For anyone at all who is lucky enough to be outdoors on a reasonably clear morning or night at sunrise or sunset, this video will likely enhance the experience:

Astronomy Resources

1. www.ClearDarkSky.com  An indispensable time-and-effort saver and frustration-reducer. Includes very precise cloud cover forecasts, light pollution maps, hour-by-hour weather info, Aurora Borealis, and countless other items for locations in Canada, USA, Mexico, and The Bahamas, at time of update in 2026.
2. Stellarium.org  A very popular and remarkable resource to understand your night (or daytime) sky. We love the ability to plan the best date / time / location to view target objects. For example, if you want to see Jupiter, Stellarium can tell you exactly where it will be in the sky for any given location, date and time.
   
3. Astronomy-tools  Includes a handy tool to figure out the right magnification for your object of interest.
4.  BBC Sky at Night Magazine  An excellent resource that includes detailed, thoughtful and reliable reviews of a huge range of astronomy equipment. We recently relied upon this resource to choose a grab-and-go mount that we plan to take to Tofino, BC for some awesome dark sky viewing! (NB: we chose a Vixen SX2 with Starbook Ten controller - with Harout's help, we also plan to use Sky Safari with this mount).
5. Amateur Astronomy Photo of the Day  As the name suggests, a gorgeous collection of amateur astronomy photographs, including a new one each day.
6. Astromart.com  It's like eBay, but just for astronomy equipment. We've heard some mixed reviews, but (so far) we've had a very good experience with the service. If you are okay with used or like-new equipment, there are some great deals to be found.
7. AstroFilters.com – Reviews of Astrophotography Filters For those living in light-polluted cities (most of us), it's essential to filter out the "skyglow" for any deep-space imaging (eg. nebulas). We like this website for its unbiased and comprehensive reviews of available filters.
8. The Role of Data Science in Astronomy and Interstellar Exploration (datascienceprograms.com) For those seeking a more in-depth understanding of large-scale telescopes (eg., Hubble, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Extremely Large Telescope (XLT), etc.), this excellent resource was sent to us by Sarah Walker, having been found by one of her students, Jeremy.
9. Jonathan's Space Report (planet4589.org) This website received a shout-out in the following video: I Accidentally Photographed Something Unknown During the Eclipse - Smarter Every Day 298 (youtube.com). As Destin explains, it's an 'old-school' website dedicated to information about satellites.
10. 100,000 Stars (chromeexperiments.com) A 3D interactive map of more than 100,000 nearby stars. MB.
11. Stargazing from your window. This stargazing guide offers some great tips to help you stargaze from indoors with minimal equipment, as well as a pretty extensive list of external resources (sky maps, books, apps, learning activities for kids and more) for anyone who'd like to explore more. Sent to us by Hailey Dawn Stratton.

Astrophotography

How cool would it be to have remote control over your telescope, and to be able to see what it sees from anywhere? eg., instead of crouching outside in the cold, you could be huddled under a blanket on the sofa with a hot cup of coffee?

We found this following YouTube video very helpful to achieve this level of comfort (lazy?):

Regarding perfectly focused stars, and keeping perfect focus for hours, the author is finding inspiration from this video:

 

Regarding the use of AI to achieve a 'push-button' automatic telescope, be sure to watch this video before buying one:

Astronomy Retailers

If you have a local astronomy store nearby, that’s the perfect place to begin — their knowledge and support can make a huge difference. Otherwise, you can likely find most of what you're looking for online, as described further below.

In considering your plan/shopping list/budget, I would take a moment to learn how dark your sky will be on a clear night: LightPollutionMap. Most reading this are likely in population centres with scary white/red/orange/yellow/green/blue/etc. colours. Don't despair, there are plenty of brighter objects that you can still see virtually anywhere on Earth on a clear night, such as the Moon (this can be breathtaking, even with binoculars), Jupiter, Saturn, etc.

Online, we've had good experiences with Telescopes Canada, based in Georgetown, ON. We understood that All-Star Telescope (based in Alberta) and Ontario Telescope both have excellent reputations, and we've had good experiences with each. You could also try David Astro or Astronomie Plus.

For astrophotography, this superb resource will simulate views with telescope/camera combinations: Byron Bay Observatory Astronomy Setup Calculator. You could look for inspiration with other photographers' achievements on Astrobin.

For video astronomy, I would consider MallinCam, a Canadian company.

If you're curious what some of the best modern equipment looks like, this resource seems to exemplify it: Astrofalls. If you watch the YouTube video, you'll see a quad telescope setup used to detect asteroids from the ground.

Second-Hand Equipment

You can see what's in the second-hand marketplace on Astromart Classifieds, but you do so at your own risk.