Q&A with Stephen J. O’Meara about his new binocular book

Daniel Pendick — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:26:00 GMT

This month, Cambridge University Press published Astronomy columnist Stephen James O’Meara’s latest book for stargazers, Observing the Night Sky with Binoculars. The book — billed as “a simple guide to the heavens” — is for beginners. This is a new direction for Steve, who has published several guides to observing deep-sky objects with telescopes. I asked him why he wrote the book and how readers could benefit from it.

Pendick: How did this book come about? When and how did you get the idea?

O’Meara: It happened after I completed my research-intensive Deep-Sky Companion trilogy (The Messier Objects, Caldwell Objects, and Hidden Treasures), followed by the extensive Herschel 400 Observing Guide. These are all deep-sky works largely to challenge telescope users.

I became aware of the need for a simple book to help pure novices get into our hobby. It's something I've always wanted to do, but I didn't get fired up to write the book until I learned that a friend of mine in Boston had bought a pair of binoculars and was trying to learn the night sky.

He was struggling with some basic concepts, and he would call and e-mail me with questions. I was enjoying helping him so much, that I thought I'd take what I was teaching him and share the knowledge.

Pendick: Yes, I noticed the book bills itself as a “simple guide to the heavens.” Is this book for the true novice — somebody just making their first attempt to explore the skies with binoculars?

O’Meara: Yes, the book takes readers by the hand and helps them to learn the night sky first with the naked eye, then with binoculars. It's what I did when I was 6 years old. The approach is quite novel, in that I start out by teaching readers the basics by first getting them oriented, then by using the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) as a naked-eye and binocular proving ground. The Big Dipper asterism is not only bright and obvious, even under city lights, but it is circumpolar, so it never sets from mid-northern latitudes or higher.

After learning the basics, the reader can then go to the month they want to begin observing, and learn the brightest stars and constellations hugging the north-south meridian. It's a very simple and slow process (what's the rush?) that first targets a bright star, then the constellation it belongs to. I then have the readers explore the constellation for some of its brightest binocular wonders. The idea is that repetition leads to familiarization.

When finished, they can use the bright star or constellation they just learned as a platform from which they can then move on to other stars and constellations.

Pendick: Would you recommend that people who want to start stargazing first do the naked eye work and graduate to binoculars before buying a telescope?

O’Meara: Absolutely! Telescopes are great. I love them! But I also know how to use them and where to point them. I know the sky, so my telescope and I are a team.

I didn't start out with a telescope. I learned the stars from a star wheel that appeared on the back of a Kellog's Corn Flakes Box when I was 6. I then augmented this journey with an old pair of 7x35 binoculars that my father had in the closet and never used.

Only then — once I learned the sky, once I knew my way around the sky, once I learned about deep-sky objects in certain constellations and explored them with binoculars — did I acquire a telescope.

So, yes, I firmly believe that the first step for any beginner is to start off by learning the basics, working with something simple (like a star wheel and a pair of handheld binoculars), and "meeting" the stars, one by one. It's like a party up there, and it's easy to get lost in the crowd. So I like to take it slow. It's a very Zen approach.

That's why I think this book will be of great help. It takes that casual approach to learning the night sky that's both fun and informative. Step by step the person increases his or her finding skills and knowledge. And with that skill and knowledge comes self-fulfillment. As I like to say, you can spend an hour running through the Louvre, but in the end what did you see? What did you experience? What did you learn?

Once I introduce the reader to, say, a star and its constellation, I tell some stories about [the targets]. I try to engage their interest. The binocular challenges I include in the book will certainly test the interest level of the observer. If he or she is not excited about a wide-field binocular view, well, then maybe he or she may find the narrow field of view in a telescope even more disappointing. Those that endure in this hobby can well appreciate both the naked-eye and binocular sky, as well as the telescopic view. All of them are alluring in their own ways. That's why this hobby is so great!

Stephen James O'Meara's Observing the Night Sky with Binoculars: A Simple Guide to the Heavens is on sale now at Amazon.com and other booksellers. Let him know what you think of it at someara@interpac.net.

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Q&A with Stephen J. O’Meara about his new binocular book