If you have a Dobsonian or Newtonian reflector, flocking is a great way to reduce stray light and improve the contrast. What is flocking? It simply means lining or painting the inside of your telescope with something that absorbs light—ideally something that absorbs close to 100% of visible light. Most telescope insides are painted flat black, but that usually doesn’t do a particularly good job of absorbing incident light. If you don’t believe me, look down the inside of your telescope tube in the daylight: is it truly pitch black or just dark gray?
Flocking is particularly helpful in light-polluted environments because there is so much more stray light to eliminate. Think of it this way: if you are in a really, really dark site, flocking doesn’t matter much because there is essentially no stray light. In fact, in really dark skies, you don’t even need a light shroud around a truss-tube telescope—there is just no light to leak into your light path. In contrast, your typical urban or sub-urban environment has plenty of stray light sources: the neighbor’s porch light or bedroom light, the nearby street light, the sky-glow from downtown, and even the light-gray background of the sky itself. If any of this light gets into your eyepiece, it contributes to brightening the background and killing the contrast.
Now flocking is pretty easy and one of the secrets is that you only need to flock relatively small portions of your telescope to get essentially all of the benefits...
Orion is not only the best known winter constellation, but it is also a great urban constellation. Thanks to its distinctive arrangement of rather bright stars, Orion shines through in heavily washed-out skies, even when few other constellations can recognized. It is also the home of the Great Orion Nebula (M42) big, bright, and easily visible even in washed-out skies. However, M42 is only the most famous of many interesting astronomical objects in Orion. And best of all for urban astronomers, quite a few of Orion's objects—like the constellation itself—can be enjoyed in light-polluted skies. Here is a run down...
Jupiter offers great observing opportunities for urban astronomers. It is very bright, easy to find and shows interesting details even in small scopes. A view of Jupiter through a telescope will never fail to impress your family, friends, and neighbors. It’s relatively large size, cloud detail, and the ballet of its moons make Jupiter my favorite planet to observe. But after you’ve stared at Jupiter for the 20th time, then what? Well, here are few ideas of things to look for that should keep you busy for many nights to come...
Since 2007 my primary telescope has been the Z-10: a Zhumell 10 inch (250 mm) Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount. Many might argue that so much aperture is wasted in washed-out skies, but I found the Z-10 suits my needs quite well. It is sometimes claimed that in light-polluted skies larger apertures only further brighten the background and diminish contrast; that in washed-out skies you can actually see more with smaller apertures. I’ve found that to be simply another urban legend: the Z-10 does quite well in pulling in DSOs from my front yard despite the heavy light-pollution. It consistently shows objects that I can’t see with smaller apertures. The Z-10 also just fits in my car (a VW Passat), allowing me to easily take it to nearby parks or to far-away dark-sites.
This review of Sky Atlas 2000.0 is the second in a series of atlas reviews to help you decide which star atlas is right for you. My first review covered