A traditional Easter egg hunt is a lot of fun, especially for kids. I certainly enjoyed them when I was young, a few dozen years ago. It's also a lot of fun to roll across starry night skies with a pair of binoculars. Telescopes can certainly let you see heavenly bodies with more magnification but a pair of binoculars lets you see wider areas of the sky in a single view.

You don't have to have a super duper large pair of binoculars for stargazing. In fact, it's much better to have a smaller pair that you can hold up while you're sitting back in a lawn chair, so you can navigate the sky without getting tennis elbow!

You could put some larger binoculars on a tripod, but you would certainly lose the quick mobility of moving the scopes around the heavens with your bare hands. I advise newcomers to stargazing to get to know their way around the stars and constellations with both their bare eyes and binoculars before sliding that credit card through to buy that telescope. It will make your time with a telescope a lot more fun if you do your "homework" ahead of time.

One of the best celestial treats you will run into when you scan your binoculars across the night sky are star clusters, made up of mainly young stars, generally less than 100 million years old, which is considered grossly under age compared to the rest of the more mature stars like our sun, which is celebrating around five billion years of stellar life.

Before you start your binocular browsing in the night sky, make sure that you're comfortable. Sit or lie back on a reclining lawn chair or hammock. It's so much more comfortable than standing, holding your binoculars over your head, especially when you're gazing straight overhead. I guarantee that will get really old in a hurry!

You can start your binocular browsing from any point in the heavens, making sure to pan slowly across the sky so you don't miss anything.

I'd like to propose a good starting point right now: the planet Mars. Early in the evening, face the bright constellation Orion the Hunter in the southwestern sky. As you see on the diagram, it's the next brightest "star" you see above Orion.

Even with the naked eye you can see its orange-red hue. Mars itself will be very underwhelming through binoculars. All you'll see will be a tiny reddish disk and that's it. Even with a powerful telescope Mars won't show much detail. The tiny 4000 mile-wide planet is just too far away presently, well over 100 million miles away.

Even though it doesn't look like much, Mars can be a great reference point to begin your binocular search.

Pan about five degrees down and to the right of the red planet. Five degrees is only about half the width of your fist at arm's length, so you won't be straying all that far from Mars.

That's where you'll find a family of young stars in a cluster, referred to by it's not so romantic astronomical name, M-35.

At first glance it may look like just a misty little patch, but if you settle your binocs on it for awhile its beauty will reveal itself to you.

You should be able to resolve at least some of the individual stars in the cluster that's thought to have over 500 members spread out in an area about 140 trillion miles across. This young family of stars is more than 2800 light years away, and with just one light year equaling nearly six trillion miles, you're not getting there and back on a weekend jaunt! It's so far away that the light you're seeing from it tonight left that young extended family of stars around 800 B.C.!

Again, the longer you continually stare at M-35, the more you'll see as your eyes get adjusted to the light level in your binoculars.

Also in same stellar neighborhood around Mars this week are three more clusters in their own little cluster.

Pan your binoculars just over ten degrees to the right of Mars, which equates to the full width of your fist held at arm's length. You should see three more star clusters within five degrees of each other.

From left to right are the clusters M37, M36 and M38. All of three of these clusters are much farther away than M35, a little more than 4000 light years away.

M37 and M38 are the largest and oldest of the trio of clusters, both between about 20 to 25 light years across and occupied by hundreds of stars.

M37 and M38 are also relatively older groups of stars, ranging in age from 200 to 300 million years old. This would make them "teenagers" in star years.

M36 is a smaller, younger stellar day care, about 15 light years across, made up of less than 100 cosmic babies, and are only about 25 million years old.

As you can see on the star map, these three clusters are within the strange constellation Auriga the Chariot Driver.

A word of caution here: I used Mars as a starting point to find these star clusters because it's so easy to find right now. However, you wouldn't always want to use Mars because like other planets, it's always on the move against the background of stars. But for the couple of weeks or so it'll help you get your bearings in that part of the sky.

In general practice it's better to use the constellation patterns to help you find clusters and other binocular celestial goodies. It takes some work getting to know the layout of constellations, but it's very well worth it.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com