My weather app is full of it, I grumbled to myself as minutes turned to anxiety-inducing hours beneath thick clouds—not the clear skies my phone had promised.
I’m not new to meteorological mind games. As an astrophotographer and night-sky enthusiast, I’ve endured my fair share of inaccurate weather forecasts. But this one-night-only trip to Pennsylvania’s Cherry Springs State Park—one of the darkest spots in the eastern U.S.—was testing my patience.
Luckily, my clear-skies gamble paid off around midnight, when bright Vega began to sparkle overhead. More stars followed, then came the Milky Way. After four hours of killing time, I saw for myself why East Coast astrotourists rave about this dark-sky oasis.
And it’s just one of dozens upon dozens of stargazing trips I’ve plotted for night-sky photography in recent years. I’ve chased aurora up and down Greenland’s west coast, snapped the stars in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and slept beneath the cosmos on a salt pan in Botswana. In this article, I’m sharing 12 staples in my stargazing gear kit. All are portable, functional, and beginner-friendly—because watching the stars doesn’t require expensive equipment or intimidating gear. It’s all about stepping outside to look up. Here’s how.
The post The Best Stargazing Gear You Need for a Night Under the Heavens appeared first on Outside Online.
