Beginner's guide

Your next steps

Before long you will have made up your mind where your main interests lie. If you want to study the Sun you will begin by plotting the sunspots from day to day. Use your telescope as a projector ; never look direct, and never use a dark cap over the eyepiece. These caps are often sold with small refractors. If you have one, throw it away!

Otherwise consider a Meade or Celestron. Spend between £70 and £1200 and you will have you a telescope good enough to last you a lifetime.

Of course you may decide to concentrate on hunting comets - in which case you will either need very good binoculars or a very wide-field telescope. I warn you that you will also have to spend many months in gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sky!

Join the British Astronomical Association, or your country's equivalent as well as your local society and take part in the research programmes. Always keep a record of your observations, whether the results are positive or negative- and always keep a copy if you are sending your observations away.

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