Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the best season for stargazing with binoculars. The nights are long, the air is cold and the stars seem brighter than in summer.
Naked-eye stargazing in winter is a joy, but lift a pair of binoculars to your eyes and the whole experience changes. The sky stops being a flat backdrop and suddenly has depth. It’s layered with stars, open clusters and nebulas that you never knew were there. Galactic immersion is yours.
That’s the magic of binocular astronomy. Sweeping the sky with both eyes open, holding a pair of binoculars up to the night sky, feels natural and relaxed, yet you’re seeing so much more than with the unaided eye. It’s also easy and affordable to do — all you need is a warm coat, a dark corner and a steady pair of hands.
Choose a good pair of the best stargazing binoculars — something like 7×50, 8×42 or 10×50 — and you’ll unlock a second layer of the winter night sky with almost no effort. Here’s what to look at in a pair of binoculars from the Northern Hemisphere this season.
1. Sirius, the kaleidoscope star
It’s the brightest star in the night sky, but Sirius in the constellation Canis Major also appears to be one of the most colorful. Although it’s a blue-white star, Sirius shows a rainbow of colors as it twinkles.
Its high brightness and the fact that it is low in the sky during the Northern Hemisphere winter make Sirius shimmer in multiple colors as its starlight is refracted by Earth’s atmosphere. Put your binoculars on Sirius and you will see a kaleidoscope of colors.
2. Jupiter at opposition
The best time to look at an outer planet is when it is at opposition. At that moment, the Earth is between the planet and the sun, making the planet both closest to Earth and fully illuminated by the sun.
On Jan. 10, 2026, Jupiter will come to opposition, something that happens once every 13 months. For a few weeks either side of this date, put a pair of 8×42, 10×42 or 10×50 binoculars on Jupiter and you will see its four Galilean moons — Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and Io — as dots either side of the giant planet.
3. First quarter moon
Ask someone when the best time to look at the moon is, and they will almost always say when it’s a full moon — but that’s bad advice. Through binoculars, the moon looks better at almost any other time of month, with perhaps the most intriguing (and convenient) coming at first quarter moon, when dramatic shadows can be seen along the terminator — the line between lunar night and day.
Use any pair of 10x binoculars and you’ll get a spectacular close-up of shadows cast by the craters, valleys and mountains on the moon. As a bonus, a first-quarter moon is up from dusk until midnight.
4. The Owl Cluster
A particularly bright open star cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia, the Owl Cluster (or NGC 457 , if you prefer) is over 9,000 light-years from the solar system and contains almost 100 stars.
Its name comes from its yellow and blue stars, which are said to resemble the eyes of an owl. If you see Cassiopeia as a ‘W’ shape, NGC 457 is just beneath the first ‘V’.
5. A supermoon rising
As we’ve already said, the full moon phase is not the best time to look at the moon through binoculars — with one very specific exception.
If you can catch the full moon as it rises in the east during dusk, there are a few better sights than the lunar surface cast in an orange light. It looks that way because the sunlight being reflected into your eyes is traveling through the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere, which scatters away short-wavelength blue light, while the longer wavelengths of red and orange light pass through easily.
See the full moon rise on Dec. 4 (Cold Supermoon), Jan. 3 (Wolf Supermoon) and Feb. 1 (Snow Moon), researching the exact time of moonrise for your location and looking east a few minutes after.
6. Auriga’s star clusters
The constellation of Auriga dominates the autumn and winter sky, but tends to get overshadowed by the rising stars in the constellation Orion below. Auriga’s brightest star is Capella, the goat star — the brightest in a rough pentagon of five stars.
However, within the constellation, there are some deep sky delights in the form of three star clusters — M36, M37 and M38. Find M36, and all three will be in the field of view of a pair of most 10×50 binoculars.
7. Winter Milky Way
Stargazers and astrophotographers rave about capturing the Milky Way during the Northern Hemisphere summer months, but the dense star fields of our galaxy’s spiral arms can easily be seen in winter. All you need to do is scan your binoculars between the constellations of Orion in the south and Cassiopeia high in the north, and you will see many thousands of bright stars.
Looking its best between December and February, it’s not as bright as the summer Milky Way, but the crisp and cold nights can give it a gorgeous, glittering look.
8. Caroline’s Rose
In the constellation Cassiopeia there is an open cluster, NGC 7789, whose stars and the dark lanes between them are said to resemble a rose. A great target for binoculars, the name comes from its discoverer in 1783, Caroline Herschel — a noted comet-hunter and the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, who discovered Uranus.
If you see Cassiopeia as a ‘W’ shape, NGC 7789 is close to the final point, marked by the star Caph.
9. Earthshine on the moon
It is one of the easiest and most spectacular sights of all to see through a pair of binoculars, but Earthshine doesn’t get the attention it deserves. When the moon is a slim crescent, put your binoculars on the night side of the moon, and you will see detail on the lunar surface. This is Earthshine, sunlight reflected from Earth’s icecaps, oceans and clouds, gently illuminating the dark side of the moon.
You’ll see it for two or three nights, either side of the new moon phase, initially during a waning crescent moon visible in the east just before dawn, and later during a waxing crescent moon in the west just after dusk. New moons occur on Dec. 19, 2025, and Jan. 18, 2026.
