hi this is Graham from Jenham's Astro in this video I'm going to look at some
gift ideas for astronomers. I've chosen five items that cost up to 25 pounds or 30 dollars.
Now astronomers can be difficult people to buy presents for the chances are they've already
filled their house maybe your house with all sorts of equipment so it could be telescopes it could be
eyepieces cameras all sorts of stuff so what I've done is I've chosen five items that I'd
like to receive some of them are practical some of them are fun some of them are just nice gifts.
okay let's have a look at the first of the items.
so I've chosen this "Turn left at Orion" which is a sky Atlas now you might think that having
an atlas these days is a little bit out of date most of us use apps on our phones to find Stars
and objects in the night sky and many telescopes have got a database to actually point their way
to an object without you needing to know where it is and all that is true but still this is a
nice object it's a book that's been around since 1989 it's now in its fifth edition and you can buy
it in the UK for about 25 pounds it's just over 30 in the US and it's just a really really well
written guide to observing the night sky now it's not like a coffee table book it doesn't have lots
of pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Telescope it simply has sketches
of what you might look to see if you look through a pair of binoculars or a small telescope or if
you look through a much larger telescope it tells it how it is so if something's going
to look like a smudge it has a picture of the smudge so it's just a really useful book
written by astronomers for astronomers and I'd recommend it
to anybody even if they don't normally look at a paper Atlas these days they'll find
something of interest in this book, so "Turn Left at Orion" - definitely worth considering
So next up is this the Solarcan now these are great fun you can buy them in the UK
for 16 pounds each about twenty dollars in the US and basically it is a camera in a can
so what you get is a can now inside here is a piece of photographic paper and it's basically
a pinhole camera so you can probably see here there's a little bit of sticky tape that covers
a pinhole and you remove that when you're ready to go now the idea of this is that you put it
somewhere up high facing towards the South and then you just leave it and it captures
an image of the Sun as it arcs across the sky during the day and you leave it for weeks or
months and you'll be able to see the variation of that Arc as the year progresses obviously the sun
is much higher up in the sky during the summer than it is during the winter so you get a can
you get some cable ties to attach it to your gutter pipe or drain pipe
and get a full set of instructions it tells you everything you need to know about
how to how to attach the Solarcan how to process it at the end when you take the piece of film out
you you don't need to take it to a photographic lab or anything like that old school you can take
a picture of it on a scanner using your camera on your phone and the idea is that you might produce
some really nice pictures like this which show as I say the Arc of the sun traveling through
the sky so it's a bit of fun low-cost investment there's a few options available you can buy them
up in multi-packs you can buy ones which are going to produce different colors to the images and it's
something that kids can get involved in as long as someone helps them set up then you can leave it
and get hopefully a good result after a few weeks or a few months so highly recommended Solarcan
okay so next up is this Optical Wonder cleaning fluid from Baader Planetarium now you can buy
one of these squirters along with a cleaning cloth like this that looks remarkably like something you
might clean your glasses with you can buy those in the UK for about 20 pounds or just under 30
in the US and it's just really useful stuff even if you buy it for someone who's already got some
sooner or later they're gonna need a refill so basically astronomers don't clean the Optics of
their telescopes very often generally it's better to leave things be so a bit of dust on a lens
doesn't do any harm and you better to just leave it but what do you do if you put a fingerprint in
the middle of your favorite eyepiece you're going to need to clean it so for times like that that's
when you're Optical Wonder cleaning fluid comes in useful and you can't really go wrong as a gift
okay if you're looking for a low-cost gift you might want to try this
it's a red torch it's made by David Chandler and it's called the Night Reader Pro it's very small
comes a little keyring on the end and it's available in the UK for 12 pounds uh 12 in
the US now it's a red light astronomers like red torches because it preserves their night
vision and if you want to annoy an astronomer you basically turn on an outside light when
they've been outside dark adapting for half an hour or so that will annoy them
so if you don't want to do that you could buy them a red torch like this the neat
feature of this one is that it is adjustable in brightness so I can push the button turn it on
if I point it at the camera push the button and hold it it dims so it is a dimmable red torch
for not much money definitely worth a try I would say it's got one button got to be pretty simple if
you play around with a button too much you can get it to go in all sorts of other modes so it can get
into a strobe light mode things you maybe weren't intending to do but it assures me that it's very
simple I think if I play around with enough I will be able to figure out how to make it
brighter and then dimmer and not to make it flash but I'd say if I can work it out you'll be able
to do the same so cheap little torch 12 pound 12 dollars definitely an option for a stocking filler
so last up is socks astronomy socks
you can get star socks constellation socks socks for men socks for women very cheap easy to find
lots of options on the internet and who doesn't need socks everyone needs socks outside when it's
cold you look at the stars you need socks inside when it's raining because you bought
some astronomy equipment you still need socks so last item on the list a gift of astronomy socks
okay I hope this video has been useful and given you some ideas for gifts for that
astronomer in your life whether it be a pinhole camera a pair of socks or a nice Sky Atlas
I try to put a few links in the description field for this video so you can find the
objects online and then have a look and see whether you think that these are things that
might be of interest to you if you haven't subscribed to Jenham's Astro yet please hit
the Subscribe button and look out for similar videos from my channel okay thanks for watching