Absolutely! This is just my specialty. Get yourself a good book on the constellations and then just go out and locate them, starting with those containing the brightest stars. I recommend Sky Publishing's "Monthly Star Charts" (www.skypub.com-go from there to their store, then on to atlases). As you learn the ones with the brightest stars, you will find that these serve as pointers to the others. For instance, you learn to find Orion, and then learn that his three "belt" stars point toward the bright star Aldebaran on the one side and the bright star Sirius on the other. Thus you pick up new constellations as well. The key is practise. The good thing about this is that over the course of a year, you can learn most of the constellations and bright stars. The stars rise about four mintues earlier each night (due to Earth's movement around the sun), so they appear to rise about two hours earlier each month. Four minutes times thirty days is 120 minutes, or two hours. Thus over the course of the year, you will see each season's constellations gradually rising earlier and earlier. It takes about 20-30 minutes for your eyes to adapt (and your night vision keeps improving slowly for hours after that) and then just 20 or 30 minutes a night will make all the difference in the world. If you have someone that can help you get started, great! He/she can get you oriented to the right stars and you can add on from there. Another beauty is that the constellations don't change in appearance over the course of a human lifetime, so they will look the same to you 50 or 60 years from now as they do now. Also, they appear exactly the same from every part of the world as long as you don't cross the equator. The constellations that are visible mainly from the northern hemisphere will look upside down from the southern hemisphere, and vice versa. There are many constellations that don't even rise above the horizon for northern viewers, and can only be seen if you go to (or below) the equator. The opposite is also true. The "North Star" (Polaris) is invisible from Australia or South Africa, while the Southern Cross is invisible from all of North America (except for Hawaii and southern Florida).
Learning the constellations is a tremendous amount of fun, and guarantees you a method of navigation if you can see the night sky.
Check out "Sky and Telescope's" website at
www.skypub.com. Go to the sights section and it will get you started too. As I type this, you could step outside and see Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars among the constellations. The first two are two of the brightest objects in the sky right now (other than the moon). JRF.
PS. I pulled an old topic out of the archives for you to check out if you want. JRF.
[This message has been edited by jrf (edited 01-12-2000).]
