Astronomy as a hobby besides the excitement of astronomy, there are many reasons it makes a great hobby one that it is easy and cheap to get started. Unlike skiing for example, to just start enjoying astronomy, all you need is the night sky. But there is no end to the levels of complexity and sophistication you can get to as you learn more about astronomy as well. So like any good hobby, astronomy is continuously enchanting and extremely addictive because there is always more you want to learn and more you can do to make your knowledge and experiences more interesting and fun. Furthermore apart from the fact that Astronomy is a huge field and requires a lot of research to come up with a beginner’s guide. There are a lot of things you could know about but there are a few essential items which are a must to know. Especially when considering it as a hobby.
The universe is basically a collection of galaxies that houses millions of stars which in turn houses planets. The galaxy that we live in is the Milky Way Galaxy and the solar system is a group of planets that takes heat and light from our star, the Sun, because it is the closest comparison to all the other stars. The Sun is 30,000 light years away from the center of this galaxy. Day and night can be defined by the fact that due to the rotation of planets, one side stays away from the face of the sun and hence experiences a lack of heat and light and therefore night; when it is in the face of the sun, it experiences a day.
In the night sky, a lot of interstellar objects can be identified with the naked eye like the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, apart from several constellations and shooting stars. Man-made objects like communication and weather satellites and the International Space Station orbiting the Earth can also be identified without the use of binoculars and telescopes.
The binoculars come handy when you have astronomy as a hobby as it absorbs more light than the human eye and thus it helps you take a trip along the Milky way galaxy and see stars that are invisible to the naked eye. The Orion Nebula and star clusters like the Pleiades and the Beehive cluster can be located with a binocular during the winter months. During the summer months, Hercules, a great cluster of stars can be identified and the Andromeda galaxy is also visible, which is 2.5 million light years away from earth. Astronomy is a wonderful hobby to consider for all age groups
Yourhobbyfinder list of hobbies related to Astronomy
The Night Sky
Solar Eclipses
Moon gazing
Star gazing
The Universe
Sunspots
Star hopping
