Binoculars a Great Aid to Star Gazing

As you may have discerned from reading some of my blog articles, I enjoy going out after sunset and looking at the night sky.  I learned the constellations and brightest stars by name and location back in the spring of 1964, when I was only seven...and I've enjoyed this hobby ever since. I suppose the comforting familiarity I get when I look up and see the same old star patterns is similar to someone who is knowledgeable about plants and who recognizes different species and varieties at different times and places.  There has always been one problem I've had with sky-gazing, though: except for a period of about three years when we had a privacy fence around our backyard, I have been very hesitant about using binoculars or telescopes to explore the sky in greater detail.  I did, back in late 1985 when I was still single and living in Sundowne Apartments off Windmeadows Boulevard, go out into the wide open field across the street (filled-in less than two years later for a Wal-Mart, Lowes, and movie theater) and train my binoculars on the skies, with a specific goal in mind: observing and tracking the path of Halley's Comet, which I recorded in a star chart in a pocket handbook that I still have to this day.  But subsequently living in a suburban neighborhood, surrounded by houses that naturally have windows and potentially suspicious neighbors, keeps me from using binoculars for fear that someone might accuse me of invading their privacy with them.  We'd like to get another privacy fence put up...and that would naturally solve the problem.  In the meantime, I'm brainstorming how to create a little makeshift "observatory" around me when in the backyard that shields me from being seen by my neighbors while enabling me to enjoy the sky in greater detail...

Although the fall evening sky isn't exactly known to be spectacular in any sense, there is always the Andromeda Galaxy to see...and in 2016 the planets Uranus and Neptune are in the constellations Pisces and Aquarius, respectively.  But in order to see any of these...especially under city light conditions where I live...I'm gonna need those binoculars...