Astronomers of Humboldt

Sky Charts

• The Astronomical League has a large number of handouts available—start at their Night Sky Tools page at https://www.astroleague.org/navigating-the-night-sky-guides/. Follow the links to "Handouts and Useful Information" as well as to their "Navigating the mid-Month Night Sky" and "What’s Up Doc" pages.
• Sky & Telescope has an Interactive Sky Chartat http://www.skyandtelescope.com/interactive-sky-chart/. They may ask you to log in, but you do not have to be a subscriber to use their site. Once you put in your location, if you have cookies activated, it will remember where you are.
• You can also download Sky & Telescope's Getting Started in Astronomy brochure as a printable pdf file from http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/GettingStartedNorth.pdf. It contains tips for beginners, bimonthly star charts, and a moon map.
• You might also give a listen to Sky & Telescope's monthly Sky Podcast at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-podcasts/. You can hear a description of the sky online or you can download it to your favorite portable media player.
• Or read the US Naval Observatory's The Sky This Week description of what's currently in the night sky at https://www.cnmoc.usff.navy.mil/Our-Commands/United-States-Naval-Observatory/The-Sky-This-Week/.
• There are a number of interactive websites: The Sky Live at https://theskylive.com/; In the Sky at https://in-the-sky.org/; Sky-Map at http://www.sky-map.org/; Time and Date at https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/. In all of these you can get astronomical information for your location and for current or future times.
• Alternatively you can get a printable star chart from Skymaps at http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html. Click on the link for the Northern Hemisphere edition near the middle of the page.
• And yet another source is Your Sky at http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yourhorizon/. These interactive maps can be set to our latitude and longitude (roughly 41 degrees North and 124 degrees West). But if you want to see a map for a time other than "Now" you will have to use Universal Time: add 8 hours to Pacific Standard Time or 7 hours to Pacific Daylight Time.
• In addition to sky maps the site Heavens Above at http://www.heavens-above.com/ includes a schedule of satellite flyovers. You can set it for your location and find recent or upcoming appearances of the ISS or Starlink groups.
• If you want to obtain your own planetarium software to run on your own computer, a free open-source program is Stellarium at http://www.stellarium.org/. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. And did we remember to say it was free?
• Another downloadable sky map program is Cartes du Ceil (available in English), also available for Windows, Mac, and Linux at http://www.stellarium.org/. This one is great for printing your own customized charts. And it also is free.
• Or visit your favorite online app store to get any of the dozens of sky apps (free, ad-supported, or for purchase) that are available for your phone or tablet.