Maybe you received a telescope during the holiday season, or perhaps you’ve gifted yourself a scope. I want you to get as much as you can out of it. There’s too much waiting for you in the universe above our heads. Galileo said it best: telescopes “reveal the invisible.”

You might be tempted to put off using your new telescope until it warms up, but that’s a big mistake. Wintertime stargazing is fantastic and it's worth bundling up for the big celestial show. For one thing, when the skies are clear, they are really clear! The sky-blurring humidity of summer is long gone, and the skies are wonderfully transparent. Along with that, skies are truly magical with the great winter constellations and all the celestial treasures within them. Prepare to be dazzled!

My first word of advice is to be patient. Too many Christmas telescopes wind up neglected because of bad technique. Take your time with your new scope and thoroughly read the instructions, even you guys out there like me who don’t think it’s necessary.

First of all, it really helps to get to know your way around the sky at least a little bit. I'm not asking you to know every single constellation out there through the course of the year, but whatever you can do to familiarize yourself with January evening skies will help you. Maybe your telescope, like many of them these days, has a built-in navigation system. Using an app on your smartphone and a Bluetooth connection, the telescopes will “find” whatever target you're looking for. It’s a great time-saver that really helps when you’re out in the cold. Even if your scope has “go-to” capability, it’s still a good idea to familiarize yourself with the night sky as best you can. One resource I can suggest is the absolutely fantastic Sky Guide App for your Smartphone. With Sky Guide, all you have to do is hold your phone toward the sky and it'll show you what constellations you're viewing. It also has articles, a celestial calendar and more. The basic version is less than $10. There’s also Stellarium, a great planetarium/star map software for your laptop, computer or tablet.

Another essential to remember is to make sure your telescope is set up outside and on solid ground. Pointing your telescope out a window never works! Especially this time of year also make sure your telescope and any eyepieces you're using sit outside for at least a half-hour before use. They need to acclimate to colder outside temperatures, otherwise, whatever you gaze at could be a little fuzzy and you could become discouraged. It’s also a good idea to avoid viewing telescope targets near the horizon. The Earth’s atmospheric layer is thicker there and targets will definitely appear fuzzy.

Make sure your small finder telescope or another finding device like a laser that comes with some scopes are in sync with the main telescope. Check the instructions because these devices vary from scope to scope. You should be able to see the moon or whatever your target is in the main scope with low magnification after you get it centered in the finder scope or device. It’s best to get the finder and the main scope synced up using a fixed land object before going skyward. Also, use a wide-field/low magnification eyepiece when you’re searching for a sky target. Once you find your target, you can go to higher magnification eyepieces, but you will notice diminishing clarity with increasing magnification. Limiting magnification is normal for telescopes of any size.

Try to take long continuous views of whatever you’re observing so your eye can used to the light level within the eyepiece. That’ll allow you to see more detail and catch clearer patches of Earth’s atmosphere that may be drifting across your target.

Now for some easy starter targets.

1. The Moon

Early in the coming week is a great time to view the moon. Your best views will be right around what’s known as the terminator, the line between the sunlit and darkened part of the moon. That's where you can get the best views of craters and mountains because of the longer shadows there. You can gain perspective on the heights of crater walls and mountains. Next week, we will have a full moon, and it won’t be nearly as fun because the entire side of the moon facing us is in direct sunlight, making seeing details on the surface much more difficult.

2. Planets

Jupiter and its moons and cloud band and Saturn with its ring system are by far the best planets to view and this month they’re both available in the evening sky. As a bonus, Mars is also available this month in the early evening sky and is the closest it’s been to Earth in over two years. You can actually see surface features on it!

3. Pleiades Star Cluster

This is the best star cluster in the sky. With the naked eye, it looks like a mini Big Dipper in the upper half of the eastern sky. Through even a small telescope you can see dozens of very young stars over 400 light-years away. One light-year equals almost six trillion miles!

4. The Perseus Double Cluster

This is a great telescope target. It’s nearly visible to the naked eye. Aim your scope very high in the northern sky, just to the upper right of the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. It’s one of my very favorites as you’ll see two distinct clusters of stars side by side. They’re both 7,000 light-years away. I know you’ll love what you see!

5. The Orion Nebula

This is simply wondrous through a telescope. You can easily find it with the naked eye as a fuzzy middle star in the three stars that make up the sword of Orion the Hunter in the eastern sky. Through your scope, you’ll see a glob of gas with a little bit of a greenish tint to it. It’s a giant cloud of hydrogen gas around 1,500 light-years away. Within it, you should be able to see up to four faint and very young stars arranged in a trapezoid.

6. The Andromeda Galaxy

It's the next-door neighbor galaxy to our Milky Way. It is nearly overhead in the high southern sky within the constellation Andromeda the Princess.

Check out my January star maps on my website www.lynchandthestars.com for locating these objects.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.