One of the many wonders of the Inland Northwest is its location in the world for stargazing.
It lies in a spot where the occasional aurora borealis can be observed, plus a plethora of meteor showers and any lunar or solar eclipse that reaches the gaze of the region.
While stargazing can feel like a relatively self-explanatory thing to get into, there's much more than meets the eye to the astronomical world.
Your experience with stargazing depends mainly on your chosen location. While you can see a decent amount of stars and astronomical objects in the city, light pollution from all of the street and house lights greatly affects one's experience gazing up at the night sky.
A local stargazing group called the Spokane Astronomical Society holds star parties at the Fishtrap Lake Recreation Area about 30 miles southwest of Spokane, which provides a super dark sky free of city lights.
"The star parties are held on a weekend closest to the new moon," says Spokane Astronomical Society member Paul Yost. "The full moon produces a lot of light in the sky, and so does any phase of the moon, but when the moon's new it's not in the sky, it's on the day side of the Earth all night long, which is nice and makes for really dark skies. We want the sky to be as dark as it can get so that we can see the things that we like to look at, which are nebula, galaxies and different structures in the sky."
John Whitmer, an astronomy professor at Spokane Falls Community College, recommends people avoid buying a telescope when starting out in their stargazing journey.
"I would suggest starting with a good pair of 10x50 binoculars and a good star chart," Whitmer says. "It is much easier to view the sky with binoculars compared to a telescope, and from a dark site you can see an amazing amount of detail with binoculars."
Whitmer also recommends getting involved with the Spokane Astronomical Society to learn more about stargazing and to determine if it's something you want to devote more time and money to.
"Getting involved with this club would be a great way for the beginning stargazer to learn more about astronomy and telescopes, and give them a chance to look through a variety of scopes before purchasing one," he says.
At the society's star parties, anyone can look through telescopes brought by the club and its members to get a feel for stargazing. Members who join for a $25 yearly fee can borrow the club's telescopes and other equipment for personal stargazing endeavors.
And if you can't make it to one of the star parties or sign up for a club membership, the Spokane Public Library offers rentable telescopes through its Library of Things — library cardholders can check out a high-quality telescope without committing to the cost.
Another resource Yost recommends amateur astronomers and stargazers check out is the Messier Catalog, a set of deep-sky astronomical objects that aren't comets, first observed by French astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700s during his search for comets.
"That's a great one to get started with," he says. "There's about 100 items on it, and if you're really fast you can do it in one night."
The Spokane Astronomical Society resumes monthly meetings on the first Friday of the month starting in August. More information about the group, its star parties, membership fees and benefits is at spokaneastronomical.org. ♦