I probably should 'fess up - I'm not an astronomical "n00b".
I've been into astronomy since I were a lad (Skylab re-entry anyone?), later acquiring a spotting scope for birdwatching - which naturally was turned to astronomy. The great planetary alignment (all the planets, except Pluto, lined up in order across the sky) was its crowning glory - my first glimpse of Neptune (by apparent motion over several nights.)
I have a soft spot for comets, having seen as many of the bright comets as I could manage since Halley's comet (much better in '86 than '87). Last year's C/2006P1 was obviously an absolute ripper!
For Halley's Comet, I borrowed my school's dusty and unloved (4.5"?) Newtonian telescope on an equatorial pier. It had awful lenses, worn/stripped worm drives, and almost certainly wasn't collimated. Unsurprisingly, the comet was unimpressive in it compared to a pair of ordinary 7x50 bins. However, the (fuzzy) high power views of Jupiter and Saturn were a real eye-opener - hence my desire for a light bucket.
For star charts, in the field I use Planetarium for Palm
(http://www.aho.ch/pilotplanets/) with the m16 star database. XEphem (
http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/) has also be useful over the years, but the Motif interface is showing its age.
I have an Energizer LED head torch, bought from Bunnings: one red LED or two white LEDs. Play Russian Roulette with your night vision!
The red LED is quite bright, but hasn't been a problem on spotlighting trips.
Anyway, enough rambling.
Cheers all.