Stargazing is a fascinating hobby, but there’s an awful lot to gaze at up there. Eighty-eight constellations and hundreds of other objects both bright and faint mean that wherever you look when you’re stargazing, there’s something to see. If you want to make sense of it all, and make sure that your kit is properly set up, this Cheat Sheet is here to help.

If you use binoculars for your stargazing, you need to get them into focus before you begin. Once your binoculars are focused, the stars you see should look incredibly sharp. You can focus most binoculars in the same way. Just follow this simple step-by-step guide:Adjust the separation between the two eyepiece lenses so that they’re at the same spacing as the distance between your pupils, called the interpupillary distance.

Orion is great signpost constellation to use for your stargazing. In fact, it may be the very best, because you can use the stars of Orion to find seven other constellations immediately around it.The objects you can find using Orion as a signpost are:Orion’s Belt to Canis Major: Picture Orion as a hunter standing upright, with the stars Betelgeuse and Bellatrix marking out his shoulders, and Saiph and Rigel marking out his feet.

One of the great signposts in the northern hemisphere sky is the Big Dipper, also known as the Plough, an asterism in the constellation of Ursa Major. If you can find the Big Dipper, then you’re well on your way to finding lots of other constellations. ‘Dipper’ is an American word for a large ladle for scooping liquid.

When you use a telescope for your stargazing, it usually comes with a finderscope, a small attachment which allows you to focus on the correct part of the sky. To align your finderscope and telescope:Get your alignment target in the centre of the field of view of your main scope.Your scope may have come with a cross-hair attachment that you can fit to your eyepiece to help you get the target exactly in the centre.

A comet is a stuck-together mixture of ice, frozen gases (such as the ices of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide), and solid particles — the dust or "dirt" shown here. Historically, astronomers described comets as having a head and tail or tails, but with additional research, they've been able to clarify the nature of a comet's structure.

Hundreds of operating satellites are orbiting Earth, along with thousands of pieces of orbiting space junk — nonfunctional satellites, upper stages from satellite launch rockets, pieces of broken and even exploded satellites, and tiny paint flakes from satellites and rockets.You may be able to glimpse the reflected light from any of the larger satellites and space junk, and powerful defense radar can track even very small pieces.

Digital cameras are now the preferred tools for photographing meteors. But digital meteor photography requires a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR), which is an expensive camera (point-and-shoot cameras and cellphone cameras don't work very well, except in the rare case when you can catch a brilliant fireball) and a lot of trial-and-error experimenting until you get it right.