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Observing double stars with binoculars might seem like a crazy pursuit. Many double star observers like to challenge themselves by splitting tight doubles; however, the low magnifications of binoculars put [...]

Here's a fun field with which to push your observing abilities. Starting at Alpha (α) Persei (Mirfak), the brightest star in the constellation Perseus, follow the J-shaped chain of stars [...]

Is there a more enchanting time of year than this for stargazing? In all honesty ... maybe. It's still cold out most evenings, and even though late-season snow isn't a [...]

WHEN I WAS A KID growing up out in the country, I loved the stars. I knew that the night sky was not just a dome overhead but an effectively [...]

When I first got into amateur astronomy in the fall of 2007, Cassiopeia was my first constellation. In the era before smartphones and astronomy apps, I learned the sky the [...]

'Ask people who land huge fish with light tackle, why I do what I do,' wrote West Coast observer Jay Reynolds Freeman, in an essay about hunting deep-sky objects with [...]

IN THE CRISP WINTER SKIES, the Milky Way seems to bend slightly closer to the Earth, inviting us to a deeper appreciation of its glittering starfields. Plus, it's usually darned [...]

I vividly remember the first time I saw NGC 253, the Silver Coin Galaxy (also known as the Sculptor Galaxy). I was in Big Bear Lake on a little weekend [...]

The Romans called the Milky Way the via lactea or 'milky road.' It's a road on which I frequently I find myself wandering. I want to understand the structure of [...]

Galaxies in Pegasus, the Winged Horse, have a certain reputation: They're challenging. With famous members like Stephan's Quintet and Einstein's Cross, you could be forgiven for thinking that only observers [...]

On a clear, dark night, the summer Milky Way is made up of bright streams of stars and dark rivers of dust interwoven with almost hypnotic complexity. Gazing into the [...]

Jupiter is this month's target, for three reasons. First, it's the most rewarding planet to observe with binoculars. Even at 7x, the King of Planets is a disk rather than [...]

The phrase 'northern Cancer' doesn't immediately stir the soul. Most people visit the cosmic Crab for its two Messier open clusters, M26 and M44. If you've been north of M44, [...]

Often Overlooked Quiz time! I'm thinking of a celestial object, it lies just over 10° from Alpha (a) Persei, with a visual magnitude of 6.5, but it isn't a Messier [...]

In the 1960 TV series, Daniel Boone describes a buffalo 'so big, I had to look three times to see all of it.' There are starfields like that, too, those [...]

Confession time: I have not paid nearly as much attention to NGC 2403 as I should have. I like binocular observing, and I like galaxies, and I especially like galaxies [...]

The constellation Auriga, the Charioteer, is a favorite for binocular observers. The center of the constellation is heaped with bright stars, clusters, and asterisms--glittering rewards for a victorious chariot-racer, it [...]

A noted extraterrestrial sage once advised his pupil, 'You must unlearn what you have learned.' I think about this all the time while stargazing. Knowing the constellations, the celestial coordinate [...]

I am a connoisseur of a particular class of open clusters: those set in star fields so rich that the clusters seem to merge into the Milky Way. A favorite [...]

Are there particular celestial objects that have bedeviled you time and again? For a long time, Alpha (α) Vulpeculae was a thorn in my side. Along with 8 Vulpeculae, Alpha [...]

A lot of stargazers don't observe exclusively with either binoculars or a telescope, but switch back and forth as needed. There's a lot to be said for examining the same [...]

Binocular Highlight by Mathew Wedel I have shown Mizar and Alcor - the "Horse and Rider" in Ursa Major, the Great Bear - to hundreds if not thousands of people at star parties and outreach events. Mizar and Alcor are roughly 80 light-years away, but the parallax distance measurements have large margins of error. Last are the percentage of a planet's disk illuminated by the Sun and the distance from Earth in astronomical units. [Extracted from the article]

The article describes some of the top attractions in the Milky Way for astronomical viewing using binoculars. Topics covered include the open cluster Collinder 121, open cluster M41 that is visible even to the naked eyes in dark skies, the M93 open star clusters, the NGC 2571 open star clusters and photographs of these star clusters.