Source: cirosantilli/good-targets-for-amateur-astronomy

= Good targets for amateur astronomy

Looking at most <astronomical object> through a <Telescope> is boring because you only see a white ball or point every time. Such targets would likely only be interesting with <spectroscopy> analysis.

There are however some objects that you can see the structure of even with an <amateur telescope>, and that makes them very exciting.

Some good ones:
* <The Moon>, notably crater detail.
* <Saturn>. Clearly visible to the naked eye, but looks like a ball. But under an amateur telescope, you can clearly see that there is a disk. Clearly discerning that the disk is a ring, i.e. seeing the gap, is a bit harder though.
* <Jupiter>. Clearly visible to the naked eye, it is quite huge. The four <Galilean moons>, being <Earth>-sized, are incredibly clearly visible, tested on <Celestron NexStar 4SE> 25mm/9mm eyepiece. Colored gas clouds are hard though, you will likely just see it bright white. https://www.reddit.com/r/telescopes/comments/35xrbb/how_can_i_see_the_color_of_jupiter_with_my/
* a <double star>. As mentioned at https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-astronomical-targets-new-telescope/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albireo[Albireo] are incredibly separated. Also it is is easy to find manually being in a major well known constellation. It is no wonder it is not quite even known if they are gravitationally bound or not!
* <Andromeda Galaxy>. This is when things start getting hard. You can see a faint cloud, but it is not super clear that it has a center.

  One important understanding is that <it is not possible to see stars outside of the Milky Way by naked eye>.

  It is at this point that you start to learn that pictures of faint objects require longer term exposure and averaging of the images taken. For this you need:
  * a digital camera attached to the scope
  * a computerized scope that slowly moves to track the point of interest
  * image processing software that does the averaging
  Just looking through the scope to immediately see something is not enough.

  <video Andromeda Galaxy with only a Camera, Lens, & Tripod by Nebula Photos (2020)> gives a good notion of expectation adjustment.

Bibliography:
* https://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-astronomical-targets-new-telescope/