{"id":334599,"date":"2020-12-07T06:04:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T20:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=334599"},"modified":"2020-12-07T06:04:59","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T20:04:59","slug":"saipan-stargazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/saipan-stargazing\/","title":{"rendered":"Saipan stargazing\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Winter Triangle. (Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re lucky enough to live on Saipan and you have a small telescope or a pair of binoculars to enjoy the beautiful night skies that Saipan has to offer, then every clear night will provide you and your family with an opportunity to enjoy viewing the heavens and it\u2019s stellar delights from your own yard or apartment deck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a very large telescope to enjoy viewing the night skies here on Saipan.\u00a0 A telescope with an 80mm or 90mm aperture (objective lens size) will do nicely, especially when viewing the moon and planets. Using a variety of eyepieces for example (10mm, 20mm and 30mm) can vary your telescope\u2019s magnification and make your observing experience an even more enjoyable one by seeing even more details of the planets such as the bright planets Venus and its crescent phases, Jupiter and its moons, and Saturn, its rings or the moon\u2019s cratered lunar surface and mountain ranges. Some of the winter skies highlights that you can enjoy viewing is the Winter Triangle in the constellations of Canis Major, Canis Minor, and Orion.\u00a0 In the constellation of Orion (in the middle of Orion\u2019s sword) you can view the spectacular Orion Nebula (M-42) through\u00a0your telescope or even using binoculars (example: 7x50mm) will also provide a splendid view of the spectacular great nebula in the constellation of Orion (Orion the Hunter). See the accompanying public domain Wikipedia image of the Winter Triangle. Some of the fun of stargazing\u00a0under Saipan\u2019s beautiful clear winter skies is viewing the Winter\u00a0Triangle\u2019s brightest primary stars such as Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Procyon, which are easy to spot and fun to observe.\u00a0The\u00a0kids can even draw their location in the Winter Triangle as an astronomy science lesson in their school notebook to show to their teacher and classmates. I\u2019ll talk about some more stargazing activities in a future article.\u00a0 Stargazing is an enjoyable educational and entertaining experience for your\u00a0whole family that you can enjoy under the beautiful clear Saipan night skies.<\/p>\n

My 3.55-inch f7.8 Chinese refractor telescope. (Norman Butler)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other images shows my 90mm 3.55-inch f\/7.8 Mystery refractor telescope that I use to observe the heavens with on Saipan. If you\u2019re going to do some casual or even some serious stargazing, then I would recommend taking a short drive over to Fishing Tackle & Sporting Goods in Susupe on Beach Road to check out some of their splendid line of telescopes and binoculars. They\u2019re the experts on\u00a0telescopes and\u00a0binoculars\u00a0and they can answer your questions about the kind and size of telescope or binoculars you need to start your stargazing activities with on Saipan.<\/p>\n

Norman Butler, PH.D. (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong>
\nNorman Butler Ph.D. is a retired astronomer and has been a Saipan resident since 2011. Butler, who holds advanced degrees in Physics and Astronomy, was an opticalman (submarine optical navigational equipment) in the U.S. Navy throughout the 1960s and worked at Haleakala\u2019s AMOS Observatory on Maui in astronomy and optical engineering starting in the 1980s. He is an award-winning amateur telescope maker (https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y4eerxot) and has authored five popular books on binoscopes.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re lucky enough to live on Saipan and you have a small telescope or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":334602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[664],"class_list":["post-334599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-ph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}