About
Backyard Sky started as a shared notebook. One of us had bought a telescope, used it four times, and put it in a cupboard for two years — which turns out to be the most common astronomy story there is.
What changed things was borrowing a pair of binoculars and a printed chart from someone at the local astronomical society, and being told to stop trying to find galaxies and look at the Moon instead. Within a month the sky had gone from an undifferentiated scatter of dots to a place with landmarks in it.
So the notes here are deliberately narrow. We write about what is visible from an ordinary garden with an ordinary sky, using equipment that costs less than a phone. We say when something is hard, and we say when a well-known target is genuinely disappointing at small aperture — because the guides that never admit that are the reason so many telescopes end up in cupboards.
Nothing on this site is sponsored. Nothing is affiliate-linked. If a page ever recommends something, it is because it survived a winter of use.
No. We have no shop, no affiliate links and no relationship with any manufacturer. When we name a piece of kit it is because we own it or borrowed it from someone at the local society.
Because that is where we observe, and pretending otherwise would make the timings wrong. Most of the objects are visible far more widely — it is the "when to look" part that shifts.
Yes, with a link back. Ask first if you want to reprint a whole page.
Probably not. There are excellent tools for that already, and duplicating them badly helps nobody. We would rather write fewer, better observing notes.