by Bob Berman
People often imagine a telescope is a guaranteed ticket to an eye-opening space ride. But I'm going to let you in on astronomy's dirty little secret: There are only about a dozen glitzy places at which to point the thing.
Magnify a fuzzy galaxy or nebula, and you're still left with a colorless smear, only bigger. Gaze at cloud-covered Venus, and all you'll see is brilliant but featureless white. Mars is hardly more than an orange dot in small telescopes. Serious observers may find endless pleasure in the universe's subtler images, but those seeking a quick thrill often get discouraged. I'd guess that a million scopes are packed away in storage, forgotten by frustrated sky watchers.
The sky does offer a few true spectacles, of course. Sunlight etches dramatic shadows in the craters of a crescent moon. The stars of the Pleiades flicker like celestial fireflies. And ...
