I need help with my telescope...?

Question

Okay I bought a tracking device with my telescope. The bad part is that I live in L.A. and am not able to see a lot of stars and constellations and stuff like that. I need to align my telescope with two starts and I need to know their names, but am unable to do that. Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to spend some time learning the stars and constellations, you don't need to know all of them.  For your immediate need you could concentrate on the 1st magnitude stars about sixteen of them and many of those would be too far south to be seen in the US anyway, so there is not that many.  With a telescope you will ultimately want to have a good star map these can be a little pricey, to start off though there are many website resources where you can get maps downloadable, try Sky and Telescope, I have a link below to some free and share ware programs which might help.  Note also if you are looking for bright stars, the brightest ones you see might be a planet and will not help in your telescope set-up, so you will need to know the difference.

Also try to get away from the city lights, it will make a big difference.

Answer 2

Keith has suggested some good stars to use.  However, as a general solution, I suggest you get a planisphere.  If you haven't seen one of these, it's a flat disc with stars printed on it, encased in a paper sleeve with an oval hole in it.  You set the planisphere for the current date and time by turning the disc, and the oval hole reveals the stars that are up in the sky at that time.  Here are some reasonably priced options:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-30%C2%B0-40%...

http://shopatsky.com/products.asp?dept=9

Be sure to buy one for your approximate latitude.

The advantage of a planisphere is that it not only tells you what stars are up in the sky, but it identifies those stars for you, if you're able to match what you see in the sky with what's on the planisphere.

Good luck.  I live in the L.A. area, too, and it's still quite possible to do some decent observing around here, depending on where you live and how far you're willing to drive (if your neighborhood really is way too bright).  The issue with the L.A. light dome is not that it's so intensely bright (although it is fairly bright, it's not as bright as more densely packed metropolises), but that it's so darned broad.  If you want really dark skies, you have to drive a long way.

Answer 3

Two stars in the south-southwest right after sunset: Arcturus is the brighter and higher (45° up); Spica is a bit dimmer and a ways below it.

Very high in the sky, but more toward the east, is Vega, which is also very bright.