Hi Folks,
I’m in Taipei at the minute. I went to the Taipei Astronomical Museum yesterday morning and I was watching the Star Show there in their IMAX theatre there. Hopefully, I learned something about the constellations. I’d like to view the stars for real in Taipei but it’s almost impossible where I am located in Ximending to do so. I think because of light pollution and also air pollution. Does anyone know a good place nearby to view the stars? A good place to do a spot of star-gazing. Maybe, I can take the MRT train to the outskirts of Taipei and have a try provided, of course, the weather is clear.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Hahahahaha! You funny, man. Velly funny.
Um, try riding the scooter up to the furthest reaches of YangMingShan one night. Better still, get on to a ferry and cruise on out to Ishigaki or Iriomote Islands, or even just to Penghu. Way too much light pollution in Taiwan.
That said, once you get above 3,000 meters on the main range, there are some places with decent star views. Not many, and not great, but better by far than Taipei. Why, back in MY day, we used to have a fireworks celebration any night that we could see THE star from Taipei. There is only one that’s visible from Taipei at any one time. I think they take it in turns…
I Taipei it’ll be hard to see much with all the light, but Yangming Mountain in the area of CingTianGang, on a cloudless night will give you great views of constellations etc…
Get a hold of a map or even better if you have an iPhone get Star Walk you are in for a nice treat.
If you have a telescope then all the better. Enjoy your viewing.
Bump on stargazing - Jupiter’s in opposition right now, which as best I can tell means that we’re directly between it and the sun, which means it’s a good time to look at it - it’s as close as it gets, plus it’s dark out. Right now (9pm) it’s visible at, oh, let’s say the top of my east-facing windows.
To my shock, I think I actually saw 1 or 2 of the Galilean moons tonight through binoculars, one directly above at some distance, and one closer in below. Now, there’s a chance they were just visual artifacts from squinting or whatever, but I’m persuading myself otherwise, and you should be able to see the Galilean moons through binoculars. Anyway, if you’ve got a pair of binoculars (or better yet a telescope), tonight would be a good night to go out on the balcony or roof and have a look. Of course if you’re in Taipei you’re not going to see many other stars out, but I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen any of Jupiter’s moons “in real life”.
Definitely the coolest stargazing moment I’ve had while in Taipei (a major caveat!), even if I’m just imagining what I think I saw.
Lostinasia that is awesome.
In Taipei area it would have to be Taipei’s highest mountain. 7 Star Mountain. I saw a lot of stars living in Wanli. Because there wasn’t the light pollution there.
I bought a telescope recently, and from Taipei I’ve easily been able to Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, as well as the brighter stars. Of course, I doubt it’s very easy to see any of the Messier objects. Tonight seemed like a good night for stargazing. If anyone’s curious about what star they’re looking at there’s an app that’ll show you. It’s called Star Chart—iPhone/iPad version and Android version.
Umm, Yangmingshan (already mentioned) and some random places around the more mountainous Xindian area are nice too.
The absolute best stargazing experience for me, however, was outside a little hikers’ hut one night in the Xueshan mountain range.