If you have an extremely dark sky, you can see the nebula on as a fuzzy patch in the Milky Way. Binoculars show more … and a telescope still more.

Messier 11 is a faint cluster of stars in a star-rich region of the night sky, in the direction of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.

If you’ve never found a deep-sky object on your own before, M4 – a globular star cluster, one of the nearest to our solar system – is a grand place to start. It’s near the bright red star Antares in the easy-to-spot constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. To spot it, you’ll need a dark sky.

Messier 6 and Messier 7 are star clusters near Scorpius’ stinger. But you’ll need a dark sky to see these faint but stunning stellar aggregations.

Many stargazers call it the finest globular cluster in the northern half of the heavens. It’s M13, also known as the Great Cluster in Hercules.

Standing under a dark sky in late July or August? Look up! You’ll notice a long, dark lane dividing the bright Milky Way. This Dark Rift is a place where new stars are forming.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, which is visible to the unaided human eye, might look like a small, faint bit of the Milky Way that’s broken off. But really it’s a separate small galaxy, thought to be orbiting our larger Milky Way.

The Triangulum galaxy, aka Messier 33, is 2.7 million light-years away, and the 3rd-largest member of our Local Group, after the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.

You need to be in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere to see the Small Magellanic Cloud. It looks like a luminous cloud, but it’s really a dwarf galaxy, orbiting our Milky Way.