If an astronomer tells you he doesn't take the telescope out much anymore because there's nothing left to see, tell him he's not trying hard enough. Our Milky Way Galaxy has a few hundred billion stars, and our universe has a few hundred billion galaxies!

But unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands, you won't be able to see them all. What you really need is a guide—a shortcut to those objects in the sky that are the most spectacular and the most rewarding. Luckily for amateur astronomers, just such a list exists. It's called the Messier catalog—named for the man who compiled it, French astronomer Charles Messier—and it contains 110 of the most beautiful objects in the night sky, all of which are visible through a small telescope. Even a good pair of binoculars will reveal many of them.