Astronomy for beginners: learn to decipher celestial bodies

STARGAZER and honorary secretary of the Astronomical Society Ng Hong-cheung looks surprised when asked what telescope a starter observer should buy. 'Oh, don't buy a telescope. Buy a set of binoculars,' he says.

Hong Kong people, used to hearing about the city's air pollution and seeing its strong lights at night, might scoff at such advice. But Mr Ng is adamant.

A pair of reasonable binoculars, maybe 10 times magnification, will show you enough wonders of the moon and the planets' warts and pimples to get you hooked, he says.

'Buy a simple pair for a few hundred dollars. It's a pair of telescopes really, and it expands your observing horizon . . . the bright stars are a few hundred light years away and you can see them with the naked eye. With binoculars you get a few thousand light years of the universe for only a few hundred dollars. It's a bargain.' Come off it, you say. Whenever I look up into Hong Kong's night sky I can't see anything. The sky is full of stars but it's not possible to see them in a dusty, highly-lit city like this.

Mr Ng agrees - for stars. But not for the Moon and planets. And he should know the difficulties: after 20 years watching the planets, he still lives in what seems the most unpromising flat he could find to watch the night sky.

His low-rise, North Point home seems to jostle against the thundering Eastern corridor highway a few metres from his observation window; the nose-to-tail traffic fires megawatts of light beams directly across his viewing path.