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Binoculars are easy to use and are a tremendous aid to stargazing. On nights, which I just make out stars of magnitude three, my binoculars enable me to see easily down to objects of magnitude five and six. To locate an object in your binoculars, first face towards the object and look through the binoculars straight ahead, parallel to the ground. Now, slowly seep the binoculars upward until you see your object. This works fine for any bright star. The binoculars allow you only a small field of vision and it is extremely difficult to point them exactly in the right direction without some sweeping. If your object is also fairly bright and there is very little in the sky between it and a bright star, you may be able to see your object by focusing on the bright star and sweeping directly over to the object.
Every pair of binoculars has a focusing mechanism. Once you set it correctly so that an object in the sky appears sharply in focus, there is no need to fiddle with it further. This is such good advice that I myself do not play with the focus more than three or four times a night.
To find dimmer objects, it is best to start on a bright star and reach your final objective through a series of short hops. For this to work you must have a reasonable idea of what to expect to see along each hop and you well need some sort of star atlas. A star atlas is a map of the sky, which includes not only stars, but galaxies, star clusters and nebulae (clouds of gas between the stars). Planets are not fixed on the celestial sphere so their locations are not included in a star atlas although the ecliptic will be drawn in to indicate along where the planets might be found.
No star atlas will exactly match what you see in the sky. They are all too detailed or not detailed enough. A very detailed star atlas will show stars that you cannot see even through your binoculars, while another atlas might not show you all the stars that you can see.
If you are trying to hop from a bright star to a dim object, a galaxy for instance, first look up both the star and the galaxy in a star atlas and imagine the stars between them as a series of geometric shapes. For instance, to the left of the bright star is a pentagon of dim stars, followed by a triangle with one slightly brighter stars at the upper point then a lopsided square and finally the galaxy. Create your own mini-constellations and soon what appeared to be a bunch of random stars will have patterns.
Do not expect to find everything right away. After finding each shape in the sky, you will probably have to go back, take another look at the star atlas (remember the flashlight covered with red cellophane) and retrace all your steps back from the bright star. It may take a while, but you will be rewarded with not only finding your galaxy but also learning another bit of the sky.