>Hi
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>>Apart from looking at information on Web-sites, there is also an interesting piece of software called "Redshift". A personal planetarium, sort of. Basically, it shows you a sight of the sky for any day, hour, and geographical coordinates.
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>Thanks I will check it out. Just another questions (already answered by you but now rephrased please bear me). The binocs I have are 7x50 they show, say Orion nebula, like hazy dots anyway, now this instrument in question is 30x30 so the lens is smaller (thus lesser light capturing) and the zoom factor is way more. Now what would be (your best guess) the situation for the same Orion nebula?
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>Please advise.

30 x 30 won't be catching enough light to support that magnification so you'll still see a grey haze. Also bear in mind the pictures we see of things like the Crab nebulae are the result of long exposures by very large telescopes plus usually with some element of false colour applied to the different wavelengths of light. Most naked eye observation through a telescope will be black and white or very subdued colour because there isn't enough light to perceive colour. The most visually impressive things to look at would be the moon and planets and star clusters

One nice thing you can do with a small telescope is project the sun onto some paper letting you see the sunspots (or the very occasional transit of venus). With the susnpots then you can track the rotation of the sun. Its a lot easier to do this with a decent tripod and equatorial mount.

Nick