A practical guide to observing the night sky for real skies and real equipment
The night sky is vast.
Thousands of objects. Endless lists.
Stargazing Buddy removes that friction by offering a curated path into visual observing and astrophotography.
What you'll find here
- • Curated observing targets for naked eye, binoculars, and telescopes
- • Practical observing notes focused on what observers actually notice
- • Clear guidance on what to expect — brightness, structure, and difficulty
- • Planning tools that explain why something works (or doesn't) from your location
No overwhelming theory.
Who this guide is for
Stargazing Buddy is for you if you want to:
- • Learn what to observe tonight, not someday
- • Build real observing skills step by step
- • Understand why some objects are easy — and others aren't
- • Plan sessions that match your sky conditions and equipment
This is not a planetarium app, and not a general astronomy encyclopedia.
Explore the sky with intention
Whether you're using your eyes, binoculars, or a telescope, observing becomes more rewarding when you know what matters: where to look, what details are realistic, and when conditions make a difference.
Tools that support understanding — not black boxes
Focused calculators and planners designed to explain tradeoffs clearly:
- • Seeing vs pixel scale
- • Surface brightness and detectability
- • Field of view and framing
- • Object visibility and timing
View observing tools →
Grounded in observing reality
Every section of Stargazing Buddy is written with real observing conditions in mind — sky quality, equipment limits, and what is genuinely reasonable to expect at the eyepiece or camera.
The goal isn't to show you everything.