Viewing the Stars

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago about viewing Mars this month: it will be the closest to Earth in recorded history. So, I spent the next few hours doing research on telescopes. I took a class at a museum a few years ago about stars, but it wasn't very useful because we never actually got to view stars outside. And so that e-mail got me excited again about viewing the stars because the Earth, and humans, play an extremely small part in the Universe. We're only one (having existed less than 1% of Earth's history) of a ten or more million species on a planet that's in a galaxy (the Milky Way) consisting of about 50 billion stars (such as the Sun) in a universe made up of tens of billions of galaxies!

So, I finally decided on buying binoculars because I can take them anywhere and I don't have a good viewing area from my home. My research led to believe I have to spend between $150-200 on a pair good enough to actually see more than with a naked eye. That recommendation was confirmed last night when I tried seeing stars through a Bushnell 8x25mm binocular which I purchased at Wal-Mart for $9.99. How Wal-Mart can make money selling them for such a low price, never mind how a company can manufacture a pair for even less, truly baffles me. In any case, these binoculars are actually minimally useful for daytime use. In the next few days I'll get a pair of really nice ones with which I'll be able to see some planets and stars.