Without any optical aid at all, you can observe a wide range of phenomena in the sky. You can see the large dark areas on the Moon that are now known to have resulted from large objects crashing into it almost 4 billion years ago. You can see the nightly wanderings of five of the planets, and from one place on Earth or another you can spot the 88 constellations the traditional star patterns. You can watch certain stars,the variables, change in brightness over the course of days, weeks, or months. You can see star clusters like the Pleiades in Taurus and gas clouds like the Great Nebula in Orion.
If the night is dark, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, will be visible, winding across the sky, as will three of its neighboring galaxies. There are also artificial satellites to be seen, and showers of small meteors. If you are far enough north or south, you can see the display of the northern or southern lights (the aurora borealis and the aurora australis).
THE CHANGING SKY The sky is constantly changing. The Moon rises about 50 minutes later, on average, every night, so as well as its phase differing each time it rises, its position relative to the stars differs.
They move more slowly than the Moon, the planets trace elegant paths among the stars and you can follow the movements of the five that are closest to us.
The stars themselves rise about four minutes earlier each night, which may not sound like alot, but the difference adds up to about an hour every two weeks and a day over the course of a full year.
You can even see the sky alter during the course of a single night. In only two hours, stars that were near the eastern horizon will have risen to high in the eastern sky, while others will have set in the west.
GO OUTSIDE
For most people, dusk marks the end of a day, for skywatchers (unless they watch the Sun), it marks the beginning. Any clear night provides a chance to go outside and see whats up, some nights have events, like a lunar eclipse, when the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow. Meteor showers (like eclipses, are also forecast). So turn off the TV and turn to the sky.
