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Thacher recommended binoculars because telescopes can be expensive and, if you’ve never used one before, frustrating for everyone.
“You can’t just point to a random point in the sky and expect great things to happen with your telescope,” Thacher said. “It’s mostly black.”
But if you know how to operate a telescope, then on Saturday night, fix your gaze on Uranus as it approaches opposition, when its relationship to the Sun makes it particularly bright. The full moon will eclipse Uranus, but you may still see it with the naked eye. Then tell your kids how scientists have found hydrogen sulfide there, which means that yes, Uranus does smell like farts.
“There is no end to the Uranus jokes,” Thacher said.
Connect the cosmic and cultural dots.
Before going beyond the planets to the actual stars in the night sky, consider using an app or software such as Skyguide, Stellarium, or Google Sky, which can map the planetary and stellar positions for you. They take a lot of guesswork out and allow you to hand your phone over to your kids so they can better familiarize themselves with the constellations.
Constellation patterns can often be difficult to reconstruct. If you’re looking for an easy one to spot, Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, suggested starting with the Big Dipper. Most people in the Northern Hemisphere have seen this, just scan the northern sky for seven bright stars clustered together. Three will be shaped like a handle and the other four will look like a rectangle.
Once you know what to look for, the Big Dipper comes to life. After you spot it, look at the two stars on the mug that are farthest from the handle, where the water could come out. These are the leading stars: Merak, at the bottom, and Dubhe, at the top. If you draw a straight line from Merak to Dubhe and exit the cup, you will land on Polaris, which is the North Star. With Polaris in your sights, you now have the handle of the Little Dipper. Faherty suggested plotting this on paper with your children in heaven.
Two more stars that you and your children can find, with the help of the Big Dipper, are Arcturus and Spica. If you follow the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle away from his cup, you will be led to the beautiful red Arcturus. “You ‘bow’ the star Arcturus,” Dr. Faherty said. After you get to Arcturus, go straight down, or as Dr. Faherty said, “Pike down to the star Spica, which is this beautiful, very bright blue star.
