The first time a policeman pulled me over was far and away the best. I was sixteen and had my new driver's license in my wallet and my homemade f5.6 eight inch Newtonian reflector in the back of my parent's car. It was about three am on Highwood Road about twenty miles East of Great Falls, Montana when I noticed a pair of flashing lights of a highway patrol car behind me. I got out of the car and went through a sobriety tests and document check. Shining his light around, he noticed a blanket covered cylindrical object about a foot in diameter and six feet long in back of the old Ford station wagon. His hand was on his service revolver as he marched me to the back of the car and ordered me to open the tailgate. I was trying to explain it was a telescope when he ripped the blanket off, but his focus was elsewhere. The poor guy was probably frustrated it wasn't anything more dramatic. I explained I had to slow to about fifteen miles per hour on corners because they were crowned (to allow snow and ice to slide off in sunlight) and the telescope was delicate. He gave me a warning to drive faster and muttered something like "damn kid" on the way back to his cruiser.
Unfortunately most of us live in heavily light polluted areas and it keeps getting worse. A few years ago a friend took a cross country trip and found herself in Zion National Park around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in August. It was one of the better showers at around two hundred per hour, but seeing the Milky Way in its glory from a wonderfully dark area was the high point of the trip.
It's Fall in the Northern Hemisphere and a great time to spot the most distant object you can normally see with unaided eyes is well-placed. At about two and a half million light years away, it's the nearest major galaxy. It's huge - about a hundred and fifty thousand light years in diameter with a mass of about a trillion of our Suns. Six full moons wide, it's an impressive sight in a clear moonless sky away from light pollution and even better with binoculars. And seeing light from that long ago can conjure feelings of awe and wonder.
You've undoubtely noticed it takes awhile for your vision to adapt to the dark. There's folklore why pirates wore an eye patch - to keep one eye dark adapted for when they had to go below deck around gun powder. At least that's what I read as a kid and it was enough for me to wear a patch at night. I've written about night walking and how to experiment with color night vision and see the colors of some of the planets and brightest stars. Seeing the color of a bright star is impressive, but there's that period a few minutes in length where your rods sensitize and all the stars suddenly come out as your eyes become about ten thousand times more sensitive. It's special-effects level dramatic and most people have never experienced it.
Back to the stars. With binoculars you can see dramatic color in a few stars. Betelgeuse is red, Rigal is a beautiful blue, Capella is yellow and Antares is somewhere between red and orange. There are dozens to look for, but you won't see green. Perceived stellar color is an artifact of the range of light stars produce and the fact we only have three types of cones. The color of a star is determined by its surface temperature. If you know a bit about blackbody radiation and the overlapping sensitivity ranges of your cones you can work out the puzzle of a sky devoid of green stars.
Om likes to talk about computational photography (as do I), but there have been dramatic developments beond smartphones and conventional cameras. Over the past twenty years computational amateur astrophotography has matured to the point where it's easy to use and not prohibitively expensive. It can make the sky much more accessible than using a conventional telescopes with your eye. While very dark areas are preferable, it is possible to observe from semi-dark suburban areas. Perhaps we can talk Tammy into a guest post on her experiences one of these days.
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