the only thing I know for sure in the night sky is the moon and the big dipper. I spent 30 minutes trying to find that green comet that flew by recently, but had no idea where any of the other constellations were, and none of the online maps helped me.
The big dipper is much more interesting and useful than it appears:
* you can use the big dipper (BD hereafter) to easily locate Castor/Pollux, Regulus, Arcturus, Spica ("arc to arcturus then speed on to spica"), Vega, Deneb, Cassiopeia, and of course polaris/northstar. Then daisy chain off those. The BD really can be the key to your understanding of the sky.
* There are revelations in even the most common groups like the BD that will change the way you look at the sky. For example: The second star from the end of the handle is not a star. It is two stars (Mizar and Alcor) which means horse and rider in Arabic. Our Arab brothers used to gauge one's eyesight by whether or not one could make out that this is not one star but a brighter and dimmer one very "close together" (optically speaking).
You can definitely "split" (tell that they are seperate) them in binos. Light pollution or haze may keep you from doing it with just eyeballs.
But the revelation is multilayered: put a telescope on the pair and the brighter one, Mizar, is actually also a double and was the first "star" split with a telescope. Its partner orbits it. The smaller of the two is something like 10x the brightness of our own sun.
Oh, and there are two telescope-visible galaxies in the Ursa Major const. that the BD is a part of.
Nightwatch: A practical guide... is full of handy tricks/tips like how to find the stars/constellations using the BD.
Turn left at Orion is my favorite for finding easily locatable splits and galaxies. Both of these will likely be findable at local used bookstores as they are very common. I got mine at Half Price Books fer cheep.
