You are or you want to be an amateur astronomer ? You can't observ the sky bacause you don't have any material, you don't have a released horizon, you live in a luminous city or it's 4 P.M. ? The software stellarium is made for you !
Stellarium can simulate on a computer the look af the sky in a given place at a given time. You can see or not the position of the galaxies and their names, the ground or a coords grid. You can see the sky at every point in the Earth, for example at home, and choose the time of the simulation, you even are able to accelerate the time to see the stars move.
To make your observation easier, you can see the atmospher to be more realistic or hide it for more visibility, and you have a search tool which find every repertoried star. With these functions, it's thus also a good help to know where to look during a real observation.
You can see there some screenshots (click on a picture to enlarge it) and to know more or to download the program (almost 16.5 Mo), it's on http://www.stellarium.org.

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