Help

Hey,as I said before I'm a complete novice.But when I takemy telescope out and look at the moon its perfect,whats next for me,is there any planets I can view.Here's a stupid question,is that really bright ,orange,red star out in the distance Venus ? Again excuse my ignorance

I found this useful:

www.stellarium.org/

most probably Mars which is quite high in the sky.

Try usning stellarium and compare it with what u can actually see

sounds like Mars, Venus would be white and is currently visible in the eastern horison just before the sun rises.

Sounds like you need a planetarium piece of software.

Download Cartes du Ciel - its free. You'll never be stuck again for the name of what your looking at also you'll learn the sky a lot quicker. If you have a Pocket PC, then I cannot recommend highly enough a program called Pocket Stars from www.nomadelectronics.com . Its great to be able to have a great database of whats currently in the sky right in your hands just as your looking at it.

caseyciaran, download that program davema gave you the link for - youll find its a great help for novices.

next up for you can be Mars & Saturn - what kind of scope do you have?