About ‘Naked Astronomy’

it is not necessary to be naked to do naked astronomy.

Well, OK. For the purist, naked astronomy equals no clothes – no ifs, ands, or buts (pun intended). However, if you can live with a little less than perfect purity – and I'm one who can, especially in winter – naked astronomy means doing astronomy with as few props as possible, and that's the definition we'll use on this site.

Ideally, you wouldn't need clothes, but when you're out there in the dark, you're doing naked astronomy when you need no field guides nor star maps, no flashlights, no telescopes – none of that. I usually dispense with binoculars, but there are some things, such as lunar eclipses or double stars, which either require binoculars to see or the viewing pleasure of which is so greatly enhanced with them that the price for purity-in-nudity is too high. That's not to say that naked astronomers never use books and charts, but the less you need to take them out into the dark with you, the more naked you are.

Using a telescope is a marvelous thing, especially those models with computerized GPS gadgets. And it's perfectly natural and normal to want to move on to searching out deep sky objects and even the outer planets of our solar system, when you've finally got to the point you know your way around the naked-eye planets, the major stars, and the constellations. Still, naked astronomy is eminently democratic, in that it requires little to no financial investment (the latter is true if you have access to a good public library) and encompasses enough subject matter to keep you "looking up" in wonder every night of the year for many years.

If you've never done any astronomy, or if you tried once but were turned off by the pedantic approach of the teacher or book you were using, you probably doubt you can ever do the naked variety, that it's something only an astronomy geek can do. Well, keep your pants on (for now), because I've got news for you: this site will have you naked in no time.

Start getting undressed HERE.