If you are a true outdoors eagle, you are not just outside during the day but during the night, too! Stargazing is one of the most relaxing yet exciting outdoors activities. To start, all you need to do is get away from a city or any place that pollutes the night sky with light. You can bring along blankets and a thermos to keep you warm.
If you want, you can look for familiar constellations like Orion (easily identified by the belt, three bright start that are in a row), or Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) and Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper). You can almost always locate Ursa Major and Ursa Minor because they are circumpolar, which means they circle around the celestial North Pole and are visible for most people in the Northern Hemisphere during each night throughout the year. They are unique because most stars will disappear below the horizon at some point during the year. The only other three circumpolar constellations are Draco the dragon, Cepheus the king of Ethiopia, and Cassiopeia his wife. Orion is a seasonal constellation.
If you would like to take your stargazing a step further, you have several options. Your best investment probably will be to buy a star chart. A star chart is essentially a map of the sky, and you can use it to identify constellations with the naked eye. Of course, your next investment would be to buy a telescope. What you buy depends on how much you want to see and what you are willing to spend. The first time I looked through a telescope I was astounded. To be able to see the craters on the moon, not just from a picture, is a strangely mind-blowing experience. Likewise is being able to see the moons of Saturn. However, my favorite sight has to be star clusters, a small spot in the sky where literally thousands of stars can be viewed with a telescope.
If you have a star chart and/or a telescope, but don’t know where to begin, StarDate is a Website that can be very helpful. If you look at the Weekly Tips, you can read hints to finding special occurrences, such as the location of a planet that might be brighter than usual on a given night.
