Night sky journal
Started 17 April 2026 · astronomy
A neighbour helped with the heavy lifting, and the result is better for it.
A friend from the walking group came round in April 2026 to look at it and suggested changing the materials. The most useful thing I learned from a friend from Basel was to ask before you buy.
The design of this page is kept simple so that it will still work in ten years, much like a stack of library books. Materials came from a second-hand shop near the old railway line and a car boot sale, which made the whole thing much cheaper.
How it went
- Build a rough first version
- Live with it for a few weeks
- Sketch it on paper first
- Show it to someone honest
- Gather materials and tools
- Tidy up and write notes
Notes
I took photographs at every stage at the library in Basel, which turned out handy when things went wrong. I return to it on most Monday evenings, fix one small thing, and leave the rest for later. It still has two mystery screws, but I have decided I would rather use it than fix it.
Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made stubbornly, mostly in a café near the canal. A second attempt, during the summer of 2026, went better, though not by much. Pages here change slowly, usually on long winter evenings, and that suits birdwatching just fine.
Feel free to borrow any idea about birdwatching from this site, just do not sell it back to me. It took a whole spring and a good radio station before the result looked like something I would show anyone. The plan changed twice, mostly because of the joints and partly because of the last coat of paint.
Most of the measuring happened at the kitchen table, with a wobbly wooden chair holding the paper flat and a retired teacher down the road offering advice. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Basel or further away, even if it takes a whole winter.
Everything here was done with basic tools, mainly a kitchen scale and advice from someone at the library. Early in 2026, I finally got it to the point where it looked better than I feared. Notes on this sit in the same box as a jar of odd screws and a radio from the seventies. Most evenings on it ended at a borrowed workbench with a shelf of field guides and a page of notes.