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Introduction to the Night Sky
Home » Astronomy » Learning the Night Sky » Introduction to the Night SkyYou can begin practicing astronomy by watching where the Sun rises and sets. Note when you see the Moon and how it appears. Return a few hours later to see how the skies have changed. The stars don’t move—we do!
At the Earth’s equator, we move at an amazing speed of 1,000 miles per hour. We can’t feel it because it’s like being in a moving car, but we’d notice something called parallax—how a thing closer seems to move faster while something further away moves slower.
The stars change position by four minutes every day—this is sidereal time. The stars visible just before dawn are still moving across the sky during the day—appearing again after sunset. To understand sidereal time, choose a night where you can see a bright star near a fixed point. Mark your spot and return two weeks later at the exact same time at the exact same spot. You’ll see the star has now progressed almost one hour on its path!
Now let’s go learn more about what we can see...
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- Introduction to the Night Sky