Think binoculars. Even those old binoculars collecting dust in your closet can take you stargazing. That inexpensive 7 x 35mm binocular you use at football games has a wide field of view that will make it easy for you to star-hop around the sky to find many deep space gems – the Andromeda Galaxy, the Pleiades star cluster, the Great Nebula in Orion, and many more. And don’t forget the Moon. There’s a surprising amount of lunar detail to be seen with a steady pair of binoculars. Learn how to find your way around the sky with them and a pair of binoculars can keep you stargazing for a lifetime.

Get a set of reasonably-sized star charts – like the Tirion Atlas 2000.0 – and a guidebook or two. Using a more detailed star chart than the small monthly charts in the magazines will let you locate hundreds of deep space objects with your binoculars (and eventually your telescope). Guidebooks – like Star Hopping, Deep Sky Companions: The Messier Objects, Nightwatch, or The Universe from Your Backyard – will describe those objects for you, help you find them, and give you a feel for what they look like through eyeball, binocular, or telescope. Becoming a regular reader of the monthly sky guides in magazines will keep you alert to the transient sights that are visible in binoculars – things like comets, the day to day changing positions of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, the phases of Venus, the brightening and dimming of variable stars, and more. The skills you develop navigating the sky with binoculars, using star charts and guidebooks, will stand you in good stead when you move up to a telescope.

Seek out other astronomers. Solitary stargazing can be restful and fulfilling, but observing with others will open your eyes to many more starry wonders and increase your observing skills. Join an astronomy club, even if you don’t yet own a telescope. Many clubs have telescopes for their scope-less club members to borrow. Attend the club’s monthly star parties and look through as many different telescopes there as you can, to get a feel for what telescope types best suit your needs and your budget.

When you’re ready for a telescope, use the information in this web site to help you choose the scope that’s right for you. When you do get your scope, read the instruction manual before you start assembling it (you can download many of them in advance from this web site). The manual usually will answer many of the questions that are bound to come up. If it doesn’t, give us a call. Don’t go overboard buying accessories at first. The greater the number of new gadgets that you have to learn how to use all at once, the more easily you can get frustrated. Take astronomy one step at a time.

Once you have your scope, keep in mind that you have to meet the Universe on its terms, not yours. There is nothing you can do about clouds blocking your view, or missing a long-anticipated event, or the extreme distance and faintness of an object you want to see. Patience and persistence are as much a part of an astronomer’s observing kit as a set of eyepieces.

Remember that most objects within reach of any telescope are barely within reach. Much of the time you’ll be hunting for objects that are very dim, very small, or both. The challenge of finding them is one of the lures of amateur astronomy. No telescope, large or small, can ever show you everything you want to see, nor can it show you the amount of detail and the vivid colors that you see in long exposure photos taken with large observatory telescopes. So, relax and accept the limitations and imperfections of the seeing conditions, your optics, and your own eyes. You may not see faint deep space objects as well as the Hubble Space Telescope, but you will be able to take great pleasure in those wonders you can see. Let’s take a look at what a telescope does . . .