Buying a Home Telescope for Family Fun
Introducing home telescopes for learning to your children and the rest of your family can broaden their minds and their education. Exploring the skies with a telescope at home is not only fun but very interesting. It doesn't take much to turn the night sky into the fuel for a fun-filled night looking at the stars with the kids. Not to mention, learning with a telescope could open up a whole new world to children that take part in such a unique and diverse activity.
Computer Programs for Kids Home Telescope Projects
Learning about the stars and the night sky can be more fun than you might think. Home telescopes are widely available, but make sure to do your research and purchase the right model for your needs. The more expensive a telescope is, the more powerful it is. Unfortunately, the same is true for the opposite: if the home telescope is obviously cheap, it might not yield enough power to see high amounts of detail in the elements of the sky.
Lucky for us parents, kids don't need much in the way of detail, although it won't hurt to spring for a mid-grade telescope. As a parent, you might have forgotten everything except for Orion’s belt and the all too famous Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations. Before your first night of family star gazing, you might want to hit up the internet for some information to keep the fun flowing.
Set up the telescope session to be as interesting and intriguing as possible. Start off by lining up a few stories that are gripping and "mostly" true, such as the story of Cassiopeia, who was a famous queen with a story worth telling. Cassiopeia was vain and made the mistake of proclaiming that her daughter, Andromeda, was prettier than any human or god alike. This made the gods very angry, and in the end, Cassiopeia was punished by being thrown to the stars where her constellation would hang upside down to punish her for her sins of vanity. This is a great story to start out with because it has a moral: beauty isn't everything.
There are dozens of computer programs for telescopes that work great for kids, and once you've included plenty of educational, yet interesting stories, you can keep them even more interested with software instead. There is even an app available for smart phones and ipods that allows you to find constellations simply by pointing your device's camera at the night sky. Local star gazing and astonomy clubs are also invaluable resources for the home telescope enthusiast.
Google Earth is a wonderful free program that will have your kids surfing the sky in no time. Make a game of it by having them write down five to ten of their favorite constellations and then go outside to see if they can use the home telescope to find those constellations again. Deep Space and Planet Tracker are other examples of programs that are absolutely perfect for beginners and young ones. There are thousands of other programs meant for different things such as keeping track of findings, taking pictures, and collecting data. No matter the level of the telescope user, there will be fun when using home telescopes for learning.
