What to show a beginner?

Question

At my new job, it's soon going to be my turn for doing night/graveyard shifts for a fair amount of weeks. Perfect excuse to buy a decent beginners telescope to replace the 4.5" 15 y/o Meade that doesn't work anymore with a 10" Dobsonian reflector!My girlfriend wants to join me (which I'm all for), and having grown up on a (relatively poor) farm, she's never had the pleasure of looking through a telescope. When I asked her what she wanted to look at first, she shrugged and said "I don't know. Show me everything!"The problem is, the stuff I generally stare at are Nebulae and star clusters (since that's all I really could see), despite knowing that there is so much more out there that are equally enticing to the eye.So my question is this: For any category of objects, what are the most popular? If you have gone to many star parties, what are the objects people are generally asking to see most of the time? What were the things that when you first saw them through a telescope made you go "Wow!"?Note: Do understand that the objects generally have to be viewable during Late September (new moon), but having new objects I can show her in the coming months would be awesome as well. I've already told her the journey of the grand tour will probably take 6 months to a year (due to earth rotation and all that,) and will require the joining of us to the local astronomy club.

Answer 1

Planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars)

Moons (Our moon, Jupiter's moons, Saturn's moons)

Andromeda

Alberio (binary star in Cygnus)

Billions and billions of other things...

Scan the sky a find something! That is the most rewarding feeling! Let your girlfriend scan the sky (maybe even set up something for her to find) and let her "discover" something and ignite her curiousity!