Home / Guides / What to observe: targets for your telescope
What to observe: targets for your telescope
The night sky offers the Moon, the planets and hundreds of deep-sky objects. These guides cover the best targets, how to find them, and the telescope and eyepiece each needs.
What can I see through a small telescope?
A small telescope shows the Moon in fine detail, the phases of Venus and Mercury, the cloud belts and moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the brightest deep-sky objects such as the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, the Andromeda Galaxy and the great globular cluster in Hercules. Fainter galaxies and nebulae reward more aperture and darker skies.
What should a beginner look at first?
Start with the Moon, then Jupiter and Saturn, then the brightest, largest deep-sky objects like M42, M45 and M31. These are easy to find and impressive even from a light-polluted site, and they build the finding skills you need for fainter targets.
How do I choose the magnification for a target?
Extended objects like galaxies, nebulae and large clusters are framed best at low to medium power with a wide field; the Moon, planets and small bright nebulae take higher power. Magnification is your telescope's focal length divided by your eyepiece's focal length, and the Fit My Telescope tool shows the magnification, true field and exit pupil each of your eyepieces gives.
Does the season affect what I can see?
Yes. The Earth's orbit turns the night sky through the year, so different constellations and their deep-sky objects are on view in each season. Orion and its nebula dominate northern winter evenings, the galaxies of Virgo and Coma ride high in spring, the Milky Way and its clusters and nebulae fill summer, and Andromeda and the autumn galaxies follow. The planets move against this backdrop on their own schedule. The target guides below tell you which constellation each object sits in so you can plan an evening around what is up.
Related
Sources: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) ยท Wikidata (CC0)