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You can buy cheap a red dot finder that has a camera hotshoe fitting which will do the job of your pvc pipe and give you a red dot to more precisely targetsomething of interest, like a planet or comet (you cant see em, but you can photograph them, they are always whizzing about).
ipad/iphone i highly recommend Sky Safari, its just awsome, thought there are cheaper and free options for beginners too i think Star Walk can help you learn the sky from your location.
Dont be afraid of hooking up with a local astronomy group, every single one of them started off lost with the sky and you'll find them a friendly and helpful bunch always happy to share knowledge to help you avoid the mistakes they made. Astronomy attracts the interested and patient types rather than the egotistical ones.
Hint #1 never show up to a gathering with a regular torch, at least make an effort to affix some red plastic over the end. red light torches don't destroy night vision like regular white light torches. Its a good habit to get into using red light torches at home anyway. It can take an hour or more for your eyes to adjust to the dark at night and another sketching exercises is when you get outside after dark is to sketch all the stars you can see in a recognisable group (say the southern cross) and sit admiring the night sky for at least 30min then repeat the process on the same group. You'll see heaps more stars with the second sketch. You could just count the stars within a region too but I find sketching forces you to focus better, looking up and down to sketch you orient faster plus it helps with scales too to navigating from a star map especially when looking for something in particular. You'll appreciate too how fast you loose your night vision as soon as a white light torch, car headlight or street lamp is in your field of view, so if you show up at a gathering with one you'll hear groans from everyone at the very least. No particular brands or anything needed here, just a torch with a red bulb, usually red leds these days which are cheap. or dodgy up a mod to a torch.
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