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Earth and the Moon

Stargazing Basics

What’s the best equipment to use for stargazing?

The only essential equipment are your eyes. Binoculars and telescopes are useful to look at fainter objects; they gather more light than your eyes alone, but their field of view—the amount of sky you can see at one time through them—is smaller than your unaided eyes. When using binoculars and telescopes, it is best to steady them with a tripod or a mount of some kind.