By CRAIG WHITE
The embers of the campfire begin to fade and the last scorched marshmallow has long since disappeared behind the toothless grin of your eight-year-old. Time to head back to the cabin and re-read a couple of comic books or a romance novel, right?
Perhaps. But next time you might want to pause for a moment before turning in and take a look into the night sky. Gaze briefly upward and you may just add a dimension to your cottaging experience that will enthrall you and your family for years to come.
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For the average city dweller, the sky loses its aesthetic appeal once the pink and orange hues of the sunset have faded. For the cottager, however, the absence of artificial light allows a wonderful view of the greatest show off Earth. It is only under a truly dark sky that one can see and appreciate the wonders of the firmament.
So what do you need to do to prepare for this? Your first reaction may be to head to an optics shop and invest in an expensive, high-power telescope. WRONG! The best way to get started is to avoid the expensive trappings and just turn your eyes skyward.
The first step involves just watching the stars - no skill required. The children and the very ambitious may attempt some sort of inventory or count, usually abandoning the exercise before reaching any significant percentage of the total. No matter though, at this stage all you need is a sense of wonder.
If this is the first time you've ever visited, take some time to notice the individual stars. Note that some stars are brighter, and some are very faint. You also note that the longer you stay in the dark, the more stars "come out". Actually, it's not the stars that are appearing, but rather your ability to see them improving as your eyes adjust to the darkness. To properly prepare, avoid looking at any bright lights for about twenty minutes and you'll be amazed at what you're able to see. Try to look for the Milky Way. Generally invisible from the city or the suburbs, it will appear like a cloudy river bisecting the sky. In the summer it stretches in a north-south direction.
Okay, so you'd like a little more of a challenge? Time to start finding your way around the sky. When you drive to the cottage, you generally need some kind of map. You may use one that says something like "North on 400 for 200 km, exit onto Highway 123, east for 5 miles and left on Smith Road" or perhaps one that reads more like "Get off the main highway at the big weeping willow, turn right and go past the second bridge. Then turn at the abandoned farmhouse". Either way is valid - same for the stars.
While there are books ad infinitum detailing star positions, you could just find your own patterns and return to them night after night. If playing celestial connect-the-dots is too unstructured for you, try finding some of the constellations that astronomers go by. To do this, you will need a star map or two. A star map is exactly what it sounds like - a guide to the location of the stars and constellations.
There are a large number of books available for this. One book that I highly recommend is, The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H. A. Rey. If the author's name sounds familiar, then you've spent some time reading Curious George books to yourself or your children. While this book is aimed at kids (I learned my way around the sky with it at the age of 12), it presents the constellations in a fun and easy-to-use format for beginners and experienced astronomers of all ages.
Many believe it to be the best introductory text ever written on the subject. Chapters sells it for about $35 CDN (cheaper for the paperback but the hardcover will be worth it when you use it night after night). Its maps are a great way to star-hop. If you take it out with you, make sure to cover a flashlight with a red-coloured filter of some sort. Red light will let you read the book for reference while preserving your night vision.
There are also a great number of websites and programs for stargazing. We've listed some sites below, but a printed map is still the most convenient tool, and it will still work if it accidentally falls off the dock.
Now that you're comfortable finding your way about the galaxy, you can yet again add to your experience quite easily. I don't think I've ever been to a cottage that didn't have at least one pair of binoculars - usually for boat or people watching. If you have a decent pair of binocs, try them out on your next stargazing session - you'll be surprised at what becomes available. Find the Milky Way again. Binoculars will resolve it into individual stars - thousands of them!
If you follow the Milky Way down towards the southern horizon on a summer night, you will be gazing right into the center of our galaxy - at Carl Sagan's "billions of stars". You'll also uncover nebulae (luminous clouds of gas), and star clusters. If you don't own a pair of binoculars, I heartily recommend them, even if you want to use them for only stargazing.
While just about any binoculars are an improvement, 50 mm lenses will gather twice as much light as 35 mm lenses. If you get really serious, there are 80 mm models made specifically for astronomy. These carry a hefty price tag however, so if you start thinking about acquiring a pair, you'll know you're hooked.
Rey's book and a decent pair of binoculars make a wonderful gift to introduce someone to astronomy. As urban life encroaches more and more on the wilderness, the starry nights of story and song are relegated to just that. The truly dark skies of cottage country are a rare and vanishing gift that cottagers should not ignore.
