Let’s say you’re a kid living near Des Moines, Iowa. You just got a brand-new telescope, and it’s getting very dark outside. Finally! The time has come to give it a try!

You start from your bedroom on the top floor of the house. The closer you are to the sky, the better you’ll see it. Right? You stick your telescope out the window. You look through the eyepiece, but everything seems blurry. What could be wrong?

Hot air always flows toward a place of cooler air. If the temperature in your bedroom measures higher or lower than the air outside, an air current will form. That will make your telescope’s image quality go down.

Next, you try observing the sky from your deck. You’ve just leaned up close to the scope . . . when your brother walks by. The deck vibrates. So does the image in your scope. The more closely you magnify the image, the worse it gets! Not only that, your house naturally gives off heat at nighttime. That means more air currents, and worse images.

Finally, you try out the best place you have for sky watching—the grassy area in your backyard. But you don’t live on a mountain top. You live in a flat spot. That means you have to look through great amounts of blurry atmosphere before you can see deep into the sky. And just as you get planted firmly, a cat skitters by, setting off your neighbor’s porch light. Suddenly you can’t see much at all. What a disaster!

The world’s best observatories have several things in common. People put them in places with clear weather where the sky grows very dark at night. Observatories work best in high places. In Chile, a famous telescope called The Very Large Telescope operates from the desert. The dryness of the atmosphere there means radio waves can come through clearly. The Mauna Kea telescopes sit above 40 percent of Earth’s atmosphere. Because of that, they don’t have to do all the extra work yours does.

It takes a while to learn the best ways and places to use a telescope. But sky-watchers will tell you: The view is worth the wait.