Easy Targets for Your Telescope or Binoculars
Here are the top five things to see with a beginner telescope:
The Moon: The most accessible and rewarding object for beginners, the Moon's surface shows incredible detail, including craters and mountains. Observing during the Moon's partial phases, rather than full, highlights the shadows and brings out more features.
Jupiter: Even with a small telescope, you can see Jupiter's four large Galilean moons as bright dots lined up next to the planet, and under good conditions, you can observe the planet's distinct cloud bands.
Saturn: The rings of Saturn are an unmistakable sight in a beginner telescope, providing a truly awe-inspiring view of our solar system's giant.
Pleiades (M45) Star Cluster
Star Clusters: Both open clusters, like the Pleiades (M45) or M44 (Beehive Cluster), and globular clusters, like the Hercules Cluster (M13), are visible. These clusters appear as glittering collections of hundreds or thousands of stars.
Andromeda Galaxy (M31): The closest large galaxy to our own Milky Way, M31 appears as a faint, blurry patch of light through a beginner telescope. Despite its distant and hazy appearance, it's a profound experience to see a galaxy with trillions of stars located millions of light-years away.