerium its a virtual planetrium and its one way of seeing the night sky at your location,all you need to do is just google stellarium and download it to your pc, i still use it from time to time for a quick reference.Let us know what you think and any more questions just ask away.

This site I like very much. There is also a good podcast if you care to download it;

astronomy.libsyn.com/

DB

Hi Caroline and welcome,
Basically you need to ask yourself "what is it you want to know"
Do you want to know how to find the planets, wht are globular clusters, there is so much.
Once you have done this you can ask away on this site the questions you have lined up .